Just then, darkness filled her vision again. The mandala dissipated, and in its place she felt shadowy forms encroaching, forms that would seek to destroy the thing she had in her hands—or worse, use it for their own evil ends. The forms swirled about her and snapped at her, attempting to distract her from her vigilance. Using all her power, she summoned herself from her vision and began striving to swim for the surface of her consciousness.
The darkness followed.
Prue screamed; her arms flailed.
She managed to grab hold of a frayed piece of rope that was left dangling from the anchoring structure of the bridge. Within a fraction of a second, she was slammed hard against the side of the crevice. She howled loudly at impact. Her arm felt as if it was being yanked from her shoulder socket. She clenched her eyes, refusing to look down at the swirling pit below her dangling feet. She reached up her free hand and grabbed at a chink in the rock; it held firm, and she scrambled to the lip of the crevice, where she saw a hand being proffered her. It was one of the younger bandits-in-training, a boy. She took it gratefully, and together they tumbled to the safety of the wooden platform.
No sooner had they done this than the boy was up and running, tearing after the diminishing pack of racers. Prue slapped her hands together, freeing them of rocky grit, and gave chase.
The remaining pack of racers—there were perhaps six now, with Curtis in the middle—were leaping between a series of platforms that served as the open-air vestibules for a number of bandits’ homes in the rock. The runners who were best able to get ahead were the ones most willing to risk their lives by bypassing ladders and leaping from ledge to ledge. Prue was winded at this point; her near fall had really taken a toll on her spirit. She had just climbed to the third in a series of platforms, watching the pack disappear around a rocky corner, when she heard someone whisper.
“Pssst,” came the voice.
She looked over; standing in the shadow of a long arch was a little girl, perhaps six. She gestured to Prue to follow her. Guessing she didn’t have anything to lose, Prue trotted after the girl. The arch proved to be an opening in the cliff face, the entryway to a short tunnel—so narrow that Prue had to walk sideways to get through—that let out on the other side of the rock. The little girl, reaching the end of the passage, pointed to a wooden pathway against the rock wall that led along a sliver of fissure to a distant stone staircase. Atop the staircase, Prue could see something fluttering in the wind: the fourth waymark! She thanked the little girl and began gingerly stepping out onto the walkway.
She had to walk carefully, step by step, as the path was really just two planed boards set next to each other, their ends balanced precariously in the little crooks in the rock face. They appeared to be older than many of the structures of the bandit camp; they were covered in a slick layer of moss and they bowed deeply, with a worrisome moan, at her every step. Arriving at the other side, she dashed up the stone staircase—a series of winding steps etched into the rock—and was happy to see that she was the first to arrive at the fourth waymark. The rest of the racers were clambering, one by one, up an impossibly tall ladder to arrive at the same spot. They were far enough off that Prue was able to stop for a moment, to catch her breath and take in the view.
The Long Gap, from this height, could be seen for what it was: not just a straight, open chasm in the earth, but a kind of waterless, bottomless river, complete with stems and tributaries and little inlets where hazy smoke from campfires could be seen drifting. She was nearly at a height where the ravine wall met the mossy ground of the surface, on top of a kind of pinnacle in the rock. Looking down, she noticed that the stone walkway she’d followed led down the other side of the rocky tower in quick switchbacks. It occurred to her then that the stone stairs could not have been the making of the bandits; the craftsmanship and labor involved in such an undertaking would have taken years and years. Where the bandits’ makeshift wooden structures still had green leaves sprouting from them, the stone of the staircase was bearded in bright green moss and worn in sections from heavy use. They looked like they’d been there for centuries. The absolute darkness into which the steps snaked intrigued Prue, and she almost then gave up the race to follow where they led.
Instead, she made sure the first kids to top the ladder saw that she’d gained the advantage, and then she was off, following a narrow band of rock that led back down into the depths of the chasm. The fifth flag could be seen waving just beyond a narrow gap in the rock. Prue couldn’t believe it, but it seemed she was on track to take the race.
