Elsie felt like she was about to be torn in two; she could feel the ivy now, licking at her shoe soles. Terrified as she was of losing her footing, she could only watch as the stuff began its steady, untrammeled assault on her ankles and her calves. Septimus valiantly ran about, trying to swat off the encroaching vines, but soon it became too much. The platform was becoming overrun. The tree teetered under the strain of the ivy and the wind and the hanging chain of humans swinging from its crown.
Elsie looked at the ground; she looked at the sky and the scattering clouds. The long horizon laid itself out before her, and a kind of peaceful resolve descended as the pressure exerted between her left elbow and her right hand grew so great as to almost dissolve. There was nowhere to go now. There was nothing that could be done. Why fight? she thought. Her whole life, she realized, had led to this very point. Every choice, every decision she’d made revealed itself to her as a long chain, not unlike the one for which she was currently a link, one that led inextricably to her present circumstances. In this light, it was as if she’d been living this moment her entire life, as everything else: Every memory, every dream, was sublimated into this single, final moment in all its pitching, wheeling chaos.
So it did not surprise her to see Oz’s pant leg finally tear—could they have really put so much faith in the seam-sewing handiwork of a bunch of subterranean-dwelling explosive experts?—and to watch the boy, his right leg comically bare, begin to fall. Some of the pressure on her arm vanished at that moment, though it couldn’t be said to matter that much: The ivy was now entirely consuming her legs.
What was surprising, however, was the dark shape that suddenly flew beneath her vision, distorting the air between Ruthie’s outstretched hand (torn pant shred firmly gripped) and Oz’s spinning, falling shape. A flurry of wind and feathers.
Had it been a bird? But there was something else—had there been someone riding on the back of the bird?
There had, hadn’t there?
However, she didn’t have much chance to consider the implication of this bizarre vision when Ruthie, screaming, slipped from her grasp and another brownish shape dove in and stopped her from her free fall. The sudden loss of Ruthie’s downward pull threw off the balance of the chain, and Elsie was nearly about to follow her fellow Unadoptables’ trajectory when she felt something sharp pinch into the flesh at her shoulders and she was suddenly pulled upward, her feet torn free of their ivy webbing.
Her head bobbled on her neck and she looked down at her legs, a few strands of ivy still clinging to her shoes, as the world grew smaller below her and she rose into the air.
Fearfully, her heartbeat wailing in her eardrums, she looked upward and saw that she was being carried in the talons of an eagle.
What’s more, as they rose above the highest treetops, the eagle fell into formation with a menagerie of avian creatures, small and large. Elsie saw, to her great surprise, that many of the bigger birds carried riders on their feathery backs.
“Els!” came a voice from just below her. She looked down to see her sister, Rachel, still shedding a thick coat of clinging ivy, in the claws of a massive egret in flight. Just behind her, his arms wrapped around the neck of a heron, rode their brother, Curtis, a look of absolute surprise written on his face.
Elsie felt the wind whistle in her ears; she felt the cool air assault her face. She glanced at the birds surrounding her: Astride their backs was an odd assortment of men, dressed in fraying gray robes. Each wore an untidy beard of his own; one of them, Elsie could see, had a truly intimidating tattoo etched on his forehead. She’d just noticed this detail when she heard an ecstatic shout from below her. It was Curtis.
“Brendan!” he yelled. “Jack! Bandits!”
Two of the men wheeled their mounts into a steep pitch and circled around to ride side by side with the boy. The air resounded with their merry laughter.
“Aye, hello there, young bandit-in-training,” hollered Jack over the rushing wind.
Curtis, for his part, was stunned speechless. “Where . . . what . . . ,” was all he could manage. Finally, he bowed his head against the back of his heron mount and said, “I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you, whatever the situation.”
“Us too, lad,” said Brendan. Out of the looping cowl of fabric over his shoulders crawled a cowering rat.
“If only it didn’t involve flying again,” Septimus moaned.
