by Colin Meloy
“But who is attacking the birds? Obviously, somebody’s living in Wildwood.”
“They’ve been claiming that troops of coyotes, probably the same as your coyote soldiers, have been attacking bird sentries along the border. They believe that these coyotes—typically a disorderly lot—are under the leadership of the deposed Dowager Governess, the former leader of South Wood.” He chuckled under his breath, as if the story were some inside joke. “Crazy birds.”
Prue turned to him, saying, “Wait; who?”
“The Dowager Governess. She was the wife of the late Governor-Regent Grigor Svik. Came to power after his death. Terrible ruler. She was removed from the seat about fifteen years ago and exiled to Wildwood like a common criminal. Gone. Out of the picture.”
“Richard!” said Prue, her face alight. “The coyotes! They mentioned her name!”
“Whose, the Dowager Governess’s?” asked Richard. He stared at her.
“Yes!” said Prue. “When Curtis and I first came on the coyotes, they were arguing. One of them threatened to turn the other over to the Dowager Governess. I’m certain of it.”
“Can’t be,” Richard said. “There’s no way that woman survived. Dropped into the middle of Wildwood. With naught but the clothes on her back.”
Prue smarted at Richard’s disbelief. “I swear to you, Richard,” she said, “one of the coyotes said he was going to report another to the Dowager Governess. I heard it very clearly. And I don’t even know what that title means.”
Richard swallowed hard. “Well, Governess—she was the female heir to the seat of governorship. And Dowager—that means she was made a widow. When her husband died, see.” He let out a low whistle between his lips. “Hoo, boy. If she’s alive—and putting together an army, no less—I gotta think that bodes ill for Governor-Regent Svik and the folks of South Wood. I’m sure the Governor-Regent will want to hear your story. So far, no one’s come forward to give witness to what the birds are claiming. He’s not buying it from the birds alone.” Richard pulled another cigar from his jacket pocket and began chewing on the end thoughtfully.
“Maybe the Governor-Regent can help me after all,” said Prue. “I mean, if this Governess woman is really a threat to his country, he’ll have to help me get Curtis back! And then, who knows; maybe she can lead us to Mac.” She put her forehead in her hand. “I can’t believe I’m saying this stuff. I can’t believe I’m here, in this weird world. In this mail van. Contemplating talking birds and a Dowery Governess.”
“Dowager,” corrected Richard.
“Right. And her army of coyotes.” Prue looked imploringly at Richard, the only friendly face she’d seen since arriving in this strange land. A flood of emotion overcame her. “What am I doing here?” she asked weakly.
“I suppose,” responded Richard, “things tend to happen for a reason. I have a suspicion that you being here ain’t an accident. I tend to think you’re here for a reason, Port-Land Prue.” He spit a wad of tobacco out the window. “I just don’t think we know what that reason is yet.”
CHAPTER 7
An Evening’s Entertainment;
A Long Journey Ended; Going for a Soldier
Despite the fact that it was now nightfall and he was as far away from his parents as he’d ever been, deep in an underground coyote warren and the captive of an army of talking animals and their strange and mysterious leader, Curtis was feeling pretty good. He’d had seconds of the venison stew, which he’d found to be incredibly tasty, and he’d lost track of how many times his mug of blackberry wine, which he found to be equally wonderful, had been refilled. His present circumstances, he reasoned, would seem pretty strange and frightening if he were to look at them in the cool light of day, but there, in the warm confines of the earthy burrow with the braziers burning and the moss below him so comfortable, everything looked particularly rosy. He was captivated by his host, the most beautiful woman he’d ever met, and fancied that with every refill of his mug, he grew more charming and charismatic himself. He was regaling her with the true story of how he and a classmate had broken an entire row of fluorescent lights while pounding nickels flat on an anvil in metal shop. He had struck one nickel at a bad angle, and it had shot up like a bullet and “blew out the whole light! BOOOOSH! And, like, everyone was going ‘WHAAAAT?’” He paused for effect while Alexandra laughed heartily. She motioned to an attendant to refill his mug of wine. “And I just walked over to the . . . oh, sure, I’ll have a little more . . . over to all the broken glass and just picked up the nickel and was all like, ‘I’ll be keeping this, thank you very much.’” He laughed and mimicked slipping the nickel into his jeans pocket. He slurped down more of the wine, spilling some on his coat. “Oh boy, that’ll leave a stain!” He laughed so hard he had to set the mug down and collect himself.
