Forest of Wonders

  She had understood! Raffa knew now that she was actually leading the bear, not being chased, and this might well give him a few more precious moments.

  He dashed into the neighboring shed and slammed the door behind him. Even through the closed door, he could hear Roo’s roars, as well as shouts of alarm, which were growing fainter. He scanned the space quickly. This shed was the one that housed adult animals—females, Kuma had said.

  The animals were mostly awake, and calm. Raffa knew at once that they had been treated with the training infusion: Dozens of pairs of purple eyes peered at him from the cages. He was here on a hunch, and he had to hurry.

  One set of shelves held raccoons. Raffa opened the hemp bag holding the twins, who immediately began to squeak.

  “Mamma? Mamma?”

  “Mamma! Mamma!”

  On a shoulder-high shelf to his right, a raccoon frantically hurled herself against the wire door of her cage, calling out and crying in obvious desperation. The commotion woke Echo, who clicked in annoyance. Raffa took a moment to pull out the perch. The bat stretched his wings and, still upside down, squeaked in delight.

  “Bando Twig mamma!” he said.

  Raffa was about to open the cage when the shed door flew open. His heart bounced in his chest as he whirled around.

  It was Trixin! She stumbled inside, panting. “I ran around the back first,” she gasped, “but then I figured it was safer to be indoors—”

  She stopped and took in the scene: Raffa’s hand on the latch, the mother raccoon still frantic, the babies now crying out for her. “What are you doing?”

  Raffa yanked open the cage door, grabbed the mother by the scruff, and shoved her into the hemp bag. “Trixin, listen,” he said, aware of the desperation in his voice. “Kuma and I—we’re leaving. There’s this project—I think they might be training animals to attack people.”

  Trixin was gawping at him as if he had turned into a throll.

  He spoke faster, his words propelled by fear. “I don’t have time to explain, but what they’re doing is terrible! You have to believe me! Will you help us? Tell them you saw me heading toward the Commons.”

  The furrow between Trixin’s eyes deepened, first in doubt and confusion, and then in vexation. “I can’t! If they find out I helped you, I’ll lose my job, and I only just got it!”

  “Please, Trixin!”

  “No! You don’t understand! My family—winter’s coming—you can’t ask me to do this!”

  “Roo is Kuma’s family! They hurt the twins on purpose!”

  Raffa knew he was hardly making sense anymore. His brain was a complete garble.

  “Kuma’s with you? You’re together in this?” Trixin demanded.

  “Yes! She’s only pretending that Roo has gone wild. It was to get everyone out of here so we could escape—”

  “And you swear on—on—on your pother’s oath that all this nonsense you’re spouting is true?”

  “I swear it’s true, every word!”

  Echo must have sensed his agitation, for he spread his wings, drawing Trixin’s attention.

  “Raffa good,” Echo squeaked. “Trixin friend?”

  Trixin blinked. She stared at the bat for a moment, then pressed her lips together as she looked at Raffa.

  He didn’t take his eyes off her as he answered Echo. “Yes, Echo. Trixin friend. I haven’t known her very long, but it feels like—like longer.”

  Silence, except for squeaks and chitters of joy from the raccoons in the bag.

  Finally Trixin heaved an enormous sigh. “Oh, all right!” she said. “But I am not losing my job over this. We’ll have to think of something. . . .”

  She glanced around, then stomped to a corner of the shed, where she picked up a stout wooden board.

  “Here,” she said, holding it out to him.

  He looked at the board in bafflement.

  “Don’t you see?” she said. “You’re to hit me with it—hard enough to give me a good lump. And then I can say that you knocked me out and I have no idea what you were about. Hurry and get it over with!”

  Raffa stood with his mouth agape. He glanced down at the board. “I don’t want to hit you—I don’t think I can—”

  “Quake’s sake!” Trixin shouted. “Do I have to do everything myself?”

  She grabbed the board with both hands, swung it hard, and bashed it into her forehead.

  “YOW!” she shrieked, and staggered as she dropped the board.

  Raffa grabbed her arm and helped her sit down against the wall. Already a handsome lump was swelling above her eyebrow.

