“I think it’s a left up here,” Prue whispered loudly from behind a garbage bin. Enver was perched atop a gaslight that lit a four-way intersection. The cobblestones here were slowly being replaced by dirt and pine needles as the upscale Rue Thurmond neighborhood gave way to the smaller hovels of the forest, their mossy roofs enshrouded by the overhanging fir boughs in the near distance.
“You sure?” asked Enver, uncertainly scanning the horizon.
“No,” whispered Prue. “Kind of just guessing.”
“Where did you say we should be headed?” asked the sparrow.
“Just southwest of the Mansion,” said Prue. “That’s what I was told.”
The sparrow clucked his beak. “One sec,” he said, giving a quick look down the four ways of the intersection. Once he saw the way was clear, he unfurled his small gray wings and shot upward, corkscrewing between the looming tree branches until he was out of sight.
Prue waited calmly, the sour smell of the garbage bin staining the air around her. The howl of a police siren sounded far away, and she froze as a small group of SWORD officers rounded the corner and marched down Rue Thurmond. Prue snuck a look from behind the bin as they walked away and noticed that each was carrying birdcages. Between the metal bars of the cages, Prue caught sight of bird feathers, all downy and gray.
Minutes passed. Finally, a flutter of wings sounded from above. She looked up to see Enver, out of breath, land on top of the Dumpster.
“Sorry,” said Enver. “I had to wait till they’d gone by.” He shook one of his wings and leaned into Prue. “I saw the top of the Mansion. It’s pretty far still, but we’re moving in the right direction. Judging from the stars”—and here Enver pointed his beak to the heavens; it was a rare clear night and the blackness was pinpricked by constellations—“we stay straight to keep southwest.”
“Great,” whispered Prue. “Let’s keep moving.”
“Have you ever been to this place?” asked the sparrow. “Do you know what it looks like?”
“No, but I think we’ll know it when we come to it,” said Prue before adding, “I expect if you’ve seen one post office, you’ve seen them all.” And with that, Enver nodded and took wing, flying ahead to find another perch from which to guide Prue to her next hiding place.
CHAPTER 14
Among Thieves
I insist I see an attorney!” shouted the coyote, his voice cracking midsentence. “This is an OUTRAGE!” He rattled the cage bars with his paws. Curtis watched him curiously from above; the coyote’s cage was much farther down the root-ball than Curtis’s.
“Oh, keep it down,” shouted one of the bandits. His cage was above and to the left of Curtis, and he was sitting against the bars, picking at his fingernails. “They’re not listening to you. Habeas corpus doesn’t really apply here.”
“Habeas corpus?” snarled the coyote. “Where’d you learn those fancy words, you half-wit?” He had turned to face the bandit, and at that moment Curtis had a chance to see his face; he was one of the coyotes he had first seen with Prue—one of the privates who had been fighting below their hiding place. Curtis seemed to remember that his name was Dmitri.
“Oh, we know a lot more than you jackals would believe,” responded the bandit, tapping a finger against his temple. “Some of us might seem thick, but don’t be fooled. We’re smart as whips. Which is why you’ll never put us under. No matter how many battles you win, no matter how much our numbers fall, there’ll always be bandits to keep up the fight.”
“Oh, please spare us your little rallying cries,” responded Dmitri. “You’re wasting ’em on me. I was drafted. I could care less if you bandits overran the place; I’d rather be in my home warren anyway, minding my own business. What bothers me is that I’m stuck up here like a common criminal—I thought I’d just get a few demerits and be on my way. Instead, I’m in the bandit ward, having to listen to you lot.”
“I’m not a bandit,” Curtis chimed in. “I’m a soldier.” He paused and looked down at his uniform, at the torn fabric where his brooch used to be. “Or I was.”
The coyote huffed and turned away.
“You,” said another bandit, this one farther away. His cage dangled from one of the larger root branches, at a similar height to Curtis’s. “So you’re the Outsider, huh? You fought alongside the Dowager, didn’t you?”