They’d all been saved in the daring rescue, every last link in the chain that had threatened to topple from the treetop fort’s lookout platform. The birds, hearing Curtis’s and Rachel’s screams, had dived down into the under-canopy and pulled them from their ivy snares. All of them were accounted for: Oz (just regaining consciousness, his surprise perhaps was the greatest), Ruthie, Martha, and Carol. Harry hugged the back of an eagle, marveling at the widening world below him. They all wore similar looks of wonder on their faces as the flock drew close and came into tight formation.
“But—where’ve you been all this time?” called Curtis.
“What?” shouted Brendan; the wind, having picked up at their new altitude, made conversing nearly impossible.
“I said—WHERE’VE YOU BEEN?”
Brendan spoke something into the ear of his eagle mount, and the bird gave a loud, marshaling cry. Just then, the flock banked downward, slowing. They were now above a portion of the Wood that had not yet been overrun by the ivy; a wide, grassy vale atop a hill in the midst of the trees presented itself, and the birds circled into a gentle landing on the soft down of the meadow.
Curtis leapt from his heron and ran straight to Brendan, as if to encircle him in a great bear hug. Remembering himself, he stopped short of the Bandit King and instead gave a low bow.
“King,” he said. Looking up, with tears in his eyes, he said, “I’ve kept the band going. I’ve kept it strong. Me and Septimus. We were the Wildwood bandits. We built it all back.” He faltered, his voice choked with emotion. “Till now.”
The tattooed man put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and smiled. “You’ve done well, Curtis,” he said. “We can only be thankful that you escaped the Synod’s poison. The bandit creed was kept with you.”
“The Synod?” Curtis said, blinking.
“Religious sect,” put in the bandit Jack, who’d dismounted his eagle and had joined the two of them in the center of the clearing. “They had us in their spell. Evil stuff. Seamus was the one who brought it—he’d already been taken in by those devils.”
“But the ivy is another matter,” said Brendan. “It did not come from these zealots, but instead—”
Curtis interrupted. “No, I know who’s responsible. We saw her.”
“Her?” Brendan’s eyebrow was arched.
“Alexandra,” replied Curtis. “But not Alexandra. Like, a plant version of her.”
The Bandit King nodded sagely. “Then what the owl says is true. She’s returned to wreak her vengeance on the Wood. She’s now on her way to North Wood, to bring down the Council Tree. We fly to the aid of the Mystics now, for the survival of the Wood.”
Rachel, having dismounted her eagle with a bowing thank you, ran to Elsie, who had been gently deposited some feet away from her in the downy grass of the meadow. Running up on her, she practically tackled the girl, and Elsie laughed in her sister’s uncharacteristically enthusiastic embrace.
“I’m okay, Rach,” she said. “Can’t breathe very well, though.”
Rachel sheepishly released her grip on her sister. “All the screaming—I thought you’d, you know . . .” She paused, as if reckoning with the difficulty of the memory. “The ivy was all over me. I was done, for sure. Then these claws just grabbed my shoulders and I was in the air.”
“And Nico?” asked Elsie, scanning the crowd. All seemed to be accounted for: Most of their crew were standing bemused in the meadow and sharing happy exchanges among one another. The saboteur, however, was nowhere to be seen.
Rachel shook her head. “He didn’t make it,” sh
e said solemnly. “The ivy got him.”
Elsie put her hand to her mouth, stifling a gasp. “No!”
One of the other riders, Curtis’s fellow bandit as far as either Elsie or Rachel could reckon, had overheard them. He approached and gave a small bow before speaking, “I wouldn’t be overconcerned for your friend,” said the bandit, an older boy with a wispy mustache. He smelled like pinecones. “The ivy just sleeps ’em. He’s like a caterpillar in a cocoon; should be fine once we get back to ’im.”
“Oh,” said Rachel, adjusting her composure to the new arrival. “Well, that’s a relief.”
“Name’s Henry. And you are . . .”
“Rachel,” she replied. “Mehlberg. And this is Elsie. We’re Curtis’s sisters.”
The boy looked surprised. “Sisters? Aye, I heard he had sisters. Pleasant surprise. It’s a family affair, I suppose, you Outsiders comin’ in here.”
