“Hello there,” said Sterling. “We got word from the swallow—that’s the Alarum Bell you hear ringing. Wasted no time on that. But I can’t figure for the life of me what the problem is here. Something about the ivy?”
“It’s her!” said Prue. Sterling and Samuel had both been at the Battle for the Plinth, veterans of the Wildwood Irregulars—who her was needed no further explanation. “She’s back! And she’s got the ivy controlled.”
A look of shock overcame the fox’s face. He swiveled his head to look upon the circle of Mystics, still lost in meditation, gathered around the base of the mighty Council Tree. “But they’ve not given us any word,” he said. “Seems like the tree would’ve alerted us long ago.”
Samuel gestured with his thumb to the robed figures. “They’ve been like that for twelve hours now. Ever since last night, late.” He paused, adding, “So.”
Prue stared across the wide, grassy meadow at the Council Tree and its attendant Mystics, immobile and quiet. Just then, a wind picked up and a flurry of shapes, like static released from a freshly dried blanket, whipped up into the air from the green canopy of the tree and flew out across the clearing. One of the shapes traveled the distance to where Prue was standing with the hare and the fox and fell at their feet. It was a dead leaf.
Kneeling down, Prue picked up the leaf and studied it: It was brittle and ochre-colored, and a piece crumbled between her fingers at her touch, scattering to the earth. “What’s this?” she murmured.
Sterling nodded knowingly. “It’s been happening. Just a few months ago. The Mystics told us. Some kind of sickness, though no one seems to be able to tell what it is. Not the Mystics, leastways. They’ve been all mum about it.”
“It’s dying,” put in Samuel. “The tree, dying. Can you believe it?”
“Where’s the Elder Mystic?” asked Prue desperately. The idea that this ancient and wizened thing would be somehow expiring filled her heart with dread. “I have to speak to him.” She remembered the odd young boy, the one who had conveyed the tree’s wishes to her. He’d been Iphigenia’s successor, by decree of the tree itself.
Sterling shook his head. “As far as I can tell, there ain’t no head Mystic. One that came before, the young one, he disappeared not long ago.”
“Disappeared?”
“Vanished. In Wildwood. He’d been to the Ossuary Tree, payin’ respects. Never seen again.”
“Strange.” This came from Owl Rex, who’d just made a graceful landing on the meadow’s surface. “Sterling. Samuel,” he said, in greeting, and the two animals bowed to the Avian prince. The owl continued, “The Mystics must be warned. The Verdant Empress—Alexandra Svik reborn—makes her way as we speak to break the tree to its very roots. She means to undo the Periphery Bind.”
“Constabulary rules—not supposed to disturb the Mystics from their meditations,” explained Sterling. “No matter the circumstances.”
But Prue was already walking, briskly, toward the seated Mystics surrounding the tree. She’d reached out, inwardly, to the massive oak, insinuating her thoughts inside the cloudy noise she felt emanating from its gnarled and woody trunk. The tree, it was said, was unlike any other vegetal matter in the Wood; its ability to communicate with all of its fellow organisms predated organized language, and so it spoke in symbols and sounds. These enigmatic voicings could only be unpacked by the Elder Mystic, someone who had spent enough time prostrate in meditation to the tree that a kind of sense could be made of the weird language.
To Prue, though, who received the tree’s channeled images loud and clear as she walked toward it, the language was an obtuse and unknowable thing. It wasn’t like the other plant life, not remotely, for whom cogent sentences could be constructed from their strange noises. Hearing the language of the Council Tree, she felt as if she’d opened some lofty tome about particle physics written in pidgin Mandarin. Something was being conveyed, that much was clear, but what, she couldn’t know.
She arrived at the circle of Mystics. Looking down, she saw that each of them, all dressed in identical hemp robes, had their eyes open, their placid gazes fixed on the tree. Another rush of wind, just then, sent a flurry of ochre leaves down to the grass. Prue knew that the Mystics’ meditation, as long as it was kept up, would be unbreakable. She walked on, toward the tree.
