by Colin Meloy
“Yes. From a park in St. Johns. In Portland—the Outside, I guess.” She was distracted by the rhythmic pumping of breath emanating from the Governor-Regent, who now had a finger at his wrist, monitoring his pulse.
“Well, that may be out of our jurisdiction. A case for your friends in the Avian Principality, I’d say. Though it is highly suspicious that any avian creature should be involved in the abduction of a human child from the Outside. Highly suspicious.” Roger paused and tapped his finger against his chin in thought. “This may be very valuable intelligence, Miss McKeel.” He leaned down and whispered something in the Governor’s ear, during which Lars briefly halted his breathing exercise. When Roger had finished, the Governor nodded gravely and looked at Prue.
“If what you’re saying is true,” said the Governor, Roger’s hand still resting on his shoulder, “this could mean very serious things for the relationship between South Wood and the Avian Principality.”
Roger interjected, “What the Governor is trying to say, Miss McKeel, is that any sojourn a bird or birds may have taken into the Outside, not the least the suggestion that they may have returned with someone in tow, is quite clearly a violation of any number of citations in the Periphery Laws, and we would thank you for bringing this information to our attention.”
“And my brother?” asked Prue impatiently, her brain reaching capacity for political talk.
“It would be in the South Wood’s best interest to help find your brother so that we might bring the perpetrators to justice more swiftly,” replied Roger.
Prue breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank you!” she cried. “Thank you so much. I know he’s out there; I know he’s still alive.”
Roger had rounded the side of the desk and walked to Prue’s side, placing an arm around her shoulder. He gently guided her back toward the door. “Of course! Of course!” he consoled. “We’ll do everything in our power to find your brother, I promise.”
“And you’ll let me know when you have?” asked Prue.
“Absolutely,” said Roger as they neared the door. “You’ll be the first to know.”
“He’s wearing a brown corduroy jumper,” she stammered. “A-and he doesn’t really have any hair.”
“Brown jumper,” repeated Roger soothingly. “No hair. Got it.”
They arrived at the far end of the room, and Roger nodded to the attaché, who had been waiting at the door. The door was opened for them.
“We would be honored to have you as a guest of the Mansion,” said Roger as they stood at the open doorway. “You’ll find comfortable lodgings awaiting you in the North Tower. Wait at your chambers and we’ll alert you as soon as we know anything more about your brother or your friend Constance.”
“Curtis,” corrected Prue.
“Curtis,” Roger repeated, and then added: “Please don’t hesitate to let the secretary know if there’s anything else we can do to make your stay here in South Wood more enjoyable.” His hand at the small of her back ushered her gently into the hallway. “Good-bye, Prue. It was very nice to meet you.”
The door closed behind her.
The attaché smiled his mustardy smile and motioned the way down the hall.
The horse’s hooves pounded the soft ground as the stallion vaulted berm and tree trunk and Curtis held tight to the Governess’s slender waist. Throwing the leather reins back and forth across the horse’s broad neck, the Governess nimbly navigated her mount through the wild vegetation of the forest.
“Hold tight!” Alexandra would occasionally remind Curtis when they would leap a particularly large fallen tree or dive into a deep gulch.
“Where are we going?” hollered Curtis, ducking the branches that swung at his face and shoulders.
“To the front!” shouted the Governess, urging the horse to run faster. “I want to give you a glimpse of our struggle, our fight for justice!” The forest blew by at a furious pace, the soft echo of their every hoof-fall resounding through the woods. Curtis gaped up at the towering trees flying by, their tops enshrouded in a veil of mist.
“Okay!” shouted Curtis in response. “So long as I don’t have to fight!”
“What’s that?” yelled Alexandra.
The cool air whipping at his face brought tears to Curtis’s eyes. “I said, AS LONG AS I DON’T HAVE TO FIGHT!”