Rachel smiled shyly; Elsie gave the bandit a polite curtsy and watched as the other bandits—young and old, men and women—all gravitated toward her brother. He was telling his incredible story: the fall into the Gap, his travels through the Underwood, his return to Wildwood, and his construction of Bandit Hideout Deerskull Dragonfighter. Septimus had crawled back to his preferred spot on Curtis’s shoulder and was busily footnoting everything Curtis said with his own particular perspective.
“And that’s when these guys showed up,” Curtis explained to the enthralled crowd. “Completely random! And—you wouldn’t believe it—but they had . . .” He paused here, suddenly remembering himself. “Prue!” he shouted loudly. “Where’s Prue?”
“Yeah,” said Septimus. “Where is she?”
“Flown on ahead, with Owl Rex and another gang of bandits,” said Brendan. “The ones you see here stayed behind in South Wood, mustering arms, before we lit out. And a good thing we did; we weren’t far when we heard your shouts. Turned around to investigate and lo and behold.” He gestured out to the gathered children. “We found you lot—kids in a tree!” He paused for a second before saying, “And one old man. Who’s he?”
“That . . .” Curtis found he could barely get the words out; in all the excitement of being reunited with his fellow bandits, he had quite forgotten about this other serendipitous discovery. “That—is Carol Grod!”
This information received a blank look from Brendan.
“That’s the OTHER MAKER!” shouted Curtis. “The one we’ve been looking for!”
“That’s him? The one who had his eyes out?”
“Yes!” shouted Curtis, waving Carol over to them. Martha, seeing the gesture, grabbed the old man by the hand and led him to where Curtis and Brendan were standing. “Meet Carol. Carol, meet Brendan the Bandit King.”
“It’s an honor,” said Carol. “Thank you for swoopin in.”
“This is the man,” spoke Brendan, savoring his words. “This is the one who Prue’s after? To make the thing?”
“The cog,” corrected Carol, somewhat proudly. “The Möbius Cog, to be exact. One of my finest designs.”
Brendan put his hand to his forehead and massaged his temple, his mouth slightly agape. “Then I expect we should get you to South Wood. They’ve already started work.”
“Started work?” asked Curtis. “Who’s started work?”
“The bear with the hooks,” replied Brendan. “We left Seamus with him to be his hands. To be honest, though, unless this Moldiest Cog of yours is the sort of thing you’d shoe to a horse, I expect your services will be much needed.”
Carol shook his head. “They won’t get far. I suppose either one of us, me or Esben, could re-create the thing—but not without our hands or eyes. It is why Alexandra committed the atrocity she did.”
“Well, it certainly did the trick,” said Brendan, before putting his fingers to his lips and producing a loud whistle. “Brownfeather!”
One of the eagles walked to where he stood and bowed. “Yes, King?” he asked.
“Get this man to South Wood, as fast as your wings will carry him,” instructed Brendan. He looked at Carol again, saying, “Can you manage the journey?”
“As long as I have a little help,” said the blind man, nodding down to the girl at his side.
“Hello,” said Brendan. “And you are?”
“Martha Song, Your Excellency,” the girl with the goggles said. “At your service.”
“Very well,” said Brendan. “Fly, the two of you, to South Wood. Quickly. And may the Ancients grant you speed.” He then turned to the rest of the assembled and spoke:
“The rest of you, mount up. We fly for North Wood, to the defense of the Council Tree. Every soul here, bandit or no, must be prepared to shed their blood for the cause. Our world—and the world beyond it—relies on our actions today. Our numbers may be small, but our courage needs must be the size of mountains.
“And as you fly, let the call go out to the surrounding countryside: The Wildwood Irregulars have marshaled again to set things to right. Birds: Those of you without riders, search the hollows and warrens of Wildwood. Find the areas untouched by the ivy’s spread. Anyone willing to fight by our side will be welcomed; their efforts will not go unrewarded.”