Curtis frowned and nodded. “I did, yeah,” he said, abashed. “But I wish I hadn’t now. I didn’t know what she was doing.”
“What’d you expect?” said the bandit from above, his venom now directed downward. “She was the rightful Queen of Wildwood? Just cleaning up shop a little bit? Making sure everyone remembered who was the boss? And you just waltz in from your Outside world and decide to help out?”
“Well, I didn’t have much of a choice,” said Curtis, hackles rising. “I mean, she captured me and the next thing I know she’s feeding me and clothing me and telling me I’m her second in command!”
“Sucker,” came a voice. It issued from a cage directly above Curtis. Another bandit was staring down at Curtis, sitting cross-legged with his cheeks propped in his hands.
“Seriously,” continued Curtis, “I had no idea what she was up to; I would’ve never agreed to go along with her if I’d known.”
“Yeah?” The bandit farther out on the root branch scoffed. “What was your first hint? Her conscription of an entire species of animal? Or maybe the fact that she was steadily wiping out every natural-born resident of Wildwood one after another? What was it, boy genius?”
Something wet dripped down on Curtis’s forehead, and he winced to look up and see that the bandit in the cage directly above him had just dropped a big ball of spit on him. The bandit’s face was visible between his bent legs, and Curtis could see he was preparing for a second lob. Groaning, Curtis ducked and moved to another side of the cage.
“You Outsiders,” said another bandit, one who had remained silent during all the invective. “You’re always looking for a way to conquer and despoil things that ain’t by rights yours, huh? I heard about what you do. Don’t think we don’t know that you’d be all over this Wood—that you’d have beat the Governess to her own game if she hadn’t been at it first. I heard you about ruined your own country, nearly ran it into the ground poisoning your rivers and paving over your wild lands and such.” His cage was a bit lower and off to the right; Curtis watched as the bandit came close to the cage bars and glowered up at him. He wore a dirty checkered scarf around his neck and a loose linen tunic. A ratty bowler was perched on his head. “Bet you thought this place’d be all yours, didn’t ye. Well, I expect it’ll just chew you up and spit you out—if you don’t end up just rotting here first.”
Curtis shivered and sat down on the floor of his cage, squeezing his knees to his chest. He could feel the glare of all the prisoners boring into his very bones. He wished now, more than ever, that he could be back home with his mother and father and his two niggling sisters. The ropes creaked and shuddered and the cages twisted slightly back and forth in the great cavern. Dmitri, the coyote, offered his sympathy: “Get used to it. They don’t really let up.”
Before long, Prue and Enver had arrived at the post office, a small redbrick building nestled into a dense scrub of hemlock trees. A tumbledown wooden fence, gray and mossy, made an enclosure behind the building, and Prue could see a few dilapidated red vans sitting idle in the yard as she climbed the steps to the door. A flat brass panel was fastened to the brick above the door, and the words SOUTH WOOD POST OFFICE were engraved into the metal.
A light from one of the windows illuminated a cluttered room, stacked floor to ceiling with brown packages and envelopes, and Prue could make out the figure of Richard, his body half-obscured by the piles of parcels and paper.
“Here goes nothing,” she whispered to Enver, who stood balanced on a nearby tree branch, nervously standing vigil over the deserted, darkened road.
Prue rapped her knuckles quietly against the wood of the
door. When no response came, she knocked again.
“We’re closed!” came Richard’s voice from within. “Come back during business hours, please!”
Prue cupped her hands against the door and, bringing her lips to her fingers, rasped, “Richard! It’s me, Prue!”
“What?” came Richard’s response; his voice, loud and impatient, seemed to rattle the hinges of the doorjamb.
Enver warbled anxiously from above.
“It’s Prue. Y’know, Port-Land Prue!”
After a moment she heard slow footsteps and the hollow clunk of a deadbolt being undone. The door cracked slightly and Richard, his eyes bleary and gray hair all a-muss, appeared through the opening.
“Prue!” he hollered, clearly oblivious to Prue’s hushed approach. “What in heck are you doing here?”
