“Do not,” Alexandra said forcefully, “do not keep me from my task.”
The sun had reached its zenith. It was noon. Prue could feel the ivy moving, slowly, underneath her.
“. . . three,” intoned the fox.
The ragtag remnants of the Wildwood Irregulars on the stone outcrop let out a collective howl and leapt up from their concealed position behind the low stone wall.
A barrage of bullets and gunpowder filled the air as they began this final assault.
Curtis whipped his saber from his scabbard and went bounding down the flight of stairs with a terrific holler.
The wall of coyote soldiers before them stood up from their cover and took aim at the advancing soldiers.
The crows in the neighboring trees launched from their perches and dove toward the fray.
A bandit sprinting next to Curtis took a bullet in his chest and fell back in a spray of dirt.
Another farmer tumbled to the ground, an arrow lodged in his furry gullet.
Curtis braced himself as he ran, ready for the hit that would send him, too, to the soil.
Time slowed to a near stop.
KEE-YEP! KEE-YEP!
Curtis looked up to see a vast fleet of eagles as they coursed over the Irregulars’ heads, diving down from the air behind the promontory. The pale gray sky was obliterated by an ocean of birds in flight.
“The Avians!” shouted Sterling.
The wave of flyers crashed into the descending crows, the crows’ terrible caws of fear and pain profaning the air above the fighters on the ground, all of whom had stopped in their warring, spellbound, to watch the amazing scene play out overhead. More birds came from the south; a tide of falcons and ospreys, owls and kestrels filled the sky. Their manifold voices, chiming their cumulative battle cry, were deafening.
Sterling was the first to shake himself from his shock. “Let’s move in!” he shouted, and the Irregulars, renewed, continued their advance.
The army of birds dispatched the crows in short order—those who weren’t torn apart by the raptors’ fierce talons fled into the surrounding woods as fast as their wings could fly them—and turned their force to the coyotes below. The coyotes, petrified by this new army that threatened them, were caught trying to choose which advancing force to engage. Those who aimed their rifles into the blur of wings above them were cut down by the farmers and bandits who dove into their ranks on the ground.
One coyote, his eyes set on Curtis, dove into the fight, his cutlass flashing; Curtis threw the blade of his saber up defensively, feeling the weight of his opponents’ weapon crashing into his own. No sooner had he done this than a pair of gnarled yellow claws appeared at the coyote’s shoulders and the animal was lifted skyward in the clutches of an enormous golden eagle. Curtis tumbled backward into a pile of dead leaves, and watching the bird and his catch grow distant in the sky, he let out a loud, victorious “WHOOP!”
The air soon became a cloud of wheeling raptors, diving to the ground to pick up more hapless coyote soldiers and returning to the air only to drop them to their deaths on the ground below. After a time, avoiding this aerial assault of falling coyotes became more of a concern to the Wildwood Irregulars on the ground than actually fighting them. More birds crested the ridge, and the forces, the conjoined Irregulars and the Avians, cleared the hillside of coyotes and made their advance on the ridge and the basilica beyond.
The Governess heard the eagles’ call. Her face whipped upward, staring at the sky. The sound was unearthly, a thousand birds crying out at once. Prue pushed herself up and scanned the horizon for the source of the noise.
“The birds,” whispered Alexandra to herself angrily. “The cursed birds.”
The Governess redoubled her focus on the task before her. Mac squirmed against her clutches as she placed him, roughly, on the headstone of the Plinth, his wails melding with the screams of the birds in the distance. Holding him flat against the Plinth with one hand, the Governess began her ritual. Her lips began to move, intoning the guttural sounds of some ancient incantation. With the tip of the dagger, she drew forth a single bulb of blood from the baby’s outstretched palm. Mac screamed.
Holding him flat against the Plinth with one hand, the Governess began her ritual.
Prue let out an impassioned yelp and tried to lift herself from the ground but discovered she could not move; the ivy had entwined itself around her legs and wrists. She was pinned to the clearing floor.
Prue’s mind raced as she struggled against the rippling vines of ivy. The tree branches above her swayed in the cold breeze, indifferent to the horror about to play out below them. If only they would stop her, she thought. If only you would reach down your boughs . . .