“Elder Mystic!”
“Iphigenia!”
The voices were desperate, agitated. The old woman decided to find out what they were so concerned about. She opened her eyes and realized she was lying flat on her back, which was unusual. A crowd of Mystics, ten to be exact, hovered over her.
“You were straight out!”
“I’ve never seen you do that before.”
Iphigenia’s back was very cold, being pressed against snowy ground. However, the snow was rapidly melting and turning to water, which was making her back wet and cold. She reached her hands up imploringly; her fellow Mystics helped her to her feet.
“What happened?” asked one, a doe named Mabyn.
Iphigenia held her fingers to her temples. She had a terrible headache. The group of Yearlings who’d been playing in the field had stopped at the commotion; she could see them standing nearby, watching the Mystics. In her heart, a sudden concern erupted.
“I saw,” she said, “I saw what must be done.”
The collected Mystics all looked at one another, confused.
Iphigenia sighed heavily. “Though in my heart I fear it is a near-impossible task. One for which we are not well equipped.” She wiped the dirt and snow from her sackcloth robe and looked at the Council Tree. Her eyes then moved to the line of trees at the edge of the clearing. A darkness was filling the spaces between. “And one I may not survive to witness.”
“What can we do?” asked a slender gray-white coyote.
Iphigenia turned to the other Mystics with a renewed purpose. “The children; we must get them to safety. Mabyn, Dawn, Anatolia, Damianos: Collect the Yearlings. Make sure they’re kept from sight. Nikanor, Hydrangea, and Erastus: Keep the civilians from the clearing. No matter what occurs, they must not enter here.” The Mystics did as they were instructed; Iphigenia turned to the three who had remained.
“Bion,” she said to the gray fox.
“Eutropia,” she said to the caramel-skinned woman.
“Timon,” she said to the lithe antelope. “Together we must stand against the assassins.”
It had been an optical illusion. While the fifth flag did flutter within Prue’s keen vision, it was not in easy grasp. The split in the rock that separated her from the banner was easily twenty feet wide; certainly too wide to leap.
The flag stood on a small outcrop on the far side of the gap; Prue studied it breathlessly. Clearly, it must be possible to reach the outcrop, she reasoned—otherwise, how had it got there? She looked all around her; there was no sign of a bridge or zip line. It was as if someone had flown in and dropped it there—but that didn’t seem to make sense. Eliciting the help of an Avian didn’t seem remotely likely, considering that the bandits-in-training wouldn’t be able to rely on flight themselves. While she puzzled this out, the rest of the pack caught up with her. There were only five remaining: the two mischievous boys who’d cut the rope bridge, Curtis, Aisling, and another girl. They were completely out of breath when they joined Prue at the edge of the cliff.
“There it is!” shouted one of the boys.
Curtis stared at Prue. “I thought you’d dropped out!” he said. “How did you—”
“The talents of a natural-born bandit, actually,” said Prue.
Aisling crossed her arms at her chest and pouted at the banner. “There’s no way we can get that. How did they even get it there? That’s, like, against the rules. Or something.”
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“There are no rules,” Curtis reminded her.
“Later, suckers!” shouted one of the boys as he followed the ledge downward and away from the place where the others stood, his partner close behind.
“Where are they going?” asked the younger girl.
“I don’t know,” said Aisling. “But I’m guessing they know what they’re doing. See you on the other side!” And she ran off after the two boys. The younger girl gave Prue and Curtis a look before darting after her.
“Well?” said Prue.
“Well,” said Curtis.
“Got any ideas?”
Curtis rubbed his chin. “Not really. I’m pretty sure that’s not the way. I’ve been through this part of the Gap before, and I think that just leads down toward the mess hall.” He put his hands on his hips and eyed the cliff wall. “No, they must’ve gone back and crossed at another spot. Shoot.” He went to spit on the ground but did it fairly clumsily. The spit dripped in a lazy string from his lips.
“Nice,” said Prue sarcastically.
Curtis blushed and wiped the wetness from his chin. “It’s something I’m working on,” he said.
