by Colin Meloy
She walked along the tracks toward the Railroad Bridge and, after a time, came upon the wreckage of her bike and the Radio Flyer wagon. They lay untouched in the tall grass of the gully. She groaned at the pain in her rib as she pulled her bike from the ground and set about untwisting the frame from the wagon. Her initial estimate had been true: The front wheel was hopelessly bent, but the rest of the bike seemed to be in decent condition. She righted the wagon, straightened out the stem that attached it to the bike, and began walking the entire ensemble through the Industrial Wastes and back across the Railroad Bridge. A loud, distinct shhhhhh noise came from behind her, and she turned to see a gray wall of rain descend on the hill of trees above the bridge. Within seconds it was upon her, and she was almost immediately soaked to the skin.
“Figures,” she murmured to herself, and continued pushing the bike and wagon across the bridge.
Reaching the other side, she made her way up a gravel road that switchbacked down from the bluff. Following this, she soon arrived back in the tidy maze of cordoned streets, fresh-mowed lawns, steady humming traffic, and quiet dark houses of her neighborhood. She breathed a long, sorrowful sigh of relief.
The world seemed to have continued on without her fairly handily; the few pedestrians to be caught in the sudden shower were huddled beneath umbrellas and were jogging briskly to their destinations. A few cars whispered over the wet pavement, their windshield wipers busily in motion, but no one gave Prue so much as a second look, despite her haggard appearance, her torn clothes and tangled hair.
It was awhile before she arrived at the front door of her house. She briefly considered going to Curtis’s house first, to check on him and see how he’d made it out, but decided it would be best to find her parents. She only hoped that her sudden reappearance would somehow temper the inevitable trauma they would experience upon learning of their son’s vanishing. Prue knew she would have to tell the truth, no matter how crazy it would sound.
A single dim light was on in the living room, barely cutting through the afternoon’s gloom and sending a small ray of light onto the front stoop. Prue could see through the window and into the kitchen; the rest of the house was dark, as if a cloud had passed over it. She could make out the figure of her mother slouched on the living room couch, her shock of curly hair as unkempt as the tangled mass of yarn she was staring into. Prue’s dad was nowhere to be seen. She dropped her bike and climbed the few steps to the door, her ankle smarting at each step.
“I’m home,” she called wearily into the darkened house.
With a shout of surprise, her mother was up in a flash from her seat on the couch. The mass of yarn on her lap spilled to the floor. She ran to her daughter and engulfed her in an embrace that only a bereft mother could manage. Prue let out a cry as her mother’s powerful arms squeezed her delicate ribs and a swell of pain overcame her, nearly causing her to faint. Hearing the cry, her mother released her and cupped her hands around Prue’s cheeks, searching her face for signs of harm.
“Are you okay?” she managed.
Prue squirmed in her grasp. “Yes, Mom,” she said. Her mother’s eyes were red and guttered with deep, dark wells. She looked like she hadn’t slept since Prue had left.
“Where’s—where’s Mac?” her mother stammered.
An enormous wave of tiredness and despair overcame Prue. She could feel her knees beginning to buckle. “He’s gone,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
Her mother erupted into tears. Prue collapsed into her arms.
“So that’s it, huh?” It was Seamus, pacing his cage and setting it to shaking. “That’s it. No trial, no torture, no execution—nothing. Just left to rot.” They had been left alone in the chamber. The warden and his two prison guards had been conspicuously absent for a few hours now.
Cormac sighed and said, “Sounds as much. Though I expect the King is getting the brunt of it. Tortured and then left to rot.”
“Disgusting dogs. All of ’em,” hissed Seamus.
Angus piped up, “And what did she say? She’s feeding the baby to the ivy when? On the equinox?”
Curtis, his legs curled to his chest, replied, “Yep. The equinox.”
Angus rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. “That’s, what, two days from now? Ye gods, we don’t have much time left.”
“We’re done for—though at least we’ll outlast our brethren back at camp.” This came from Cormac. “Don’t expect they’ll see it coming when the ivy takes over. That’ll be a quick end.”
