“And that’s all we could hope for,” she replied, placing her hand on his arm.
Brendan the Bandit King stood apart, gauging the placement of the sun in the hazy sky. “She’s got some time on us. If she’s on to the Ossuary Tree, it won’t be long before this Verdant Empress will cross the pass and into North Wood.” He spat angrily at the writhing ground. “Us on foot, she’d long have laid the Council Tree to waste before we made Wildwood, even without all this damned ivy everywhere.”
Owl Rex offered up a smile. “Then we will not travel on foot,” he said, before unfurling his wings and leaping into the air. He wheeled about, some hundreds of feet above their heads, before spiraling upward and rending the air with the loudest birdcall many of the bandits and South Wooders assembled had ever had a chance to hear. It echoed through the still woods, among the ivy-crowned trees and the falling buildings and the sad, desolate landscape of this desecrated world: a resounding cry, a call to arms.
CHAPTER 26
The Birth of Giants
The children had decided they’d spend the day at Bandit Hideout Deerskull Dragonfighter recuperating from their ordeal the night before, catching up on sleep and prepping for their long walk to South Wood, where they’d (hopefully) find Curtis’s friend Prue and reunite Carol with his long-lost machinist counterpart. The kids passed the hours exploring the many walkways of the hideout while Curtis helpfully fitted his sister Elsie with a pair of handwoven moccasins—she’d been going it one-shoed since the duct-rats’ escape from the stevedores in the security elevator shaft. They were a trial pair he’d been working on in order to keep his hide-working skills up to snuff, and it was a great fortuity that they actually fit Elsie’s small feet.
“Thanks, Bandit Curtis,” said Elsie, wiggling her toes against the doeskin.
“Don’t mention it,” replied her brother, smiling.
Once night fell, however, Rachel found she couldn’t sleep. She’d dozed a little that morning, when they’d first arrived at the hideout—though certainly not enough to replenish the amount of energy she’d expended, physically and emotionally, in her maiden saboteur action. She felt emboldened by everything that had taken place, and that night, after the salvaged dinner had been eaten and the wood-carved dishes had been cleaned and stowed, she sat with her palms to the crackling fire while the rest of the crowd, the five Unadoptables and Carol, all collapsed into a sardine-packed row and fell into dreamless sleep. All night she listened to the soughing of the tall trees as they were gently rocked in the dark’s noisy breezes; she heard the hooting calls of owls and the cries of the night birds. She must’ve dozed off at some point; when she awoke, the air was warm and the light was bright through the stain of gray clouds in the sky; she’d lost track of the passing of time in this bizarre new world, and her head felt as heavy and confused as it had ever been. The other sleepers had long roused; their mossy cots were all empty.
Curtis walked into the hut and saw his sister wake and prop herself up by her elbows; he was carrying a handful of wineskins, dripping full with water. Setting them by the door, he picked up a nearby willow branch and stirred at the smoldering campfire.
“Morning,” he said. “You slept well. It’s getting on midday!”
“I think I was up most of the night,” was her reply.
“Oh,” he said, frowning. “Well, you’ll get used to it. I didn’t sleep much, either, when I first came here. Except for that first night, in the Governess’s warren. But I had some blackberry wine to help with that.” He smiled sheepishly before suddenly growing self-conscious of this admission. “It was sort of forced on me.”
“Where’s Nico?” asked Rachel, seeing the empty spot next to her pile of moss.
“He volunteered for lookout,” said Curtis. He stirred the fire a little more before saying, “Seems like a nice guy.”
“He is,” said Rachel. “Though I don’t know what he’s thinking about all this.”
“Seems to be taking it in stride. I guess the Industrial Wastes were kind of their own weird universe. This isn’t that big of a change.” He paused in his fire stirring and said, “It’s good to see you guys again, Rach.”
“You too, Curtis.”
“How are Mom and Dad doing?”
“I guess okay, considering that they’ve been traumatized about you.”
Curtis stiffened. “I didn’t mean to cause anyone any grief.”