The Governess lifted Mac’s body from the Plinth with her left hand, her fingers clutching the cloth of his jumper, and held him high in the air. The dagger in her right hand flashed momentarily in a brief break of sun. The blood on Mac’s palm dripped down his finger, poised to fall at his fingertip to the ivy below.
“Stop. Now,” came a voice.
It was Brendan, standing on the top of the stairs. His yew bow was stretched taut, an arrow nocked in the string and held to his cheek. His eye squinted down the shaft of the arrow as he took aim at his target. His face was drained of color, and the front of his shirt was soaked a dark red.
Alexandra turned to the bandit and cracked a smile. “Too late, O King of the Bandits,” she said. She raised the dagger to strike.
If only you would, thought Prue.
Please. My brother.
Suddenly, a dark shape swept across the wide plaza, casting a moving shadow over the expanse of quivering green below. Prue looked up and saw that it was a pair of long, spindly fir boughs, arcing mightily toward the Governess’s extended hand. Her attention momentarily distracted by Brendan and his drawn bow, she did not see the boughs as they descended on the baby in her hand. In a quick motion, they had snatched Mac from her grip and carried him aloft. Alexandra shrieked, twisting as she grabbed for the baby’s feet.
Brendan released his arrow.
It sank home between Alexandra’s shoulder blades.
The ivy licked greedily at her ankles.
A single drop of blood fell from the wound the arrow had made, falling to spatter against the leaves of the ivy vines. The dagger fell from her fingers. The Dowager Governess followed the droplet of her blood into the awaiting tongues of the ivy vines, and the entire glade of dark green leaves surged forward, consuming her long body in the span of a few short seconds.
Mac, cradled high above the scene in the spiny fingers of the fir bough, cried fitfully. The ivy quavered around Prue, its spiny tendrils still holding her fast. She screamed, terrified that the ivy would consume her next.
Iphigenia called out to Brendan from across the clearing.
“Bandit King, you’ve fed the ivy! They’ve feasted on the Governess herself!” she shouted. “The plant is in your thrall. You must command it to sleep!”
A flicker of recognition flashed across Brendan’s tired face. Prue could see the realization pass fleetingly through his mind: He now had control of the most powerful force in the Wood. But no sooner had the idea occurred to him than he had cracked his bloodied lips wide and intoned the simple command:
“Sleep.”
The ivy immediately stopped its pulsing movement and relaxed into the floor of the square, its many leaves twitching like a sleeper on the edge of slumber. In a moment, the glade had ceased movement entirely. The vines around Prue’s wrists and legs released their powerful grip and she tore at them, quickly freeing herself from their bounds. The Bandit King, as if heeding his own command, slumped to the ground in a pile, his bow clattering across the paving stones at the top of the stair.
Iphigenia held a single hand above her head and gestured to the high branches of the fir tree, and Prue watched as the tree complied with the Mystic’s request, dropping Mac gingerly from bough to bough like a multitude of hands juggling a d
elicate bauble slowly to the ground. Once the tree’s freight had arrived at its lowest branch, the limb swung wide again, curving across the wide glade to deposit the baby softly into the lap of his sister.
Prue threw her arms around her brother and squeezed him tight to her chest. “Mac!” she cried. “I have you!”
The baby, recognizing his sister’s voice, held back his crying and stared up at her. “Poooo!” he said, finally.
The tears came flooding as Prue kissed the soft skin of his brow over and over. Mac babbled merrily in her arms.
The quiet scene did not last long; a loud groan sounded from the far side of the clearing. “Brendan!” Prue shouted, remembering her friend. She ran toward his prone body, sprawled over the two top steps of the stone staircase. The ivy leaf poultice the bandit had made was barely clinging to his shoulder, and it was apparent that the act of drawing the bow and firing the arrow had opened the wound afresh. Brendan’s eyelids were closed, though Prue could see his pupils moving underneath the thin veil of skin, as if he was searching for something, desperately, in the darkness of his unconsciousness.