“Do you hear that?” asked Prue suddenly.
Curtis froze. “What?”
“That … moaning,” said Prue. She looked at Curtis; he shrugged.
“I don’t hear anything,” he said.
Prue, understanding, smiled widely. “Of course you can’t!” she said, recognizing the sound of the voice. She searched the chasm for the source and in doing so discovered, on the other side of a large rock, a little lip that led along the cliff around a sharp corner. After crawling carefully over the boulder, she followed the lip, her back braced against the cliff face, until she arrived at a place where a juvenile big-leaf maple tree, jutting from the rock, made a kind of bridge over a narrow part of the defile. It was moaning sorrowfully.
“Someone must’ve pushed it over, the poor thing, to make a bridge,” said Prue as she arrived at the tree. She put her hand on its bark consolingly.
Curtis came up behind her. “What? Did you … hear the tree?”
“It’s something I can do. Ever since the Plinth. I can … well, I can hear plants talk.”
Curtis slapped his forehead. “Really? Prue McKeel? You can talk to plants?”
“They don’t say anything intelligible,” corrected Prue, “but I can hear them. It’s weird. I haven’t told most people.”
“Well, whatever!” exclaimed Curtis. “Next stop, the fifth waymark!” He paused, thinking, before clambering onto the tree. He turned to Prue and waved her forward. “After you,” he said. “You did discover the way, after all.”
“Very kind of you,” she said, and delicately stepped onto the tree-bridge, silently thanking the tree as she crossed.
The afternoon sky grew ominously gray; Iphigenia saw to it that each of the Yearlings were safely ushered away by the other Mystics as she watched the sky darken. One of the them, a little boy, looked at Iphigenia searchingly as he followed her command. “Are they coming?” he asked, his face betraying no emotion.
The Elder Mystic was surprised at the question. She looked at the boy blankly.
“I hear them coming,” said the boy. He put his hand on Iphigenia’s arm. “Be strong.”
She nodded to the boy and then watched as he was led away, hand in hand with one of the Mystics. They were headed for the safety of the acolytes’ ward. She smiled despite the gravity of the circumstances. The Yearlings were proving to be very powerful, she assessed, and she had no doubt that the next generation of Mystics would be a formidable one indeed. Their promise was heartening to her. She watched as the children disappeared behind the line of trees, then turned and looked back at the sky.
They were here.
Following the tall trunks of the Douglas fir trees down from their sky-tall tips to the black shallows between them, she saw three figures emerging from the dark. They were humans: two men and a woman. It was clear they were not from North Wood; the two men wore what appeared to be suit jackets, while the woman, in the center, wore a patterned dashiki.
“Good afternoon,” said Iphigenia. “You look as if you’ve traveled far. We’ve not much to offer, but there is a warm hearth and a modest meal to be had at the hall, if you’d be our guests.”
“Quiet, Mystic,” said the woman. “We’ve come for you.”
Iphigenia nodded, resigned. “Yes, I know,” she said. “I felt you coming.” She looked at the woman squarely. “You must be Darla.”
The woman sneered, revealing a pair of distinctly inhuman canine teeth. “You—you and your friends—harried me once. I don’t expect to be delayed from my task this time.” The two men on either side of the woman straightened their bright red ties and stretched their necks. The three approached, crossing the snowy clearing; Iphigenia beckoned to her three fellow Mystics to keep by her. They rounded the large trunk of the Council Tree and stood in front of it protectively. The wind trembled the yellow blades of grass, sending little flurries of snow into the air.
“You won’t find them, the children,” said the Elder Mystic. “They’re well hidden. Beyond your reach.”
“Don’t underestimate us,” said Darla.
“I wouldn’t think to. I know your kind.”
They edged closer; their movements were silent and studied. The Mystics did not move.
“Who’s sent you?” asked Iphigenia, her hands gently urging the three other Mystics to keep their ground.
“None of your business, old woman.” This came from one of the men. His shoulders were hunched and shuddering within his natty three-piece suit.
