“What happened, fox?” asked the Mystic.
“It, uh, appears to have been unengaged,” replied the fox.
Iphigenia shook her head. “Well, get in there and ring the bell!”
The fox did just that; a jarring series of deafening clangs issued from the fire tower, the peals echoing out over the surrounding forest meadows and thickets.
The placid farmland, quiet in the early dawn, came to sudden life.
Figures in the trees and among the rows of crops began to show themselves; cottage doors were thrown open, their occupants stepping out on to dawn-dappled verandas and looking curiously up at the small crowd gathered at the base of the fire tower. Brightly hued caravan wagons appeared from the woods and began trundling their way toward the hill. Shovel-laden farmhands paused in the day’s first labors and walked from their tidy fields, their eyes set on the old wooden tower. Before long, a sizable crowd had gathered at the top of the hill.
Iphigenia turned to Prue. “You wouldn’t mind helping me here, would you?” she asked, gesturing to the stepladder that led to the top of the fire tower. Prue smiled, said, “Of course,” and mounted the ladder, holding her hand behind her so that Iphigenia could grip it on her ascent to the walkway. Once she’d arrived at the top, she looked out at the gathering crowd. Prue stood at her side. The serene countryside of North Wood stretched out beneath them, a maze of alder groves and patchwork garden plots. Little hamlets, their few quaint huts spewing peat smoke, nestled into far-flung hillsides; a single wide, meandering road—Prue guessed it to be the North Wood tributary of the Long Road—carved its way through the landscape like a wild river, disappearing finally among the wooded hills.
“Step forward, please,” the Elder Mystic instructed the crowd. “Let the folks in the back in a little closer. I can only speak so loud. Sterling, make sure the smaller animals can be seated at front: the moles and the squirrels. Dears, if you’re taller than four feet, please keep to the rear of the crowd. Mm-hmm. That’s good.”
She paused for a moment as a new flurry of witnesses arrived, swelling the crowd considerably. The two constables, Sterling and Samuel, busily walked the perimeter of the expanding assemblage, doing their best to keep people calm and attentive. The low hum of the crowd’s chatter swarmed the scene like a hive of bees. When Iphigenia was satisfied with the hill’s capacity, she spoke.
“Are we all here?” she asked.
A sea of moving heads, some nodding, some shaking. A voice from the outer rim of the crowd sounded, “Folks up Miller Creek are on their way.”
Another: “Kruger and Deck Farms are in the middle of hay baling. Can’t make it.”
Iphigenia nodded. “We’ll make sure word spreads. For now, this will have to do.” By Prue’s estimation, three hundred fifty souls were gathered—a dizzying menagerie of creatures: stoats, coyotes, foxes, humans, and deer. A family of black bears in overalls towered above the crowd in the center; the antlers of a cluster of bucks jutted from the left side. A group of skunks, motioned forward by Samuel, made their way to the front.
“The reason we’ve called you here,” said Iphigenia, her voice firm and resounding, “the reason we’ve rung the bell, is that a great trial is at hand. An army is on the march in Wildwood, an army intent on the destruction of the entire Wood. We have meditated through the night at the Council Tree and we have reached a unanimous decision, with the tree’s consent, to gather arms against this foe. The North Wood volunteer militia will muster.”
The quieted murmur of the crowd burst open afresh, the whispers turning to desperate chatter. “What do we care about what happens in Wildwood?” called one of the bears. “That’s no business of ours.”
Iphigenia frowned, responding, “The thing that threatens Wildwood threatens us all. The ivy has been awakened. The exiled Dowager Governess of South Wood promises to feed the blood of a human child to the plant and thereby gain its control. We have this girl, this Outsider, Prue McKeel, to thank for first bringing this to our attention.” She waved for Prue to come forward. Prue did so shyly, giving a little half curtsy to the teaming crowd.
“What’s an Outsider doing here?” called a faceless voice from the crowd.
Another voice corrected the first: “She’s not just some Outsider, she’s a half-breed!”
