by Colin Meloy
The door creaked open, revealing the long hallway. A few hanging light fixtures illuminated an ornate Persian runner that led from her room. As she’d expected, the mastiff still stood sentry at the far end of the hall. Hearing the door open, he briefly looked up. Wisps of smoke drifted from a lit cigarette in his paw.
“Excuse me!” called Prue. “Excuse me, sir?”
The dog, apparently surprised to be spoken to, looked around. Once he realized she was talking to him, he grumbled uncomfortably and stood up from his leaning position against the wall. “Yes, miss?” he asked.
“I was wondering—I just need some help,” said Prue, conjuring her best damsel-in-distress routine. “I can’t seem to get the sink in the bathroom to shut off. I think the faucet is broken. I’m afraid it’s going to overflow.”
The dog paused, evidently weighing the propriety of his helping. He shifted in his suit, which clung tightly to his large, hairy body.
“Please?” asked Prue.
The mastiff gave a little huff and stepped away from the wall. He ground the cigarette out on the wood of the floor. When he came closer to Prue, he said, “I ain’t no plumber, mind,” his voice low and gruff. “But I’ll see what I can do.” Prue got a better look at the badge on his shoulder; below the word SWORD was the grim image of a blade surrounded by what looked to be barbed wire.
Prue let the dog into the room and followed him as he walked toward the bathroom. He swung the door open and entered, approaching the sink. Prue stayed behind in the room. Reaching over, he gave the spigot a quick turn and the faucet stopped. Before he had a chance to raise any kind of surprised objection, Prue had slammed the bathroom door closed behind him.
“Hey!” the dog cried, his voice muffled behind the door.
The ornate bow of a skeleton key could be seen protruding from the keyhole in the door. With a swift flick of her wrist, Prue had thrown the lock, hearing the weighty click of the deadbolt engaging.
“HEY!” the dog cried again, now angrier. He began frantically trying the doorknob. “Let me outta here!”
“Sorry!” cried Prue, feeling genuine anguish that she’d tricked the mastiff. “I’m really super sorry. I’m sure someone will be along to help you. I put a bag of gorp by the bathtub if you get hungry. I’ve got to go. Sorry!”
She quickly exited the room, hearing the echoes of the mastiff’s angered barks fade behind her down the hallway. As she walked, she breathed a quick benediction to the patron saint of sleuthing.
“Nancy Drew,” she whispered, “be with me now.”
At the end of the hall was a door. She opened this to find herself looking down another long hallway. The corridor before her was empty. Prue cautiously stepped one foot out onto the rug, paused at the floorboards’ first complaint, and then started tiptoeing down the hallway.
The wing seemed particularly vacant, and Prue gained confidence with every step that she would not be caught; until a door suddenly flew open and a young bespectacled man walked out, carrying a briefcase with an overcoat slung over it.
“Good night, Phil,” he said to someone inside the room he had exited.
“G’night,” came the response from within.
Prue froze in place. With nowhere to conceivably hide, Prue had no choice but to stay stock-still in the middle of the hallway, praying the young man would not turn and see her. To her great relief, he didn’t. Apparently so occupied in leaving, he simply walked down the hall and disappeared around a corner. Not moving, Prue looked out of the corner of her eye into the room, the door now opened to the hallway. Another man sat at a desk, busily intent on his work. A green anglepoise lamp illuminated the papers in front of him. Occasionally he dabbed a nib pen into an inkwell.
Prue hurriedly stepped through the block of light on the floor cast from the open room, hardly daring to breathe until she had cleared the doorway. When she heard no calls for her to stop, she started walking faster.
The rug ended at a large wooden door, and Prue cracked it open and peeked through. Beyond the door was the stairway landing and below it, the foyer, now eerily absent of all the manic activity she had witnessed that afternoon. The double doors to the east wing were closed, and what appeared to be a Labrador in khakis slumbered noisily in a chair outside.
Prue pushed the door open and snuck out onto the landing. Reaching the stairs, she carefully began descending, counting each step until she made the bottom. Upon reaching it, she half walked, half ran across the checkerboard marble of the floor and was nearly to the front door when she suddenly heard a man’s voice, loud and reproachful:
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Prue’s body seized up, mere steps from the freedom of the front door.