“It’s just that when one faces one’s assassin, one likes to know who’s doing the bidding,” explained Iphigenia. “I always thought it was a final consideration paid by your kind—a last favor granted a doomed soul.”
One of the men laughed; Darla shot him a glare. “It’s actually quite the opposite,” she said. “A true assassin never gives up her sponsor.”
“An honorable profession,” said Iphigenia, a wry smile on her otherwise stoic face. “Though I do wonder how much honor is to be found in infanticide.”
Darla ignored this comment. She bared her teeth and growled. “Your time is through, old lady. Make way for the new regime.”
With a flick of her wrist, she signaled the men, and the three of them suddenly hunched low, as if stricken with a sudden pain. Their bodies trembled and shook and their clothing undulated strangely as a transformation began to take place. Iphigenia watched placidly, though she could tell the sight awed the other Mystics. Within a few seconds, the three figures had shed their clothing and emerged from their human chrysalises in the form of three jet-black foxes, their hackles along their backs raised in wiry spikes.
Iphigenia, for her part, lifted her hands into the air and prepared for her supplication to the living green of the Wood.
“Ready?”
“Yeah. You ready?”
“Uh-huh.”
Their temporary truce was over. Nearly tripping over each other, Prue and Curtis sprinted back over the fallen maple, eliciting another groan from the tree, and inched along the narrow lip of the cliff face. They clambered down a set of stairs, jousting elbows, and ran along a walkway to arrive at an outcrop from where the final waymark could be seen, fluttering wildly atop the camp’s West Tower. Prue assumed that the other bandit trainees had been waylaid somewhere in the recesses of the gap; it was now just the two of them left.
They gave each other a quick, fleeting glance and then they were off, tearing across a swinging rope bridge to arrive at the circular stairs that climbed the side of the wooden tower. Whatever civility had been guiding their behavior prior to this moment was gone; Prue had a firm handful of the fringe hanging from one of Curtis’s epaulets, and he was desperately elbowing her in the neck at every opportunity. They made their way, ungracefully, to the top of the tower, where they both fell to the ground, pulling and shoving, crawling
the final feet to the waving banner.
It was Prue who broke away, who managed to shove past her friend and come within a finger’s length of the final waymark. But something occurred; something she could not, at that moment, understand or explain. She froze while a feeling of absolute terror and hopelessness poured through her entire body.
The three black foxes, freed of their former clothing, prowled closer to the Mystics, who had all outstretched their arms as if reaching to catch the lazy snowflakes that drifted down from the slate-gray sky. This behavior seemed odd to the assassins, who were used to their victims whining and groveling when their end was in sight. It was no matter; this way, the whole ordeal was bound to be much less messy. Darla gave a quick glance to the other two foxes: Now was the time.
A length of bright golden filigree connected each of these objects in the mandala, one to the other, a sign of the interconnectedness of the Wood.
And then the ground came alive.
Suddenly, the grass beneath their paws was a bed of quivering, slithering life, snaking its way between their toes and around their ankles. Once it had wormed its way around their legs it held fast, imprisoning them. The two males snapped and growled, angrily trying to wrestle themselves free. One of them had come close to a small shrub of wax myrtle, which was busy entangling its palmlike leaves into the hairs of the fox’s coat. Darla, held tight by a few patches of writhing grass, snapped loudly at the Mystics.
Iphigenia raised her hands out to the wax myrtle and closed her eyes. There was an earthy tearing sound, and little white tendrils of root erupted from the soil, winding around the body of one of the foxes. His snarls turned to helpless yelps as the roots, having made a kind of trough in the earth, began pulling him down into the ground. Within moments, all that remained at the spot where he’d been standing were a few loose piles of dirt and a patch of black fur.
Darla and the other fox helplessly watched their compatriot be buried alive. With renewed vigor, they growled and flexed their haunches. Suddenly, the grass tore away at their paws and the two foxes broke free of their bonds, leaping, teeth gnashing, for the throats of the Mystics.