The Governess was laughing with him as well, though her laugh trailed off as she began speaking. “Oh, Curtis, how charming. How excellent. You are truly one of a kind. No wonder you braved these woods alone. You are a singularly independent spirit, aren’t you?”
“Oh, well, yeah,” said Curtis, attempting sobriety. “I . . . well, I was always kind of a loner, I guess. Kept to myself, you know. But that’s sort of how I, um, roll. You know, looking out for number one. Et cetera, et cetera.” He sipped at his mug. “But I’m good in a team, too. Really. I mean if you’re ever in need of a partner, I’m your man. Prue didn’t believe me at first, but we made a pretty good team for a bit—we were, like, real partners.”
“Who?”
“Who? Did I say someone’s name? Prue? I think I said, who, as in: ‘Who wouldn’t believe me?’” Curtis turned pale. “Wow. This stuff is really strong.” He fanned himself with his hand and set his mug down.
“Prue. You said the name Prue,” said the Governess, her face growing serious. “So maybe you weren’t alone after all in your little foray into the woods.”
Curtis clasped his hands between his knees and breathed deeply, exhaling loudly. The wine had had an unexpected effect on him: He had totally lost track of what he was talking about. He found himself struggling to return to his senses. “Okay,” he said finally, “I might not have been totally straight with you on that front.”
The Governess arched an eyebrow.
“It was Prue’s idea to come into the woods—she’s my, well, friend, I guess. She’s a classmate. She sits two rows over from me in homeroom. And we have honors English and social studies together. We’ve never really hung out that much, though, outside of school.”
Alexandra impatiently motioned her hand for him to continue. “And what brought you into the woods?”
“Well, I followed her this morning. See, she was coming into the woods to look for her . . . her baby brother, who was . . .” Here he trailed off, glancing around the room. “I would say that this would sound crazy, but considering all that I’ve seen today, it seems pretty ordinary actually. Her brother was, I guess, kidnapped by crows. A bunch of ’em. Swarming around. They just picked the kid up and took him into the woods here, and so Prue went after them.”
The Governess was staring at Curtis intently.
“And I went after her. Thinking she could use the help. And here we are,” Curtis finished. He looked at Alexandra pleadingly. “Please don’t be angry. I know I said I came here alone at first, but I wasn’t sure what was going on or if you guys were, y’know, trustworthy.” Massaging his belly, he puffed his cheeks and blew through puckered lips. “I don’t feel very well.”
There was a long silence. A cold, musty breeze blew through the room, guttering the flames of the braziers. A coyote attendant in the corner coughed, cleared his throat, and excused himself.
“Oh, we’re very trustworthy, Curtis,” said the Governess, breaking the reverie. “I think you should not be afraid to tell us anything. This must be quite a shock for you, having grown up in the mundane Outside, with your everyday experiences and your domesticated animals, so short on intelligence they haven’t the capacity to
speak. I can understand your reticence in trusting me, especially after my Commandant and his brutish underlings handled you so disrespectfully. They can be a miserable bunch. I can only offer my humblest of apologies. We’re just not used to visitors here.” The Governess was tracing her finger along the eddying grain of the armrest’s wood. “And I can tell you directly that this is not the first time we’ve heard complaints about those meddling crows. Their species as a whole tends toward this sort of mischievous activity. I can’t imagine they mean to do anything untoward with your friend’s brother. It’s likely that they’ll keep him around for a bit and play with him like some bauble, and once they’ve tired of his company, they’ll return him to the place from whence he was stolen.”
“P-play with him? Really?” asked Curtis.