Enver warbled again, louder, in warning, and Prue threw her finger to her lips. “Shhhh!” she hissed. “You have to keep your voice down!”
Richard, eyes wide, glanced out at the sparrow on the tree and back at Prue. He matched Prue’s volume, saying, “And you’ve got a bird with you—y’know, the coppers were here, not but two hours ago, looking for you. I don’t rightly know what’s going on!”
“I need your help,” said Prue, hesitating before saying, “it’s way too long and complicated to explain here on the porch—can I come in?”
Richard stood in thought for a moment. “Well, all right,” he said. “But mind no one sees you. This ain’t regular.”
“Exactly!” agreed Prue. She turned and whistled to Enver, who flew down from his perch. Ushering them quickly inside, Richard shot a quick glance down both end of the street before carefully closing the door and throwing the deadbolt.
A windowed partition divided the interior room in half, separating the public part of the post office from the private, and Richard led Prue and Enver through a gate to the back room. Towers of packages created a maze of Lilliputian city streets, and Prue navigated the boulevards gingerly, as the cardboard and brown paper skyscrapers quaked at her every footstep. In the corner of the room, a small hearth enclosed a smoldering coal fire.
Richard cleared his throat in embarrassment as he set about clearing away some of the detritus. “I know there’s another chair around here somewhere,” he mumbled, sifting through the stacks. Finding no chair, he slid a few empty crates from underneath a desk and set them down in the clearing before the fireplace. “Have a seat,” he offered.
Prue thanked him and sat down, relieved to be off her feet. Enver settled on a pile of boxes near the desk, fluttering his wings nervously when the pile swayed under his weight.
“So what’s the deal? Why all the hullabaloo?” asked Richard, sitting on an overturned basket before the fire.
Prue took a deep breath and began to recount all the events since she and Richard had parted ways. “They’re rounding up all the birds in South Wood,” she explained, finally arriving at the end of her adventures. “Who knows where they’re taking them? So I’m stuck there wondering what to do, and Enver and I figured we’d come to you and maybe ask a favor.”
Richard took in the whole story with wide-eyed amazement. It took a moment before he realized a question had been asked him. “A—a favor?” he asked, rubbing a temple with his knobby fingers. “What’d that be?”
“Well,” continued Prue, “the owl, just before the police showed up, said if all else fails I should go to North Wood. To see the Mystics. Enver here seems to think I can catch a ride with an eagle, if I could just get myself across the border to the Avian Principality. And since the whole South Wood is searching for me and any bird that happens to be in the vicinity, I’d need to do that undetected.” She bit her lip. “Like, I need someone to sneak me out.”
Richard caught on. “So you want me to smuggle you. Across the border.”
“Yep,” said Prue.
“I can only imagine: in the van. In the government’s own mail van.”
“Uh-huh,” said Prue.
Rubbing his hand across the stubble of his chin, Richard stood up and walked to the fireplace. He absently stirred the coals in the hearth with a poker.
“Well,” said Richard carefully, “I can say that I have no love for the Governor-Regent and his buddies, that’s for a long sight. And these SWORD goons, just waltzing all over town, arresting folks for no reason—it ain’t right. This country ain’t what it used to be, least not since Grigor died. I’ve outlived a lot of Governors-Regent in this place, and I can say that Lars is just about the worst we ever come up against. But me taking you across the border in a post office vehicle, well, if we got caught, that’d cost me my job, and my job is all I got right now, since my Bette took ill—that’s my wife, understand. She’s counting on me for this paycheck. Worse yet, that’d probably land me in jail for a time, and that just can’t happen.”
Prue was crestfallen. Enver whistled dispiritedly and looked out the window.
“So I guess we’re just gonna have to not get caught,” said Richard.
Prue leapt up from her crate. “So you’ll do it?” she asked.
“Yeah, I s’pose so,” he said, sighing.
Prue grabbed his hands and, squeezing them, led Richard into a kind of impromptu, maniacal dance in the small clearing before the fire. “I knew you’d do it!” she shouted, forgetting herself. “I knew you’d say yes!” Enver had left his perch and was making quick figure eights in the air of the room, twittering joyously.
