At night, the children would gather on the floor of the cottage’s living room, where a fire burned merrily in the hearth. Carol would take his place in the rickety rocking chair, and the children would splay around him, wherever they could manage to fit. Puffing at his ever-present pipe, Carol could be induced to tell stories of his time inside the Impassable Wilderness—“The Wood,” as he called it—and the children would thrill to the fascinating tales of talking animals, nature-attuned Mystics, and the comings and goings of kings and bird princes and Governors-Regent. In all his stories, however, he would always deflect the question of exactly how he came to be in the Periphery and what thing he’d done that had so angered the people of the Wood, enough to exile him to this strange purgatory.
Once the younger ones were tired, the children would shuffle off to their makeshift beds. The house managed to sleep all of them fairly comfortably, though they’d been forced to fill every available space with little fur cots. Once the few bedrooms had been filled, the attic then took the overflow; it wasn’t long before that large room had reached capacity, and ever since, they’d been sticking little beds wherever they could manage in order to meet the demands of a slowly growing pool of children. Growing in number only, however. It was one of the advantages of the time-stoppage that occurred in the Periphery—the fact that the littlest ones, whose beds could fit easily in the cavity of a kitchen cabinet, would never outgrow their sleeping arrangements.
And so the days folded one into another, and thus would they continue to pass; or so Elsie and Rachel figured. That was, until they discovered something very strange, something that they wouldn’t, in the immediate moment, be quite able to figure out or explain.
It happened one afternoon; the firewood had been stacked and the cleaning had been done. Most of the children were opting for an afternoon free of chores and were busy blocking out a hopscotch court in the snow of the yard. Elsie and Rachel were sitting on the porch of the cottage, watching the proceedings, when they saw Michael and Cynthia prepare themselves for an outing in the surrounding trees, setting snares for wild game. Rachel had asked what they were doing. Michael had responded with an invitation to come along.
“Sure,” said Rachel. She then looked at her sister. “Wanna?”
“Yeah, okay,” said Elsie, though she was a little leery. She kept flashing back to that rabbit she’d seen, their first day in the Periphery. It broke her heart, the idea of it snagged in a wire snare. “I’ll go along just to keep company.”
They followed the two older kids—Cynthia was a year Michael’s senior, at eighteen—into the trees beyond the vale. Cynthia carried a few loops of wire at her belt; Michael had built several traps out of salvaged metal and wood which he held at his side as he walked. They stuck to familiar paths, worn into the forest floor by their own steps; after they’d been walking for a time, they stopped and studied the surrounding woods.
“It ends right about there,” said Michael, pointing to a stand of trees in the distance, where the ground began to slope upward. “We’ve never been able to go beyond. We just keep ending up back here.”
“That’s weird,” said Rachel.
“It is—and it’s a little disorienting. I wouldn’t advise it.” This was Cynthia. She wore her auburn hair back in a knotted bandanna.
“Makes me a little, like, seasick every time,” said Michael, miming rubbing his stomach. “It’s gross. And then you’re back where you were before. Easy to get lost that way.”
Cynthia nodded before saying, “Since there’s four of us, let’s split up and see if we can’t find any game trails. More eyes. Just stay clear of that line of trees. If you do happen to step over the Periphery Bind, just let out a holler. We should be able to find you.”
“Got it,” said Rachel.
Elsie said a quick good-bye to her sister; she didn’t want to seem overly clingy, but the idea of getting lost again in the Periphery was a little frightening. What’s more, it brought back memories of their initial march into the woods; she’d thought she would never see her sister again. It was strange to be reenacting the same scene, days later. However, she was determined to help out; she liked the idea of being a provider for their new family.
She walked toward the sloping hill but then skirted left, minding the warning of the older kids. The snow had let up the night before, and the temperature had warmed slightly; the snow was falling away from the trees in little clumps, revealing the deep green of their boughs. The floor was wet with the snowmelt, and little rivers of water could be seen, cutting their way through the shallow draws in the sloping wood. Little mushrooms sprouted from the carcasses of the fallen trees; a bird sounded in the boughs ahead. Elsie found that a tremendous peace had fallen over her; the first she’d felt in quite a while, since her parents had announced their decision to leave the country. It was refreshing, if such a word could describe the feeling.