“Aye,” said Angus. “Y’know I took a nap once, down the Old Woods, in the ancient glen. Right down in a bed of the stuff, the ivy, that is. Not but two hours pass when I wake up and a little tendril of the stuff is all coiled around my big toe, sure as I’m standin’ here.” He paused and spat. “No telling what it’ll do once it’s in the control of that evil witch. And all drunk on baby blood.”
Curtis grimaced at the thought.
Cormac continued, “Nah, we’re better off starvin’ down here, lads. At least we’ll die a natural death, not have ivy a-snakin’ into our eyeballs. Only hope that the camp catches word in time and gets somewheres safe—underground or somethin’.”
Seamus laughed. “Nah, they’ll all be done for long before that. You heard the Dowager—Brendan’s done abandoned them. As soon as the dogs were on the camp, he hightailed it. If they haven’t found it by now, no doubt he’s spillin’ the beans to them coyotes as we speak. He ain’t bein’ tortured, boyos, he’s sitting down with the witch herself, havin’ a glass of chilled juniper gin and laughin’ about how we’re just a bunch o’ fools.”
Cormac leapt up from his cage floor and raged from between the bars, “You take that back, you mongrel, you son-of-a-skunk. You can bet that Brendan’s not betrayed us—he’s got more courage in his pinkie fingernail than you ever showed!”
Seamus took up the challenge, shouting, “Aye, we’ll see about that, Cormac Grady. You may be deceivin’ yourself. I suspected for a long time that he was givin’ in to the dogs. He was losin’ his edge, for a damn sight.”
“Watch your words, traitor!” yelled Cormac.
“Cormac,” said Angus, “don’t waste your breath. Who knows what’s happened? In the end, it don’t rightly matter much, us wasting away in here.”
“You!” countered Cormac. “You too! And what with your old lady waiting at home. You’d throw in the towel just ’cause she’s got a bit of a rovin’ eye and is likely warming the tent of some other bandit.”
This got Angus’s hackles up. “Don’t bring my girl into this,” he yelled. “And no, she don’t got no rovin’ eye. She’s as honest a woman as—”
“SHUT UP!” shouted Curtis. “For once: Please, please just stop arguing.”
“Thank you,” snorted Dmitri.
The bandits fell silent. A gloom fell over the cavern’s inhabitants. One of the torches on the chamber wall flickered and went out.
A jingling noise caught Curtis’s attention. It was coming from above, from within the root-ball. He looked up to see Septimus, sitting on a snaking limb, casually picking his teeth with a shiny piece of metal. Something about the gleam of the metal caused Curtis to stand up and try to get a better look. Indeed, it wasn’t just a single piece of metal, but rather a cluster of metallic things.
“Hey, Septimus,” Curtis called out.
The rat paused and spat out a loose bit of food.
“What’s up?”
“What are you chewing on?”
Septimus raised his eyebrows and looked at Curtis sideways, as if the question had never occurred to him. “What I’m chewing on? You mean these old things?”
He was holding a ring of keys.
“Where did you find those?” asked Curtis frantically. They looked incredibly similar to the ones that the warden carried.
The rat held the ring of keys at arm’s length and studied them, as if for the first time. “Gosh,” he said, “I don’t rightly remember.” He paused and thought, his tiny index fin
ger poised at his chin. “Now that you mention it, I think I got them from the warden. Ages ago. He had two sets, see, and I figured he wouldn’t miss ’em.” He nodded and looked down at Curtis. “They feel really good on my teeth.”
Curtis let out a jubilant laugh, which he quickly tried to suppress, looking out into the chamber. “Give them here, Septimus!” he whispered to the rat. Septimus dutifully dropped them down into Curtis’s cage.
“A lot of good it’ll do us,” said Seamus, above. He was watching the proceedings intently. “We get out, sure, but we’ll drop to our deaths.”
Curtis waved him away impatiently. “Hold on,” he said. “I’m thinking.”
He stood up and looked over at the long, spindly ladder that was leaning up against the cavern wall. It was too far to leap—even from a swinging cage. Curtis gauged the distance carefully. To his eye, the closest cage to the ladder—Angus’s—at its farthest-out swing would allow too much of a gap for even the boldest jumper to clear. If there were only some way of lengthening the rope, maximizing the swing . . .