“Oh yes,” replied the Governess. “Though I don’t imagine they’ll do him any real harm.” She thought for a moment and continued, “As long as he doesn’t fall from one of their nests.”
“Fall? From their nests?”
“Yes, I would expect that’s where they’ll be keeping him. Notoriously, they make them rather high in the trees. But he should be fine; crows are very protective of their possessions. He’ll be perfectly safe provided he doesn’t get stolen by a neighboring buzzard or something.”
“A buzzard would steal him?”
She nodded. “Oh yes, and then, dear Curtis, I’m not sure anything could be done. Buzzards adore human flesh.”
Curtis’s body convulsed, and he clasped his hand to his mouth. He had grown considerably paler over the course of the last few minutes.
“But don’t worry, Curtis!” said the Governess, leaning forward. “I will personally see to it that a battalion is devoted to the search and rescue of your friend’s brother. We’ve dealt with these crows before; I have no doubt we will have ferreted out that boy in a few days’ time, trust me.”
The low light of the warren shivered in Curtis’s vision, and the dirt walls began to revolve slightly, sending a sickening feeling into his stomach. The feeling was stanched when he closed his eyes, so he rasped, “I think I might just rest my eyes a little, if that’s okay,” and shuttered his lids, reclining farther back on the bed of moss.
“You must be exhausted, my dear boy,” came the voice of the Governess, sounding closer now in the darkness. “You should rest. We’ll speak again in the morning. Until then, lie back. Sleep. Sleep and dream.”
And Curtis did just that.
Asleep, he did not see the Governess looking down on him fondly. He did not feel her lay a fur blanket over his body and tuck the hem tidily under his chin. He did not hear her sigh deeply to watch him sleep.
The first broken rays of dawn were filtering up through the trees when the mail van came to a halt at a massive stone wall. A towering pair of wooden doors provided a gateway through the wall, and a carved placard reading NORTH GATE was affixed to the keystone. Prue rubbed sleep from her eyes, exhausted after their nightlong drive, and looked out the window at the imposing wall as it stretched in either direction away from the road until it was swallowed by distant trees. A soft haze dusted the vegetation of the forest floor, and the green was cast in a crystalline shimmer by the early morning’s remaining dew. A few birds sang. Richard stubbed his third cigar of the night into the overflowing ashtray and waved at the two armored guards who stood on either side of the doors. They walked over to the van window and peered through the glass. When they saw Prue, their eyes widened, and Richard rolled the window down.
“An Outsider,” he explained wearily. “I’m bringing her to the Governor-Regent.”
“We had heard,” said one of the guards, an older man. His gray-whiskered beard protruded between the chinstraps of a tin helmet that closely resembled an overturned dinner plate. “We caught word from the Avians. You can go through.” The other guard was younger and appeared more aghast by Prue’s presence in the van. As the oaken doors of the gate were slowly heaved open and Richard drove beneath the wide stone arch, Prue caught a glimpse through the side-view mirror of the younger guard, standing stone-still in the middle of the road, watching the van. The look made her uncomfortable; she felt overly scrutinized, like some strange insect under a magnifying glass. Prue returned her attention to the road in front of the van as it widened on the ground beyond the gate.
“South Wood,” said Richard. “Home at last.”
The forest here had a completely different aspect than the wild scrub and crooked, looming trees of Wildwood: Prue began to see odd structures appearing in the woods along the road, what appeared to be modest houses and buildings. Some stood dramatically apart from the trees, built of rough stone and brick, while some seemed to grow from the trees themselves, shingled in branches and layers of moss. Others bolted up from the ground like burrows with colorful wooden doors and small porthole-like windows and sprouted crooked tin chimneys that belched wisps of smoke into the arbor eaves. A lattice of walkways and bridges linked the higher boughs of the trees together, and Prue craned her neck upward to see that they led to more houses, shacks, and outbuildings in the tops of the trees. People moved in and out of the buildings and populated the walkways and doorways, but not just people: animals, too. Deer and badgers, rabbits and moles walked among the humans in this miraculous world. Other roads appeared and intersected with the Long Road: arterial roads, side streets, and alleys, some paved with flagstones and brick, others covered in gravel and dirt and pockmarked with puddles remaining from the previous night’s rain.