“Well, that didn’t really work out, did it? What did you expect?” She stared at her brother, waiting for his response.
Curtis shrugged defensively. “I don’t know, Rach. I thought maybe you guys’d understand.” He corrected himself before his sister had a chance to pounce. “I mean, if you’d only known what was happening. That I was wrapped up in this bigger thing. People depended on me, Rachel. And I figured that if you could see me, you would get it.” He gestured to their surroundings. “I mean, look at all this. I belong here.”
The fire crackled between them; Rachel didn’t respond.
Curtis continued: “Not to say I didn’t belong there, in the Outside. I love you guys, and there’s really not a day that goes by I don’t miss you and think about you. Mom and Dad and Elsie. Even you, though you were kind of a jerk to me, back home.”
“What?”
“You were! There was a moment where we got along, but it was so long ago it’s like it didn’t even exist. I just remember old photos of us sitting together when I was, like, a baby. That’s the last time I remember ever hanging out with you where you were nice to me.”
Rachel felt her dander getting up. “Don’t pin this on me. I’m not the reason you ran away from home.”
“No,” said Curtis, waving his hand in objection. “No. You weren’t the reason. But it was a part of it. Like, all these little things building up. School was awful. Everyone had moved on from the stuff they’d loved as kids. All my friends had changed—since middle school began, it was like they were different people. I felt like they’d figured out something that was totally a mystery to me. Like, how to grow up. I just didn’t get it. And then I found this place, and suddenly I could grow up—but in my own way, you know?”
“I guess so,” said Rachel. “Couldn’t you have done this out there?”
“Maybe. But I wasn’t open to it. The stakes weren’t high enough. Or something.”
There was a pause between them as the fire snapped and flickered and the light of the day grew sharper as the sheen of clouds parted; it peered in through the open windows. Curtis was about to say something, perhaps something peaceable, to assuage his sister’s anger, but he was interrupted by a very large crashing noise.
“What was that?” said Rachel suddenly.
Curtis leapt up and looked out one of the windows; the air was suddenly alive with the noise of frantic birdsong. “I don’t know,” he said. “Sounded like a tree falling.”
It came again, the crashing. It sounded like someone had taken a particularly branchy tree and dropped it from a great height. Nico came rushing in through the door.
“Curtis!” he shouted. “You’re going to want to see this.”
Together, they rushed along a series of rickety bridges and up a staircase that spiraled the trunk of another cedar. From this vantage, they towered above the forest canopy and could see, seemingly, for miles. Nico scanned the vista; another crash sounded.
“There,” he said, pointing his finger at a gap in the trees. “Please tell me what that is.”
Curtis squinted, trying to make out what the saboteur had spotted; the forest was very thick here, in deepest Wildwood; something would have to be fairly big for one to spot it on the ground from their high vantage point. But then, just as he was about to question Nico once more, he saw it.
There, in the break between a circle of trees, was a tranquil meadow. Curtis could make it out plainly from their treetop. Another crash came, and Curtis saw the grassy soil of the meadow undulate as if it were a down comforter and someone had just given it a he
althy shake. The source of this little quake soon presented itself: The thick and telephone-pole-tall leg of some bizarrely fashioned humanoid creature stepped out onto the grass of the meadow. Curtis gaped; soon, the rest of its body followed, and the creature was completely exposed in the center of the clearing, an awful smudge on this pastoral scene.
It was the ivy; and yet it was not the ivy. Rather, it was as if someone had taken a vast patch of the plant and, having molded it into the shape of the poor approximation of a human figure, fed it some monstrous fertilizer that let it grow to the size of a small building. And then, by some magic, imbued the creation with life. The ivy hung from the creature’s frame like a shaggy coat and draped in long tendrils from its faceless head, like an overly hairy dog; it was a shambling, leafy hedge, come to life.
The ivy hung from the creature’s frame like a shaggy coat and draped in long tendrils from its faceless head, like an overly hairy dog.
With every step the creature made, ivy took root and began to spread. Where trees stood in its way, it reached out its long, spindly arms and merely knocked them aside like traffic cones.
