Wildwood (Wildwood Chronicles 1)

Prue stared at him. “What?”

“This woman you met,” her dad said slowly. “This Governess. Your mother and I, we’ve met her before.”

“What!?” Prue shouted. The sudden interjection sent a shower of pain from her bruised rib.

Prue’s dad raised his hands in an effort to quiet her. “Shhh!” he said. “You’ll wake your mother. Someone in this house has got to get rest.”

“You met her? Alexandra?” hissed Prue, quieter this time. “When?”

“Long, long ago. Before you were born.” He shook his head sadly. “We should’ve known.” Heaving a deep sigh, he looked back up at Prue and continued.

“When your mother and I married, we were so excited to have children, to start our family. We bought this house and immediately began envisioning which room would be whose—always keen on the idea of having a boy and a girl. A brother and sister. But, as these things sometimes go, our hopes were never realized. We tried and tried, but no baby was coming. We saw doctors, specialists—went to holistic retreats and acupuncture sessions. Nothing. Even the most radical approaches seemed to be hopeless for us—we just couldn’t have kids. Your mother, she was heartbroken. It was a very sad time. We tried to get our heads around the idea of being a family without kids, but it was just so . . . so impossible.” He sighed again.

“One day, though, we were at the farmer’s market—you know, downtown—and I was off getting, I don’t know, rutabagas or something, and I came back looking for your mom and she’s at this weird booth—one I didn’t remember having seen before—talking to an old, old woman. The woman must’ve been in her eighties, she was selling trinkets and strange beads, and she had a whole shelf of weird bottles of tinctures behind her. Anyway, your mom was in a serious conversation with this woman when I came up, and your mother, she turned to me and said, ‘She can help us. She can make us have kids.’ Just like that. Well, at that point, we’d tried everything. I was starting to lose patience, but I knew it meant so much to your mother, so I said, ‘Okay.’ For a small price, she sold us this little box here.”

He picked up the small black container on the table. It looked to be made of painted teak; hinges on the side of the cube suggested a clamshell opening. A baseball could be comfortably concealed within. He continued:

“She instructed us to go to the bluffs, near the center of St. Johns—just down where that restaurant is—and, well, cast these runes.” Here he lifted the lid on the box and poured six smooth pebbles onto the Formica of the kitchen table. These sigils, varied in color, had each been inscribed with a different strange runic character.

“When we cast the runes, she said, a bridge would appear. But not just a bridge

, the ghost of a bridge. Apparently the apparition of some bridge that had been there long ago. And once that bridge had been called into existence, we were to walk to its middle point and ring a bell, and a woman would appear. She said we would recognize the woman because she was tall and very beautiful and she would be wearing a headdress of feathers. Well, naturally this all seemed like a bunch of hooey, really, but we were desperate and figured it was worth a shot, and if it didn’t work we could just have a good laugh about the whole thing. So that night, when it was late and the streets were deserted, we walked out to the bluff and found this little stone slab, and we emptied the pebbles onto the stone. And the next thing you know, this big mist appears over the river and a giant, green bridge—with these cables and towers—just appears in front of us. I mean, it was incredible. Never had seen anything like it before. And we walk out to the middle of the bridge and, sure enough, there’s a bell, a little antique-looking bell, just hanging from one of the columns, and we ring it a few times. So we wait there, and we wait a long time. Just the two of us, standing in the middle of this ‘ghost bridge.’ All of a sudden, a figure appears on the other side of the bridge walking toward us out of the mist. It’s a woman, and she’s wearing this funny headdress.

“She doesn’t introduce herself, she just says, ‘So you need a baby?’ And we nod yes. And she says, ‘I’ll make you with child but you have to agree to something.’ And we say, Okay, what is it? And she says, ‘If you ever have a second child, that child belongs to me.’”

A chill came over Prue. She stared at her father.

Her dad, sensing her amazement, gulped loudly and continued, “At that point, Prue, we were desperate. We just wanted a kid, you know? So we said yes. Since it seemed impossible that we would have another child, it seemed like a good deal. Her end of the bargain would probably never happen, right? And this woman, this weird woman, steps forward and just lays her palm on your mother’s stomach and that’s it—she turns around and walks away. We walk back home over the bridge, and the bridge disappears behind us as soon as we’ve stepped off. Your mom, she doesn’t feel much different, and we figure the whole thing was some sort of elaborate hoax until a few weeks later when we were at a doctor’s appointment and it turns out, your mom was pregnant—with you!”

Clearly, her dad intended this to be a heartwarming moment, but it was lost on Prue. She was feeling fairly disturbed.

Her father clocked her response with a sorry grimace before he went on, saying, “So that was it. You were born. And there never were two people more happy than your mom and I. We were over the moon. You were the sweetest baby anyone could’ve imagined. And we never for a moment thought we’d have another kid—we’d been through hell and back to have one, after all—we were done. Single-kid family. That was us. Besides, as your mom and I got older, we figured it would be just impossible. Then, out of nowhere, some eleven years after you were born, your mom gets pregnant again. Out of nowhere. No way we saw that coming. Well, we figured that it had been long enough and that woman we met on the bridge had probably forgotten about the whole thing, so we went through with it. And that was Macky.”

He sniffled a little, his eyes downcast. “So that’s it. We brought this on ourselves.” said her father. “That woman came back for her side of the deal.”

There was silence in the kitchen. Outside, the rain had stopped, and a soft breeze rustled the oak branches in the backyard.

“Prue?” her dad asked after she’d sat silent for a few moments. “Are you going to say anything?”

Footsteps in the entryway alerted Prue to the presence of her mother. She had just arrived at the door to the kitchen. She padded over to Prue and rested her hands on her shoulders. “Hi, babe,” she whispered. “We’re so sorry. We don’t blame you at all; there’s nothing you could’ve done. It was our mistake. Our stupid mistake.”

Prue’s father nodded. “You see, Mac never really belonged to us. As terrible as that sounds—it’s all clear now. But if not for that woman, this Dowager Governess, we’d never have been a family. We’d never have had you.” He looked directly into Prue’s eyes, tears welling up at the lip of his lower lashes. He reached out his hands and grabbed Prue’s and squeezed them.

Prue stared back at her father. Her hands didn’t move. Her mother’s fingers burrowed into her shoulder muscles. Prue’s ankle pulsed with a quiet pain. Her mind fumed.

“I’m going back,” she said.

Her father’s eyes widened. His mouth slackened. “What?”

Prue gave a quick shake of her head, as if loosening herself from a dream. “Back. I’m going back.” In a decisive motion, she freed her hands from her father’s and picked up the black box on the table. She scooped the rune stones back into their container and snapped the lid shut. “I’ll be taking these,” she said. Her mother’s hands had dropped from her shoulders, and Prue scooted the chair back from the table. Standing, she briefly tested the strength of her ankle and, feeling less pain than she’d had since the accident, walked out of the kitchen.

“Wait!” shouted her mother, finally. Prue paid her no mind. She was already at the stairs and climbing, her mind quickly itemizing everything she’d need to do before leaving.

“Don’t be rash!” came her father’s voice from the bottom of the stairs. “Think this through. It’s not safe!”

Prue was in her room, attempting a superhero-like quick change into her clothes. She shoved the box of runes into the midsection of the hoodie’s pocket. The stones clattered from within. She knew that the Governess’s coyotes would be guarding the Railroad Bridge; she’d have to call this Ghost Bridge. It was the only way to cross the river. She turned to see her parents at her door.

“Think about this, Prue,” said her mother, desperate. “This is bigger than you. You’re only going to get hurt!”