The crowd seemed to collectively attempt a closer inspection of Prue as she stood on the tower’s walkway. Satisfied, many in the crowd nodded. “It’s true!” Prue heard someone say to his neighbor. Iphigenia gestured to Prue, an open palm extended in invitation. Prue’s eyes widened.
“You want me to say something?” she whispered.
Iphigenia nodded. “Yes,” she said. “It would be best if they heard it from you.”
Prue gulped and took another step forward, resting her hands on the rail of the walkway. She stared out at the crowd. “My brother,” she began. “My brother, just five days ago—”
“Speak up, then!” someone shouted from the back.
Prue cleared her throat and spoke louder. “Five days ago, I saw my brother taken by a flock of crows. From a park in St. Johns—the Outside. So I came in here to find him. I’ve asked the people in South Wood for help—they did nothing.” She was gaining confidence. “I asked Owl Rex, the Crown Prince of the Avians, for help—and he was arrested! He told me to come here, to speak to the Mystics. He said they’d be my last hope.”
Iphigenia stepped to Prue’s side. “The crows are in the employ of the Dowager,” the Elder Mystic said. “They have fallen away from the Avians to do her bidding. Once the ivy is similarly under her command, there will be no stopping the swath of destruction that will follow. Every tree will be toppled, every glade consumed. Your crops, houses, and farms will be laid to ruin. The ivy knows no boundaries. It will consume and consume until it is instructed by its commander to cease. And clearly, its commander is nothing short of a madwoman, bent on the complete annihilation of the Wood as we know it.”
The audience emitted a murmur of fear. The Mystic continued:
“It is clear from our meditations with the Council Tree that this is our calling. To gather our army in defense of the Wood. There is no other choice.” Iphigenia paused and took a deep breath. “Mr. Fox,” she called, “would you mind saying a word?”
Sterling, standing at the foot of the stepladder, nodded and climbed to the walkway. He held a tattered and yellowing scroll in his paw. Unfurling it, he began to explain to the crowd, “The Decree of Muster dictates thus: that every man and woman, animal or human, of able body, in the event that the Decree is instated, must take up arms and join the ranks of the militia. For this, he or she will be compensated from the community stores for labor lost.”
“But we have no weapons!” came a voice.
Sterling rolled the scroll tight and patted the pruning shears at his belt. “Then you must use whatever is at hand. Farming implements, cooking utensils—whatever you can find.”
The crowd collectively heaved a worried grumble.
Iphigenia stepped forward. “Go now,” she commanded, “and find your families. Gather your weapons. Meet back at this point in an hour. You have an hour, no more, to do this. Our time is very short. The Governess intends to commit this sacrifice at noon this day. Remember: Our very lives depend on this.”
The crowd of farmers, dismissed, moved into distressed splinters as they each ran home to their cottages, farms, and families.
Prue turned to Iphigenia. “Will you come? Into Wildwood?” she asked.
The Elder Mystic nodded, brushing a few strands of her silvery gray hair from her lined forehead. “Yes,” she said, “I will represent the Order in this journey. The others will stay behind and remain in meditation. However, when I took the robes, I was sworn to do no harm, pledged to a life of nonviolence. Whatever fighting must be done, I will be unable to take part in it. But there are other ways that I may help.”
Prue watched as the crowd continued to dissipate, its individual figures disappearing into the
copses of trees and small hovels that peppered the landscape. “How many,” she asked, “do you think there’ll be?”
Sterling the fox grumbled under his breath. “We’ll be lucky if we have four hundred,” he said.
Iphigenia, her face set, looked at the fox. “It will have to do.”
“That’s it?” Prue asked. The number seemed far too small.
“You saw the crowd,” said Sterling defensively. “Even if we get everyone—all the farmhands and homesteads on the far side of Miller Creek—we won’t get many more than that. This is a quiet country; we’re not accustomed to these upsets.”
Iphigenia sighed. “And yet, the Council Tree has decreed it. We have little choice in the matter.”
“What about—what about—” Prue’s mind whirred desperately for options. “What about other creatures—in the Wood? What about all the animals in Wildwood—wouldn’t they want to ally with us to do this? I mean, their homes are in as much in danger as yours are.”