“How many times have I told you, the Governor takes cream with his chamomile tea?” continued the voice.
Prue looked over to the source of the scolding and saw, through a door off the foyer, a man—a butler of some sort—giving a stern lecture to a girl who Prue saw, in the faltering lamplight of the small room, to be none other than her maid, Penny. The man was holding a tray with a teacup and a kettle on it.
“Sorry, sir,” was Penny’s sheepish reply. “It won’t happen again.”
Penny’s eyes looked up and in an instant she saw Prue, frozen in the foyer. Her eyes widened. So did Prue’s. They stared at each other for a moment before the butler spoke.
“Well, I don’t expect you’ll make the mistake again. Otherwise, it’s back to the scullery with you—and that’s going easy!”
Penny looked back at the man. “Yes, sir,” she said. “Understood, sir. Give me the tea, sir, I’ll bring it to the Governor.”
The butler huffed his approval and handed the tray to Penny, exiting the small room through a door in the rear, his back to Prue all the while. When he had gone, Penny looked at Prue, her eyes again wide with surprise.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
Prue realized she had no choice but to be honest.
“I have to go see Owl Rex,” Prue whispered back. “He sent me a note. He said I should come see him. Tonight!” She toed the ground in front of her ashamedly. “And, oh gosh, I kind of locked someone in my bathroom, this dog who I think was guarding me. I might be in a bit of trouble.”
“You did what?” whispered Penny, appalled.
“I . . . locked him in my bathroom. It’s okay, I left a bag of gorp in there, in case he gets hungry.”
Penny was momentarily speechless. Finally, she hissed, “Well, don’t go that way! There are sentries every fifteen feet out the front door!”
Prue looked at the doors in front of her, bowled over by the fact that that had not occurred to her. “Oh.”
Penny rolled her eyes. “What were you gonna do, lock them up in your bathroom too? Come this way.”
Prue joined Penny in the small room, which appeared to be a kind of servants’ staging area. Penny set down the tea tray and opened the small door through which the butler had left. She peeked her head around the corner and, satisfied that all was clear, motioned for Prue to follow.
Penny led Prue down a tight labyrinth of passageways, lit by the occasional flickering gaslight. At some points, the passageways seemed to be just arteries connecting other corridors, where others appeared to be in use as pantries or larders, their walls covered in shelves holding bags of flour and rows of strange vegetables in jars. Prue lost track of their bearing after the fifth intersection was crossed, and she simply started following Penny blindly, acquiescing wordlessly to the maid’s every hushed “this way” and “follow me.” They finally arrived at a particularly ancient-looking door and Penny opened it, revealing a worn flight of stone steps leading down into darkness. Penny fetched two candles from a box on the floor and, lighting them both on an obliging gas lamp, she handed one to Prue.
“What’s this?” Prue whispered.
“The tunnels,” said Penny. “They run everywhere. We can take them into town.”
“What a
bout the tea? Isn’t the Governor expecting you?” asked Prue.
Penny smirked. “That old insomniac? He’ll get by.”
Prue paused at the doorway. “Thank you,” she whispered. “For helping. I don’t know what to say.”
“Listen,” replied Penny, “I could get in big trouble for this. But I’m a firm believer that you gotta do what you gotta do. And if the Crown Prince wants to see you, you go. God knows you’ll likely be better off than collecting dust in that guest room.” She studied Prue intently. “As soon as I saw you, my heart went out. To imagine losing a brother.” She sighed and held her candle into the doorway, illuminating the steps. The slightest breeze, cold and still, crept from the opening and it smelled of musty, damp stones. “Go ahead.”
Prue stepped down onto the smooth stone of the stairs, worn by what looked like a forgotten eternity of footsteps. The dankness of the stairwell was bone-chilling, and she shivered as she descended. Penny followed, closing the door behind her as she went. The candles in their hands projected flickering shadows against the brick walls, their flames quivering in the stagnant air.
