Wildwood (Wildwood Chronicles 1)

Sterling was the first to shake himself from his shock. “Let’s move in!” he shouted, and the Irregulars, renewed, continued their advance.

The army of birds dispatched the crows in short order—those who weren’t torn apart by the raptors’ fierce talons fled into the surrounding woods as fast as their wings could fly them—and turned their force to the coyotes below. The coyotes, petrified by this new army that threatened them, were caught trying to choose which advancing force to engage. Those who aimed their rifles into the blur of wings above them were cut down by the farmers and bandits who dove into their ranks on the ground.

One coyote, his eyes set on Curtis, dove into the fight, his cutlass flashing; Curtis threw the blade of his saber up defensively, feeling the weight of his opponents’ weapon crashing into his own. No sooner had he done this than a pair of gnarled yellow claws appeared at the coyote’s shoulders and the animal was lifted skyward in the clutches of an enormous golden eagle. Curtis tumbled backward into a pile of dead leaves, and watching the bird and his catch grow distant in the sky, he let out a loud, victorious “WHOOP!”

The air soon became a cloud of wheeling raptors, diving to the ground to pick up more hapless coyote soldiers and returning to the air only to drop them to their deaths on the ground below. After a time, avoiding this aerial assault of falling coyotes became more of a concern to the Wildwood Irregulars on the ground than actually fighting them. More birds crested the ridge, and the forces, the conjoined Irregulars and the Avians, cleared the hillside of coyotes and made their advance on the ridge and the basilica beyond.

The Governess heard the eagles’ call. Her face whipped upward, staring at the sky. The sound was unearthly, a thousand birds crying out at once. Prue pushed herself up and scanned the horizon for the source of the noise.

“The birds,” whispered Alexandra to herself angrily. “The cursed birds.”

The Governess redoubled her focus on the task before her. Mac squirmed against her clutches as she placed him, roughly, on the headstone of the Plinth, his wails melding with the screams of the birds in the distance. Holding him flat against the Plinth with one hand, the Governess began her ritual. Her lips began to move, intoning the guttural sounds of some ancient incantation. With the tip of the dagger, she drew forth a single bulb of blood from the baby’s outstretched palm. Mac screamed.

Holding him flat against the Plinth with one hand, the Governess began her ritual.

Prue let out an impassioned yelp and tried to lift herself from the ground but discovered she could not move; the ivy had entwined itself around her legs and wrists. She was pinned to the clearing floor.

Prue’s mind raced as she struggled against the rippling vines of ivy. The tree branches above her swayed in the cold breeze, indifferent to the horror about to play out below them. If only they would stop her, she thought. If only you would reach down your boughs . . .

The Governess lifted Mac’s body from the Plinth with her left hand, her fingers clutching the cloth of his jumper, and held him high in the air. The dagger in her right hand flashed momentarily in a brief break of sun. The blood on Mac’s palm dripped down his finger, poised to fall at his fingertip to the ivy below.

“Stop. Now,” came a voice.

It was Brendan, standing on the top of the stairs. His yew bow was stretched taut, an arrow nocked in the string and held to his cheek. His eye squinted down the shaft of the arrow as he took aim at his target. His face was drained of color, and the front of his shirt was soaked a dark red.

Alexandra turned to the bandit and cracked a smile. “Too late, O King of the Bandits,” she said. She raised the dagger to strike.

If only you would, thought Prue.

Please. My brother.

Suddenly, a dark shape swept across the wide plaza, casting a moving shadow over the expanse of quivering green below. Prue looked up and saw that it was a pair of long, spindly fir boughs, arcing mightily toward the Governess’s extended hand. Her attention momentarily distracted by Brendan and his drawn bow, she did not see the boughs as they descended on the baby in her hand. In a quick motion, they had snatched Mac from her grip and carried him aloft. Alexandra shrieked, twisting as she grabbed for the baby’s feet.

Brendan released his arrow.

It sank home between Alexandra’s shoulder blades.

The ivy licked greedily at her ankles.

A single drop of blood fell from the wound the arrow had made, falling to spatter against the leaves of the ivy vines. The dagger fell from her fingers. The Dowager Governess followed the droplet of her blood into the awaiting tongues of the ivy vines, and the entire glade of dark green leaves surged forward, consuming her long body in the span of a few short seconds.

Mac, cradled high above the scene in the spiny fingers of the fir bough, cried fitfully. The ivy quavered around Prue, its spiny tendrils still holding her fast. She screamed, terrified that the ivy would consume her next.

Iphigenia called out to Brendan from across the clearing.

“Bandit King, you’ve fed the ivy! They’ve feasted on the Governess herself!” she shouted. “The plant is in your thrall. You must command it to sleep!”

A flicker of recognition flashed across Brendan’s tired face. Prue could see the realization pass fleetingly through his mind: He now had control of the most powerful force in the Wood. But no sooner had the idea occurred to him than he had cracked his bloodied lips wide and intoned the simple command:

“Sleep.”

The ivy immediately stopped its pulsing movement and relaxed into the floor of the square, its many leaves twitching like a sleeper on the edge of slumber. In a moment, the glade had ceased movement entirely. The vines around Prue’s wrists and legs released their powerful grip and she tore at them, quickly freeing herself from their bounds. The Bandit King, as if heeding his own command, slumped to the ground in a pile, his bow clattering across the paving stones at the top of the stair.

Iphigenia held a single hand above her head and gestured to the high branches of the fir tree, and Prue watched as the tree complied with the Mystic’s request, dropping Mac gingerly from bough to bough like a multitude of hands juggling a d

elicate bauble slowly to the ground. Once the tree’s freight had arrived at its lowest branch, the limb swung wide again, curving across the wide glade to deposit the baby softly into the lap of his sister.

Prue threw her arms around her brother and squeezed him tight to her chest. “Mac!” she cried. “I have you!”