Everyone’s attention was drawn to the newly formed tree in the center of the spiral. They watched as the third branch, the naked branch, of the sapling suddenly sprouted a new, green leaf.
CHAPTER 32
Wildwood Imperium
The borders had been erased and the civilized enclaves pulled down; buildings that had stood for centuries had been laid to rubble. The tree’s grand prophecy had come true: A new era had been ushered in.
It was all Wildwood now.
The birds flew out from their nests and made homes in new parts of the forest, now free of the burdens of boundaries. The farmers of old North Wood set about rebuilding their demolished homes and plowing up their fields, ruined by the invasion of the ivy. It was summer now, after all, and the planting had to get done. Already, the weather had improved mightily and the Mystics were promising a banner year for the harvest. Whatever they’d lost in the deluge of ivy, they were sure to regain in time.
The bandits returned to the fort built by their younger members, Curtis and Septimus, and set about rebuilding the structures and staircases so that a new cadre of bandits could call the place home. Oddly enough, when the ivy had been peeled away from the holding pen, the bandits were surprised to see that its captive had disappeared; apparently, when the viny plant had crowned the tree, the bars of the pen had been bowed apart enough to allow easy escape. They searched the nearby perimeter for Roger Swindon, the villainous bureaucrat-turned-Caliph, but they never found him. Some months later, a bandit ranger team returned to camp with a torn gray robe. It had been found rudely discarded at the opening of an abandoned coyote warren. Its owner was nowhere to be seen. One thing was clear: They had likely not seen the last of the old villain.
The Wildwood bandits’ numbers had winnowed considerably during the long winter, and they’d lost several good members in the battle for the Council Tree. It was suggested that some outreach wouldn’t hurt; waylaid coachmen would now be given the opportunity, after a holdup had transpired, to abandon their servile post and join the illustrious Wildwood bandits.
Elsie and Rachel, who’d stuck by their brother’s side after the ivy had been dissolved, approached the Bandit King with a suggestion.
“You’re looking for recruits?” asked Rachel.
Brendan only raised an eyebrow to the girl. “Yes, but we won’t just take anyone.”
“I’m not talking about just anyone.”
“They’ll need to be hard,” said the Bandit King, putting on his gruffest voice. “And brave.”
“They’re both of those things,” assured Rachel.
“And crafty.”
“Crafty in spades,” said Rachel.
“And willing to live long months in sordid conditions. And work well with others.”
“Check,” said Rachel. “And check. Sometimes.”
The Bandit King paused and eyed this Mehlberg sibling carefully. “Where would you find such a fount of solid bandit material?”
A reconnaissance party was dispatched beyond the borders of Wildwood to the Industrial Wastes. There, in an abandoned warehouse in a forgotten quadrant of this wasteland, the surviving members of the Unadoptables remained, forging a life for themselves amid the wreckage. They needed very little persuading; the promise of a life in the forests seemed a desirable alternative to their present circumstances. They arrived at the border of the Impassable Wilderness and linked hands with the half-breed girls, Elsie and Rachel Mehlberg, and ventured beyond the Periphery Bind, their former place of captivity, into the strange land.
In time, they would grow to be great bandits, bandits of renown. They had many further adventures alongside their new companions; one of the Unadoptables even grew to succeed Brendan in the title of Bandit King, but that was to come much, much later. In the short term, they were simply happy to have found a home together, far from the world that had abandoned them.
A new Periphery Bind was conjured; it sprouted from the stripling bark of the One Tree and the world, again, was protected from the many dangers of the Impassable Wilderness (or vice versa, depending on your perspective)—not that any Outsider could have noticed the difference. The invasion and subsequent retraction of the blanket of ivy did not receive an ounce of regard from the population beyond the boundaries of the I.W., and the people of that world continued on with their quiet and very mundane lives.
The elder Mehlbergs, Lydia and David, arrived home from their jet-setting romp around the world, disappointed in their failure to find their missing son. When the cab deposited them at the front stoop of their North Portland home, they were surprised to see that the dining room light was on.
“Did we leave that thing on the whole time?” said David.
But no: Inside the house, sitting at the dining room table, stacks-deep in a cutthroat game of gin rummy, were none other than all three of their children: Elsie, Rachel, and, yes, Curtis. Curtis the missing boy. He wore, strangely, a uniform that looked like it had leapt from the pages of War and Peace, all epaulets and gilded sleeves. They dropped their luggage with a bam and ran, hollering, to wrap the boy in the most tender tackle that the two middle-aged parents could have managed.
