Prue lifted her head from the ground and saw that Alexandra had frozen, a being in suspended animation, her gaze fixed on some point just over Prue’s shoulder. Following the spectral woman’s gaze, Prue turned and saw a monarchal figure, a boy dressed in a smart uniform, step down from the back of a golden eagle some yards behind where Prue lay crumpled. A girl had ridden with him; she stepped down as well, the hem of her white dress grazing the tips of the meadow’s grass, newly freed from the scourge of ivy. As the boy walked closer, Prue could see that his flesh vibrantly caught and reflected the intermittent rays of the dimming sun like a bright, light mirror. She could see that he was a machine, this boy, made of steely brass.
“Alexei,” she whispered, bowed by awe.
The boy heard her; he approached and offered his hand. She took it, feeling the cold grip of his metallic fingers press into her palm. He helped her to her feet, which she regained with some difficulty. Her knees wobbled; she stared at the boy intensely, marveling at the pristine whiteness of his eyes, the immaculate smoothness of his skin. But the boy didn’t tarry long with Prue; instead, his attention was returned to the spirit at the end of the long channel of ivy.
Seeing the boy, the ivy spirit let out a heartrending moan.
Alexei approached. The girl in the white dress walked beside him.
“Hello, Mother,” he said, and the Verdant Empress flinched to hear his voice.
“What have they done?” The voice issued from deep inside the towering figure; it seemed to flow from the river of ivy around her.
“They’ve brought me home,” replied Alexei.
“I brought you,” said the boy’s mother quietly. “I gave you life.”
“I know,” said the boy. “And I forgive you.”
Then the Verdant Empress’s temper was dissolved, and her long arms retracted. Her body seemed to shrink as the ivy vines that had built up her columns of legs and the intractable trunk of her torso seemed to fall away. She was no longer the imposing, enraged thing that had razed her surroundings with every step, every conjuration. Now she seemed almost human.
Alexei continued his approach; Zita the May Queen walked with him, her hand clasped in his, two kindred spirits on a promenade: she in her white dress and garland of dead flowers, he in his brocaded uniform, cloaked in the dust of a tomb. The moat of dry land ended at the stump of the Council Tree, where the ivy had flowed out from his mother’s feet. This was where Zita stopped and let go of the mechanical boy’s hand; Alexei took a first uncertain step on this hill of ivy, then another. He ascended the pedestal Alexandra had made of the ancient tree and stopped at the apex, standing mere feet away from the Verdant Empress.
Alexandra held out her arms; her son stepped into them and laid his head, softly, on his mother’s chest.
Alexandra held out her arms; her son stepped into them and laid his head, softly, on his mother’s chest.
Her ivy arms, now slim and small, closed and she wrapped her son in a long embrace, bowing her head so that her lips graced the metallic smoothness of his brow with a tender kiss.
And, at that very moment, when the kiss was laid on the boy’s head, and the mother’s arms were firmly wrapped around her child as they’d been when she’d first held him, when she’d first cradled him as a baby, when she’d held him as a child crying over some lost bauble, when she’d held him as a boy when a fever had come on strong, when she’d held him as a young man in the full throat of summer, and when the horse had thrown him and he lay motionless on the flagstones and she’d held him then—at that very moment, the ivy ceased its endless writhings and lapsed into immobility and fell quiet.
Then: the arms that had enwrapped the boy turned to what they had previously been: just a gathered and bound bunch of ivy stalks, and the form of the Verdant Empress fell away and was returned to the ground, to the ether.
For Prue, it was as if the very air had been returned to her lungs. The two walls of ivy on either side of the clear strip of grass leading to the stump of the tree settled and compressed, flattening to the ground like downy feathers after a particularly ferocious pillow fight. The plant collapsed into the canyon the Verdant Empress had created, and Prue was swamped by the torrent.