The trunk of the tree flowed down from its canopy like a torrent of thick syrup that had been frozen to the side of the bottle; it branched out from its base, and its roots bent and burrowed into the grassy soil of the meadow. A person could spend hours marveling over the patterns in play on one small section of the tree’s wrinkled and aged trunk, over the many knots and divots that had etched themselves into the mighty oak’s puckered bark. It was a giant among giants. And it was speaking to Prue. Or at least trying to.
As she walked closer, it became clearer and clearer that the tree was doing this: reaching out to her, drawing her in. She responded in kind; still the flurry of images and sounds in her head would not codify into anything resembling an understandable idea.
What? she thought.
There had been a pause, there, when she’d said the word, and it made the exchange at least somewhat resemble the brief quiet in conversation between two people as one speaker waits for the other. But the barrage of sounds that followed still did not make sense to Prue.
More leaves fell, and Prue felt a small cascade of the papery things alight on her shoulders. She took a deep breath and began to address the tree afresh.
Okay, she thought. I don’t understand you or what you’re trying to say. But I’m doing my best. I’ve been following your directions all along. I’ve been going on faith. I’ve trusted the people around me, as best I can. But now this: You’re dying?
Noises; chattering; shapes.
Did you know this? I mean, this must’ve been happening all along! I can’t help but feel like I’ve been let down. Like I’ve been misled. Is this part of the plan? Or have I not worked fast enough? Tell me!
Still: shushing; a rush of wind. Then, a quieting, like the stillness between gusts in a thunderstorm. And then: Prue saw.
What she saw was complex, disorderly. But, like making out the picture in between the lines of static on an old black-and-white television set, something emerged. She saw herself. But not the present version of herself: black bob, peacoat, Keds. Instead, she saw herself as an old woman, grayed hair and wrinkled brow, bent over some menial craft. Looking closer, she saw that she was knitting something. As the static cleared in the picture in her head, she was able to see closely that the thing was a cabled scarf and it seemed to stretch out from her clacking needles like a long, green path.
The image inverted, then, and had spun her around; she was now following this knitted path as it cut its way through a dense forest. She had the distinct sense that this path would lead on forever. However, the green scarf suddenly cut to her left and began a circuitous path that she soon realized was folding in upon itself. After having followed the curve of the scarf for a time, with each revolution growing shorter, she saw that the path let in on the center of a labyrinth; there, in the end point, was a single, glowing bud, nestled into the forest’s loam like an egg in a nest. As she watched, the bud unfurled, revealing the tiniest sapling of a tree. Like a time-lapse film, she saw it grow three distinct limbs; at the end of each limb bloomed a single, green leaf.
That was when she was shaken out of the vision.
“Prue!” It was the voice of Sterling Fox. “Can you hear me?”
She blinked her eyes rapidly and turned to face the animal. “I saw something. The tree. It showed me.”
“No time!” shouted the fox, his face lined with desperation. “The ivy! It’s here!”
“Maybe it needed another few hits with the hammer,” suggested Seamus.
The bear only stood, massaging his jaw with the back of his prosthetic hook.
The bandit cocked his head sideways and squinted his left eye, as if that would provide him a newer
perspective. “I guess we coulda fired it a little longer. Just a little more fuel on the fire.”
Still, the bear said nothing.
“Some gemstones? Maybe it needs something shiny. Something to dress it up a bit. You know, a little sparkle.”
This time the bear responded. “It doesn’t need sparkling. It doesn’t need dressing up. It’s a cog.”
“Doesn’t look like one,” the bandit grumbled.
“No, it doesn’t, does it?” said the bear, his hackles rising. He reached down and picked the thing up from the anvil, looping the point of his hook through its cavity, and held it out for the bandit to see. “It looks like a . . . I don’t know . . . squashed metal insect.”
And indeed, it did. The bandit by the bear’s side could only nod at Esben’s uncanny observation. However, their goal hadn’t been to construct a squashed metal insect. It had been to create, with what tools and materials they could scavenge from a rapidly decomposing world, one of the most incredible and improbable machinations ever devised by man—or bear, for that matter: the Möbius Cog, a tri-sprocket oscillating monogear and the central component needed for a certain mechanical boy prince’s life-giving functions. Had the cog’s two inventors not been blinded and de-handed, respectively, they’d have been, without a doubt, on the short list for the South Wood Mechanical Fabrication Society’s Gear of the Year.