The Governess pulled back on the reins and the horse reared as they crested a ridge, a steep fern-laden valley stretching out before them. Steam blew from the horse’s nostrils, and it whinnied to feel the Governess’s caress at its neck. “Good boy,” Alexandra chimed. Curtis gazed down at the blanket of deep green that covered the valley floor, a canyon of moss and stone erupting from either side of a gushing brook. The gap was crisscrossed with ancient deadfall, and colonnades of soaring fir and cedar trees rose majestically from the opposing hillsides.
“It’s really beautiful,” Curtis said.
Alexandra smiled and looked back at him. “My thoughts exactly when I first arrived here in Wildwood. I immediately knew that this was my home; this wild country was where I belonged.”
“How long have you been here?” asked Curtis, uneasily adjusting his perch on the back of the horse. The horse made a kind of box step on the forest floor, shifting its footing below the two riders. “Did you move here from somewhere?”
“Let’s just say, sweet Curtis, that I did not come here of my own free will,” the Governess responded, “and initially I was deeply unhappy—but I soon realized that my exile here in Wildwood was predestined, that there were greater machinations at work. I began to see my persecutors as my liberators.”
Somewhere, distantly, a bough broke, and the ensuing crash of its landfall echoed through the wood. A bird sang its full-throated warble in a nearby bush.
“I saw in Wildwood, this forsaken country, a model for a new world. An opportunity to return to those long-forgotten values that are programmed deep within us, the draw of the wild. I thought if I were able to corral and focus this powerful law of nature, I could bring to the Wood a sort of order out of disorder and govern the land as it was always intended to be governed.”
“I’m not totally sure I’m following you,” Curtis said.
The Governess laughed. “In due time,” she said. “In due time, all will be made clear.” She turned and looked at Curtis again, her steely eyes bright and piercing. “I need people like you, Curtis, on my side. Can I count on you?”
Curtis gulped. “I guess so.”
Alexandra’s smile turned wistful. Her eyes lingered over Curtis’s face. “Such a boy,” she said quietly, as if she were speaking to herself. “Is it a coincidence, the resemblance?”
“Pardon?” asked Curtis, his confusion redoubling.
The Governess blinked rapidly and furrowed her brow. “But we’re wasting time here! To the front!” She dug her heels into the horse’s flank and it burst into movement, leaping down into the ravine and charging up the far side. Curtis gripped his hands together at Alexandra’s waist and gritted his teeth as the horse made quick time through the trees.
They had traveled for the better part of an hour when they arrived at a small clearing at the top of a hill. There, a group of coyote soldiers had gathered and a small village of tents had been assembled in a circular formation. One of the soldiers, seeing Alexandra and Curtis’s approach, ran up to the horse and grabbed its reins, allowing the Governess to vault to the ground. Unaided, Curtis threw one leg over the rump of the horse and awkwardly slid off, nearly falling as he did so.
“Battalion is in place, ma’am,” reported a soldier, saluting them both. “Awaiting further instruction.”
“Any sign of the bandits?” asked the Dowager Governess, knotting a belt around her waist that had been given her by another soldier. A long, thin sword hung in its scabbard through the weave of the belt. The soldier also presented to her a timeworn rifle, which she hefted to her shoulder, peering down the barrel and checking the sights.
“Yes, ma’am,” replie
d the soldier. “They are grouping on the far ridgeline.”
Dropping the rifle to her side, the Governess smiled. “Let’s show these ruffians the true law of Wildwood.”
Curtis, meanwhile, was standing by the horse, still jarred from the horseback ride. He snapped from his trance to notice one of the coyote soldiers still standing at attention in front of him, saluting. “As you were,” said Curtis, a line repeated from countless war movies he had seen. Satisfied, the soldier moved away and left Curtis, suddenly exhilarated, a smile creeping across his face. “As you were,” he repeated in a whisper to the air.
“Curtis!” shouted the Governess, standing amid a crowd of soldiers. “Stay by me!”
Holding his sword pommel, Curtis jogged over to where Alexandra stood.