“Now slow up,” cautioned Richard, pulling Prue to a stop. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. And we’ve got to keep our voices down—those SWORD officers are like little termites when they want to be: coming out of the woodwork. They could be anywhere.” He let go of Prue’s hands and walked over to a paraffin lamp on the mantel, the sole source of light in the room, and lowered the wick. Shadows extended into the room. He gave a hasty look out the window before returning to Prue, saying, “I said before you were likely here for a reason; maybe you were sent here to make rightful change in this place—get folks back up on their feet. That’s a kind of cause I can stand for.”
Prue smiled, tears welling in her eyes. “Thank you so much, Richard,” she said. “I can’t tell you how much this means.”
Richard nodded before scanning the room. “Now,” he said, “we just have to find a box that’ll fit the cargo.”
Curtis had a difficult time finding a comfortable spot to sit in his cage; the floor was made of closely woven maple boughs, and the knobby surface did not make an inviting sitting area. He settled for a spot opposite the cage door, where a depression in one of the branches created a kind of seat; this was where he stayed, waiting out the bandits’ derision. They had made good sport of Curtis for the better part of an hour until, their tormentee remaining silent, they turned their attention elsewhere: first to the coyote Dmitri, who spat more insults back at them, and then to one another, berating their neighboring prisoners over boasted feats of strength and derring-do.
“Ten feet?!” challenged one. “I’ve leapt farther in my sleep! Ten feet.”
“Oh yeah?” responded another. “Would love to hear your best jump, Cormac.”
Cormac, farther out the same branch as Curtis, replied casually, “Thirty, easy. The distance of about five trees. And not just little saplings, mind you, these were full mature firs we’re talking about. During that big raid, last August. Connor saw me. I’m on the crown of this massive cedar and all of a sudden a big gust comes up and I hear this crack and I look down and the whole top of the tree is splitting, right in two. Well, I’m high enough up that there’s no real tree to get to, just these firs that are well down below from where I was. In a flash, I look over and see—I swear to you here, five fir trees apart, thirty feet, easy—another cedar, same size. So I grab hold of the treetop, set my foot in the crotch of the topmost branch, and I just jump, hell-for-leather, just as that old cedar gives way, and the next thing I know I’m scrambling for a grip in the far tree. Sure as I’m standin’
here, gentlemen. Thirty feet.”
A snort came from the bandit below Curtis’s cage. “Right,” he scoffed. “I heard from Connor that that cedar top just tipped over and fell straight into the other tree—ye’d as easily walked from branch to branch if ye’d not had your eyes clapped closed in terror!”
Cormac shouted a reproach. “Eamon Donnell, so help me, I’ll string you from your toes as soon as we’re out of here—the second we’re out of here, you and me are going blow for blow.”
“Save your breath, gents,” advised the bandit up and to the left of Curtis’s cage. “We won’t be seein’ the light of day anytime soon.”
“You may be right there,” said another. “Hey, Angus, don’t suppose your old lady’s going to wait around?”
Angus, a bandit with a raspy voice whose cage was the farthest out, its weight straining the root branch, sighed a reply. “Hope she does. That bairn’ll be born any day now, I expect. Had half a hope that I’d be there for the birthing.” He kicked impotently at the wooden bars, setting his cage slowly rocking. “Blasted cages. Blasted coyotes. Blasted war.”
Dmitri had remained mostly silent during this exchange; here he interrupted, “Now hold on, some of us coyotes don’t want any more a part of this than you all do. I’d let you know that I happen to have a litter of pups at my home warren, waiting for me. Haven’t seen them in ages! I imagine they’ll be just about full grown by the time I get back. If I get back.”
The bandits gave no rebuttal to this honest admission; the cages fell silent for a moment as each prisoner fell into a reverie. Finally, Angus spoke up. “Hey, Seamus,” he called.
“Yeah?” was the response.
“Give us an air,” said Angus. “Nothing too sad, mind you—something to kick the mood a bit.”