“Help!” she yelled. “The King needs help!”
A broad swirl of gray and brown birds wheeled above the middle tier of the basilica, and the ground was littered with discarded weapons and fallen soldiers. The surviving Irregulars and the seemingly endless tide of birds continued to pick off the last of the coyotes as the Governess’s defeated army beat its retreat, the coyotes falling to their forelegs to run, casting off the coarse fabric of their uniforms as they went. The south ridge of the clearing still smoldered from the artillery barrage, and a great mantle of smoke hung over the ruined city. Prue heard someone approach; it was the Elder Mystic.
“Let me see,” she said, her voice calm. She knelt down at Brendan’s side and inspected the wound beneath the poultice. “Hmm,” she said. “Blood lost, some flesh—a chance for infection.” She lifted the King up by the shoulder and looked at his back. “An exit wound—it’s gone clean through. That’s good. Here.” She reached over and tore a long swath of fabric from the hem of her robe sleeve and set about packing it against the wound. The pain of the Mystic’s work woke Brendan from his unconsciousness and his eyes flew open, wide and bloodshot. He grasped at his shoulder; Iphigenia held him down. “Easy, King,” she said. “You’ve had a bit of a hurt. Not major, but you surely shouldn’t have been playing archer.”
There was a clatter of footsteps on the staircase; Curtis, flanked by several of his fellow Wildwood Irregulars, was leaping up the stairs. “Prue!” he shouted. “Prue! You won’t believe what’s happened. It’s all so—” He stopped short and stared at the baby in Prue’s arms. A wide grin broke over his face. “Mac,” he said. “You’ve got him.”
“Yep,” said Prue, beaming. “I’ve got him.”
He went to hug her but was again distracted by the supine body of the Bandit King below him. “Brendan!” he said. “How is he? Is he okay? What happened?”
Iphigenia, trussing the King’s shoulder with the bit of tawny fabric, nodded. “He’ll be all right. Might be laid up for a bit—he won’t be robbing any stagecoaches anytime soon, but he’ll heal in time. Important thing is that we get him to the circle of caravans, quickly. There are people there who can see to his wounds.”
The several Irregulars standing next to Curtis vaulted forward at Iphigenia’s request, and hoisting Brendan into a standing position between their shoulders, they walked him off toward the glade above the basilica.
The Elder Mystic wiped her hands on the hem of her robe while Curtis sat down on the top step next to Prue, who was staring down at the child in her arms. Her brow was furrowed, as if she were mulling over some important puzzle.
“Pooo!” the baby was saying.
“I can’t believe it,” Curtis said quietly. “We did it.” He reached out his arms to the baby and Prue smiled, handing him the child. He bounced Mac on his knee, and the baby squealed happily.
Prue squinted over at Iphigenia. “That was amazing,” she said. “Really incredible. If you hadn’t convinced the tree branches to swoop in and grab him—who knows what would’ve happened?”
Iphigenia nodded thoughtfully. “Indeed.” She shifted a little in her seat and added. “But I didn’t ask them.”
Prue looked back at her blankly.
“It hadn’t occurred to me, actually. I was distracted in the moment, as the Dowager was, by the arrival of the Bandit King. The trees, they seem to have done it of their own accord, which is very strange,” continued the Mystic. “Or”—she paused—“they answered the request of someone else.” She studied Prue intently. “But that is highly, highly implausible.”
Prue shyly looked down at her shoes.
“So what’s happened to the Dowager?” Curtis interjected, gesturing over at the glade of ivy behind them. There was no sign of Alexandra’s body; it was as if she’d vanished completely.
“She’s part of the ivy now, dear,” replied the Mystic. “A fate this baby has narrowly avoided.”
“Does that mean she’s, you know,” started Prue, “dead?”
Iphigenia shook her head. “Oh no,” she said. “Not dead. Very much alive. But certainly incapacitated. She’s . . .” The Elder Mystic searched for the right words. “She’s simply changed form. Her every molecule has been absorbed by this plant, which is now returned to its soporific state. Quite incapacitated.” Iphigenia looked off into the distance thoughtfully. “I suppose, now that you mention it, there would be a way to . . . well, hello, look who’s come to see us.”