The room was plain and simple and, being the lone room at the top floor of the Mansion’s North Tower, was in the shape of a half circle. A few framed etchings decorated the drab papered walls. In one, a square-rigged sailing ship, its keel exposed, was navigating around a giant rock in a wild gale. Another etching showed a pastoral scene of a wooded clearing, in the center of which rose a massive gnarled tree that dwarfed its surroundings. A line of figures encircled the base of the tree, their heads barely cresting the tree’s exposed roots. Prue studied these pictures for a while, admiring the line work, before a wave of tiredness overcame her and she walked to the bed and threw herself down. The box spring gave a complaining squeak. She grabbed the bed’s only pillow and hugged it to her face, breathing in its musty scent. She hadn’t realized how exhausted she was until this moment. Before she had any further chance to reflect, she felt herself drifting into a deep sleep.
She was awoken by what initially sounded like a colossal, lingering gust of wind, like the sudden onset of a summer thunderstorm. She soon realized that the sound was instead the collective rustling of a hundred birds’ wings. “The crows!” she cried, in half sleep. She leapt from the bed and ran to the window, in time to see the largest and most varied flock of birds she’d ever seen, swirling in a liquid, eddying pattern against the sky. A dizzying panoply of birds, nuthatches and jays, swifts and eagles, all volleyed for air space in the sudden swarm. Amid their squawks and titters, Prue could hear the words “Make way!” and “He approaches!” and she craned her neck to see what the fuss was about. Below the tower, she could see that the entranceway to the Mansion was alight with movement, the full retinue of the Mansion’s staff running in and out of the double doors in panicked chaos. Looking up, she saw a procession approaching along the drive that curved through the estate’s luxuriant lawn. This procession, however, was entirely in flight, a multitude of small brown finches surrounding a central figure: the largest and grandest great horned owl Prue had ever seen.
As the procession flew nearer to the entrance of the Mansion, the double doors were thrown open, and Prue recognized the figures of the Governor-Regent and his aide, Roger, as they stepped forward to meet it. The owl, nearly the size of the corpulent Governor, arrived at the entrance, and the hovering finches dispersed into the trees and the cornices and eaves of the Mansion’s exterior. The Governor-Regent bowed deeply. The owl, all mottled brown, white, and gray, alighted on the pavement and nodded his head, his two wide yellow eyes glowing amid his plumage. Roger bowed his head slightly and made a welcoming gesture, motioning the great owl through the doors. Together, the group walked forward and disappeared into the Mansion.
“Wow,” breathed Prue finally. “He’s beautiful.”
“Owl Rex,” said a girl’s voice behind her. “He really is, ain’t he?”
Prue jumped. Turning around, she saw that a maid had entered while she had been at the window and was busy laying towels and a bathrobe at the foot of the bed. She looked about nineteen and was dressed in a very old-fashioned-looking apron and dress.
“Oh!” said Prue. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“No worries,” the girl said. “I’ll be out of your way in a tick.”
Prue looked out the window, watching the ebb of activity at the entranceway below. “That was some entrance,” she said finally. “The birds, I mean.”
“Oh yeah,” responded the maid. “I never seen that before, the owl coming to the Mansion. Usually it’s some lower bird or other who comes for the Principality’s business. Don’t know that Owl Rex has ever set foot in South Wood. Or would you say ‘set claw’?” She laughed and shrugged. “Hey, I don’t mean to pry, but . . . you’re that Outsider girl, huh? The one that everyone’s talking about.”
“Yeah,” Prue responded, “I guess that’d be me.”
“I’m Penny,” said the girl. “I live down in the Workers’ District. I can see the tops of your buildings from my bedroom back home.
I always wondered what it was like on the Outside.”
“It’s pretty different from here,” said Prue. “So no one’s ever been—to the Outside? From here?”
“Not that I know of,” was Penny’s answer. “Way too dangerous.” She walked to the bed frame and began turning down the hem of the quilt. “How’d you get in here?”
“I just walked in,” answered Prue. “But I guess I wasn’t supposed to be able to. Something about a boundary?”
“Yep,” said Penny. “There’s a thing called the Periphery; keeps us safe from the Outside. You can only get through if you’re, you know, from here.” She paused and thought for a moment. “But you’re not from here.”
“Definitely not,” said Prue.