  “Now get out of here,” she said, rubbing the lump. “This is going to hurt for days, and I don’t want it to be for nothing!”

  He grabbed the raccoons’ bag and ran.

  It was not easy to run while holding on to a bag in which an ecstatic raccoon reunion was taking place. Raffa raced out of the shed toward the gate, but he was hampered by the awkwardness of the bag and the weight of the mother. He hadn’t had time to put Echo back on the perch; the bat clung to his sleeve.

  At the gate he pulled up and looked around in a panic. He saw that the fleeing group had been joined by the gate guard and the wagon driver. Kuma and Roo had chased them down the drive toward the stable yard. He heard Ansel shout, “Garith! To the laboratory! Hurry!”

  Raffa turned and dashed down the length of the fence, then into the brush, where he had hidden the night before. “Echo,” he panted, “go toward the stables. Find Kuma and Roo and lead them to me. I’m going to go on, to the west. Toward sunfall, okay?”

  “Echo go, Kuma come,” the bat said, and flapped off.

  Raffa hated seeing Echo fly out of sight, but he could think of no other way to reunite with Kuma. He hoisted the raccoons’ bag over his shoulder and started off to the west.

  In the opposite direction, to the east of Gilden, lay the ferry landing, the river, home. But he knew it was the first place they would search. He planned to head west, into the foothills, and camp there for a while. Maybe he could somehow circle south of Gilden and find another way to cross the Everwide.

  Sooner than he dared hope, Echo was back. “Kuma come,” he said. “Big big big BIG—”

  “That’s Roo, Echo,” Raffa said. “She’s a bear.”

  “Stop,” Echo said. “Raffa run no good.”

  What was Echo saying? That he should turn back?

  “I shouldn’t run, Echo? What do you mean?”

  “Raffa run, big bear run.”

  He understood then: Kuma had told Echo to convey that Raffa shouldn’t be running when they reunited; if he did, Roo would chase him.

  It worked out well, considering that Raffa had to stand still and watch as the giant bear loped toward him. Roo looked far bigger than when he had seen her emerging from the shed.

  Kuma was running alongside the bear. She slowed to a walk as Roo raised her nose in the air. “Stay here, Roo,” she said. Then she hurried the rest of the way to Raffa and, to his surprise, gave him a hug.

  “See, Roo?” She turned to look at the bear while her arms were still around Raffa’s shoulders. “Raffa is my friend. Come meet him.”

  So the hug had been for Roo’s benefit. But Raffa didn’t care; he was so relieved to see Kuma again that he hugged her back.

  As the bear ambled over, Kuma cautioned Raffa. “Don’t move. Let her smell you. I know we’re in a rush, but she has to do this.”

  Raffa did as he was told. Roo made a thorough job of it, including an extended bout of sniffing with her snout between his legs. Raffa squeaked in alarm, which made Kuma giggle.

  “Most animals do that, smell each other’s—um, lower parts,” she said.

  “Of course,” Raffa said, trying not to flinch from Roo’s probing nose.

  Apparently satisfied, Roo turned her attention to Raffa’s rucksack. Hastily he took out an apple. He held it out cautiously, and Roo swiped it from him with a snort of approval.

  “Now you’re friends for
life,” Kuma said, smiling. But her smile vanished quickly. “Listen, we chased them toward the stables. We stopped when Echo came. The Chancellor saw us turn off the track, and started screaming for the guards. And she kept yelling about the bear—that they had to get the bear.” She swallowed. “We need to take Roo somewhere safe. Where they’ll never find her.”

  “This way,” Raffa said. As they started toward the foothills, he explained his reasoning as to why they shouldn’t run east. Echo flew ahead of them, sometimes circling back to squeak encouragement. The foothills would have forest growth for cover. If they could just make it there, they might have a chance to elude pursuit.

  They came to a low stone wall topped by a hedgerow. Roo broke through the thorny hedge as if it were made of matchsticks. On the other side lay a straw-stubbled field. For a brief, long moment, Raffa stared through the gap at the field.

  Wide open.

  No cover anywhere.

  “Come on,” Kuma said. “At least we’ll be able to move fast.”

