Wildwood (Wildwood Chronicles 1)

“Never mind,” whispered Cormac. “Let’s keep moving.”

They took the right turn, Angus leading the way, with his sputtering torch casting a yellow globe of light along the corridor walls. Plant roots and knobby boulders vied for space along the ceiling; the loose, brown dirt of the floor was pockmarked with paw prints.

Curtis, falling behind momentarily, tripped over a leather strap from his boot that had come loose. He caught himself before h

itting the ground but issued a loud “OOF!”

“Shhhh!” hissed Seamus. “Keep those footsteps light. We don’t want the whole coyote army coming down on us.”

“Sorry!” whispered Curtis. “I’ll try.” A look on Seamus’s face, however, belied a kind of puzzlement. It was strange that they had yet to hear any sound from their captors; the warren tunnels were surprisingly silent.

Finally, they arrived at another intersection and, at Dmitri’s behest, they took a smaller corridor that led off to the left. This snaked around for a time before ending in a cramped chamber.

“Hold up,” instructed Angus quietly. He hefted the torch, and the light illuminated a short wooden door in the wall of the chamber left slightly ajar. “I hear something.”

The band of escapees held their collective breaths. A scurrying noise could be heard breaking the silence, the sound of small feet on the dirt floor.

A rat’s whiskery snout appeared around the corner of the door. It was Septimus. Using a single forepaw, he shoved the door open with a loud creak.

Cormac threw his finger to his lips reproachfully, reminding the rat of the need to stay silent, but Septimus was undeterred.

“It’s empty, lads,” he said. “The warren’s abandoned.”

“What?” asked Cormac, instinctively whispering.

“Gone. Vanished. Whoosh,” said Septimus, splaying the bony fingers of his paws before him. “Don’t need to be quiet. No one’s gonna hear you.”

“But . . . ,” came Dmitri’s voice from the back of the group. “They were just going to—to leave me there? In that cage?”

“What about us, you mutt? We were gonna be left too,” said Seamus.

“Well, I know but . . . I mean, you guys were the enemy,” explained Dmitri.

“Looks like the Dowager cares as little for her soldiers,” said Angus. The overall posture of the bandits had relaxed considerably. Seamus leaned against the earthen wall, picking dirt from a fingernail.

Dmitri was gutted. “I guess so,” he said slowly. “And I was only in there for ‘general insolence,’ whatever that means.”

“Capital crime, apparently,” said Angus.

Septimus interjected, “But you’re still looking for that Bandit King of yours, yes?”

Cormac’s face lit up. “Did they leave him? Where is he?”

“Follow me,” said Septimus, and he disappeared around the corner of the doorway.

Angus swept the sparking torch upright, and the four bandits, Curtis, and Dmitri followed the rat down the darkened passage.

As soon as the last bell peal had echoed into oblivion, Prue was on her bike and pedaling madly across the remaining span of the bridge—she was already beginning to regret her own impudence at ringing the bell. A wind had picked up, and she could feel the cold air from the river surface crest the lip of the bridge and sway the uppermost cabling of the suspension, causing it to whine noisily. The pavement seemed to shift underneath Prue’s bike tires, and, mindful that the bridge was in fact spectral, she set her eyes on the ground at the far side, intent on her crossing.

The rear tire of the Radio Flyer wagon had scarcely touched the earth on the other side when the mist reared once again into a massive thunderhead of fog and the bridge was consumed by the clouds. Prue slammed on the brakes and turned to watch the green steel towers dissipate in the mist, and then the smoke cleared to reveal the empty river valley yawning below her, uncrossable.

Prue turned back to the hill, gazed up at the looming barrier of trees before her, and shivered. The sun, now rising, glowed moodily behind a heavy curtain of clouds, its light a blue-gray sheen against the topmost firs and cedars of the forest. A chorus of birdsong was being taken up, and the air grew clamorously melodic. Looking down the hill, she saw that a dirt path had been worn in against the slope, leading away to the North and parallel to the river. Holding the handlebars of her bike, she cautiously scampered the few feet down to the path and began following it.

After a time, the ground became considerably less steep and no longer cut such a severe angle into the hillside; it ambled through the and short trees that made up this sort of forest boundary-land. Prue found she was able to comfortably ride her bike along the path, the red wagon raising a considerable ruckus as it clanged along behind her.

When she felt like she’d gone far enough, she stopped and gauged her position: Looking south, St. Johns was a distant speckle of rooftops, and the Railroad Bridge was all but lost to the shifting layers of mist on the river.

“Back we go,” Prue sighed.