The two girls stood quietly in the room, each privately considering that paradox.
“So I heard you lost your brother?” asked Penny finally.
Prue nodded.
“I’m real sorry to hear that,” said Penny. “I have two brothers at home and I hate ’em to death sometimes, but I can’t imagine what I’d do if they ever left.” Suddenly fearing she’d overstepped her bounds, Penny retreated to the doorway with her satchel of cleaning supplies. “Is there anything I can get for ya, miss?” she asked.
“No, I’m good,” said Prue, smiling. “I don’t suppose you know how soon they’ll come for me, do you? I mean, regarding any news they find out.”
Penny smiled sympathetically. “Sorry, dear,” she said. “I don’t know nothing about what goes on down there. I just clean up.”
Prue nodded and watched as the girl walked out into the hallway and closed the door behind her. Crossing over to a mirror that sat atop an ancient-looking vanity, Prue tousled her hair and stared at her reflection. She looked tired; there were bags under her eyes and her hair was tangled with bedhead. She stood there and let time slowly cascade over her, thinking of her parents and how devastated they must be, she and Mac now two days gone. She bet they’d been reported as missing to the police, and a search team would be assembled, combing through the parks and alleyways of St. Johns and downtown Portland. She wondered how long it would be before they gave up, declared them missing, and their pictures started showing up on the backs of milk cartons and in the foyer of the post office. Maybe, in time, they’d take old school photos and digitally age them like she’d seen on TV, creating a weird approximation of the influence of age and time on a young girl’s face, a baby boy’s toothless smile. She sighed heavily and walked from the mirror and into the bathroom, grabbing a towel and the bathrobe on her way. Maybe a hot bath would cure everything.
CHAPTER 10
Enter the Bandits; An Ominous Note
Hold to the line! Keep in formation!” barked the Dowager Governess as she stalked back and forth behind a long line of coyote soldiers who were installed at the edge of a deep, wide wash. Curtis struggled to keep pace. The sides of the wash fell gradually away from the ridgeline, allowing several distinct rows of the soldiers to find their ground. The first row was made up of fusiliers, armed with muskets, who were crouched in the tufts of maidenhair fern that blanketed the slope. Directly behind them was a long row of archers, their bows at the ready, the ground at their feet bristling with the fletching of thei
r arrows. A third, wider row stood behind these two ranks, and these were the infantry dogs, the grunts who were sparking with anticipation at the battle ahead, yapping at one another and nervously stamping the ground with their hind paws.
“Make way for the cannons!” shouted a soldier, and Curtis looked behind him to see a row of cannons—ten at least—being pushed up the rear hillside above the clearing where the soldiers’ camp was made. Each cannon had four soldiers laboring over its movement, the unruly forest floor an uncooperative surface for the cannons’ heavy wooden wheels. When they finally arrived at the rear row of infantry, the coyotes shuffled out of the way so that the cannons could be placed, every fifteen feet or so, at the highest point on the ridge. The soldiers who had pushed the cannons collapsed when they reached their goal, only to be yapped at by their commanding officers and shoved into formation.
While Alexandra stood apart and upbraided a sergeant whose column was in disorder, Curtis crept through the rows of soldiers (intoning “as you were” to every soldier who turned and saluted) to the front of the line. Arriving at the row of archers, he peered behind their shoulders, trying to catch a glimpse of the enemy that would warrant such an impressive display of military might.
The far side of the gully was empty.
Curtis looked to either side of him, down the seemingly endless row of coyotes that populated the hillside, at the soldiers as they stared with steely eyes at the ridge on the other side of the wash, and wondered what they could possibly be seeing that he wasn’t. He looked back at the far side of the gully and squinted. Still nothing; only trunks of hemlock and oak sprouting from a mossy floor of fern and salal. He whispered to the nearest archer next to him, “So who are we fighting?”
“The bandits,” replied the soldier before adding, “sir.”
Curtis nodded knowingly. “Okay,” he whispered. He still couldn’t see anything.
A moment passed.
“Where are they?” asked Curtis.
