by Colin Meloy
Roger smiled embarrassedly at Unthank and Wigman, who stood speechless at his side. He turned back to the group of kids. “Hand him over, kiddos,” he said with all the charm of an impatient dogcatcher.
Unthank managed to snap out of his reverie. “That’s Carol Grod, the machinist. The guy who made the Cog?” he asked, though it sounded more like a statement that he wished somehow proved false. He couldn’t believe the serendipity.
“Yes, Mr. Unthank,” said Roger. “One of them, anyway. That, right there, is one half of our ticket to success.”
Wigman, having heard the exchange, had begun looking at the gaggle of children in an entirely different light. “Listen to him, kids,” he said, fast making sense of the situation. “Give us the old man.” He paused, considering his next words before deciding that threatening children was fairly acceptable behavior in the Industrial Wastes. “And no one gets hurt.”
“You’re the one who’s gonna get hurt,” said Martha.
The crowd of children murmured their determined consent.
Rachel walked to Martha’s side and faced the men defiantly. “Thirty-eight to three,” she said. “That’s how I figure it. We’re going to cross the bridge, simple as that. I don’t think you’ll be wanting to stand in our way.”
Unthank swallowed nervously. Roger squirmed in his pointy black shoes, his eyes never wavering from the figure of the blind man. Wigman seemed unperturbed. He reached into his pocket and retrieved something that looked like a cell phone. Flipping it open with his thumb, he depressed a button, and suddenly the silos and smokestacks of the Industrial Wastes were ringing with the persistent, clamoring sound of a ringing bell. The children all threw their hands to their ears; the noise was near deafening.
Doors, once imperceptible, revealed themselves in their opening amid the tangle of rusted piping and wire; from each spewed an army of maroon-beanied hulks, their muscled shoulders near to bursting from their gray work shirts and overalls. They carried ratchets and hammers, wrenches and pipes. The protuberance of their chins, speckled with stubble, bore such a resemblance, one to the other, that they looked as if they’d been birthed from the same test tube. The giant men fanned out, and soon the pack of kids found themselves surrounded.
Addressing the kids, Wigman yelled over the clamorous sound of the clanging bell, which continued to ring unabated, even though the alarm had clearly been heeded, “You’re in the land of the Titans, kiddies,” he said. “No one threatens a Titan of Industry on his own ground.”
The rain was falling harder now; the last light of the day was dissipating westward. Prue and Curtis trudged despondently up the hill of junk away from the circus and the noises of its shuttering. Their hair was soaked through from the freezing rain; their clothes clung chilly to their prickly skin. Septimus stood at Curtis’s shoulder, his fur so soaked with rain that he most resembled a used bath towel, wadded up on the floor of a water-wet bathroom. Prue didn’t think she’d ever felt more defeated than she did now. Her heart felt like it had sunk as far back in her rib cage as it could manage, like a cat cowering from a vengeful owner. It seemed to weigh down her every step as she navigated the discarded television sets and box springs of the junk heap.
“I suppose we’ll just head back to the moles,” she said. “Without Esben. They’ll be able to take us to South Wood, where we can try to find this other maker. Right?” It was like pulling a filled bucket from the depths of a well, so great was her effort in finding the will to speak about what lay ahead.
Perhaps, she reasoned, regardless of these apparent missteps, she was on the right path anyway. Perhaps the tree foresaw this hiccup—Esben’s unwillingness, his implacability—and the dominoes would continue to fall in their favor. Kismet, was what her mother had once called such things. A kind of magic symmetry to the world. She wasn’t sure, however, how long they’d be able to string such events together before something eventually went wrong. No, it was best that they just soldier on. Return to South Wood. Rally the people. Something was bound to offer itself.
Curtis remained silent; Prue assumed he hadn’t heard her.
“I mean,” Prue continued, “we’ll have to see if we can just make do with one maker. Maybe one is enough after all; maybe we can be his eyes. What do you think?”
“I’m not going.”
“What?” Prue stopped abruptly.