He struck on something. “You guys!” he hissed. “I think I can get us out of here!”
The bandits, forgetting their earlier disagreements, all scrambled to attention.
Prue’s father arrived at the reunion sopping wet. He’d been out in the rain, and his yellow slicker was clinging to his wet skin. In his hand, he carried a stack of papers, matted with water. Made hastily on their home computer, the sheets featured photos of Mac and Prue above supplications for help printed in a large, bold typeface that was now smeared from rainwater.
Like her mother, Prue’s dad had hugged her tightly until she’d been forced to push him away by the nagging pain in her rib. On discovering that his son was still gone, he sat down heavily on his reading chair and held his head in his hands. Prue and her mother looked on helplessly. Finally, her mother spoke.
“I suppose you should tell your father what’s happened,” she said.
And she did. She told him everything, as she’d told her mother moments before. It all spilled out of her in a fountain of regret and sadness. She finished this fantastic monologue, compulsively, by saying, “And now I’m just so tired. So very, very tired.”
When she finished, both parents were completely silent. They gave each other a quick, meaningful glance—Prue, in her state, was unable to read it—before her father stood and, walking toward her, said, “Let’s get you to sleep. You’re exhausted.” And Prue had crushed her face into her father’s chest, feeling his strong arms lift her into a cradled position. Prue’s father walked her upstairs, shushing her like a small child, and she was asleep before she’d reached her bed.
When she woke, it was dark. She felt the familiar softness of her goose-down pillow against her cheek, the cocoon of her down blanket nestled closely around her body. Cracking one eye open, she lifted her head from the pillow to see what time it was. The clock at her bedside read three forty-five a.m. She kicked her legs out, stretching her weary hamstrings, and realized the poultice at her ankle had been removed. In its place, her parents had wrapped a conventional gauze bandage. She turned over, shutting her eyes again, but then realized she was desperately thirsty.
Getting out of bed, she quietly opened the door and walked out into the upstairs hallway, testing the strength of her ankle as she went. She was in her pajamas now, though she had no memory of putting them on. She climbed down the stairs, mindful to avoid the particularly creaky steps—she didn’t want to wake her parents. She couldn’t imagine what emotional turmoil they must be in. However, once she’d made the ground floor, she was surprised to see that a light was still on in the kitchen.
Sitting at the kitchen table was her father. He cradled a glass half full of water and was staring at a small black container, the size of a large jewel box, resting on the table’s surface.
“Hi, Dad,” Prue whispered as her feet hit the cork of the kitchen floor. She squinted at the overhead light.
Her father startled on hearing her approach. He looked up, surprised, his eyes tired and glazed over. It was clear he’d been crying. “Oh, hi, honey!” he said. Initially, it seemed as if he were going to feign normalcy, put a brave face on things, but he soon lapsed back into despair. “Oh, sweetheart,” he moaned, his eyes downcast again.
Prue stepped forward. “I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice freighted with sadness. “I’m so, so sorry. I don’t know what to say. This whole thing is crazy.” She scooted out one of the four red chairs that surrounded the table and sat down. “I know this whole thing is my fault. If only I’d taken better—”
Prue’s father interrupted her. “No, it’s not your fault, dear. It’s ours.”
She shook her head. “You can’t blame yourself, Dad, that’s crazy!”
Her dad stared at her, his eyes puffy and red. “No, you don’t understand, Prue. It is our fault. It’s always been our fault. All along. We should’ve known.”
Prue’s curiosity was piqued. “Should’ve known . . . what?” She reached over and took a sip from his glass of water.
Her father rubbed his eyes and blinked rapidly. “I guess . . . ,” he began, “it’s best that you know. What with all you’ve been through. We should’ve told you earlier, but it just never seemed like the right time.”
Prue stared at him. “What?”
“This woman you met,” her dad said slowly. “This Governess. Your mother and I, we’ve met her before.”
“What!?” Prue shouted. The sudden interjection sent a shower of pain from her bruised rib.
Prue’s dad raised his hands in an effort to quiet her. “Shhh!” he said. “You’ll wake your mother. Someone in this house has got to get rest.”