Iphigenia shook her head. “Impossible,” she said. “The creatures of Wildwood, what we know of them, belong to loosely tied packs and families. It’s truly a wild country. Getting each of those disparate packs to come together would be impossible.”
Prue struck on something. “The bandits,” she said. “What about the bandits?”
Sterling’s eyes widened. “Those bloodthirsty hooligans? Are you kidding? No one in their right mind would ally with those anarchic hoods. We’d all get our throats slit and our purses taken.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Prue objected. “I don’t think that’s true at all. I’ve been there—to the bandit camp.”
“You’ve been to their camp?” asked a surprised Iphigenia. “How on earth did you manage that?”
Prue sighed. “Long story. I was lying on the back of an eagle when I was shot down by a coyote archer. They found me and brought me to their hideout. It’s up a really deep ravine—totally hidden from sight. I wasn’t there long, though, before they’d spotted some coyotes nearby—they were following my scent, you see. So their King, I think they called him, rode me out of the camp and away so as not to lead them right into the hideout. That’s when I was captured by the Governess.”
The fox was momentarily speechless. “They didn’t rough you up, did they? I mean, that’s what they do, right?”
“No, they were very gentlemanly,” said Prue.
“I’d always suspected as much,” said Iphigenia. “That the bandits were a sympathetic crew, however anarchic they might be. One thing is certain: They would be the strongest and most organized of the many tribes and packs of Wildwood. A formidable ally, if we were able to gain it.”
“No way,” said the fox angrily. “There is no way I will march alongside a bunch of Wildwood bandits. It’s a miracle we’re able to stay alive, what with their pilfering our shipments to and from South Wood.”
“But Mr. Fox, you forget that for every shipment that is waylaid, others are allowed passage. They’ve always allowed enough through for us to live very comfortably,” said Iphigenia. She turned to Prue. “Do you think that you’d be able to find this camp, this hideout, again?”
Prue thought for a moment. “I don’t think I could get to the hideout itself,” she said, “but I could get close, I think. It’s just south of that big bridge—the one that crosses the ravine.”
“The Gap Bridge,” Iphigenia corrected. “Yes.”
“And west,” continued Prue, her memory busily retracing her flight from the hideout. “Yes, that’s it: west of the Long Road. And I know they post sentries everywhere around the camp. If I were able to make enough of a racket, no doubt they’d nab me, right? And I know they’d recognize me from before—I could explain what’s going on!”
Iphigenia nodded. “I can only imagine they’d be as concerned as we are. This threat endangers all of us.”
“Let me go,” Prue said, feeling a wave of determination rise in the cavity of her chest. “While you wait for the militia to regroup, let me ride into Wildwood. I’ve got my bike—I can take the Long Road—and maybe I can make it to the bandits and convince them to join by the time the North Wood army is on the march.”
Iphigenia was thoughtful. “It’s a dangerous gambit, my dear,” said the Elder Mystic. “You certainly are risking running afoul of the bandits. Perhaps they would think it was a trick, to lead them from their hideout. There’s no telling how they’ll respond.”
“Do we have a choice?” asked Prue. “I mean, if we have them with us—there must be hundreds of them!—we at least stand a chance against the Governess.” She looked desperately back and forth between Iphigenia and Sterling. The fox crossed his arms and huffed. Iphigenia, after a moment, nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “Go. Ride to the bandits. Tell them of our plight. Of their plight. In the meantime, we’ll muster our arms and set out. And we will meet you at the Gap Bridge—before the sun has ascended to the midday mark.” She looked up and gauged the height of the sun, its glow dampened by the strands of clouds above the horizon. “Go now. Ride quickly. We have very little time.”
Prue dashed down the stepladder and leapt astride her bike, kicking it into motion.
Curtis could feel his tiredness deep in the heels of his feet. The little sleep he’d had the night before—a few fitful naps by the side of a campfire—was scarcely adequate to prepare his temperament for a long morning march, at the end of which, undoubtedly, would be his own personal end. The gravity of the situation was slowly unfurling, creeping over him like a chill. He found himself longing for the comfort of his own bed, his overcrowded bookshelf, the abrasive chime of his alarm clock, the endless footfalls of his two sisters crowding the hallway outside his door. He ran the rope of the sling through his fingers as he walked, feeling the pilly grit of the hempen cord and the smooth leather of the sling’s little cradle. The six finger-wide smears of paint that a fellow bandit had striped across his face still felt fresh and cool against his skin.
