Cynthia nodded before saying, “Since there’s four of us, let’s split up and see if we can’t find any game trails. More eyes. Just stay clear of that line of trees. If you do happen to step over the Periphery Bind, just let out a holler. We should be able to find you.”
“Got it,” said Rachel.
Elsie said a quick good-bye to her sister; she didn’t want to seem overly clingy, but the idea of getting lost again in the Periphery was a little frightening. What’s more, it brought back memories of their initial march into the woods; she’d thought she would never see her sister again. It was strange to be reenacting the same scene, days later. However, she was determined to help out; she liked the idea of being a provider for their new family.
She walked toward the sloping hill but then skirted left, minding the warning of the older kids. The snow had let up the night before, and the temperature had warmed slightly; the snow was falling away from the trees in little clumps, revealing the deep green of their boughs. The floor was wet with the snowmelt, and little rivers of water could be seen, cutting their way through the shallow draws in the sloping wood. Little mushrooms sprouted from the carcasses of the fallen trees; a bird sounded in the boughs ahead. Elsie found that a tremendous peace had fallen over her; the first she’d felt in quite a while, since her parents had announced their decision to leave the country. It was refreshing, if such a word could describe the feeling.
Suddenly, a flash of white caught her eye. She looked over and saw, standing atop the broken stump of a cedar tree, a white rabbit. It was staring at her. Elsie immediately recognized it as the same one that had greeted her when she’d first ventured into the woods, those long days ago. Something in the way it twitched its ears when she approached; it seemed to recognize her as well.
“Hello, little rabbit,” said Elsie.
She could swear that the rabbit opened its mouth to speak in response—though nothing came out. It was as if it had forgotten what it was about to say. Instead, the rabbit merely wiggled its nose. Seeming happy that it had gotten Elsie’s attention, the rabbit bounded off the stump and began hopping its way up the hill. It hadn’t gotten far, however, before it stopped and turned to look at Elsie again, beckoning her on.
“Okay,” said Elsie, determined. “Where to?”
She marched through the hip-high bracken after the rabbit, which was thankfully mindful of her slow progress: It kept stopping and waiting as she managed the difficult terrain. She wasn’t sure where they were going; she’d long lost any sense of where the edge of the Periphery was, as per Michael and Cynthia’s warnings. Her curiosity was too great to be frightened off the rabbit’s trail.
They crossed a hillock and continued down into a little rift, where a creek bubbled with muddy water; they wound along a snaking ridge and across a wide meadow, sparking with the green shoots of grass newly freed of its snowy blanket. All along, Elsie kept wondering how she could ever hunt or trap such a beautiful creature, so full of brightness and intelligence. She figured she wouldn’t mention the appearance of the rabbit to Michael or Cynthia; she couldn’t risk the possibility that they might be less humane than she.
And then the rabbit was gone. It had ducked behind a web of young trees and disappeared. Elsie called out, “Rabbit! Where did you go?” She was surprised at herself; what, was the rabbit supposed to holler back, “Right here!”? While distracted by her searching for the rabbit, she took an uncertain step farther, caught her shoe on a sticky bunch of ivy, and fell headlong onto a gravel road.
Elsie looked up; it was, in fact, a road. A very long road. One that cut an easy, snaking swath through the dense forest. She also saw a kind of waymark, a stone cairn, on the far side of the road; it looked like it had sat there for centuries. She looked around her, deeply confused. Why hadn’t the others ever found this? And what was a road doing in the no-man’s-land of the Periphery? And then it occurred to her: This was not a part of the Periphery. She’d somehow managed to break through the Bind and was now in the arms of the Impassable Wilderness. Or, as Carol called the area, Wildwood.
CHAPTER 18
The Great Siege; Elsie and the Road
They’d been instructed to wait in the corridor; the seer, Bartholomew Mole, counseled that it would be a better use of the element of surprise. The High Master commander agreed, though he was sparking to begin the siege. Again, the seer advised that they make camp there, in the elbow of the tunnel, as the mole army had been marching for nearly two days.
They’d followed
endless stretches of tunnel, watched the stonework change from smooth granite to rough slate and back to granite. They’d crossed more bridges than Curtis thought he’d ever seen in his life, spanning depths that seemed to reach into the very bowels of the earth itself. They camped on rocky outcrops and listened to the patient dripping of water from the lichen while the little campfires of the mole knights cast weird shadows on the walls. When the two days had passed—which, it was explained to the three deities, was about a week in Overdweller travel time—Sir Timothy stood at the head of the army and made a proud declaration.
