Wildwood (Wildwood Chronicles 1)

She nodded. “Oh yes, and then, dear Curtis, I’m not sure anything could be done. Buzzards adore human flesh.”

Curtis’s body convulsed, and he clasped his hand to his mouth. He had grown considerably paler over the course of the last few minutes.

“But don’t worry, Curtis!” said the Governess, leaning forward. “I will personally see to it that a battalion is devoted to the search and rescue of your friend’s brother. We’ve dealt with these crows before; I have no doubt we will have ferreted out that boy in a few days’ time, trust me.”

The low light of the warren shivered in Curtis’s vision, and the dirt walls began to revolve slightly, sending a sickening feeling into his stomach. The feeling was stanched when he closed his eyes, so he rasped, “I think I might just rest my eyes a little, if that’s okay,” and shuttered his lids, reclining farther back on the bed of moss.

“You must be exhausted, my dear boy,” came the voice of the Governess, sounding closer now in the darkness. “You should rest. We’ll speak again in the morning. Until then, lie back. Sleep. Sleep and dream.”

And Curtis did just that.

Asleep, he did not see the Governess looking down on him fondly. He did not feel her lay a fur blanket over his body and tuck the hem tidily under his chin. He did not hear her sigh deeply to watch him sleep.

The first broken rays of dawn were filtering up through the trees when the mail van came to a halt at a massive stone wall. A towering pair of wooden doors provided a gateway through the wall, and a carved placard reading NORTH GATE was affixed to the keystone. Prue rubbed sleep from her eyes, exhausted after their nightlong drive, and looked out the window at the imposing wall as it stretched in either direction away from the road until it was swallowed by distant trees. A soft haze dusted the vegetation of the forest floor, and the green was cast in a crystalline shimmer by the early morning’s remaining dew. A few birds sang. Richard stubbed his third cigar of the night into the overflowing ashtray and waved at the two armored guards who stood on either side of the doors. They walked over to the van window and peered through the glass. When they saw Prue, their eyes widened, and Richard rolled the window down.

“An Outsider,” he explained wearily. “I’m bringing her to the Governor-Regent.”

“We had heard,” said one of the guards, an older man. His gray-whiskered beard protruded between the chinstraps of a tin helmet that closely resembled an overturned dinner plate. “We caught word from the Avians. You can go through.” The other guard was younger and appeared more aghast by Prue’s presence in the van. As the oaken doors of the gate were slowly heaved open and Richard drove beneath the wide stone arch, Prue caught a glimpse through the side-view mirror of the younger guard, standing stone-still in the middle of the road, watching the van. The look made her uncomfortable; she felt overly scrutinized, like some strange insect under a magnifying glass. Prue returned her attention to the road in front of the van as it widened on the ground beyond the gate.

“South Wood,” said Richard. “Home at last.”

The forest here had a completely different aspect than the wild scrub and crooked, looming trees of Wildwood: Prue began to see odd structures appearing in the woods along the road, what appeared to be modest houses and buildings. Some stood dramatically apart from the trees, built of rough stone and brick, while some seemed to grow from the trees themselves, shingled in branches and layers of moss. Others bolted up from the ground like burrows with colorful wooden doors and small porthole-like windows and sprouted crooked tin chimneys that belched wisps of smoke into the arbor eaves. A lattice of walkways and bridges linked the higher boughs of the trees together, and Prue craned her neck upward to see that they led to more houses, shacks, and outbuildings in the tops of the trees. People moved in and out of the buildings and populated the walkways and doorways, but not just people: animals, too. Deer and badgers, rabbits and moles walked among the humans in this miraculous world. Other roads appeared and intersected with the Long Road: arterial roads, side streets, and alleys, some paved with flagstones and brick, others covered in gravel and dirt and pockmarked with puddles remaining from the previous night’s rain.

The Long Road itself, after a time, became a grand avenue through the trees, and smooth, ancient ruts were worn into its paving stones. Lavish residences began to line the Road, multistory townhouses built of pale white granite and deep red brick with graceful porticos and mullioned windows. Some of the houses seemed to be built around the trees themselves, dramatic cedar trunks extending from the center of the roofs or out the side of the walls. The acrid smell of burning coal and creosote slightly tainted the air, a striking change from the clear, crisp air of Wildwood. The Road here became choked with traffic, even: Sputtering cars and battered old motor scooters vied for space along the flagstones among bicyclists, pedestrians, and clattering carts drawn by (literally) complaining oxen, horses, and mules.

“This is incredible,” Prue finally murmured once she’d recovered from her shock at seeing the forest come to life. “I can’t believe this has been here all along and I never even knew it.”

“I can’t believe this has been here all along and I never even knew it.”

