by Colin Meloy
Whish.
The unmistakable sound of a flutter of wings came from the distant dark of the tunnel.
Whish.
The smile dropped from Curtis’s face, replaced by a puzzled frown.
Again, the noise replayed: a distinct whip of feathered wings, the sound of a bird briefly circling before landing.
He kept walking toward the sound. A bat? No: He had heard bats wheeling above the patio at his house at dusk. They barely made a flutter. But what could a bird possibly be doing in an underground warren? So far, he hadn’t seen any other animal included in the Governess’s forces. He followed the sound through a passageway leading off the tunnel—a small light could be seen at the end. This ceiling here was lower than the main one, and Curtis bowed his head as he walked. The pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel flickered like a movie projector, its tiny gleam occasionally being blotted by the sudden appearance and disappearance of a number of quick black shapes. Curtis narrowed his eyes, the sound of flapping wings now growing in volume.
“Hello?” he called.
The brittle agitation of the wings started at the sound of his voice, and Curtis now guessed there must be hundreds of birds, the noise of their flying, circling, and diving massing together.
Suddenly he felt something sweep over his shoulder, skirting the fabric of his uniform. He instinctively dove out of the way, landing uncomfortably on his saber’s scabbard against the raw dirt of the tunnel wall. A single black feather drifted lazily to the ground where he had been standing.
Curtis righted himself and drew his saber from its sheath.
“Seriously! Who’s there?” he called, unnerved.
And that was when he heard the sound of a baby crying. A sharp, short wail from an infant, bubbling up from below the harried noise of the birds’ wings. His heart froze at the sound.
“Oh man,” whispered Curtis, walking faster down the passageway.
The tunnel opened into a tall chamber—almost egglike in shape—and it was filled to the ceiling with crows. Pitch-black, tar-black crows. Dozens, hundreds, all wheeling and hovering, sparring and cawing. The few lit torches on the wall illuminated their oily black feathers. The apex of the room was crowned with a small opening, through which more crows arrived and departed.
In the center of the room, on the dirt floor, sat a small, simple bassinet made from the mossy boughs of beech saplings. And in this bassinet lay a chubby, burbling baby, his eyes vacillating between fear and amazement at the whirling cloud of crows above his head. He wore a brown corduroy jumper, badly stained with dirt and what appeared to be bird droppings.
Curtis gaped. “Mac?” he stammered.
The child looked at Curtis and cooed. A single crow broke away from the hovering mass and landed on the side of the cradle, a long fat worm writhing in his beak. To Curtis’s disgust, the crow dropped the worm into Mac’s open mouth. Mac munched it contentedly.
“Gross,” whispered Curtis, his stomach churning.
Curtis’s mind was racing; did the Governess know about this? Did the company know that there were these intruders in the warren? He was certain Alexandra, once informed, would not stand for this trespass.
“Mac, I’m getting you out of here,” said Curtis, snapping from his spell. Raising his saber above his head, he began moving in on the strange bassinet. The crows, threatened by this usurper, began cawing and crying madly. Several dive-bombed him as he arrived at the cradle, their talons ripping at the fabric of his uniform. Swinging his saber about his head to thwart the birds’ attacks, he arrived at the cradle and, with his free hand, scooped Mac into his arms. Mac gurgled happily, a speck of half-chewed worm still on his lip. The crows, now incensed, redoubled their attacks, and Curtis and Mac were enshrouded in a veil of black feathers, beaks, and talons. Their claws scratched at his face and their beaks tore through his clothing, pinching blood through his revealed skin. Curtis stumbled across the floor, his saber waving haplessly in the air before him. Mac began crying. Curtis could feel the crows’ talons tangling in his hair, their wings batting him in the face until he was practically blinded. He shouted, at once in frustration and in pain. Suddenly, a voice cleared the racket of the room.
“STOP!” shouted the voice. Curtis immediately recognized it to be Alexandra’s.
“OFF!” she commanded.
The storm of crows abated slightly, and Curtis was able to lift his head and open his eyes. Through the diminishing sea of feathers, he could make out the form of Alexandra, standing by the entrance to the chamber.