“I said, I’m not going.” Curtis walked past her, making his way over the garbage-strewn ground. “I’m sorry. I made an oath. I have to go back to the camp.”
“What are you talking about, Curtis? What about the tree?”
Curtis stopped and pivoted, glaring at her. “The tree! The tree! All this talk about the tree!” His voice was quavering with emotion. “I don’t hear plants talk, Prue. For all I know, this is some weird hallucination you’re having. And I’ve humored you this far. Find the makers? Reanimate the heir? What’s all that supposed to even mean? How is that supposed to help anyone?”
Prue could feel tears springing to her eyes. “It is,” she managed. “It is going to help things. I know.”
Septimus had remained silent; he watched the two of them from his perch at Curtis’s collar. The boy spoke again. “I told you, I made a vow. The longer I’m away from that camp, the more I’m going against it.”
“So just like that. You’re leaving me.”
“Well, don’t put it that way. I’ve been with you for a long time now. And all along, all I’ve wanted to do was get this thing taken care of so I could find out what happened to Brendan and everybody. That’s where my, you know, allegiance is.” He paused, as if measuring the impact of his next words. “Prue, maybe you should just go home. Go back to your parents. Maybe this whole thing with Alexei is just over our heads.”
“Me?” Prue asked, taken aback. “I should go back to my parents? You’re setting the standard here, Curtis. What about your parents?”
“I know, but—”
“But nothing,” countered Prue. “I know what I have to do. The boy—the tree—told me. Everything else is unimportant right now. You know what? I haven’t thought about my parents this whole time. For some reason, it’s like my heart isn’t in the Outside anymore. It’s there. There in the Wood.” She pointed angrily at the horizon to the west. “I’m a Woodian, Curtis. North, South, Wild. What I do now, I do for the tree. I’ve been called. Nothing can change that. You’ve got your oath and I have my calling. My life in the Outside is over.”
Curtis stared at her, unsure how to respond. “Fine,” he said, after a beat.
“Fine,” said Prue, battling the swelling emotion in her chest. “You go do your thing. Find your bandits. I’m sorry for whatever harm I caused you and your brothers and sisters. I have to do this.” She turned and continued down the trash heap; the shack that housed the ladder to the underground was not far off.
Curtis remained. “Listen,” he called after her, the defiance in his voice softening, “we’ll reconnect in South Wood. How does that sound? Let me figure out what happened to the bandit camp; I’ll stick around to rebuild if necessary. I’ll send word when I can join you. The moles will help you out, I’m sure.”
“I’ll be fine,” shouted Prue over her shoulder. “It’s not like I needed you around when I was looking for Mac.”
That last bit stung. Curtis watched his friend disappear around a pile of transistor radios. A clutch of rusted springs lay at his feet and he kicked them, angrily.
“Can I speak?” asked Septimus.
“Of course you can,” responded Curtis.
“Don’t be so hard on her,” he said. “She’s a lot more fragile than you think.”
“Maybe so. But she definitely doesn’t let on.”
“Humans are weird that way. Something I’ve always observed.” The rat smoothed back his whiskers, flicking water from the tips of his claws. “So what’s the plan?”
“Back to the camp, find the survivors.”
“In that case, we should get moving. We’ve
got a long way to go before we’re back in Wildwood.”
Shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his pants, Curtis turned about and walked back toward the floodlights of the disassembling carnival. They would go over ground, he decided. He would walk through the Outside for the first time in a long while. They would cross the Railroad Bridge as he had so many months before; they would find their lost brothers and sisters. He was determined.
On the other side of the ridge of trash, Prue stumbled in the dark to arrive at the little trough in the pile where the dilapidated shack stood. She found herself muttering to herself as she walked, mouthing words of self-affirmation. “I’ll be fine,” she said, and then, as if to reinforce it, said, “You’ll be fine.” A little bit later: “Curtis will be fine,” along with its companion: “Of course he’ll be fine. He’s a big kid.” She realized, then and there, that she was enacting a conversation between herself and some invisible guardian; she was acting as her own surrogate parent.
