by Colin Meloy
There then came a sound from the base of the pallet, a kind of earthy tearing noise, as the grass and bracken surrounding the bed began to undulate alive. Prue felt a kind of electricity surging through the ground at her feet; she could now hear the collective vegetation of the clearing begin its sorrowful keening.
AAAAAAAAAA.
It issued from every blade of grass, every branch and bramble. The mossy bed shook; the ground beneath began to tremble. Little tendrils of root shot up the side of the pallet and made a kind of webby cocoon before the earth below yawned open and the body of Iphigenia, Elder Mystic of North Wood, was consumed by the earth.
The world was silent.
The acolytes and Mystics awoke from their meditation. Prue remained as if paralyzed, staring at the virgin ground where the bed of moss had stood. Curtis grabbed her arm. “Whoa,” he said.
The boy who’d been the center of the meditators’ arc was standing farther off, just beyond the ring of light emanating from the torchbearers on the crowd’s fringe. Prue couldn’t help but notice that he seemed to be watching her.
After a time, the collected Mystics and acolytes began to move away from the circle and started mingling among the crowd. Prue noticed that many of the local townspeople and farmers had arrived, standing at a polite distance from the ceremony. They now joined the crowd, and an air of conviviality overtook the previously somber proceedings. Smiles started appearing on faces. Hands were shaken genially, people shared warm embraces. Prue turned and saw that Timon was not far off, speaking with a few of the younger acolytes. She brushed her hand against his side.
“Ah, Prue,” he said, smiling to see her. “I am speechless; however broken my heart, I am happy we made it in time for this. Regardless of the circumstances.”
“Yes,” said Prue. “Thank you for carrying us so far.” She paused, at a loss for words. Then: “I’m so confused! I’d come all this way, following some weird pull, some calling. I was sure she was the thing, the—whatever—that was pulling me. I can’t believe she’s gone and I’m here. I mean, what do I do now?”
“It will be revealed,” said Timon. “It will be revealed. I have no doubt.”
Curtis appeared at Prue’s side. “Where do we go from here?” he asked.
“A potluck is to be held at the Great Hall,” said Timon. “Even in times of rationing, a wake requires a gathering. Do you suppose it will be safe for you to attend?”
Septimus, who’d been on Curtis’s shoulder, spoke up. “My guess is this is the last place they’d think to look for you. No one in their right mind would’ve done what you’ve done. I mean, you’d have to have a serious nut loose to come to the scene of your own assassin’s crime.”
“Thanks,” said Prue.
“Just telling it like it is.”
“Or it’s a trap,” said Curtis. “They might’ve guessed we would make the journey. But it’s true: It doesn’t totally make sense. They couldn’t know why we came.”
“Exactly,” said Prue. “And that’s something I’m still working out.” She looked past the milling figures in the meadow to the tree. The glow from the torches sent little flickers of pale yellow light along its knobby trunk.
Why have you called me here?
The meadow was emptying of mourners. Those bearing torches were leading the way toward the eastern edge of the clearing. “You guys go on ahead,” said Prue. “I’ll be along in a bit. I’ll find my way.”
The three of them, Septimus, Timon, and Curtis, followed the potluck goers away from the funeral site. Prue watched them leave. A heaviness had lodged itself in the cavity of her chest. She walked around the far side of the tree, away from the burial site, to a little nook made by a particularly large limb of the tree’s exposed roots. Here, she placed both hands on the cold, silent wood and closed her eyes.
What is it? Why am I here?
There was no response; if the tree was now communicating with her, she was unable to register its thoughts.
What do you want me to do?
“You’ve come a long way.”
Prue opened her eyes. The voice was not coming from inside her mind; rather, she heard it behind her. She turned to see a young boy, maybe seven years old, standing there, holding a short lit candle. He wore the brown, hempen robe of the Mystics.
“And you put yourself in tremendous danger,” he said. Prue recognized him to be the boy who’d been at the center of the meditations; clearly, his station must’ve been high to be given that responsibility. As he walked closer, she noticed that he tended to look off to one side of her, as if he were watching something just beyond her shoulder.