The two long columns of marchers had fanned out as soon as they’d left the enclosure of the hideout ravine, and Curtis could see the dark forms of his fellow bandits making their way skill-fully through the underbrush. While they traveled as fleetly as ever, a certain energy seemed to be drained from them. The reality of their doomed enterprise hovered over them like a dense fog, unbreakable. Curtis attempted to distract his own feelings of helplessness by searching the ground for good, usable missile projectiles for his sling. He stuffed them in his pockets as he found them, and he could feel the weight of the pocketful of rocks and pebbles with each step.
“Keep up, Curtis!” hissed a bandit ahead of him, noticing his slowed pace as he stooped to pick up a nice-looking stone. It was Cormac. Curtis heeded him, shoving the stone in his pocket and jogging ahead. They were getting farther and farther from the camp; the wood smoke was no longer even a hint on the air. Septimus had left his regular seat on Curtis’s right shoulder and could be seen occasionally, leaping from tree bough to tree bough above their heads. After a time, the troop spilled out onto the Long Road. Brendan, having donned his viney crown, stood at the head of the crowd of bandits, waving them forward.
“We’ll follow the Road,” he explained, once the army had amassed around him. With a long, knobby stick, he began drawing a rough map in the wet dirt of the road. “Till the Hardesty game trail—then we’ll go backwoods. Numbers ain’t gonna cut it in this battle—we’re well outgunned—but we can try to make up for it in stealth. An army of that size, I have to assume that they’ll be on the Long Road as long as possible; they’ll probably cut west off the Road between the north and middle fork of Rocking Chair Creek.” He drew a long, snaked line with the stick and placed an X at the end. “We’ll come at them from the northwest, just above the Plinth. That’s the best we can do.” He looked up at the gathered bandits. “Is that clear?”
A chorus of “ayes” was the reply.
Brendan’s jaw was locked in firm determination. “Let’s move,
” he said.
The army of bandits began their march down the Long Road. Curtis strayed to the rear, still glancing around at the ground below his feet for rocks. Something caught his eye: a flash of shiny metal in the underbrush near the side of the road. He peeled away from the columns of marchers and kneeled down. Pushing aside a small cluster of thistle stalks, Curtis was surprised to see his house keys. “My keys!” he said aloud. He pulled the keys from the undergrowth and shook them in his hand momentarily, reveling in their familiar jangle. Septimus, falling behind the bandit parade, scrambled to his side.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“My house keys,” responded Curtis. “They must’ve fallen out of my pocket when I was being carried by the coyotes.”
“Fascinating,” said Septimus wryly. “Now we shouldn’t get too far behind. We have our own suicides to attend to.”
Curtis smirked. “Right,” he said, pocketing the keys. “It’s just crazy to think that, like, straight that way, down through the woods, is the Railroad Bridge. And beyond that, my home. This was where I came in.” He shook his head as if dispelling an enchantment. “Crazy.”
The bandit army was farther down the Long Road now, the midsection of the column disappearing around a bend. Septimus began hopping along the gravel surface, looking over his shoulder at Curtis. “C’mon,” he said.
“Right,” said Curtis. “Coming.” He gave one last look to the wall of trees, the bunch of thistles that had held his keys, and jogged after the bandit host to catch up.
Never in Prue’s life had she been so focused on her riding, so tuned into every churn of the pedal assembly, the springy contractions of her quads as they powered the quick, rhythmic motions of her calves and ankles. She rode lightly on her bike seat, her weight off center on the back of the saddle in order to better absorb the incessant hammering of the bumpy road. That selfsame bumpy road, however, played havoc with the red Radio Flyer wagon trailing behind; it leapt and shivered manically as she rode, and made a terrific banging noise. Prue let the noise echo on; it felt defiant. Besides, if anything was going to catch the attention of the bandits, surely the clatter of a metal wagon would do the trick.