  The field looked enormous. Raffa felt almost naked with all that open space around him, and nothing but a menacing gray sky above.

  Roo covered the ground easily, and Kuma ran light-footed as a doe. But Raffa found that the furrows were exactly the wrong distance apart—too far for a single stride, too close together for two. If he were to twist an ankle, he’d have to ignore the pain and keep going.

  Echo flew back toward the hedgerow to scout behind the group, then veered sharply and returned. He hovered over Raffa and squeaked; still running, Raffa held up his arm so the bat could land.

  “Ouch!” Echo flapped in agitation. “Birds! Many!”

  Raffa looked over his shoulder and almost tripped. Catching his balance and his breath, he searched the sky behind them, seeing nothing but clouds.

  “What kind of birds, Echo?” he asked urgently.

  “Craw, craw,” Echo replied.

  Crows. Raffa frowned in puzzlement. What were the crows going to do—drop pastries on them?

  “Raffa!” Kuma was pointing not to the sky overhead but much lower, on a line with the horizon. A dark cluster was moving steadily toward them.

  “They’ve probably been sent to track us,” she said. “We should split up. Once we get to the hills, you can send Echo to find me again.”

  Raffa didn’t answer. Something was bothering him . . . something that kept ducking away from the grasp of his mind. Crows at the Chancellor’s dinner . . . No, that wasn’t it—

  “We can’t just stand here!” Kuma said in a near-wail. Roo whined, sensing Kuma’s distress.

  Whatever the memory was, it wouldn’t come to him. “Let’s stay together until we get across the field,” Raffa said, “and split up once we hit the scrub.”

  They would never be able to traverse the field before the crows reached them, but they ran anyway. When they were no more than a third of the way across, the first of the crows swooped above them.

  What came next happened so quickly that Raffa could hardly believe it had happened at all. The crow let out a loud craw and dove directly at his head.

  “Yow!” he cried.

  The bird had struck hard with its beak. Then the rest of the crows were upon them.

  One after another, the crows dove and struck, always aiming for their heads, sometimes landing a vicious peck on their shoulders. There were perhaps two dozen of them, but to Raffa it seemed like hundreds.

  Echo was squealing and flapping, trying to impede the crows despite being barely a quarter their size.

  “No, Echo, don’t!” Raffa yelled, terrified that the bat would get hurt. “Stay out of the way!”

  Kuma screamed as one crow struck her dangerously near her left eye. Blood bloomed on her brow, and the image that had been eluding Raffa solidified in his mind.

  The scarecrows, their blank eyes gaping.

  The ground around the scarecrows littered with crushed grapes.

  “Eyes!” he shrieked. “They’re going for our eyes!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  RAFFA threw himself to the ground and buried his face in the crook of his elbow. The sack holding the raccoons went flying. He heard Kuma’s desperate voice saying, “Down, Roo! Down! Raffa, help! I can’t get her down!”

  A crow struck at Raffa’s neck, piercing the flesh behind his ear. He bellowed a curse, then raised his head and saw Kuma frantically beating off crows with one arm while hanging on to Roo with the other.

  Raffa jumped to his feet. His arm over his brow, he rushed toward Kuma and the bear. There were crows all around her, flapping, cawing, striking. . . .

  “Kuma! Get down, protect yourself!”

  “No! I can’t let them blind Roo!”

  “But they’re not attacking her, only us! Get down, I’m telling you—!”

  Raffa did the only thing he could think of: He threw himself at Kuma and grabbed her around the waist, taking her down with a hard tackle. She cried out and struggled against him as the crows continued to dive at them, raining blows on their heads and shoulders.

  With his body holding Kuma down, Raffa yelled into her ear. “Cover your eyes! Trust me!”

  She stopped fighting him and obeyed. He let her roll over, and she peeked out from under her arm. Her eyes widened: She’d seen that he was telling the truth.

  Then Roo gave a tremendous roar right over Raffa’s head. With his back to the bear, he couldn’t see what she was doing, but then there was a thudding sound, followed by an explosion of black feathers.