STOP! she called instinctively, and found that the ivy responded very well; it was no longer under the powerful enchantment of the Verdant Empress and so had reverted to its normal suggestible self. Truly, were you to poll any Woodian Mystic (or anyone else, for that matter, with the ability to communicate with plant life), you’d find that ivy, under normal circumstances, is the easiest thing to persuade to your control. Soon, Prue had called away the languid vines and had a small stretch of ground emptied. She heard a voice call to her, a familiar voice, a boy’s voice.
“Curtis!” she yelled, batting away the ocean of ivy. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah!” came his voice, some yards off. “What happened?”
“She’s gone!” shouted Prue. Peeling apart a curtain of the plant, she found her friend, busily cutting through the thick jungle with his saber.
“Gone?”
“Alexei came, Curtis. He got here just in time. He went to her. I don’t know what he said, or what she said, but she just disappeared. Like that!” She found she had tears in her eyes as she spoke. “The tree was right—we were right! We needed to bring him back to save everything. I just never in a million years expected it to turn out this way.”
Curtis had a giant grin on his face by the time he’d pulled himself from the vines and stood in the open ground that Prue had managed to clear. They fell into a hug, the two friends, and laughed loudly.
“Where were you, the whole time?” asked Prue between fits of relieved laughter.
“Oh, I was around,” he said, still smiling.
“Alexei!” shouted Prue, suddenly remembering. “Let’s go find him!”
They fought through the jumble of ivy, Prue clearing the way as she went. Soon they arrived at the foot of the Council Tree’s stump; they stepped clear of the vines as they climbed to the top of the mound. There, they found Alexei standing, staring at the ivy-strewn ground where the reborn form of his mother had only recently stood. By his side was the girl in the white dress. She saw Prue and Curtis approach and smiled, saying, “Are you Prue?”
Prue nodded. “I am. Who are you?”
“I’m Zita. I’m the one who made all this happen.” She seemed abashed then, and she looked quietly at her feet.
“You’re not,” said Prue. “This was all in the making, a long time ago.” She felt the solid wood of the Council Tree’s stump below her shoes. “You had as much control over these events as a leaf does in the time of its falling.” She smiled and added, “Someone really special told me that once.”
They both looked up at the mechanical boy, who stood silent at the top of the mound. Prue gave Zita a quick nod before walking the few steps to stand at Alexei’s side.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Prue.”
“I know,” said Alexei. His voice, brittle and metallic, was tinged with sorrow.
“Thank you. Thanks for coming back.”
“I didn’t make the choice.”
“Sometimes we don’t make the choice,” said Prue quietly. “Sometimes, I guess, the choice is made for us.”
The mechanical boy prince took a long, rattling breath and exhaled out into the clear air around him. “It’s bracing,” he said finally. “Breathing. I’d forgotten.”
“I can imagine,” said Prue.
They stood there for a time, quietly, before Alexei spoke again. “I suppose we’ll have to do something about this ivy,” he said.
Prue looked out at the horizon; as far as she could see, the ivy was everywhere, settling into silent, dormant pools. Nothing had been spared.
“I can do it,” said Prue. “I need to know something, though.”
“What’s that?” asked Alexei.
“Will you stay? They need someone. The people of the Wood. Everything will need to b
e rebuilt. They’ll need someone to lead them in that. To show the way. I was that person for a bit, I guess. But I think my time is done.”
The mechanical boy stared out into the middle distance. His fingers opened and closed at his side as he thought. Zita had climbed the tree to stand beside them; she, too, awaited the boy’s response.
“I don’t know,” said Alexei. “I didn’t ask for this fate. I was gone from here. And now I’m back.” He looked at Zita, then, and spoke. “I asked her to take the cog out, once I’d done what had been asked of me. But now I’m not sure. I’m not sure.”
“Take some time,” suggested Zita, grasping the boy by his hand and holding it like a longtime friend. “Think about it. Breathe the air. Then make a decision. I’ll do the thing, the thing you asked. But Prue’s right. We need you.”