Suddenly, a flash of white caught her eye. She looked over and saw, standing atop the broken stump of a cedar tree, a white rabbit. It was staring at her. Elsie immediately recognized it as the same one that had greeted her when she’d first ventured into the woods, those long days ago. Something in the way it twitched its ears when she approached; it seemed to recognize her as well.
“Hello, little rabbit,” said Elsie.
She could swear that the rabbit opened its mouth to speak in response—though nothing came out. It was as if it had forgotten what it was about to say. Instead, the rabbit merely wiggled its nose. Seeming happy that it had gotten Elsie’s attention, the rabbit bounded off the stump and began hopping its way up the hill. It hadn’t gotten far, however, before it stopped and turned to look at Elsie again, beckoning her on.
“Okay,” said Elsie, determined. “Where to?”
She marched through the hip-high bracken after the rabbit, which was thankfully mindful of her slow progress: It kept stopping and waiting as she managed the difficult terrain. She wasn’t sure where they were going; she’d long lost any sense of where the edge of the Periphery was, as per Michael and Cynthia’s warnings. Her curiosity was too great to be frightened off the rabbit’s trail.
They crossed a hillock and continued down into a little rift, where a creek bubbled with muddy water; they wound along a snaking ridge and across a wide meadow, sparking with the green shoots of grass newly freed of its snowy blanket. All along, Elsie kept wondering how she could ever hunt or trap such a beautiful creature, so full of brightness and intelligence. She figured she wouldn’t mention the appearance of the rabbit to Michael or Cynthia; she couldn’t risk the possibility that they might be less humane than she.
And then the rabbit was gone. It had ducked behind a web of young trees and disappeared. Elsie called out, “Rabbit! Where did you go?” She was surprised at herself; what, was the rabbit supposed to holler back, “Right here!”? While distracted by her searching for the rabbit, she took an uncertain step farther, caught her shoe on a sticky bunch of ivy, and fell headlong onto a gravel road.
Elsie looked up; it was, in fact, a road. A very long road. One that cut an easy, snaking swath through the dense forest. She also saw a kind of waymark, a stone cairn, on the far side of the road; it looked like it had sat there for centuries. She looked around her, deeply confused. Why hadn’t the others ever found this? And what was a road doing in the no-man’s-land of the Periphery? And then it occurred to her: This was not a part of the Periphery. She’d somehow managed to break through the Bind and was now in the arms of the Impassable Wilderness. Or, as Carol called the area, Wildwood.
CHAPTER 18
The Great Siege; Elsie and the Road
They’d been instructed to wait in the corridor; the seer, Bartholomew Mole, counseled that it would be a better use of the element of surprise. The High Master commander agreed, though he was sparking to begin the siege. Again, the seer advised that they make camp there, in the elbow of the tunnel, as the mole army had been marching for nearly two days.
They’d followed
endless stretches of tunnel, watched the stonework change from smooth granite to rough slate and back to granite. They’d crossed more bridges than Curtis thought he’d ever seen in his life, spanning depths that seemed to reach into the very bowels of the earth itself. They camped on rocky outcrops and listened to the patient dripping of water from the lichen while the little campfires of the mole knights cast weird shadows on the walls. When the two days had passed—which, it was explained to the three deities, was about a week in Overdweller travel time—Sir Timothy stood at the head of the army and made a proud declaration.
“THE MARCH ON THE FORTRESS OF FANGGG WILL BE CELEBRATED IN THE ANNALS OF HISTORY. IT IS THE LONGEST ADVANCE EVER UNDERTAKEN BY A MOLE HOST,” explained Sir Timothy.