At the bottom of the stairs, the corridor linked up to a single passageway that led in either direction into pitch-blackness. The walls of the tunnel radiated a wet chill, the expanse stained here and there by rivulets of water dripping from the arched ceiling. The ground was of ashy dirt, and Prue could feel the cold seeping through her shoes.
The construction of the tunnel changed as they traveled farther along; the red brick and mortar of the walls gave way to rough-hewn stone and granite. Sometimes, the tunnel seemed to be carved out of the earth’s rock itself. The ceiling towered above them and took on the aspect of a cavern; other times, they were forced to crouch over and shuffle through low passageways. After what seemed like an eternity, they arrived at an intersection, and Penny pointed her candle down this new corridor. “This is as far as I go,” she said. “I have tea to deliver. Follow this passage. After a bit you’ll come to a ladder—take that to the surface. From there, you’re on your own.”
“Thank you so much,” said Prue. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”
“Don’t mention it,” replied Penny. “I know you’ll find him, your brother.” She smiled and turned to leave, the halo of light cast by her candle fading into the darkness of the tunnel.
Prue began walking down this new passageway. Before too long, she arrived at the ladder Penny had described. Its rungs were splintered and worn, and they bowed with the weight of Prue’s feet as she gingerly climbed. The ladder carried her up through a long cylindrical duct in the ceiling of the tunnel that ended at what looked like a manhole cover. Bracing herself against the rungs of the ladder, Prue heaved the cover up and slid it to the side of the opening. A brisk breath of fresh air caught her by surprise, and she inhaled deeply. She cautiously pushed her head up through the opening and looked around.
She was back in the woods.
CHAPTER 11
A Soldier Distinguished;
Audience with an Owl
Curtis, lifting himself up on his elbows, surveyed the damage he had wrought. The coyote soldiers who had, just moments earlier, been in the throes of battle stood frozen in surprise, their adversaries having miraculously vanished. The course of the cannonball had ripped a tidy pathway through the underbrush, crossed the gaping ravine, and continued its path onto the other side. Several bandits, immobile, lay in its wake. Curtis blinked rapidly.
The soldiers raised their sabers in a brief cheer before a new wave of bandits appeared over the ravine edge, and they leapt back into the fray. Curtis heard the sound of hoofbeats behind him.
“Curtis!” came the voice of the Governess. “Come with me!”
He turned to see Alexandra above him, her hand extended. They locked hand-to-forearm, and he was carried over the horse’s flanks. Curtis’s hearing was only now returning
“Did you see that?” he shouted over the ruckus of the ongoing battle. He could feel himself beaming, as much with astonishment as with pride.
“I did!” was Alexandra’s response. “Very nice work, Curtis! We’ll make a warrior out of you yet!”
One hand holding her sword, the other holding the reins, she urged the horse to a gallop as it deftly slalomed through the trees. Her horsemanship was second to none, and woe betide the bandits who attempted to raise a rifle or saber to her as she rode: They were certain to be cut down.
“Where are we going?” asked Curtis, his face nuzzled into the fur of her stole.
“You’ll see!” shouted Alexandra.
They arrived at the far end of the ridge, where the wash was at its deepest and the gully’s walls rose from the bottom like the sheer face of a canyon. The ridge was all a-tangle with bandits and coyotes, toe to toe, their bayonets and swords clashing. Alexandra leapt from the horse, quickly dispatched a charging bandit with a thrust of her sword, and ran to the edge of the ridge. Curtis gulped loudly and followed. When he had arrived at her side, the Governess pointed to the trough of the draw, where a group of bandits was laboriously pushing a giant howitzer up the gully.
“There,” she said softly. “If that gun gets much farther, our battalion will be at the mercy of these savages.”
The massive howitzer made the coyotes’ cannons look like Roman candles; its mouth was easily three feet in diameter and the bore was of such a length that two men, end to end, could lie inside. The iron of the gun was ornately decorated with the vicious form of a dragon, the gun’s maw framed by the dragon’s barbed fangs. One shot from that, Curtis surmised, and you could take out an entire hillside.
“What can we do?” Curtis asked.