Prue gave a low bow to the heir apparent, Alexei, and stepped away, leaving Zita and the boy alone at the top of the mound. Curtis was waiting at the bottom of the slope; Septimus had crawled himself free of the ivy and had found his spot back on the boy’s shoulder.
“What now?” asked Curtis.
“I’ve got work to do,” was Prue’s reply. She smiled warmly at her old friend before saying, “And then . . .”
“And then what?” Curtis looked at her with a deeply puzzled expression.
“I don’t know. Something the tree wanted me to do. I guess it’s been a part of this whole thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll see, Curtis,” said Prue. “You’ll see.”
She laid her hand briefly on the boy’s shoulder, before turning and hiking to the top of the ivy-laden stump of the Council Tree.
She stood on the fallen husk of the tree and threw her hands out to the ivy, taking the position of a hardy fisherman in the midst of a cascading spray, miles out to sea, pulling in the trolling nets. She grabbed fistfuls of ivy and with her arms and her mind began pulling it back like a blanket from a bed, like a magician pulling the shroud from a glass box and revealing the disappeared woman.
It pulled back from its farthest remove first, where it had just touched the trees and grasses of the far farmlands on the outskirts of the city of Portland. It moved quickly, sweeping back from the territory it had amassed in its initial wave of devastation. It pulled back from the streets and alleyways; it uncovered the cars on the interstates and receded from the heights of the tallest skyscrapers and unwound from the lowly parking garages. It revealed the figures of businessmen, eating their lunches on park benches. It unveiled sweethearts, walking hand in hand on busy sidewalks; it released the coffee drinkers and the book browsers and the line cooks and the bicyclists and the bag boys and the counter girls—it released them all from their sleep and they woke with a start, wondering at the strange and deep reverie that had just overcome them.
All the while, from her spot on the trunk of the giant dead tree, Prue pulled.
The plant withdrew from the locks and wharves on the Willamette River; it forded the water and quickly retraced the steps of its rampaging invasion across the Industrial Wastes. It shored up against the wild woodland of the Impassable Wilderness and retreated into the dark of the trees there. It was pulled down from the tall trees, though many had already succumbed to its crushing force. It ebbed, like a tide going out to sea, across the lush green landscape it had covered, unveiling a thriving world of tree saplings and the green shoots of newborn plants. It fell away from the unsuspecting denizens of South Wood, and they shook themselves free of their dreamy slumber. It freed the nests of birds in the Avian Principality; it swept across the wilds of the central province of this land and scaled the high peaks of the Cathedral Mountains. Finally, the receding tide of ivy rolled across the farm plots and village squares of North Wood and arrived at the edge of the great meadow itself.
Prue, from the center of the clearing, continued to draw it in. As the surplus piled at her feet, she willed it to be swallowed into the ground.
The ivy flowed across the meadow and loosed itself from the bodies of the sleeping Wildwood Irregulars. They awoke and blinked their eyes, these farmers and bandits and birds, and stared into the glimmering sunset, the glowing moonrise. Elsie was lying flat on her back and enjoying a pleasant dream in which she’d been having a tea party with the actual Intrepid Tina; they’d just sat down and the woman in the pith helmet was telling her that she’d done a good job, a real fine job, and that Elsie was a shining example for her fellow Intrepid Girlz—a model for all the qualities that the group held sanctified: bravery, kindness, and pluck.
Not far from her was her sister, Rachel, who was standing in the midst of the freed grass of the meadow and staring at her hands. She looked up and saw her sister and smiled, as if to say, What is all this, what do you know . . .
But the ivy didn’t stop there; it continued to pull away, and finally the last strands were swallowed back to the mound in the center of the clearing and disappeared into a small hole in the broken wood of the Council Tree’s split trunk. Prue swayed there, her hands still extended, still speaking to the ivy until the last leaf had disappeared; and then she collapsed.