The story the three children told their parents, when they’d become settled and the shock of seeing their beautiful boy returned had somewhat ebbed, was fantastic beyond words, and it was a testament to the imaginations of Lydia and David Mehlberg that it was not only believed, but promised to be kept as a secret. They were chagrined to learn that Curtis would need to return to this world—he’d taken an oath, after all—but they were understanding of the importance of his role among his bandit brethren.
They could come and visit any time. They were half-breeds as well, after all.
Alexei chose to stay and to stay alive.
He’d seen the devastation his mother had wrought on his native land, and despite his misgivings about his being a mechanical re-creation of his former, living self, he felt like he had an obligation to the people of his country. The boy’s return was met with excitement and celebration from all quarters; it was unanimously agreed that Alexei should ascend the throne and be given the title that the Ancients used for their reigning monarchs.
He was named Wildwood Emperor and was crowned with a salal wreath, as the Ancients had done.
A great party was given at the site of the old Council Tree in celebration of Alexei’s coronation. It took place not long after the ivy had been dispelled, and invitations were sent out far and wide by hawk and sparrow. Owl Rex and his retinue of eagles arrived in full military regalia. Rarely had the people of the Wood seen those grumpy raptors let go their austere expressions and enjoy themselves; once the second cask of poppy beer had been uncorked, the old generals were regaling the crowd with stories of harrowing battles and singing the old songs from their flying corps.
The Wildwood bandits arrived by horseback. It was generally agreed among the partygoers that they proved to be the best dancers of the crowd, there under the pinprick stars and the paper lanterns that showered the wide meadow with light. Several dancers, having chosen a bandit for a partner, seemed not to notice that their purses grew lighter with every turn around the sawdust-covered dance floor.
Elsie and Rachel returned to the Wood for the party; many a dancer fought for a chance to take a turn around the floor with one of the two black-haired sisters, and Rachel had barely escaped the grasp of one particularly persistent farmhand to get a sip of cordial when she felt a tap at her shoulder.
“May I have this dance?” asked a voice.
She was about to demur politely, when she turned and saw it was none other than the saboteur Nico, having been discovered in the wreckage of Bandit Hideout Deerskull Dragonfighter not long after the bandits had returned. He’d ditched his black uniform for the mismatched costume of a Wildwood bandit, which he admittedly wore with considerable panache. Rachel threw her arms over his shoulders and gripped him in a tight squeeze. “I thought we’d lost you!” she shouted.
&n
bsp; “Moi?” he asked, affronted. “C’est impossible.” He then took a step back, bowed deeply, and proffered his hand.
She took it, smiling, and the two danced off onto the floor while the band whipped up a rousing reel.
A dais had been erected at the far side of the room; several local craftsmen had come together and designed a magnificent throne, in honor of the returned mechanical boy prince, the newly crowned Wildwood Emperor, and this was where Alexei abashedly sat while well-wishers and congregants brought flowers and benefactions to the savior of their land. He accepted their gifts with embarrassment, squirming uncomfortably under all the blushing attention. Not long into the party, he saw Zita come into the light of one of the paper lanterns and he stood up, gesturing her over.
She came up to the dais and bowed.
“Don’t bow,” said Alexei. “Please.”
“Sorry, Your Majesty,” she said.
“And don’t call me that. It’s me who should be referring to you that way, May Queen.”
Zita blushed at the mention.
“Will you sit with me?” asked the boy, patting at a small chair that had been set beside the opulent throne. “It’s awfully lonely up here.”
Zita smiled and gave a low curtsy. “If Your Majesty wishes,” she said. She ignored the glare the boy gave her as she crossed in front of the throne and took her place at his side. Together they watched the whistling, wheeling party as it played out before them, while the paper lanterns cast dancing shadows on the wooden floor and the band played merrily under a sky filled with stars.
But that is not the end of the story.
There is more.
In a leafy borough of Portland called St. Johns, there lived a man and a woman and their young child.
And though they were blessed with a family, they were heartbroken over the loss of their daughter, a girl of twelve short summers who’d disappeared earlier in the spring. They carried their grief bravely, however, because they knew that their daughter had become a great power in a distant and dangerous land and perhaps had died in the defense of this land. They’d known of her exploits from her telling; they’d met talking birds and a sentient bear with hooks for hands. They knew that whatever had happened to their daughter, she had lived a good life and had persevered bravely for a downtrodden people.