“Are you a Mystic?” asked Prue. When the boy nodded, she said, “You’re so young!”
“I’m a Yearling,” said the boy, still looking away. “They call us that. The younger acolytes.”
“What’s your name?”
“I’m Alister. And you are Prue.”
Prue nodded, somewhat unnerved by the Yearling’s bearing. He seemed unconcerned with easing into an introduction.
“You knew the Elder Mystic?” he asked.
“I did, yeah,” said Prue. “She was, well, I suppose she was a friend. I didn’t know her that well, or for that long. But she was really important to me.”
“Me too, but now she is dead,” said the boy. His face betrayed no emotion at this abrupt declaration. His eyes strayed farther afield to look at the tree. He stood for a moment, silent, as he studied the lines in the wood. “It wants to tell you something.”
Prue was shocked. “What? Who?”
“The tree,” Alister said. “It’s called you here, you know.”
“How can you—how can you hear it?”
The boy shrugged. “Just something I’ve always been able to do. I don’t know why. I haven’t told my teachers, the older Mystics. They say I’m not supposed to be able to. I guess I just haven’t thought to correct them.”
Prue moved closer to the boy. “What’s it saying?”
The boy didn’t respond. Prue wasn’t sure whether he’d heard her. She repeated the question, but the boy still didn’t answer.
Finally, his attention now turned to Prue’s feet, he spoke. “It says that you can bring the severed three together.”
“I don’t know what that means,” said Prue, blinking rapidly.
“The Three Trees of the Wood,” explained Alister. “You can unite them. But …” He paused, his eyes looking skyward. The look on his face suggested that he was in the process of receiving. After the look faded, he nodded in quiet understanding. “But that is far off.” He smiled warmly at the vacant space just next to Prue’s left cheek. “You will rise to great prominence. A sovereign, perhaps.”
Prue was dumbfounded.
The child spoke again. “But first, the true heir must be … be …” Now Alister’s brow was furrowed in deep concentration. Whatever was being communicated to him was difficult to unpack. He reminded Prue of someone slowly translating a difficult language, like the few kids at her school for whom English was their second language. They were brimming with ideas; they just had a hard time getting them out in the language they were expected to use. His eyes then suggested that he’d arrived at a satisfactory translation. “Reanimated,” he said. “Yes, that’s it. Reanimated. The true heir must be reanimated.” However sure he was of the word, he seemed be to as flummoxed by it as Prue. “Do you know what that means?” he asked.
“Reanimated. Like, brought back to life? From the dead?”
“No, not quite,” said Alister. “Like a machine. Repair. I don’t know if there’s a human word for it.”
“Reanimate the true heir. Like a machine.” Prue puzzled over the words. “Who’s the true heir?”
The boy shrugged.
Somewhere, on the periphery of her thinking, something swirled, batting at her consciousness like a moth at a lightbulb. The answer was there, somewhere.
The Yearling continued his channeling haltingly. “This is the thin
g—the only thing—that will bring peace. And save you—you and your friends’ lives. But you’re—you’re not the only one. They know. The others know. They will be trying as well. And if they succeed, all is lost.” And then: “Reanimate the true heir. The twice-died boy.”
Prue had scarcely heard this last flow of information; she was too busy searching her brain for clues that might shed some light on this mysterious phrase. Reanimate the true heir. Like a machine. The twice-died boy. What did that even mean? And then it struck her. “Alexei!” she said aloud. “The boy prince!”
“The tree does not recognize cultural signifiers,” Alister said, and Prue cocked an eyebrow at him.