The meadow was full of waking sleepers, all rubbing their eyes as if they’d just woken from some centuries-long slumber. They were foxes and hares and humans and birds; some wore gray robes, some bib overalls. Many carried implements of war; some held the simplest gardening tools. There were children among them and they all flocked to one another, sharing stories of daring that were each more incredible than the last. They’d fought off the attacks of the ivy giants, they said; they’d dodged the blitzing birds and scored a few hits themselves with the sabers and spears they’d been given.
Alexei, having descended the pedestal of the tree, stood some feet off, taking in the air of the living world, this world he’d been brought back into. Zita walked to join him. They stood quietly in the meadow while the figures of the Wildwood Irregulars, all around them, emerged from their sleep.
The Mystics, too, had awoken to the new reality that faced them: The Council Tree, the totem of their practice, had been split in two and now lay collapsed on the floor of the meadow, its great leafy canopy splayed out across the ground. The ivy had caught them in deep meditation, seated in lotus position, and they’d remained there throughout the entire battle. They now stood, slowly, unsteadily, and took in the scene playing out before them.
Prue lay immobile on the top of the broken tree. Curtis, seeing his friend fall after the ivy had been completely contained, scrambled up the trunk and knelt by her side.
He called her name; she didn’t respond. Her face was quiet and still but her cheeks still blossomed with color; when he laid his ear on her chest, he could hear the frantic beat of her heart.
“C’mon, Prue,” he whispered. “Hold on, there.”
He slipped his arms beneath her waist and stood, her slack body draped between his elbows. This way, he slowly stepped down from the top of the broken tree, following the long path made by one of the enormous roots. Arriving at the meadow’s grass, he saw that the Mystics were there to meet him.
“She’s not well,” he said. “She’s not conscious.”
Wordlessly, one of the Mystics, an older woman, reached her arms out to Curtis. He transferred Prue’s limp body to the woman’s arms, and she laid the girl down on the soft turf of the clearing’s floor.
“We know what has to be done,” said the Mystic.
The Mystics carried the girl deep into the forest, far from the old bastions of civilization. They crossed the Cathedral Mountains and wound their way down into the wooded wilds of the old middle province. They traveled for days; the bandit band followed close behind, cantering their horses. They’d insisted on accompanying the Mystics, for fear of newly formed marauders in the woods, emboldened by the sudden change in the landscape and power structure—though in truth, the Mystics needed no entourage; they’d made this pilgrimage yearly and had long resolved themselves to the dangers of the journey. It had been de
cided, long ago, that whatever events might befall them and thwart their path, it was intended by the fabric of the forest and was thus to be accepted as part of the natural plan of the Wood.
In the middle of the forest, not far from the smashed trunk of the Ossuary Tree, a path had been cut into the greenery of the forest floor. Arriving here, the Mystics fell into a line and began following the path, which led in a circuitous route through the trees. It flowed like a circle; with each revolution, the path moved farther inward until the followers of the path found themselves walking a spiral.
In the center of the spiral was a sapling tree. Three branches sprouted from its tiny trunk; two of the branches sported a single leaf. The third branch was naked.
The Mystic in the lead of the procession carried the unconscious girl: the black-haired girl who had pulled in the ivy, who had brought the makers together, who had united the Wood and brought a new peace. The Bicycle Maiden, Wildwood Regina.
The woman Mystic laid Prue’s body at the foot of the young tree. Slipping her arms from beneath the girl’s waist, she stepped away and waited.
The ground churned beneath the girl momentarily, before silently opening up and swallowing the girl’s body whole into the loamy ground.
A few of the bandits had followed the Mystics on their circuitous route along the spiral labyrinth; they sat hidden in the trees, some yards off. Despite their typically steely composure, each of the bandits fought tears at the sight of the girl’s succumbing; one boy wept openly watching his old friend and partner disappear.
Then: Something shook. The forest itself seemed to heave a long breath.