Wildwood (Wildwood Chronicles 1)

“Good General,” said Iphigenia. “How did you hear word of our . . . predicament?”

“A sparrow,” replied the general. “A young sparrow named Enver. He took a particular interest in the young Outsider girl. He sought news from the birds of Wildwood as a way to follow the girl’s progress. When the Dowager’s army had amassed and began marching south, the news traveled very quickly. We knew that we had to intercede. Alas”—the general pecked at the underside of his wing thoughtfully, as a man might stroke his beard—“our numbers are fairly small. The persecutions of South Wood have badly diminished our standing.”

The Elder Mystic nodded. “Perhaps then,” she said, “our work is not completed.” She turned to Prue and Curtis, snaking her fingers into the crooks of their arms and standing up. “Help me down the stairs, little ones,” she said. “I’ve got an idea I’d like to put to the good General. I’ve a mind to set some things right. We do have an army at our disposal, after all.”

CHAPTER 28

Wildwood Rising

A steady breeze picked up the tattered scraps of fallen leaves on the dirt paving of the Long Road and shuffled them around in little funnels. The trees were changing more and more each day; another autumn was reaching its height. Soon, winter would arrive with its steady gloom of rain and the occasional fall of snow. The people of South Wood were busy stocking their larders with the jarred surplus of the summer’s harvest and eyeing their steep woodpiles while their begrudging offspring stacked it in tidy blocks in dry enclosures, away from their house walls, where the bugs could get in.

The two guards stood on either side

of the wide wooden gate, leaning on their rifles. They’d been on the shift for more than five hours and were already looking forward to their reprieve for the evening. The sun was shifting downward in the sky; an early twilight was at hand. They could smell the first whiffs of the nearby houses’ dinners being put on the hob, and it made their stomachs growl. In unison, in fact. Hearing it, they looked at each other and gave a laugh.

A noise sounded from the distance. A clattering noise. Something was coming toward them on the Long Road.

They stiffened. The evening’s rush hour had long passed, and the road’s travelers had become fairly sparse, as they always did at this time of the evening. Once the final shipments had made their way into the South Wood gates, the Long Road often had the feel of a deserted highway.

The clattering grew closer. The guards exchanged a glance and stood up from their leaning positions, both of them staring down the wide expanse of the road. The noise was distinctly metallic, like a chain being rattled or . . .

A bicycle.

It came around a distant bend, weaving under the weight of its passengers. On the front of the handlebars sat a young boy with a fountain of curly black hair atop his head. He was wearing a dirty, torn military uniform. As the bike came closer, the guards saw that the person pedaling the bike was a young girl with short dark hair; a small red wagon bounced along behind the bike, carrying a bald infant swaddled in a pile of blankets.

The bike came to a quick, skidding stop in front of the gates, and the boy on the handlebars hopped off. He pulled a sling from his pocket and began swinging it casually at his side. The girl dismounted from the seat and, after quickly checking on the baby in the wagon, turned to the two guards.

“Let us through,” she said.

The guard on the left of the gate laughed, taking in the strange sight. “Oh yeah?” he asked. “What’s yer business?”

“We’ve come to free Owl Rex and the citizens of the Avian Principality from the South Wood Prison,” she said matter-of-factly. “Oh, and to remove Lars Svik and his cronies from power.” She thought for a moment, adding, “Peacefully, if at all possible.”

The guards stared, speechless.

The boy with the sling prompted, “Well? You gonna open up?”

The guard on the right tried to snap himself from his confusion. “I—I mean—we—you’ve got to be—I mean, NO! What are you talking about?”

“This is a coup,” said the girl. “So if you wouldn’t mind opening those gates, we’d greatly appreciate it.”

The guard continued to sputter. “But—come on, now, little one. You and what army?”

The girl smiled. “This one,” she said.

From behind them, around the distant bend of the Long Road, the horizon was suddenly filled with a multitude of birds, humans, and animals, a wall of figures moving toward the great gate.

It would be called “The Bicycle Coup” when, in due time, the history was written. It would be recorded as a perfectly peaceful overthrow, the existing South Wood army having already been at odds with the ever-expanding force of the SWORD, the government’s nefarious secret police. As the combined force of the Avian infantry and the so-called Wildwood Irregulars marched through the streets of South Wood, they were met with open arms, the citizens and soldiers falling into step with them on the march toward Pittock Mansion. When they’d finally arrived at the doors of the Mansion, the major players of the Svik administration had either escaped, running into the surrounding woods to, presumably, find refuge in some damp gully in Wildwood, or were kneeling in supplication on the marble floor of the Mansion foyer.

There, the arriving revolutionaries issued their first demand: the keys to the South Wood Prison. The overthrown officials handed them over with no resistance. The revolutionaries then boarded the steam train that ran to the prison, a welcome respite since they’d spent the better part of the last twelve hours on a grueling march through half the country. When they’d arrived at the walls of the prison, the gates were thrown open and a pinwheeling collage of plumage erupted from within, funneling into the sky. The imprisoned birds of the Avian Principality were freed.

The last bird to exit the prison, it is recorded, was a very large owl, the Crown Prince of the Avians, and he was met with embraces from the lead revolutionaries. Together, they decamped back to Pittock Mansion and set about mapping out a new era for the Wood.

“Hold still,” instructed Prue, her colored pencil poised over the page of her sketchbook.

Enver cocked an eye sideways and looked at her. “How much longer?” he managed through a half-open beak. He shifted his small talons on the railing of the balcony, trying to find a more comfortable stance.

“Almost done,” replied Prue, lowering the tip of the pencil and drawing a rust-colored streak. The wisp of the bird’s tail feather was complete. “There,” she said. She placed the pencil on the stone of the railing and held the sketchbook at a distance, so the grainy details of the colored pencil blurred together to form the striped features of the sparrow.