Had she really meant all that, back there? Had she really forsworn her parents? The thought, oddly enough, created very little regret in the cavity of her chest; the overwhelming power of her task and the tree’s whispered instruction seemed to eclipse all other concerns. It felt as if she’d been slipped some powerful draft that had made her whole reasoning and perspective shift. Or, she figured, perhaps it was of her own making. Maybe this was what becoming an adult felt like.
Her mind was consumed by this new realization, this epiphany. As she grew closer to the shack, however, she saw that there was something very different about it; different from how she and Curtis had left it only a few hours before.
The door was open.
Indeed, it was so open as to be banging on its hinges, blown by the cold wind. Her mind flashed back to their first arrival; she was certain they’d closed it tightly before they’d left to search for Esben, for fear of someone finding the hole. They’d even put a spike through the latch to keep it closed.
That was when she began to hear the noise. It sounded like a broken, uncommon yell—a voice in a garbled dialect on a transcontinental phone call. She realized it seemed to be coming from her feet. She looked down to see a gray tuft of grass peeking up through a tangle of rusted wire. The sound grew in volume, its timbre more focused and intense.
Prue squatted down, her feet on either side of the tuft. What is it? she thought.
GGG.
She screwed up her brow and focused; the bit of grass seemed to be wanting to convey something—something of grave importance. Like a ship cutting through a dense blanket of fog, the little plant’s desire to speak became more and more clear to Prue’s mind.
GGGGGG!
What is it? she repeated. What are you trying to say?
Louder now. GGGGG.
It became clear that the grass was trying, to the best of its ability, to scream at her.
And then it broke through:
GO!
Prue nearly fell over, so great was her surprise. The plant had formed a cogent, single word in the center of her mind, its meaning as evident as if she’d been yelled at through a megaphone. It was the first time she’d ever heard the noises in her head coalesce into an intelligible thought. The grass made a kind of sigh, as if it were relieved that she’d finally understood what it was trying to say. It seemed so simple: She now realized it wasn’t the plants who’d lacked the sufficient power to communicate clearly; it had been her own slow learning curve.
I’ve got to get out of here, she suddenly knew.
She began to walk away from the grass, which, lapsed back into wordlessness, was sounding a kind of howling moan. She searched her surroundings for a route of escape; a tunnel made by a pair of toppled car fenders suggested itself. Before she could arrive there, however, a dark shape stepped between herself and her target.
“Where to, little one?” asked the shape.
Prue froze.
The shape, black as pitch, seemed to undulate slightly in her field of vision; the evening’s dark was pervasive now. The glow of the departing carnival, just beyond the ridge of trash, dimly lit the scene. Prue watched with horror as the shape convulsed before her eyes.
“Who’s there?” she called out, though she knew the answer to her question.
“Just your old science teacher, Prue. Your old pal.” The dark shape of Darla Thennis—neither fox nor human—seemed to spasm in between shapes, the movements making a kind of eerie quaver in the woman’s voice. “Been some time, hasn’t it? Now, I’m not one to hold a grudge, but you did a pretty bad thing back there at your precious bandit camp. A pretty bad thing.”
Prue’s eyes adjusted slightly to the dark; she saw two gleaming eyes peering out from the wobbly dark shape. “Just let me go, Darla.”
The shape coughed a laugh. “Let you go? After what you did to Callista? Poor, sweet Callista.” The contortions ceased; the figure, caught between its two warring shapes, began to approach her. The nascent glow of a low moon, hidden by clouds, gave light to the horrible thing: It was undeniably the shape of a woman—she walked upright, though hunched—but her head had a distinctly canine shape. Twin fangs jutted over her lower lip; black fur, matted from the rain, covered her otherwise naked body. It was the most hideous sight Prue had ever witnessed; she recoiled in revulsion.
“What’s the matter?” asked Darla. “Do I scare you?”
Prue began moving backward; a bent piece of rebar caught her boot heel, and she fell backward against the ground.