The morning must’ve arrived; some three hours later, the mole camp, all small white canvas tents and campfires, was a-bustle with activity. The moment had finally come; the generals gathered to review the events of the day. The army would march to the gates of the city, instructing the citizenry to either take up arms with the Knights Underwood or risk falling to their sword. Then, Sir Timothy would confront Dennis the Usurper from afar (they had a goat’s horn, attached to a wheeled cart, for such communications); assuming he would refuse to capitulate, Prue and Curtis would be signaled from their hiding place, at which point the battle would begin and the mole army, in its entirety, would fall on the City of Moles and the Fortress of Fanggg. It was suggested that the two large Overdwellers enter with as much ferocity as possible and perhaps, even though the blind moles would not actually see this taking place, wave their hands and gnash their teeth. This latter suggestion came from the mole squire whom Prue had nearly crushed earlier. The other moles roundly agreed: Yes, gnashing teeth would be very effective. Prue tried it out; she nearly bit her tongue. Curtis seemed to be an old hand at it, though.
“No, like this,” he instructed, his eyes bugged out and his teeth noisily chomping together.
“You’re weird,” said Prue.
Septimus, for his part, had taken an interest in the gathering military formations, and since he was scarcely bigger than the largest of the mole knights, it was decided that he should lead a squadron of his own. The top brass had all agreed: A vanguard of soldiers marshaled by an Overdweller would go a long way to striking fear into the hearts of the fortress’s defenders. As Septimus, Curtis, and Prue were conferring in a dark alcove, a retinue of knights approached, presenting to the rat a custom-built suit of armor made of pull tabs and interlinked sections of bicycle chain. Septimus, at Curtis’s nudging, accepted with all the grace he could muster, and a trio of squires set about dressing him in the unwieldy outfit. By the time they were done, he looked like an animated pile of discarded parts one might find at the bottom of their junk drawer.
“It’s really handsome,” offered Prue.
Septimus’s voice issued, echoing, from the inside of a halved tin can: “Well, at least if I slay anybody, I’ll be spared having to actually see them.” He moved his arms, with some apparent difficulty. “I could always just sit on the enemy, I suppose.” It took a crew of fifteen mole squires to get him strapped onto his mount, a yellow salamander he promptly dubbed Sally.
Traveling along the damp passageway, the great army of Knights Underwood began their advance, following a sloping floor as the tunnel descended deeper into the ground. From the sound of their marching feet in the cavern, it was clear they were approaching some vast cavity in the stone. At this point, Prue and Curtis were advised to wait; Sir Timothy, having donned his formal attire, a bent washer crown with a red hummingbird feather attached, climbed astride his salamander and followed the wheeled goat’s horn and its attendants around the corner and out of sight.
A short moment later, Timothy’s voice could be heard, amplified through the horn and pouring into what sounded like a very large chamber.
“MOLES OF THE CITY OF MOLES,” came Sir Timothy’s voice. “THE KNIGHTS UNDERWOOD HAVE AMASSED OUTSIDE YOUR GATES. WE INTEND TO BRING EMANCIPATION TO ALL WHO DWELL IN THE UNDERWOOD. WE WILL LIBERATE YOU FROM THE TYRANNY OF DENNIS, THE USURPER OF THE THRONE. TURN AGAINST YOUR CAPTORS AND ALLY WITH US OR RISK PERISHING BY FLAME AND SWORD.”
A pause; there came the sound of a multitude of voices crying out: some in confusion, some in opposition, many in celebration.
Sir Timothy’s voice sounded again: “DENNIS MOLE, YOUR DAY OF RECKONING IS AT HAND. COMPEL YOUR FORCES TO STAND DOWN.”
There came another pause, after which a voice, distant but clear, rang out in the cavern, apparently amplified by a similar technology. “GO STICK IT!” it called. Curtis assumed this to be the voice of Dennis the Usurper. He didn’t sound like a particularly considerate mole.
“VERY WELL, DESPOT!” At a full-throated call from Sir Timothy, the Knights Underwood at Prue’s and Curtis’s feet exploded into action and descended upon the gates of the City of Moles. And thus, the great siege began.
Prue and Curtis listened to the clamorous noises of war from their spot behind the wall of the tunnel. They’d been told their signal would be three short bursts from the goat’s horn, and they attuned their ears the best they could for the sound—though it was certainly difficult to distinguish anything from amid the deafening din the siege had already managed to create. Curtis was about to sneak a peek behind the wall when the unmistakable blat-blat-blat of their signal to attack was sounded. Curtis held out his fist to Prue—she reluctantly bumped it with hers—and the Overdwellers emerged from their hiding place, doing their best to act like the ferocious, wrathful demigods they were expected to be.