“Oh God,” said Nico. “There’s more.”
Sure enough, just as soon as the ivy giant had lumbered across the meadow, another appeared on the edge of the clearing, great waves of ivy extending out from its every step. Another followed, close behind. Their footfalls and the ensuing tide of ivy crashed together, and soon whole trees were being swallowed by the leafy stuff; it clung to the trees’ trunks and snaked up through the limbs until the shorter trees were all but swallowed whole, the wood aching and wheezing from the weight.
“Quick!” said Curtis, breaking from his trance, from the horror he’d felt to see such awesome, terrifying things waltz into his domain. “We’ve got to get everyone up.”
“This isn’t something that regularly happens, I take it,” said Nico, breathlessly stepping away from the edge of the lookout post.
Curtis shot the man an annoyed glare. “No,” he said flatly, before leaping down the staircase away from the platform.
“I don’t know,” said Nico. “Where I’m from animals don’t talk, either.” He quickly followed the bandit down the stairway.
When they arrived at the hut, all the children and Carol had gathered there and were in a state of frenzied activity. “What is that noise?” demanded Oz; Martha was holding Carol’s arm protectively. She held back the branchy curtains and searched the view out of the window.
“I don’t know,” said Curtis. “Nothing I’ve ever seen before. Huge . . . huge things. Giants.” His heart was rattling in his chest as he spoke. “Made of ivy, as far as I can tell.”
“What do we do?” This was Elsie, her eyes wild. Suddenly, this tranquil forest world seemed not as safe as it once had.
Curtis looked down at his little sister, trying to tamp down his own fear. “I—” he faltered. “I don’t know.”
Another crashing noise sounded, this time closer. The walls of the little house shook and the tree swayed.
“Think of something,” demanded Rachel, staring down her brother, hard.
Septimus the rat came scurrying into the room. “Curtis!” he shouted. “What are you doing? We’ve got intruders on the perimeter!”
Curtis looked at his sisters, blinked a few times, and then turned to the rat. “Right,” he said, regaining his composure. “Where are they headed?”
“Toward the gully,” said Septimus. “I heard Nico’s call-out, went to go get a close-hand view.”
“Are the traps set?”
“The ones in the gully are down, remember? We were working on them the other day.”
“Damn,” swore Curtis, before remembering his little sister. “I mean, shoot. Maybe . . .”
He felt every eye in the hut resting on him. The pressure suddenly felt overlarge, weighty. “You guys. Follow me,” he said finally, pointing at Nico and Rachel. “Elsie and everyone else, stay put. Get to the crow’s nest if you have to. As far as I can tell, only the shorter trees are being swallowed up. I think you’re safe here.”
“From the ivy?” asked Martha.
“These things—they’re made of ivy. They’re covering the forest. Every step sends out more shoots.”
“What if they come at the hideout?” This was Elsie, her face lined with worry.
“We won’t let them,” answered Septimus.
Curtis gave them all a brief, determined look before he dashed out of the doorway and down the stairs toward the ground. Set into an empty knot in the tree a few steps down the stairs, a weathered chest had been placed; Curtis opened it and pulled out three scabbarded sabers and handed one each to his sister and Nico. The third, a pebble-pommeled sword, he saved for himself, strapping it to his waist.
“What’s this?” asked Rachel.
“What’s it look like?” responded Curtis.
Nico looped the belt around his black trousers and cinched it tight. Drawing the blade from its scabbard, he looked at the thing briefly before saying, “I think I can do this. C’est facile.”
Rachel, not as assured as her compatriot saboteur, fastened the sword around her waist and waited for her brother to lead on.
By the time they’d descended the ladder to the forest floor, the ivy was everywhere; it was flattening the low brush and teeming over the tree saplings, reducing what was once a vibrant, diverse-colored canvas into an ivy-strewn wasteland. What’s more, Curtis found as his booted feet touched the ground that the stuff was moving, like a pit of writhing asps. It licked up his ankle as he made contact, trying to strangle his calf, and he kicked it away disgustedly.