“Alexandra!” he shouted. “I got Mac! I got Prue’s brother!”
He paused. As Alexandra stood, taking in the scene, a few crows alighted on her shoulders. One landed on her arm, and she petted the feathers absently with her ringed fingers.
“He was . . . here,” continued Curtis, the wind leaving his sails as the reality of the situation began to dawn on him.
Alexandra, looking away from Curtis, lifted her arm so as to bring the crow perched there to eye level. The crow squawked a reprobation, to which Alexandra calmly smiled, cooing soothingly. Satisfied, the crow returned its steely gaze to Curtis.
“What are you doing in here, Curtis?” asked Alexandra.
He stuttered a response: “I was j-just wandering and I . . . well, I heard the sound of a baby so I came to, um, check it out.”
Mac was still crying.
Alexandra walked forward, confidently, sternly. The crow on her arm flew off. Alexandra pulled Mac from Curtis’s arms and cradled him, quietly shushing his crying. “There now,” she said. “Shhhh.”
“You . . . ,” began Curtis. “You knew about this?” A trickle of blood from his scalp had descended the distance of his forehead and was clotting in his eyebrow.
Alexandra rocked back and forth, her eyes on the child in her arms, and Mac began to quiet.
“You knew about this?” repeated Curtis, louder.
His raised voice startled Mac, who began to cry again.
Alexandra shot Curtis an angered look. “Curtis, keep your voice down,” she said, resuming the rocking motion. “You’ve already upset the child enough.” The crow on Alexandra’s shoulder snapped its beak at Curtis.
“But,” he objected impotently, “why have you—how did you—” Despondent, he punctuated this slurry of words with: “I’m just confused.”
Alexandra half smiled at Curtis and walked past him to the vacant bassinet. Whispering calming assurances to the unquiet baby, she placed him down in the mossy heather that lined the bottom of the cradle. Touching Mac’s lips with a finger, she mouthed a final shhhh before returning to Curtis, taking him by the arm.
“I wasn’t quite prepared to show this to you, Curtis,” she said, walking him away from the baby. “But since you’ve forced my hand, I have no choice.” The crowd of crows above them, in the presence of the Governess, had calmed, and many had exited the room via the opening in the ceiling.
“These are difficult times,” continued Alexandra. “Difficult, confusing times. Eventually, it will all make sense to you—but I can understand your present bewilderment.”
“W-why didn’t you tell me?” pleaded Curtis. “I mean, you knew why I was here in the first place. Why did you keep it a secret?”
“I couldn’t have told you, Curtis,” said the Governess. “Think of what a shock it would’ve been—before you’d been properly acclimated to Wildwood. No, I needed to give you time before revealing this to you—and believe me, I was intending to. I would’ve hoped you’d enjoyed your night of celebration a little longer but no matter: Now is as good a time as any.”
Alexandra stopped short of the opening to the chamber and turned to Curtis, putting her hands on his shoulders and looking him squarely in the eye. “Sometimes,” she began, her tone turning from dulcet to firm, “you are forced into a position against your own wishes, a position that requires you to retaliate with any given weapon at your disposal—even if it is at the expense of others. Those reproba
tes in South Wood have done this to me. They have taken from me my dignity, my power. And not only do I intend to get it back, but I also intend to strip the same from those who stole from me. Any action I take to further this end that might be construed as immoral or antagonistic is a consequence of their foolhardy decisions. Do you follow?”
Curtis sniffled. “No, not really.”
Alexandra smiled. “That child is rightfully mine. He is owed to me. I have waited thirteen long years for this moment. Thirteen bitter years. Curtis, the child is the key to my—to our—success in this campaign. Do you remember, earlier this evening, you and I were talking? We were talking about ruling, you and I. On the rubble of South Wood. Returning the natural order, the natural rule, to this country, with me as its queen and you by my side. Do you remember that?”
Curtis nodded dolefully.