The Long Road itself, after a time, became a grand avenue through the trees, and smooth, ancient ruts were worn into its paving stones. Lavish residences began to line the Road, multistory townhouses built of pale white granite and deep red brick with graceful porticos and mullioned windows. Some of the houses seemed to be built around the trees themselves, dramatic cedar trunks extending from the center of the roofs or out the side of the walls. The acrid smell of burning coal and creosote slightly tainted the air, a striking change from the clear, crisp air of Wildwood. The Road here became choked with traffic, even: Sputtering cars and battered old motor scooters vied for space along the flagstones among bicyclists, pedestrians, and clattering carts drawn by (literally) complaining oxen, horses, and mules.
“This is incredible,” Prue finally murmured once she’d recovered from her shock at seeing the forest come to life. “I can’t believe this has been here all along and I never even knew it.”
“I can’t believe this has been here all along and I never even knew it.”
Richard, his arm resting on the open van window, had just finished castigating a wobbly cyclist for cutting him off. He looked over at Prue and smiled. “Yup, here it is. South Wood in all its glory. A little cluttered, for my taste. The quiet of the North Wood is a bit more my speed. Country folk. Simple things.”
The section of road they traveled on now cut across the side of a hill, and a knobby stone bridge allowed passage over a rushing brook before the road began carving switchbacks up another hillside, this one rimmed with the wooden and stone facades of buildings gaudy with carnivalesque signs advertising cafés and taverns, shoe shops and soda fountains. The traffic was thickest here, and the van heaved jerkily forward along the steep and busy streets, Richard swearing under his breath every time he was forced to slam on the brakes for a stopped car or passing pedestrian. Finally, they topped the hill, and the traffic cleared and the buildings receded behind them as the forest fell away to reveal an extraordinary sight: a glorious granite mansion in the middle of a pristine park, its windows glinting in the bright morning sun. Prue drew in her breath; it was truly beautiful.
“Pittock Mansion, built centuries ago by a William J. Pittock to serve as the seat of power for South Wood—it has changed hands many times over the years, mostly peaceably, though sometimes by force,” explained Richard, in tourist guide mode, “as you can see from the many pockmarks in the granite from cannon and bullet fire. This country was forged in the clashing of divisi
ons, Port-Land Prue, and not a lot of those disagreements have been forgotten, I’m sad to say.” Sure enough, Prue could see the divots in the stately stone, though they did not diminish the grandeur of the place, its two north-facing corners capped with red-roofed turrets bordering a handsome balcony on the second floor.
The grounds of the Mansion suggested an immaculately tended English garden, hedges and flowering trees (denuded by the season) fanned in symmetric patterns away from the central hub of the Mansion—a stark contrast to the cluster and chaos of the busy streets in the woods below. A few couples strolled along the gravel paths; a family of beavers fed breadcrumbs to enthusiastic geese paddling in a resplendent statue-crowned fountain. The van exited the Long Road here and followed a circuitous stone road into the Mansion’s inner compound. A wrought-iron gate was thrown open at the end of the drive, and Richard navigated the van through the tumult of carriages and state vehicles that clogged the driveway. He eased to a stop in front of a pair of glass-paned French doors.
“And ’ere we are,” said Richard, letting the van idle noisily in front of the Mansion.
“And here we go,” Prue muttered as she threw the door open and stepped down onto the cobblestone drive.
Curtis, on the other hand, did not have such a nice introduction to the morning.
Just prior to waking, he had the clearest sensation of being home, in his bed, pillowed in his duvet with its Spider-Man duvet cover. As he woke, his eyes still closed, he marveled at the bizarre and vivid dream he’d been having, something involving him and Prue McKeel and a voyage into the Impassable Wilderness; it had been at times a terrifying dream, but now he felt a distant, nagging reluctance to reawaken into his normal life. When he did finally acquiesce and open his eyes, he screamed.