Richard, his arm resting on the open van window, had just finished castigating a wobbly cyclist for cutting him off. He looked over at Prue and smiled. “Yup, here it is. South Wood in all its glory. A little cluttered, for my taste. The quiet of the North Wood is a bit more my speed. Country folk. Simple things.”

The section of road they traveled on now cut across the side of a hill, and a knobby stone bridge allowed passage over a rushing brook before the road began carving switchbacks up another hillside, this one rimmed with the wooden and stone facades of buildings gaudy with carnivalesque signs advertising cafés and taverns, shoe shops and soda fountains. The traffic was thickest here, and the van heaved jerkily forward along the steep and busy streets, Richard swearing under his breath every time he was forced to slam on the brakes for a stopped car or passing pedestrian. Finally, they topped the hill, and the traffic cleared and the buildings receded behind them as the forest fell away to reveal an extraordinary sight: a glorious granite mansion in the middle of a pristine park, its windows glinting in the bright morning sun. Prue drew in her breath; it was truly beautiful.

“Pittock Mansion, built centuries ago by a William J. Pittock to serve as the seat of power for South Wood—it has changed hands many times over the years, mostly peaceably, though sometimes by force,” explained Richard, in tourist guide mode, “as you can see from the many pockmarks in the granite from cannon and bullet fire. This country was forged in the clashing of divisi

ons, Port-Land Prue, and not a lot of those disagreements have been forgotten, I’m sad to say.” Sure enough, Prue could see the divots in the stately stone, though they did not diminish the grandeur of the place, its two north-facing corners capped with red-roofed turrets bordering a handsome balcony on the second floor.

The grounds of the Mansion suggested an immaculately tended English garden, hedges and flowering trees (denuded by the season) fanned in symmetric patterns away from the central hub of the Mansion—a stark contrast to the cluster and chaos of the busy streets in the woods below. A few couples strolled along the gravel paths; a family of beavers fed breadcrumbs to enthusiastic geese paddling in a resplendent statue-crowned fountain. The van exited the Long Road here and followed a circuitous stone road into the Mansion’s inner compound. A wrought-iron gate was thrown open at the end of the drive, and Richard navigated the van through the tumult of carriages and state vehicles that clogged the driveway. He eased to a stop in front of a pair of glass-paned French doors.

“And ’ere we are,” said Richard, letting the van idle noisily in front of the Mansion.

“And here we go,” Prue muttered as she threw the door open and stepped down onto the cobblestone drive.

Curtis, on the other hand, did not have such a nice introduction to the morning.

Just prior to waking, he had the clearest sensation of being home, in his bed, pillowed in his duvet with its Spider-Man duvet cover. As he woke, his eyes still closed, he marveled at the bizarre and vivid dream he’d been having, something involving him and Prue McKeel and a voyage into the Impassable Wilderness; it had been at times a terrifying dream, but now he felt a distant, nagging reluctance to reawaken into his normal life. When he did finally acquiesce and open his eyes, he screamed.

Above him stood a headless figure, clothed in an officer’s coat, its arms and legs made of the branches of a leafy tree. It loomed over him, inspecting him, ready to strike. Curtis grasped for his duvet and found it wasn’t there; his hands sank into the mossy loam of the dais. His surroundings came into focus: the ornate throne, the root-lined ceiling, the cracked mud of the walls. He immediately realized where he was: the throne room of the Dowager Governess. He scrambled backward, pressing himself against the rough wall, and readied himself for his attacker. The figure did not move.

A voice came from the middle of the room. “Good morning, Master Curtis,” said the voice, growling, gruff, and brittle. Curtis looked over to see one of the coyote soldiers, fresh from his dream, walk into the light of the braziers.

A sinking feeling of nausea was creeping up on Curtis. His mouth felt uncomfortably dry. He quickly glanced back over at the uniformed figure by the moss bed and realized, to his relief, that it was only a dummy.

“The Dowager Governess wished you to have this uniform. She instructed me to dress you and to make sure it fit correctly,” said the coyote, gesturing to the dummy. The slightest tone of resentment colored his voice.

The uniform slung over its shoulders looked newer than the tattered apparel of the coyote soldiers he had seen the day before: The coat was dark blue and held closed by bright brass buttons. The shoulders were crested with epaulets, and the hems of the sleeves ended in bright red cuffs, delicately brocaded with golden cording. The chest of the jacket was festooned with important-looking medals and badges. A wide black leather belt had been draped over one of the dummy’s stick-arms, and on it hung a scabbard encrusted with small river stones; a sword hilt, glinting gold and topped in a river-pebble pommel, jutted out from one end. A pair of dark tapered pants with silver piping clung to the dummy’s legs.

Curtis stared at the sight. “For me?” he asked. His surprise had sent a jolt up through his body, and his stomach turned. The coyote nodded and began pulling the uniform from the dummy. Once he had removed it, he shook it at the shoulders, the medals jingling, and waited patiently for Curtis to stand.