“Well, that is not possible without that child, that babbling incoherent thing there.” She pointed over to Mac, who was idly toying with a small twig in his rustic cradle. She looked back at Curtis and gripped his chin between her thumb and forefinger. “That child is our ticket to victory.”
Curtis nodded again before adding, “How?”
“The ivy, Curtis. We need him to harness it.”
“The ivy? Like, the plant?”
Alexandra closed her eyes briefly and took a deep breath. “Curtis,” she said, “this may be difficult for you to hear.” Her fingers drifted from his chin to caress his cheek. She wiped a small drop of blood from his skin. “The child must be given as offering. As offering to the ivy.”
“W-what does that mean?” stammered Curtis.
Her voice became a meditative monotone, as if she were reciting primeval scripture: “On the autumnal equinox, three days hence, on the Plinth of the Ancients, the body of the second child will be laid. At my incantation, the vines will come forward and consume his flesh and drink his blood. This will confer upon the ivy an inestimable power, the human blood coursing through its stalks, and what’s more it will render the plant in thrall to my command. When we march on South Wood, we need only follow the path of destruction laid in the wake of the ivy.” Lifting her hand from Curtis’s cheek, Alexandra poised to cap this neat explanation with a snap of her fingers.
“Simple,” she said.
Snap.
“As that.”
Part Two
CHAPTER 13
To Catch a Sparrow;
Like a Bird in a Cage
A wild flutter of wings. The piercing shatter of glass. The gruff dismissal of a sparrow’s squawked reproach. All these things created a vivid collage in Prue’s mind as she squatted, frozen, at the bottom of the wicker hamper and listened to the sounds of Owl Rex’s living room being violently dismantled. The searchers, the remaining SWORD officers, seemed to be working in a methodical manner; overturning chairs, slamming doors, and upending bookcases on the other side of the room, slowly making their way to where Prue was hidden. She had little time.
Using the eruptions of sound as concealment, she shifted her weight on the pile of old newspapers below her and began sliding the top few from underneath her feet. During the silent breaks between the officers’ work, she would halt her efforts and stare silently, breathlessly, at the ambient strands of light coming in through the slats of the hamper until the noise of their searching began again. Finally, just as the footsteps grew closer, she managed to get several folded stacks of newsprint up from beneath her shoes to rest on her head. She had no sooner achieved this when a voice shouted, “What about there?”
“Where?” came another voice, mere inches from where Prue sat.
“Under your nose, idiot! That hamper!”
“Oh,” responded the voice. “I was just going to look there.”
Light poured in above Prue, and she squeezed her eyes closed and willed herself disappeared.
“Well, well, well,” the voice said. “What have we here?”
Prue’s eyes shot open.
A hand reached down into the hamper and fumbled with the pile of papers balanced on her head. Suddenly, the hamper lid slammed shut again. Prue noticed that the weight of paper on her head had grown a little lighter.
“It’s Jonesy and his pwetty wittle garden!” announced the officer, his voice dripping with unbridled sarcasm. “Front page of the illustrious House and Home section.”
“What?” said another voice from across the room.
“Yeah, take a look: Jonesy got a nice shiny medal from the Governor-Regent last week for his, get this, award-winning peonies.”
The room erupted with laughter as the sound of boot heels echoed, moving toward the man’s voice. A litany of mirthful shouts followed:
“Nice one, Jonesy!”
“Ooh! That’s a fancy little apron you’re wearing!”
“The way you cradle those peonies, Jonesy, very maternal.”
Finally, the object of all this laughter, Jonesy, made it over to the side of the hamper and, judging by the sound, whipped the incriminating object from the joker’s hand. “My wife put me up to it!” was the man’s feeble explanation.
The room exploded with more laughter, and Prue could practically feel the crimson redness of poor Jonesy’s cheeks through the hamper walls. “I—I—” he stammered. “Well—you know—” Finally, he gave up. “Oh, STUFF IT! All of you!” More laughter. In the flash of a moment, the hamper lid was thrown open and the newspaper was heaved, powerfully, back onto the stack on Prue’s head. The lid slammed closed. “Back to work!” shouted Jonesy. “Enough of this horseplay.”