“Anyway,” she said, “it must mean Alexei, Alexandra’s—the Dowager Governess’s—son! When he died, she brought him back to life as a mechanical—thing! Then …” Something weird and gross involving teeth, she remembered. It had been so long ago, her meeting with Owl Rex. That night when she’d slipped away from the Mansion and arrived at his South Wood residence. They’d sat in front of the blazing fire, sipping tea. He’d told her many incredible things, stories of the Dowager Governess and her husband, the late Grigor Svik. And of their young son, Alexei, who’d died in a—what?—hunting accident? She couldn’t quite remember the details. But yes: Alexandra, in her grief, had brought him back to life as a—what had been Owl’s word for it? An automaton. That was it. She’d had a mechanical replica built of her son, and she’d brought him back to life by sticking his full set of teeth, which she’d saved, into the machine’s mouth. The mother and son were reunited. But, the story went, sometime later Alexei discovered the mystery of his existence and he, in his despair, removed something, some vital bit from his metal body, and destroyed it. He perished, this time for good; he was irreparable. The twice-died boy. The people of South Wood rose up against Alexandra, and she was exiled to Wildwood. And now the tree wanted someone to bring Alexei back? All these thoughts raced through Prue’s mind while the boy Yearling looked on.
“Yes,” was all he said. “That’s right.”
“Wait,” said Prue. “Did you just read my mind?”
“I didn’t. The tree did.”
She looked up at the tall, twisted boughs of the Council Tree. Periwinkle sousaphone, she thought.
“That’s silly,” said the boy.
“Just testing.”
“Oh.”
“But how are we supposed to do …,” she began, before transitioning to thought: How do we reanimate him?
The boy answered, “Find the makers. The makers must remake. Reanimate the true heir, the twice-died. This will bring peace. But know this: Your path will be uncommon. Sometimes it is necessary to go under to get above.” The boy’s face, after issuing the decree, went blank. He was silent for a time and his eyes gravitated toward the trunk of the tree, as if searching for something lost. “And that’s it. That’s all it can say.”
“That’s all? Nothing about how to do it?” Prue was becoming frantic in her questioning. “Or who these makers are? And how to find them?”
The boy only shook his head.
“That’s maddening,” said Prue. And then, for good measure, she turned to the tree and thought, That’s maddening. The wind whipped through the meadow; now the only light came from a few torches on the far side of the tree. They cast the trunk in a ghostly silhouette. The boy began wandering away, his eyes fixated on something in the distance.
“Wait!” called Prue, carefully stepping after him.
“Find the makers,” said the boy, as if to himself. “Reanimate the true heir.”
“I don’t know what this means!” shouted Prue. The boy had moved beyond the illuminated halo of the torches; he had disappeared into the bordering dark.
“Find the makers,” Prue heard the boy’s voice sound. “Reanimate the true heir.”
And then she was alone.
CHAPTER 11
Across the Boundary
Unthank led the three girls into the office and shut the door behind them. To Elsie, the sound of the door latching cracked like a lightning strike, and she cringed to hear it. What’s more, she hadn’t even been allowed to go to the dormitory to get her Intrepid Tina doll, and her hands felt very empty without her. No one had spoken since they’d left the factory floor; the silence had been oppressive, ominous. Only their footsteps, echoing noisily on the hallway floor, broke the quiet. Inside the office, Elsie was greeted with a very strange array of sights: a weird, metallic chair in the center of the room, bookshelves stacked with little glass jars and vials, the blinking lights of a bunch of little white boxes—the same kind that Unthank had carried with him when he made his accusations to the kids in the machine shop.
He’d been positively apoplectic then; now he seemed to be almost giddy. Once he’d shepherded the girls into the office and closed the door, he lined Elsie, Rachel, and Martha up in front of his desk and began rubbing his hands together excitedly.
“Three of you,” he said. “Three live specimens. It’s not often that such an opportunity presents itself.”
Miss Mudrak stood to the side of the line of three, looking down with a disinterested scowl on her face.
“What have you done with Carl?” Rachel asked Unthank, her voice imbued with a rare kind of bravery.
“And all the others?” added Martha.
Unthank responded, “Shush, girls. Think of it this way: You’re making an enormous contribution to science. Not only to science, actually, but the progress of humankind. You will be remembered and lauded. When people talk about space flight, it’s the ones who took the risks who are most remembered. We don’t know much about those Russian scientists, but we sure know who the first into space was, don’t we?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Laika!”