But still, this did not dispel their grief.
A shadow was cast over their lives. They struggled to regain a feeling of normalcy and poured all their love into their young son, Mac, and watched him grow happily into a toddler; they marveled over his first sentences and his first stumbling steps. They remembered their daughter when she had done the same, those years before, though sometimes this would make their loss come back afresh.
Then one day, while mowing the lawn, the father saw something growing amid the freshly cut grass. In a small circle of earth, the sprout of a tree had grown. Getting down on his hands and knees, the father pulled back the grass and made a little bed of dirt for the small green shoot. A seed must’ve taken, he decided, blown by some neighbor’s tree. He felt connected to the tiny sprout for some reason, and so he became the tree’s staunch steward.
He watered it meticulously and kept the weeds from infringing on the small circle of turf he’d carved away. He fed it compost; he built a small fence around it to keep the deer from chewing at its fledgling limbs. Perhaps it was because of his insistent caretaking, perhaps it was because of magics beyond his ken: The tree grew at an alarming rate.
Each day the father would walk out onto the back porch of his simple house and see that the tree had grown several feet during the night. His wife and his son soon joined him in his careful minding of the strange tree, and together they would replace its compost and feed its roots with water and fertilizer. The tree continued to grow quickly; soon it was the size of a juvenile sapling, and from its trunk grew many long, healthy limbs, sporting an array of waxy green leaves.
One night, as the father lay asleep in his bed with his wife by his side, he felt something tug at his blanket. He opened his eyes to see it was his young son, having woken up in the night.
“Daddy,” said the boy. “Come see!”
They both, the husband and wife, followed the child down the stairs and through the kitchen and out onto the back porch, where they saw that the tree, the tree they had so meticulously watered and cared for these many weeks, was gone.
In its place, in the small circle of dirt and compost where the tree had been, was their daughter.
“PROOOO!” shouted her brother, getting her name right for the first time.
They ran to her and threw their arms around her and bathed her in kisses; she smiled blearily at them, having undergone some incredible journey, and happily returned their embraces. They walked together, this overjoyed, reunited family, and returned to the shelter of their house’s kitchen where their daughter, once she’d recovered from her reverie, told them an incredible story about a land in upheaval, about the strange cult that gained control over it; she told them about a ship that took her to a faraway rock in the ocean, where she thought she’d die—until the great bird prince rescued her and returned her to a land overcome by a reborn spirit, made of ivy, bent on the destruction of this land, and how only the return of the spirit’s son, the heir to the kingdom, would stop the devastation. She described the heartbreaking reunion of these two, mother and child, and how the ivy was pulled away and the boy became the emperor of this strange land.
The girl’s mother listened to the story attentively; her brother barraged her with questions; and her father, shaking his head and smiling at the incredible tale, only said, “Who’s up for some hot chocolate?”
And, indeed, they all were.
The End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR
COLIN MELOY once wrote Ray Bradbury a letter, informing him that he “considered himself an author too.” He was ten. Since then, Colin has gone on to be the singer and songwriter for the band the Decemberists, where he channels all of his weird ideas into weird songs. With the Wildwood Chronicles, he is now channeling those ideas into novels.
As a kid, CARSON ELLIS loved exploring the woods, drawing, and nursing wounded animals back to health. As an adult, little has changed—except she is now the acclaimed illustrator of several books for children, including Lemony Snicket’s The Composer Is Dead, Dillweed’s Revenge by Florence Parry Heide, and The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart.
Colin and Carson live with their son, Hank, in Portland, Oregon, quite near the Impassable Wilderness.
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CREDITS
Cover art © 2014 by Unadoptable Books LLC
Cover design by Carson Ellis and Dana Fritts
COPYRIGHT
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
WILDWOOD IMPERIUM
Copyright © 2014 by Unadoptable Books LLC.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress catalog card number: 2013953784
ISBN 978-0-06-202474-9 (hardback)
EPub Edition November 2014 ISBN 9780062119643
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FIRST EDITION
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1. She can do it. She just needs a little practice.
2. We don’t have time for practice. We strike tonight.
Colin Meloy, Wildwood Imperium
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