A flurry of smaller birds ascended into the air, a dizzying funnel, before exploding outward in all directions. The surrounding bandits shared a few fleeting words with their comrades before returning to their winged mounts and climbing astride. Oz and Ruthie climbed aboard a pelican that was offering its back, while Harry situated himself atop a bald eagle. Martha and Carol were already gone; the eagle Brownfeather and his two passengers were just now clearing the tops of the trees and disappearing toward the southern horizon. The young bandit Henry, with an undue amount of chivalry, bowed to Rachel and helped her astride his silver egret, before he, too, mounted up. She blushed beneath her black tresses and clasped her wrists at his belly as the egret bent its spindly legs and, with two hearty beats of its wings, lifted into the air.
Brendan watched all this activity proudly, a natural-born leader newly freed of his shackles. Just then, he felt a tug at the hem of his gray robe. He looked down to see it was Elsie Mehlberg, nine years old, smiling shyly up at him.
“Can I ride with you?” she asked self-consciously.
Without saying a word, Brendan reached down, picked the girl up by her waist—a feather’s weight to the broad-shouldered bandit—and set her atop the back of a dappled golden eagle. Climbing aboard behind her, he gave the eagle a small whistle.
“All right then, Chester,” he said.
“We ready?” responded the eagle.
The Bandit King said, “Let’s fly.”
CHAPTER 28
Wildwood Irregulars,
Take Wing!
They’d soon passed the vanguard of the ivy tide; the wave had struck against the peaks and passes of the Cathedral Mountains, and like Hannibal crossing the Alps, it was charging mercilessly over the terrain as if the great mountain range was a small bump in the road. Prue saw it all from her vantage in the air: the sea of green coloring the world into one homogenous pattern like someone dragging a drab-colored paintbrush over a formerly vivid canvas. Beyond the dividing line between the ivy and the uncovered forest, the patchwork fields of North Wood could be seen, drowsy in the afternoon light, untouched, untrammeled, and peacefully ignorant of the great invasion that was about to descend on them.
She rode a white heron named Oliver; Owl Rex led the flock of thirty birds. Other gray-robed bandits joined her in flight. Several South Wood citizens had volunteered as well. Once Brendan and the rest of the bandits reunited with them, carrying whatever weaponry they could scavenge, they would be a formidable force.
But who was their adversary? Could even the best-trained militia stand a chance against the awesome power of the ivy, harnessed by the reborn spirit of the Dowager Governess? Even now, the woman’s awful handiwork was being done: Looking down at the world of the Wood, Prue saw that the borders between the provinces were being quickly era
sed. South Wood and the Avian Principality were effectively gone, their borders wiped away in the flood. Soon North Wood would be caught up in the deluge. The old divisions were disappearing.
It was all Wildwood now.
That’s what Alexandra had wanted all along, wasn’t it?
And there, just as her mind had touched on it, she saw the great expansive crown of the Council Tree itself, towering over its surrounding trees by magnitudes of greatness, standing resolute in the center of a great meadow. From this height, the sackcloth-clad Mystics who surrounded its gnarled trunk were minuscule, little dots on a green field. As they drew closer, she saw that many of them were in the midst of their daily meditations. It surprised her to see them engaged thus: Surely the tree, in its omniscience, with its deep connection to the fabric that ran through the entire Wood—surely it had seen what had happened, what was coming, and would’ve long since alerted the Mystics to the danger they faced.
The flyers began their descent, veering low over the fields and the farms while astonished onlookers gaped at their progress. Somewhere, a bell was ringing. As they flew closer to the ground, Prue saw carriages being drawn up in front of the tiny farmhouses, filled with the accumulated belongings of the panicked residents. The winding roads that linked the plantations, one to another, were becoming clotted with these vehicles, all overflowing with the prized possessions—furniture and chests, framed portraits and pewter dishes—of a fleeing people.
“What are they doing?” Prue said, marveling at the activity. “They can’t escape it!”
Banking sharply, the heron landed deftly on the grass of the great meadow, and Prue leapt from his back at the sight of two individuals she hadn’t seen in a long while.
“Sterling!” she shouted. “Samuel!”
Indeed, there could be no mistake: Sterling the fox greeted her proudly in his bibbed jeans while Samuel the hare, colander jauntily flattening his long ears, stood at attention. They smiled, despite the circumstances, at seeing the girl.