As they rounded the corner, Prue was feeling sheepish about her performance; holding the lit lantern with one hand, she was brandishing the other arm dramatically, her fingers poised like claws, though the teeth gnashing continued to be elusive. Curtis, on the other hand, was relishing the opportunity and was taking to the part with gusto: Not only was he waving his arms and gnashing his teeth, but he was accompanying his every step with shouts like, “Overdweller ANGRY!” and “I will spit fire and brimstone upon thee!”
However, as soon as they’d come out of hiding and had traveled the few feet down the sloping floor of the tunnel, both of them were struck dumb by what they saw.
The chamber they’d walked into was so massive as to make the ceiling indistinguishable from a dome of sky. Much to Prue and Curtis’s surprise, the lantern they were carrying was superfluous here; little electric lamps affixed to the wall of the chamber flooded it with light. It was the first full light they’d seen in days; their eyes took a moment to adjust. How they’d not noticed this before, even from the reach of their hiding place, was befuddling to them; perhaps the light from the lantern had obscured it.
The most incredible thing about the chamber, though, was the presence of the City of Moles itself. They’d never seen anything like it before in their lives. Given the opportunity to describe it, as Curtis and Prue were both pressed to do when, far into the future, they were asked, they’d each been at a loss for words. They’d fumble for explanation, the poverty of language laid plain to them.
It was as if someone, some intelligent being with a razor-sharp eye for mechanics and engineering, had taken a great crane with a gigantic vacuum cleaner attachment connected to it, and hovered it slowly over an entire city, sucking up every imaginable piece of scrap, fragment, or particle of unwanted, indeterminate junk—be it metal, plastic, or wood; this someone then deposited all of this mass of man-made detritus here on the floor of the chamber and endeavored to find a way in which every piece fit, one into another, to create a structure that used each particle as if it had been designed to be used in that very precise way.
A massive wall, made of aluminum and stone, surrounded a lattice of strange, oblong structures; a tangled series of tracks and chutes wove between them—some of them clearly fashioned from the remnants of toy train sets and race-car courses. A portcullis, made of what appeared to be a flattened colander, barred the gateway of the outer wall. Beyo
nd it, the immediate interior of the city was a grid of boxy buildings, piled next to one another almost haphazardly (Curtis recognized an entire suburb made of cigar tins). Farther along, nearer the center of the city, the maze of structures grew even more dense and tightly knit as the city itself spiraled upward in an almost conical pattern to reach a plateaulike apex, a rise broken here and there by the presence of smaller walls that effectively turned the city into a succession of climbing tiers. At the apex, perhaps six feet tall, a cylindrical tower rose above the clutter, attached to the rest of the city by a series of bridges; the shaft of the tower looked to be a plain aluminum duct, but as it climbed it blossomed little auxiliary towers and turrets from its rounded side. The tower was topped with an onion-domed cupola; there, a flag with the initial D stenciled on it fluttered in the chamber’s very slight breeze.
“Whoa,” said Prue, forgetting herself.
Curtis hadn’t dropped his act so easily; even in his shock at the sight of the City of Moles, he managed to continue acting wrathful. “Prue,” he said through his gnashing teeth, “keep up the angry-god thing.”
“Right,” said Prue, and she set down her lantern, employing both of her arms as she approached this miraculous underground city.
As soon as they’d been spotted, a series of terrified screams came from within the mole compound. The defenders of the city, soldiers clad in what appeared to be suits made of aluminum foil, sensed the two Overdwellers’ approach and shuddered, visibly, in their armor.
“Sally-ho!” came a shout at their feet. It was Septimus, astride his salamander, waving a darning needle wildly over his tin-can-covered head. A tide of foot soldiers, under his command, came tearing after him. They exploded onto the defending moles like the crest of a wave, sweeping away everything in their path. Septimus, rearing his salamander, towered over his enemies like a giant in the fray, and the city’s defenders approached him quaking in their bottle caps.