Wildwood (Wildwood Chronicles 1)

“Sure,” said Prue, just now waking from the spell the encounter with the Mehlbergs had cast on her. She reached down and grabbed Mac, trundling into the kitchen for good-night kisses from his parents. Once he’d been properly smothered in hugs, Prue took him upstairs, ignoring his tired whines, and put him in his jammies. She set him in the middle of his crib and snuggled his stuffed animal owl into his arms. She gave him a peck on the bald crown of his head and walked to the door, hitting the lights on the way out. “G’night, Macky,” she said.

She hadn’t gotten halfway down the hallway when she heard her brother’s mournful plea: “Pooooo! Pooooo!”

Stopping in her tracks, she sighed and rolled her eyes. Returning to the doorway of his room, she popped her head around the doorway. “What’s up?” she asked.

Mac gurgled something in response.

“Can’t sleep? Not tired? What is it?”

Another gurgle.

“You want a story, don’t you?” she asked.

Mac’s face widened into a smile. “Pooo!” he chimed.

Prue caved. “Okay,” she said, walking to his crib side and pulling him from the mattress. “Just one story.”

The two of them, the brother and the sister, sat in the rocking chair in the corner of the room. Mac nestled himself against her arm, and Prue looked out the window, as if pulling the story from thin air. Finally, she began.

“Once upon a time,” she said, quietly, “there lived a little boy and his big sister.” She paused, thinking, before continuing: “But before that, there was a man and a woman and they lived here in St. Johns and they wanted more than anything to have a family. But in order to have children, they had to make a deal with an evil queen, an evil queen who lived in a faraway wood.”

Mac was riveted, a broad smile splayed across his face.

“The deal was that, in time, the evil queen would come for the second child, the little boy, and would take him with her into her forest kingdom. And one day she did. His sister, however, would have none of it, so she got on her bike.

“And took off after him . . .

“Into the deep, dark woods . . .”

In memory of Ruth Friedman