(What the bear and the bandit couldn’t know, however, was that the thing they’d created—this squashed insect—did have a purpose, albeit fairly arcane: When installed correctly, it turned the average household clothes dryer into a time machine that, when “wrinkle guard” was engaged, actually sent one’s socks ten minutes into the future.)
“Start again,” said the bear, and he threw the brass jumble into the dirt by the fire.
Seamus groaned and trudged back out into the surrounding forest in search of more fuel; Esben set the crucible back into the flames and began sorting through the drawerful of jewelry that had been salvaged from South Wood’s collapsing houses and buildings. It was a sad lot: wedding rings, necklace chains, heart pendants. The trinkets’ owners either volunteered the stuff, happy to be of service to such a grand gambit, or were sleeping beneath a mound of ivy and weren’t necessarily available to not give consent. A few tearfully parted with the items, a nearby loved one consoling them as they gave away the locket their grandmother wore, the brass badge their father carried as a constable. And so it was with a heavy heart that Esben sacrificed these keepsakes to the smelter, all the while knowing that his reconstructing the Möbius Cog on his own was as likely as his building a living butterfly from some pipe cleaners and a ball of wax.
He selected another item: a circular pendant on a chain. Someone’s name had been lovingly inscribed on the shiny brass. With a deep sigh, the bear dangled the chain from his hook and dropped it into the dimpled gray crucible.
He was so engrossed in his despair that he did not hear the approaching bird as it circled a few times above the pyre and landed some twenty feet off from where he was standing. He did not hear its two riders dismount and approach him, one helping the other walk across the difficult, viny terrain.
“Hello there, old friend,” came a voice. It was a voice the bear recognized.
He turned and saw Carol Grod, his old partner and fellow machinist, standing in the midst of the wriggling ivy vines, holding the hand of a young black-haired girl. The bear sputtered a few times. He found he could barely speak. His knees buckled and he fell to the ground.
“What’s he doing?” asked the old man, suddenly confused that his greeting had been given no response.
“He’s kneeling on the ground and his mouth is moving, but he’s not really saying anything,” said the girl.
“But he’s a bear, with hooks for hands?” asked Carol.
“Definitely,” confirmed the girl.
Carol spoke to the air. “Esben, if it’s really you and not some other bear with his paws removed, why don’t you say somethin?”
The dam broke and Esben let loose a torrent of words: “Carol! Carol Grod! You’re okay! You’re safe!” He leapt up from his knees and threw his arms around the old man’s neck.
“Hey there,” said Carol. “Easy. I’m an old human, you remember. Made of more fragile stuff than you.” The two then parted and Carol reached down for the bear’s hands. Finding the metallic prosthetics, he said, “Oh, what she’s done.”
“I know, Carol, I know,” said the bear. “And you—your eyes.”
“These wooden ones suit me just fine these days.” As if to show off the things, he raised his eyebrows and the wooden, painted orbs danced in their sockets.
And so the two friends stood, marveling at their sudden and unexpected reunion. They spoke over each other, trying to ferret out where the other had been all this time, wondering at what sweet horror the Mansion had visited upon them in their exile. They expressed sorrow and pity for each other’s particular predicament, while insisting that their own had not been that bad; they’d managed as well as could be expected. In the end, though, they were each in agreement about the considerable serendipities at play that had brought them back together and the apparent gravity of their new task.
The bear was glowing. “You couldn’t have come at a more opportune moment.” He looked down at Martha and said, “And who are you?”
“Martha Song,” replied the girl, not a little daunted to be speaking to a talking bear. “Mr. Bear, sir.”
“You’ve got some goggles there,” said Esben, pointing at the plastic pair perched on her forehead.
“Don’t go anywhere without ’em,” replied Martha.
