by Colin Meloy
Prue’s world, once again, returned to normal. Her absence from school during the week was explained away as a sudden extended illness, and her friends greeted her in the hallway with sympathetic faces.
“Chicken pox,” Prue explained, when pressed. One friend pointed out that she’d already had chicken pox, that she remembered this because she’d been the one who’d given them to Prue. “Guess I got ’em again.” Prue shrugged.
The weeks passed. Halloween came and went, notable only for the fact that it was pouring rain that day and everyone had to adjust their costumes accordingly. November ushered in an uncommon Indian summer, the rains having abated, and the McKeel family chose a particularly pleasant Saturday to head out to one of the farms on Sauvie Island to pick up some pumpkins for their planned Thanksgiving desserts. Prue milled about the apple orchard near the farm’s open-air market while her parents went in, arguing over who had the best eye for squash. Mac, now walking unaided, tottered around the few picnic tables that dotted the orchard.
A group of figures making their way toward their car in the parking lot caught Prue’s eye. They were a middle-aged couple and their two children, both girls. Prue recognized them in an instant as the Mehlbergs, Curtis’s bereft family.
Before she knew it, she was walking toward them. “Mr. Mehlberg,” she heard herself saying, “Mrs. Mehlberg.”
The couple looked up. The two girls, one older, one younger than Prue, stared at her as she approached.
“Yes?” said the woman.
As Prue came closer, she saw such a sadness in the woman’s face. Indeed, it was a sorrow that seemed to hover over the entire family like a dark cloud. Prue put her hand on Mrs. Mehlberg’s arm.
“I was a friend of Curtis’s,” said Prue.
The woman’s face lit up. “From school? What’s your name?”
“Prue McKeel. I know him—I mean I knew him pretty well. I’m . . .” Prue paused. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
The pallor returned to the woman’s face. “Thank you, dear,” she said. “That’s very kind.”
Prue bit her lower lip in thought. Finally, she said, “I just want you to know that . . . well, I believe that he’s in a better place. I think, wherever he is, he’s happy. Truly happy.”
The Mehlbergs, the man and woman and their two daughters, stared at Prue for a moment before Mr. Mehlberg replied. “Thank you,” he said. “We believe that too. It was very nice to meet you, Prue McKeel.” He opened the driver’s-side door and climbed into his car. The rest of the family followed him. Only one of the girls, the youngest one, paused at the open car door and squinted up at Prue. “Tell him hello,” she requested before climbing into the backseat of the car.
Prue, momentarily taken aback, replied, “I will,” and watched the car as it drove out of the parking lot and away down the road.
The McKeels’ trunk, when they arrived at home, was laden with squashes of every variety and size, and they’d had to make several trips to get the bounty into the kitchen. It was getting late, and Mac, having had a bowl of banana and avocado at the farm, was acting fussy from tiredness. Prue’s mom was flustered.
“Hey,” she said, “can you put that cranky kid to bed? We’ve got to start these pies if they’re going to be ready for this week.”
“Sure,” said Prue, just now waking from the spell the encounter with the Mehlbergs had cast on her. She reached down and grabbed Mac, trundling into the kitchen for good-night kisses from his parents. Once he’d been properly smothered in hugs, Prue took him upstairs, ignoring his tired whines, and put him in his jammies. She set him in the middle of his crib and snuggled his stuffed animal owl into his arms. She gave him a peck on the bald crown of his head and walked to the door, hitting the lights on the way out. “G’night, Macky,” she said.
She hadn’t gotten halfway down the hallway when she heard her brother’s mournful plea: “Pooooo! Pooooo!”
Stopping in her tracks, she sighed and rolled her eyes. Returning to the doorway of his room, she popped her head around the doorway. “What’s up?” she asked.
Mac gurgled something in response.
“Can’t sleep? Not tired? What is it?”
Another gurgle.
“You want a story, don’t you?” she asked.
Mac’s face widened into a smile. “Pooo!” he chimed.
Prue caved. “Okay,” she said, walking to his crib side and pulling him from the mattress. “Just one story.”
The two of them, the brother and the sister, sat in the rocking chair in the corner of the room. Mac nestled himself against her arm, and Prue looked out the window, as if pulling the story from thin air. Finally, she began.
“Once upon a time,” she said, quietly, “there lived a little boy and his big sister.” She paused, thinking, before continuing: “But before that, there was a man and a woman and they lived here in St. Johns and they wanted more than anything to have a family. But in order to have children, they had to make a deal with an evil queen, an evil queen who lived in a faraway wood.”
Mac was riveted, a broad smile splayed across his face.
“The deal was that, in time, the evil queen would come for the second child, the little boy, and would take him with her into her forest kingdom. And one day she did. His sister, however, would have none of it, so she got on her bike.
“And took off after him . . .
“Into the deep, dark woods . . .”
In memory of Ruth Friedman
About the Author and Illustrator
COLIN MELOY once wrote Ray Bradbury a letter, informing him that he “considered himself an author too.” He was ten. Since then, Colin has gone on to be the singer and songwriter for the band the Decemberists, where he channels all of his weird ideas into weird songs. This is his first time channeling those ideas into a novel.
As a kid, CARSON ELLIS loved exploring the woods, drawing, and nursing wounded animals back to health. As an adult, little has changed—except she is now the acclaimed illustrator of several books for children, including Lemony Snicket’s The Composer Is Dead, Dillweed’s Revenge by Florence Parry Heide, and The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart.
Colin and Carson live with their son, Hank, in Portland, Oregon, quite near the Impassable Wilderness.
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Credits
Jacket art © 2011 by Carson Ellis
Jacket design by Carson Ellis and Sarah Hoy
Copyright
Wildwood: The Wildwood Chronicles, Book 1
Copyright © 2011 by Unadoptable Books LLC
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Meloy, Colin.
Wildwood / Colin Meloy ; illustrations by Carson Ellis. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (The Wildwood chronicles ; bk. 1)
Summary: When her baby brother is kidnapped by crows, seventh-grader Prue McKeel ventures into the forbidden Impassable Wilderness—a dangerous and magical forest at the edge of Portland, Oregon—and soon finds herself involved in a war among the various inhabitants.
ISBN 978-0-06-202468-8 (tr. bdg.)
[1. Fantasy. 2. Missing children—Fiction. 3. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 4. Animals—Fiction. 5. Portland (Or.)—Fiction.] I. Ellis, Carson, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.M516353Wi 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2011010072
CIP
>
AC
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11 12 13 14 15 LP/RRDH/CG/RRDCF 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
EPub Edition © AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 9780062093530
FIRST EDITION
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