“Careful!” he called out to Nico and Rachel, who were making their way down the ladder. “This stuff is really alive.” His saber was withdrawn, and he held it poised as he stepped away from the tree. A vigorous tendril shot up his leg and his sword came flashing down, slicing the thing in half and sending it, withering, to the ground.
“What is this, Curtis?” called Rachel, high-stepping through the blanket of ivy. “Do you know what’s happening?” Suddenly, a patch of ivy quivered at her step, and several shoots went climbing up her leg. She screamed, stumbling, and the ivy clung tenaciously.
“Rach!” shouted Curtis. “Your sword!”
Pinwheeling her arms, she managed to gain enough control to whip the saber from her side and catch the ivy vines by the base; lifting the blade up, she heard a satisfying rip as the plant went scattering and her legs were freed. Nico, seeing this, drew his sword as well and held it threateningly toward the blanket of ivy.
But Curtis’s thoughts were elsewhere, drifting, as he made his way through the dense bracken. Like some shade of a memory, hailing him from a long distance. It seemed like so long ago, and yet was only last fall: He’d been there, a proud member of the Wildwood Irregulars. They were fighting back wave after wave of the coyote army. To scuttle her plans.
The Dowager Governess.
And now, it would seem that somehow that terrible ceremony she’d sought to complete there, on the Plinth, had been achieved. By whose hand, he couldn’t know. But it was clear, while the ivy lapped at his heels and he high-stepped headlong through the swallowed forest, that someone was certainly to blame for this enchantment.
He couldn’t, however, have anticipated the horrors that the ivy could create: He rounded the felled stump of a large tree and had to leap back, his heart racing, when one of those ivy-built behemoths came charging down the hillside toward him. He waved his hand to Rachel and Nico, and they dove into cover behind him.
The thing was even more awesome from this perspective, here on the ground. Seeing it from the air had given it a toylike appearance; but from here, from below, the thing looked positively menacing. Thick curtains of ivy poured down from the crown of its head and all but covered its humanlike limbs, which, when they revealed themselves from within a thick screen of ivy, were seen to be rippling with viny sinews. The thing hadn’t seen them, there concealed by the leveled stu
mp, and the three of them watched slack-jawed while it slowly crashed its way through the forest; soon, two more appeared in its wake. One of them stopped and, letting its foot fall with a loud, crashing stomp, sent a tidal wave of ivy up an ancient hemlock, crowning it in vines until it was a sad, drooping thing, a Christmas tree over-decked with tinsel.
“Curtis,” came a hissed voice. It was Septimus, just above them, hidden in the boughs of a tree. “They’re moving toward Deerskull Dragonfighter.”
Just as the rat said this, another crash sounded as one of the giants swung its heavy arm against a tree that had stood in its way; the tree’s massive roots tipped up from the ground, sending a spray of dirt skyward, and it toppled to the forest floor.
Curtis thought quickly; diving out from behind the tree, he dashed toward the ivy giant, waving his saber wildly around his head.
He yelled something then, though he wouldn’t later be able to remember what it was. Even Rachel and Nico, who were still cowering behind the tree trunk, couldn’t be called upon to describe it later, so shocked were they to see this twelve-year-old boy go darting out into the path of possibly the most horrifying and grotesque spectacle they’d ever seen in their lives. All any of them really knew, at that moment, was that the ivy giants, all three of them, stopped what they were doing (which was stomping around, sending up rafts of ivy and knocking trees down) to stare at the small human with a look of seeming disbelief—though it couldn’t be said that the giants had eyes—or even faces; their undulating green heads were totally featureless, covered as they were in deep, shaggy tresses of vines.
Curtis made a few more prancing leaps, shouted something else, turned around, and started running.
One of the three giants lifted its bulky leg and let it fall, stomping out a flurry of ivy vines that shot toward the running boy; they hit the wall of trees Curtis had dived beyond and exploded upward into the branches. Rachel, seeing this, let out a little yelp. One of the giants, having evidently heard her exclamation, swiveled its weird head in her direction and began walking toward her and Nico.