At the bottom of the steps, a contingent of the Avian army had gathered. The largest of them, a golden eagle, stepped forward and climbed the first few steps of the staircase.
“Is one of you Prue McKeel?” asked the eagle.
Prue looked up. “I am,” she said.
The eagle bowed low. “My name is Devrim. I’m the acting general of the Avian infantry. I understand you were flown, two days ago, by another eagle such as myself.”
“Yes,” she said. “We were shot down. He didn’t survive.”
The eagle’s face was stoic. “It is as we feared.”
Prue’s heart sank and she began to stammer a desperate apology; all the calamity that she’d brought on these poor animals! But before she could speak, Iphigenia seemed to guess at her troubles and stepped forward.
“Good General,” said Iphigenia. “How did you hear word of our . . . predicament?”
“A sparrow,” replied the general. “A young sparrow named Enver. He took a particular interest in the young Outsider girl. He sought news from the birds of Wildwood as a way to follow the girl’s progress. When the Dowager’s army had amassed and began marching south, the news traveled very quickly. We knew that we had to intercede. Alas”—the general pecked at the underside of his wing thoughtfully, as a man might stroke his beard—“our numbers are fairly small. The persecutions of South Wood have badly diminished our standing.”
The Elder Mystic nodded. “Perhaps then,” she said, “our work is not completed.” She turned to Prue and Curtis, snaking her fingers into the crooks of their arms and standing up. “Help me down the stairs, little ones,” she said. “I’ve got an idea I’d like to put to the good General. I’ve a mind to set some things right. We do have an army at our disposal, after all.”
CHAPTER 28
Wildwood Rising
A steady breeze picked up the tattered scraps of fallen leaves on the dirt paving of the Long Road and shuffled them around in little funnels. The trees were changing more and more each day; another autumn was reaching its height. Soon, winter would arrive with its steady gloom of rain and the occasional fall of snow. The people of South Wood were busy stocking their larders with the jarred surplus of the summer’s harvest and eyeing their steep woodpiles while their begrudging offspring stacked it in tidy blocks in dry enclosures, away from their house walls, where the bugs could get in.
The two guards stood on either side
of the wide wooden gate, leaning on their rifles. They’d been on the shift for more than five hours and were already looking forward to their reprieve for the evening. The sun was shifting downward in the sky; an early twilight was at hand. They could smell the first whiffs of the nearby houses’ dinners being put on the hob, and it made their stomachs growl. In unison, in fact. Hearing it, they looked at each other and gave a laugh.
A noise sounded from the distance. A clattering noise. Something was coming toward them on the Long Road.
They stiffened. The evening’s rush hour had long passed, and the road’s travelers had become fairly sparse, as they always did at this time of the evening. Once the final shipments had made their way into the South Wood gates, the Long Road often had the feel of a deserted highway.
The clattering grew closer. The guards exchanged a glance and stood up from their leaning positions, both of them staring down the wide expanse of the road. The noise was distinctly metallic, like a chain being rattled or . . .
A bicycle.
It came around a distant bend, weaving under the weight of its passengers. On the front of the handlebars sat a young boy with a fountain of curly black hair atop his head. He was wearing a dirty, torn military uniform. As the bike came closer, the guards saw that the person pedaling the bike was a young girl with short dark hair; a small red wagon bounced along behind the bike, carrying a bald infant swaddled in a pile of blankets.
The bike came to a quick, skidding stop in front of the gates, and the boy on the handlebars hopped off. He pulled a sling from his pocket and began swinging it casually at his side. The girl dismounted from the seat and, after quickly checking on the baby in the wagon, turned to the two guards.
“Let us through,” she said.
The guard on the left of the gate laughed, taking in the strange sight. “Oh yeah?” he asked. “What’s yer business?”
“We’ve come to free Owl Rex and the citizens of the Avian Principality from the South Wood Prison,” she said matter-of-factly. “Oh, and to remove Lars Svik and his cronies from power.” She thought for a moment, adding, “Peacefully, if at all possible.”