“And today, they’ll come in very handy,” said the bear as he waved Carol and Martha to the roaring fire. “We’ve got some work to do.”
“Where are you at with it?” asked Carol as Martha carefully navigated him through the ivy toward the fire pit. They’d constructed a kind of open kiln of salvaged bricks from the many dilapidated buildings of South Wood, each being slowly dismantled by the scourge of the ivy vines. An iron dowel held the crucible in place in the center of the pit’s glowing coals.
“We’ve had two stabs at it so far,” explained the bear. “Took a bit for me to remember exactly how it went—going totally off of memory here. I have no idea where the schematics ended up.”
Carol tapped his forehead. “Got ’em right here. Ever since she took my eyes from me, those things’ve been burned in my brain. Spend days just sittin, lookin over those plans, seein ways to improve ’em. In my mind. A way to pass time, anyway.”
“Well, that’s good news, for once. And how are those fingers holding up?” asked the bear.
“As well as can be expected for an old man. How’s the eyes on you?”
Esben blinked, rapidly, as if trying them out. “Pretty good shape, I’d say.” He then reached down and grabbed one of their former attempts, the wiry insect-looking thing. “This is as close as we’ve come.”
Taking the object in his hands, Carol rotated it a few times in his fingers before saying, “What’s this, a phone-box widget? Some kind of dog’s chew toy?”
Esben looked at Martha for explanation, startled by the old man’s sardonic tone. The girl shrugged. “Well, no, but . . . ,” stammered the bear, embarrassed.
“Oh, Esben. Oh, my boy. How the mighty have fallen.” A grin was plastered on the old man’s face. He felt at the object in his hands a little longer before saying, “Though if installed correctly, in a standard-issue clothes dryer . . .”
“Yes?” prompted Martha.
“Well, that’s not going to help us any here,” said Carol abruptly, before handing the thing back to Esben. “Back into the crucible with it.”
And so it went, and the two machinists’ labors began in earnest.
They barely had time to brace themselves when the ivy wave came. It preceded the giants by several miles, having gained considerable steam over its long journey from the southern part of the Wood. It pou
red over the small huts and hovels and seeped into the furrows of the farmlands, covering everything in sight. The handcarts and flatbed trucks, hastily loaded with furniture, toppled in the wave while their owners were swallowed whole and put into a deep, seamless slumber. It crowned the tall trees and broke them in two; it dashed the constabulary and the Great Hall, splintering the ceiling beams and crushing the buildings to the ground as if they were made of tissue.
Prue stood just beyond the ring of immobile Mystics, all of them still fathoms deep in meditation, and steeled herself. She could see the rumbling ivy topping the trees from hundreds of yards off; it was only a matter of time until it reached the tree.
“We must stop it,” she said, “at all costs.”
Sterling had tried to rouse the Mystics, despite his instructions, but to no avail. While the robed figures’ eyes remained wide open, fixed on the dying Council Tree, their faces belied no outward consciousness. Several bandits ran to Prue’s side, brandishing what looked to be gardening implements.
“It’s the best we could do,” said one of the bandits, Ned. He was holding a pitchfork, about as menacingly as expected, considering the circumstances.
“Line up!” shouted Sterling as the crowd of Wildwood bandits and South Wood volunteers came into formation. They were joined by the few farmers and ranch hands who managed to escape the earlier waves of ivy and had run for the shelter of the tree. Together they made a line of about thirty humans and animals, bearing what looked like the cast-off pile of a tentative lynch mob.
“Once again,” the fox side-mouthed to Prue, who was standing next to him, “not the finest fighting force the world has ever known.”
But Prue’s mind was being assaulted. The fox’s voice sounded like a blur in her ears. She could hear the ivy coming on—it hissed in her mind like a fire hose on full blast—but she could also sense the approach of her.
Alexandra was part of the plant world now, and as such her presence outstripped her simple, corporeal frame. She was as much spirit as she was living organism, and her every thought rippled through the forest. The presence was becoming overpowering, and Prue found she had to concentrate very hard in order to keep it from bowling her over. She felt a nudge at her hip; she turned to see it was Samuel.