“You don’t think, do you,” said Darla, approaching. “I mean, it was smart of you, staying underground; very clever. But I knew you’d eventually come up for air. They all do. See, I’ve been doing this a long time now. I’ve killed a lot of things. Animals, humans. Yes, even kids. I take particular pleasure in the children, actually.” She punctuated this statement with a wide smile before continuing. “In the process, I’ve come to learn folks’ motivations, the things that drive ’em. I’ve also learned to be patient. Very, very patient. I figured maybe you were dead, sure. That was an awfully long fall you took. But it just didn’t taste right.” She was circling her now, toying with her. Her speech sounded like it came from someone who’d been in isolation for too long; it was half-crazed and weirdly cadenced. Prue scrambled backward, trying to push herself onto her feet. The uneven terrain of the trash heap was unforgiving. The fox-woman spoke on. “That’s the only way to explain it. So I was patient. I didn’t rush things. I knew, if you survived the fall, you’d pop up again.” To illustrate the word pop, she made twin explosive gestures with her hands, spooking Prue. Her fingers were black with fur and topped by long, yellow claws. “And lookit that. You did.”
“But how could you have known?” murmured Prue. Her fingers wormed their way to her knapsack; it still lay slung over her shoulders. She found the clasps mercifully undone.
“Good question,” responded Darla, taking on her life-science-teacher tone. “Very adept. Passing grades, all around. You should know the answer yourself, Prue. Prue of the Council Tree, the Half-Breed Mystic, Wildwood Regina, the Bicycle Maiden. I have tricks. I have informers.” Again, those fingers illustrated the words in little flicks and wiggles. “All over. Even here, in the vulgar Outside.”
Judging from the bedraggled and half-shapen appearance of the Kitsune, Prue guessed that this assassin was well at the end of her rope. She looked as if she’d been driven mad. Prue couldn’t decide if that was a good or bad thing. Her fingers continued their excavation of the knapsack’s innards.
“Now,” said Darla, “we can do this quick and easy or we can drag it out. The old lady, that miserable, magical hag, put up an inconvenient amount of resistance. I would prefer if we didn’t have to play that little scene out.” She turned her head, as if stretching her neck; she appeared to be practicing a few momentary exercises before her deadly work began. But before she managed to do anything further, she let out a shrill, harrowing scream.
Prue had stabbed her in the foot.
They were called stevedores. This is what Unthank had called them when he stepped to the man in the tight-fitting suit and asked him, fairly petulantly, why they’d needed to be brought into things and weren’t they handling this fine by themselves, thanks very much. Elsie had heard him. But regardless of their name and their strange, identical dress and comportment, they were moving slowly toward the group of Unadoptables in a way that could only be described as menacing. The stare-down between Unthank and the man who appeared to be his boss, Mr. Wigman, continued. It looked tense; Mr. Unthank seemed much put out by the stevedores’ presence, as if their being there was somehow undermining his authority. The stevedores, for their part, played up their threatening ferocity by smiling coyly and smacking their lead pipes and ratchets on their palms as they walked. Elsie looked at her sister; Rachel was grimacing.
“What do we do?” hissed Elsie to her sister. There were many moments during this prolonged adventure she’d been having since her parents deposited her at the Unthank Home when she’d wished she’d had Intrepid Tina; this was decidedly one of those times.
“I don’t know,” said Rachel.
The children watched as Roger spoke to Wigman, his voice haughty and impatient. “We don’t need the children, Mr. Wigman. We need that man.”
Wigman, being petitioned from both sides, waved both Unthank and Roger away. “Listen, folks,” he said, addressing the crowd. “It’s starting to rain. It’s getting dark.” Both of these things were true; the light was disappearing to the west, and a chill drizzle was wetting the hair and maroon beanies of everyone present. “Let’s all move this little conference back to the Unthank Home. No one gets hurt, no one has to do any hurting. Agreed?”
The stevedores had stopped their advance, though they continued to flaunt their weaponry in a decidedly threatening fashion. There seemed to be no avenue of escape. The stevedores outnumbered the Unadoptables—Elsie guessed there to be fifty of them. Finally, Carol spoke up from the center of the crowd. “Let’s do as they say, children. No sense in resisting.”