  The bear roared again, and Raffa turned to see Roo swatting at the crows with her enormous paws. The birds were clustered so thickly that every blow clouted away at least one crow, sometimes two.

  Still, the others continued to attack. Then Raffa shouted to Kuma, “Make yourself smaller!” They crouched as close together as they could, arms crossed over their heads, giving the crows the tightest possible target.

  With another roar, Roo cleared several birds in a single swipe. That was enough for the rest of them: In a final flurry of angry croaks, the remaining crows flapped into the air and flew off toward the Commons.

  A weighty silence followed the crows’ departure. As Raffa finally, hesitantly, lowered his arms, he heard Kuma’s gasps for breath alternating with his own.

  From a few paces away came the feeble croak of a crow as it died.

  There were eleven dead crows on the ground. Raffa and Kuma knelt over one of them, its neck twisted at an odd angle. Raffa felt compelled to straighten it gently, so it looked more comfortable in death.

  “It wasn’t their fault,” Kuma whispered.

  Roo snuffled at her, whining a little.

  “Or yours, either,” she added sadly, fondling the bear’s ears.

  Raffa was still trying to understand what had just happened. Training crows to blind people! As a wartime tactic, it was one thing, but he shuddered to think of the callousness of someone trying to blind him and Kuma, who could hardly be called an enemy army.

  He doubted that Mannum Trubb had the authority to order such an attack. It might have been Jayney. Or even Chancellor Leeds herself. And each of those possibilities served to block the one he didn’t want to consider: That it was Uncle Ansel who had done it.

  Raffa glared at his own thoughts and forced his mind back to the present. “We have to go,” he said. He adjusted the straps of his rucksack. Then, in a moment of sudden realization, he looked around wildly.

  “The babies!” he cried out. “Where are they?”

  The hemp bag was on the ground several paces away; it looked suspiciously flat and inert. Was it empty?

  Raffa raced over, groped for the top of the bag and opened it. The face of a dazed-looking baby raccoon peered out at him. He couldn’t tell which one it was.

  “Mamma? Bando? Bando? Mamma?”

  It was Twig, and she was alone.

  Raffa cried out in distress. “We have to find them!” He cradled Twig as he scanned the field. It was all his fault. He didn’
t even remember dropping the sack when the crows had begun their attack.

  The mother raccoon sensing danger. Picking up Bando in her mouth, finding her way out of the sack, and carrying her baby—where?—to a place safer than the open field. “She’ll come back for Twig, I know she will!”

  Kuma looked as miserable as he felt. “We have to go, Raffa,” she said gently. “She wouldn’t have turned back, so she must be somewhere up ahead. Maybe we’ll find her. Or she’ll find us, so long as we keep Twig with us.”

  Raffa knew she was right. The crows had been only the first wave, he was sure upon certain. They had to get away before . . . before whatever came next.

  He put Twig back into the bag. They began tramping over the furrows again. Raffa tried to hurry, but his legs felt as stiff and heavy as tree trunks. At each step he scanned the field, hoping to spot the missing raccoons.

  The only small comfort was that Twig seemed stronger now, having had the chance to nurse from her mother. A quiet but steady stream of plaintive Mammas and Bandos issued from the bag. Raffa could hardly bear it: Just when the baby raccoon had been reunited with her mother, they were separated again, and this time, there was no Bando for solace.

  When they finally reached the end of the field, Raffa sent Echo back to scout. The rest of them ducked into the scrub and sheltered under a small hazeltine tree.

  They drank from Raffa’s waterskin. Then Raffa hastily cleaned up the wound on Kuma’s forehead, and did the same with his own neck. He knew he couldn’t take the time to make a poultice, but he rolled a few yellowroot leaves between his palms and plastered the leaves to their injuries.

  “Why didn’t the crows attack Roo?” Kuma asked.

  “Because she’s too valuable to them,” Raffa said. “I’m almost certain they want to use her as a weapon—I’ll explain more later. She’d be no good to them blind.”

  Kuma looked stricken, which made Raffa wonder if his words had been too stark. But there was no time for honey-dripping. They had to face things as they were.

  Just then Echo returned and alit on a branch over Raffa’s head.