The river of laughter eddied down to a trickle as the sound of footsteps and voices spread back out across the room. More doors were slammed, more furniture was disturbed, and more sidelong comments regarding Jonesy were whispered, but Prue scarcely paid attention; she was too busy counting out a thousand thank-yous to the Fates, the Goddess, or whatever pantheon of deities had somehow granted her this reprieve.
Minutes passed. Prue’s left foot was starting to fall asleep, and she began trying to ignore the incessant needling pain by practicing her Pranayama. It was a technique for controlling breathing; she’d learned it in her beginning yoga class. No matter how much control she was gaining over her breathing, however, it didn’t change the fact that her foot felt like it was about to fall off her body. Finally, a voice came from beyond the hamper walls.
“No sign, sir,” said the officer. “We’ve searched the whole building.”
Prue exhaled a sigh of relief out her nose.
“Everywhere?”
“Yes, sir.”
“She must’ve escaped. Someone tipped her off,” said the commanding officer. “Well, no matter. She’ll turn up in the sweep.”
“Yes, sir,” responded the other officer. “And the sparrows? What should we do with them?”
“Arrest them,” was the answer.
Another voice sounded from the far end of the room. “There’s only one, sir.”
“What happened to the other?”
“Must’ve flown away, sir, in the excitement.”
There was a brief silence in the room. “Flown away? Just . . . flown away?”
“That’s my guess,” another officer quietly replied.
“Idiots! Brain-dead idiots!” shouted the commander. “Incompetent brain-dead . . .”
“Idiots, sir?” offered an officer.
“IDIOTS!” The commander regained himself and said in a level voice, “Head office is not going to stand for this. We can lose one collar, but they’ll have our jobs if they see we’ve lost two.” He thought for a moment before instructing, “Write up in the report that there was one, I repeat, one sparrow attending to the incarcerated on arrival.”
“And the girl?” quavered a subordinate officer.
Another pause. “Write that the Outsider girl is suspected to have been tipped off to SWORD’s arrival and was not to be found at the scene.”
“Yes, sir,” replied another officer.
“And y
ou, bird,” spoke the commander, “you’re coming with us. We’ll see how well you’re soaring after a few weeks in the hoosegow.”
There was a pause in the room. An officer chimed in, “The what, sir?”
“Hoosegow. Pokey. Slammer.” No response. “PRISON, idiots! Now let’s hop to it before the place is full. Lord knows the prison warden’s hands’ll be full tonight.” A thunder of boot steps followed this proclamation, and in moments the room was empty of sound. The front door slammed in the distance, and the growl of a car’s engine could be heard, starting up and grinding away down the street. After counting out thirty Mississippis, Prue slid the pile of newspapers from off her head and cautiously opened the lid to the hamper. Peeking over the lip and seeing no one, she stood up straight in a gust of energy, feeling the blood course from her neck down to her toes in an ecstatic rush. She shook her numb foot and carefully stepped out of the hamper.
She was alone in the room. The two high-backed chairs where, only minutes before, she and the owl had been sitting were carelessly toppled on their sides, and the fine tall bookcases that had stood against the wainscot of the walls had been thrown to the ground, their contents strewn about the room in a great scatter of warped spines and splayed pages. A few mottled feathers lay in the center of the room, and Prue’s heart broke at the sight. What had she done? It was all her fault; the police had come for her. And yet he had protected her. Guilt washed over her as she knelt down and picked up one of the feathers. “Oh, Owl,” she gushed. “I’m so, so sorry.”
She was startled by a flustered flap of wings sounding from the hearth. Looking over, she saw one of the sparrow attendants, his light gray belly marred with soot, emerge from the fireplace flue.
The bird clumsily flew over to where Prue was standing and landed on the edge of one of the upended bookcases. He shook a mist of ash from his left wing and looked haplessly at Prue. “He’s gone,” said the sparrow, his voice as ashen as his plumage. “The Crown Prince. Gone.”