“Start shooting,” Alexandra replied. She thrust a rifle into his hands before hefting her own to her shoulder, squaring her sights with the howitzer crew below.
Curtis blanched, and the pit in his stomach grew. He had fired the cannon, sure, but it had felt so anonymous and random. He wasn’t sure he’d actually be able to shoot a gun at someone. Paralyzed, he simply stood, holding the rifle in his arms.
The Governess, meanwhile, had fired several shots into the crowd surrounding the giant cannon, felling two bandits who were quickly replaced as more reinforcements came hurrying up the draw. Stamping the rifle butt on the ground, she cursed as she unscrewed the ramrod from the rifle and busily began repacking a round.
Desperate for an alternate strategy, Curtis scanned the ridgeline. His eyes fell on something that made his heart catch in his throat. “Hold on!” he shouted to Alexandra, dropping his rifle to the ground. He sprinted over to a mossy outcrop overlooking the gully, where a massive cedar tree had fallen, its rough bark overgrown with ivy and ferns. It lay in the underbrush, perilously balanced on the edge of the ravine, its midsection cantilevered on another fallen tree. Curtis gauged the distance and height of the overhang, all the while looking back and forth between the bandits and the dead tree. Satisfied, he vaulted back over the tree and threw himself to the ground, lifting his feet to find purchase against the bark of the tree’s trunk. With a pained grunt, he began pushing with all the power he could muster. The trunk began to tip on its axis, the living earth below it ripping away, before he exhausted his energies and the tree tipped back to its resting place. He took a deep breath and, grunting louder, began pushing again. The trunk lifted a little farther this time, but still not enough to be unanchored from its perch.
“Alexandra!” he shouted. “Come help me!”
The Governess, who had been firing her rifle into the amassing bandits below to no appreciable effect, looked over and, catching on to Curtis’s plan, ran over to where he lay. Dropping to the ground, she too began pushing at the tree trunk with her moccasined feet.
“One . . . two . . . three!” counted Curtis, and they both pushed with all their might. The tree trunk gave a terrific groan before it toppled from its moorings and pitched over the edge of the ravine with a deafening crack. Alexandra and Curtis leapt up from the ground in time t
o see the giant tree go crashing down the steep wall of the gully, gaining speed with every roll. A scant few of the bandits, those that were alert, managed to dive out of the way before the tree collided with the howitzer, sending a spray of splinters and bark into the air. The howitzer collapsed from its carriage and tipped over onto the ground, the massive cedar trunk finally coming to rest on top of its muzzle. The bandits who made up the howitzer crew, the few that remained, ran off down the gully and disappeared into the bush.
Curtis started jumping up and down. “Holy . . . holy . . . ,” he sputtered. “Holy SMOKE! Did that really just happen?” Alexandra looked on and smiled.
The inimitable sound of a conch shell being blown distracted them from their celebration, and suddenly the tide of bandits was retreating from the hillside, desperately scrambling up the far side of the ravine and back into the woods. The surviving coyote soldiers gave brief chase, picking off a few of the stragglers as they went, before raising their arms in a collective cheer. The ravine was theirs.
Prue pulled herself from the manhole and, sitting on the edge, surveyed the landscape; the knot of the forest’s canopy loomed over her, and the few stars in the early evening sky glimmered through the branches above. She found she was in a small clearing, surrounded by a dense weave of trees.
She scarcely had time to ponder the presence of a manhole (its face was minted with the words PROPERTY OF SOUTH WOOD, DRAINAGE RESOURCES COUNCIL) in this remote clearing when she heard a strange, woody clattering behind her. She turned to see a bright yellow rickshaw making its way toward her. It was being pulled by a badger.
“Hello,” said the badger when he arrived at Prue. He slowed to stop.
“Hi.”
The badger blinked and looked down at the manhole. “Did you just climb out of there?” he asked, puzzled.
Prue looked back at the hole. “Yes.”
“Oh,” said the badger, and then added, as if suddenly remembering his trade, “Need a ride?”
“I do, actually,” Prue said, pulling the owl’s note from her pocket. “I need to get to Rue Thurmond. Number Eighty-six. Is that far?”
