Wildwood (Wildwood Chronicles 1)

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.