“THE MARCH ON THE FORTRESS OF FANGGG WILL BE CELEBRATED IN THE ANNALS OF HISTORY. IT IS THE LONGEST ADVANCE EVER UNDERTAKEN BY A MOLE HOST,” explained Sir Timothy.
The morning must’ve arrived; some three hours later, the mole camp, all small white canvas tents and campfires, was a-bustle with activity. The moment had finally come; the generals gathered to review the events of the day. The army would march to the gates of the city, instructing the citizenry to either take up arms with the Knights Underwood or risk falling to their sword. Then, Sir Timothy would confront Dennis the Usurper from afar (they had a goat’s horn, attached to a wheeled cart, for such communications); assuming he would refuse to capitulate, Prue and Curtis would be signaled from their hiding place, at which point the battle would begin and the mole army, in its entirety, would fall on the City of Moles and the Fortress of Fanggg. It was suggested that the two large Overdwellers enter with as much ferocity as possible and perhaps, even though the blind moles would not actually see this taking place, wave their hands and gnash their teeth. This latter suggestion came from the mole squire whom Prue had nearly crushed earlier. The other moles roundly agreed: Yes, gnashing teeth would be very effective. Prue tried it out; she nearly bit her tongue. Curtis seemed to be an old hand at it, though.
“No, like this,” he instructed, his eyes bugged out and his teeth noisily chomping together.
“You’re weird,” said Prue.
Septimus, for his part, had taken an interest in the gathering military formations, and since he was scarcely bigger than the largest of the mole knights, it was decided that he should lead a squadron of his own. The top brass had all agreed: A vanguard of soldiers marshaled by an Overdweller would go a long way to striking fear into the hearts of the fortress’s defenders. As Septimus, Curtis, and Prue were conferring in a dark alcove, a retinue of knights approached, presenting to the rat a custom-built suit of armor made of pull tabs and interlinked sections of bicycle chain. Septimus, at Curtis’s nudging, accepted with all the grace he could muster, and a trio of squires set about dressing him in the unwieldy outfit. By the time they were done, he looked like an animated pile of discarded parts one might find at the bottom of their junk drawer.
“It’s really handsome,” offered Prue.
Septimus’s voice issued, echoing, from the inside of a halved tin can: “Well, at least if I slay anybody, I’ll be spared having to actually see them.” He moved his arms, with some apparent difficulty. “I could always just sit on the enemy, I suppose.” It took a crew of fifteen mole squires to get him strapped onto his mount, a yellow salamander he promptly dubbed Sally.
Traveling along the damp passageway, the great army of Knights Underwood began their advance, following a sloping floor as the tunnel descended deeper into the ground. From the sound of their marching feet in the cavern, it was clear they were approaching some vast cavity in the stone. At this point, Prue and Curtis were advised to wait; Sir Timothy, having donned his formal attire, a bent washer crown with a red hummingbird feather attached, climbed astride his salamander and followed the wheeled goat’s horn and its attendants around the corner and out of sight.
A short moment later, Timothy’s voice could be heard, amplified through the horn and pouring into what sounded like a very large chamber.
“MOLES OF THE CITY OF MOLES,” came Sir Timothy’s voice. “THE KNIGHTS UNDERWOOD HAVE AMASSED OUTSIDE YOUR GATES. WE INTEND TO BRING EMANCIPATION TO ALL WHO DWELL IN THE UNDERWOOD. WE WILL LIBERATE YOU FROM THE TYRANNY OF DENNIS, THE USURPER OF THE THRONE. TURN AGAINST YOUR CAPTORS AND ALLY WITH US OR RISK PERISHING BY FLAME AND SWORD.”
A pause; there came the sound of a multitude of voices crying out: some in confusion, some in opposition, many in celebration.
Sir Timothy’s voice sounded again: “DENNIS MOLE, YOUR DAY OF RECKONING IS AT HAND. COMPEL YOUR FORCES TO STAND DOWN.”
There came another pause, after which a voice, distant but clear, rang out in the cavern, apparently amplified by a similar technology. “GO STICK IT!” it called. Curtis assumed this to be the voice of Dennis the Usurper. He didn’t sound like a particularly considerate mole.