“You met her? Alexandra?” hissed Prue, quieter this time. “When?”
“Long, long ago. Before you were born.” He shook his head sadly. “We should’ve known.” Heaving a deep sigh, he looked back up at Prue and continued.
“When your mother and I married, we were so excited to have children, to start our family. We bought this house and immediately began envisioning which room would be whose—always keen on the idea of having a boy and a girl. A brother and sister. But, as these things sometimes go, our hopes were never realized. We tried and tried, but no baby was coming. We saw doctors, specialists—went to holistic retreats and acupuncture sessions. Nothing. Even the most radical approaches seemed to be hopeless for us—we just couldn’t have kids. Your mother, she was heartbroken. It was a very sad time. We tried to get our heads around the idea of being a family without kids, but it was just so . . . so impossible.” He sighed again.
“One day, though, we were at the farmer’s market—you know, downtown—and I was off getting, I don’t know, rutabagas or something, and I came back looking for your mom and she’s at this weird booth—one I didn’t remember having seen before—talking to an old, old woman. The woman must’ve been in her eighties, she was selling trinkets and strange beads, and she had a whole shelf of weird bottles of tinctures behind her. Anyway, your mom was in a serious conversation with this woman when I came up, and your mother, she turned to me and said, ‘She can help us. She can make us have kids.’ Just like that. Well, at that point, we’d tried everything. I was starting to lose patience, but I knew it meant so much to your mother, so I said, ‘Okay.’ For a small price, she sold us this little box here.”
He picked up the small black container on the table. It looked to be made of painted teak; hinges on the side of the cube suggested a clamshell opening. A baseball could be comfortably concealed within. He continued:
“She instructed us to go to the bluffs, near the center of St. Johns—just down where that restaurant is—and, well, cast these runes.” Here he lifted the lid on the box and poured six smooth pebbles onto the Formica of the kitchen table. These sigils, varied in color, had each been inscribed with a different strange runic character.
“When we cast the runes, she said, a bridge would appear. But not just a bridge
, the ghost of a bridge. Apparently the apparition of some bridge that had been there long ago. And once that bridge had been called into existence, we were to walk to its middle point and ring a bell, and a woman would appear. She said we would recognize the woman because she was tall and very beautiful and she would be wearing a headdress of feathers. Well, naturally this all seemed like a bunch of hooey, really, but we were desperate and figured it was worth a shot, and if it didn’t work we could just have a good laugh about the whole thing. So that night, when it was late and the streets were deserted, we walked out to the bluff and found this little stone slab, and we emptied the pebbles onto the stone. And the next thing you know, this big mist appears over the river and a giant, green bridge—with these cables and towers—just appears in front of us. I mean, it was incredible. Never had seen anything like it before. And we walk out to the middle of the bridge and, sure enough, there’s a bell, a little antique-looking bell, just hanging from one of the columns, and we ring it a few times. So we wait there, and we wait a long time. Just the two of us, standing in the middle of this ‘ghost bridge.’ All of a sudden, a figure appears on the other side of the bridge walking toward us out of the mist. It’s a woman, and she’s wearing this funny headdress.
“She doesn’t introduce herself, she just says, ‘So you need a baby?’ And we nod yes. And she says, ‘I’ll make you with child but you have to agree to something.’ And we say, Okay, what is it? And she says, ‘If you ever have a second child, that child belongs to me.’”
A chill came over Prue. She stared at her father.
Her dad, sensing her amazement, gulped loudly and continued, “At that point, Prue, we were desperate. We just wanted a kid, you know? So we said yes. Since it seemed impossible that we would have another child, it seemed like a good deal. Her end of the bargain would probably never happen, right? And this woman, this weird woman, steps forward and just lays her palm on your mother’s stomach and that’s it—she turns around and walks away. We walk back home over the bridge, and the bridge disappears behind us as soon as we’ve stepped off. Your mom, she doesn’t feel much different, and we figure the whole thing was some sort of elaborate hoax until a few weeks later when we were at a doctor’s appointment and it turns out, your mom was pregnant—with you!”