“That was a dog,” said Martha.
“Doesn’t matter. A very famous dog.”
“And didn’t she die?” she pressed.
Unthank only glared at her.
“What are you getting at?” asked Rachel. “What are you going to do with us?”
Unthank paused, as if collecting his thoughts. He knelt down in front of the three girls like a proud parent, sizing up his brood after a successful holiday recital. “Girls,” he said. “Girls.”
Elsie was suspicious of this turn of events; his earlier frustration and anger seemed to have vanished completely.
He continued, “I have a dream. I have a great ambition. And with your help, I’m going to achieve it.” He looked off to his right, where a set of high windows let in the gray light of the winter day. A few trees could be seen distantly through the foggy panes. He stood and walked to those windows, peering out of them. “Out there,” he said, pointing to the trees, “out there is a vast swath of untouched, untrammeled resources. Trees. Minerals. Land. Thousands upon thousands of acres of it. This so-called Impassable Wilderness, this wild area, which so far no man or woman has had the guts and the guile to conquer—I intend to be the one, when the history is written, to have finally overcome the challenges of the place to call it my own.” The color in his face was rising; he was getting very excited. He jogged over to his desk, piled high with papers. Pulling a few maps from the surface, he waved them at the three girls.
“Look at this,” he said. “I mean: There are no deeds, no tax records, no Bureau of Land Management surveys. This place would seem to not even exist! And yet it’s right there, on the cusp of our city, taunting us. Toying with us. As if the whole place were just wagging its great green tongue at us.”
The girls just stared at the man.
“Well, I’m this close—this close!” He was holding his thumb and index finger a few inches apart. “I’ve had a few ideas the past week—a few, in the parlance of us scientists, ‘eureka moments.’ I thought I’d have to wait and parse out those ideas over weeks and weeks, as more kids became Unadoptable. But now I have three. Three pitch-perfect Unadoptable children on which to try the spoils of my research.”
Elsie couldn’t
keep silent any longer. “Sir, Mr. Unthank,” she said, pleadingly. “Me and my sister’s parents are coming for us in less than a week. Please, sir, let us go. They’re expecting us to be safe here.”
“Parents,” he said, pausing as if trying to remember the meaning of the word. “Coming for you?” He looked at Desdemona.
“This is true,” said Miss Mudrak icily.
Rachel interceded. “Yeah, they were only boarding us here. They went to Turkey to look for my brother. They’ll be back really soon. Plus, my dad’s really big and knows how to knife-fight.”
“He knows how to knife-fight?” asked Elsie, unable to stop herself. Rachel just shot her a glare.
“Well,” said Unthank, “that sounds scary. How about you? Should we be worried about your parents?” He had rounded on Martha.
Desdemona answered for her: “The Chinese is orphan.”
“My name’s Martha,” corrected the girl angrily, “and I’m Korean.” Her voice pitched down a somber octave as she said, “My parents aren’t coming back for me.”
“Well, that’s convenient, at least,” said Unthank. He looked back at the Mehlbergs. “As for you two, I’m sorry to say that your parents were well aware of the agreed terms and conditions associated with boarding children at the Unthank Home. I’ll show you.” He walked back to the desk and, rifling through an overcrowded file cabinet, returned with a piece of paper. It was an application of some sort. Elsie and Rachel’s names had been written—in her mother’s hand—at the top of the page. Both her mother and father had signed the document. Unthank traced his finger along a paragraph of text below the signature line, text printed so small as to be almost illegible.
“You’ll see here, at the bottom of the page, where it says (and I quote): ‘The Proprietors reserve the right to mete punishment at their discretion if the child is deemed a hazard to themselves or the greater population. Three such infractions will render the child Unadoptable, at which point the Proprietors reserve the right to remove such a child from the adoptive population of the Home.’” He looked up from the page. “Pretty clear, really. Wouldn’t you say, Miss Mudrak?”
