Wildwood Imperium (Wildwood Chronicles 3)

MAP

LIST OF COLOR PLATES

1. They were staring intently at their houseguest, who was taking up most of one side of the dining room table.

2. “That’s what the Chapeaux Noirs are all about: a clean slate for the Industrial Wastes. Wipe out the oppressors, the wreckers, the looters. Finis.”

3. And then, her son appeared from the curtain of shadow: a boy of fifteen summers, fourteen winters.

4. She thrust her hands into the robe’s pocket and retrieved the three things she’d stowed there: an eagle’s feather. A pearly stone. A boy’s full set of teeth.

5. The ship pitched in the waves that drew it closer to the rock’s only visible landing spot: a wave-racked wooden jetty.

6. The ivy hung from the creature’s frame like a shaggy coat and draped in long tendrils from its faceless head, like an overly hairy dog.

7. Alexandra held out her arms; her son stepped into them and laid his head, softly, on his mother’s chest.

PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

The May Queen

First, the explosion of life. Then came the celebration.

Such had it been for generations and generations, as long as the eldest of the eldest could remember; as long as the record books had kept steady score. By the time the first buds were edging their green shoots from the dirt, the parade grounds had been cleared and the maypole had been pulled from its exile in the basement of the Mansion. The board had met and the Queen decided; all that was left was the wait. The wait for May.

And when it came, it came wearing a bright white gown: the May Queen. She appeared on horseback, as was tradition, wearing a blinding white gown and her hair sprouting garlands of flowers. Her name was Zita and she was the daughter of a stenographer for the courts, a proud man who stood beaming in the stands—a person of honor—with the Interim Governor-Regent-elect and his flushed, fat wife and his three children looking bored and bemused, stuffed as they were into their little ill-fitting suits that they only wore for weddings.

But the May Queen was radiant in her long brown braids and white, white gown, and everyone in the town flocked to see her and the procession that followed. In the center square, a brass band, having performed “The Storming of the Prison” to satisfy the powers that be, launched into a familiar set list of seasonal favorites, led by a mustachioed tenor who played up the bawdiest bits to the delight of the audience. A traditional dance was endured by the younger set among the audience, while the elders cooed their appreciation and waxed nostalgic about their own time, when they wore those selfsame striped trousers and danced the May Fair. The Queen reigned all the while, smiling down from her flower-laden dais; she must’ve been only fifteen. All the boys blushed to make eye contact with her. Even the Spokes, the hard-liners of the Bicycle Revolution, seemed to drop their ever-present steeliness in favor of an easy gait, and today there were no words of anger exchanged between them and the few in the crowd who might question their fervor. And when the Synod arrived to rasp the benediction on the day, the crowd suffered them quietly. The rite was a strange insistence, considering the fact that the May Fair’s celebration had long predated the sect’s fixation on the Blighted Tree; indeed, the May Fair had been a long-standing tradition, it was told, even when the tree’s boughs were full with green buds, before it earned its present name, before the strange parasite had rendered the tree in a kind of suspended animation. But such was the spirit that day: Even the spoilers were allowed their separate peace.

By the time the festivities, the beribboned maypole their axis, had spiraled out into the surrounding crowd and the light had faded and the men gathered around the barrels of poppy beer and the women sipped politely at blackberry wine and the dancing had begun in earnest, the May Queen had long since been hoisted on the shoulders of a crowd of local boys and brought with much fanfare to her home, where, her now-tipsy father assumed, she was peacefully asleep, her white gown toppled in a corner, her braids a tattered mess, and her pillow strewn with flowers.

But this was not the case.

Zita, the May Queen, was climbing down the trellis from her second-floor room, still wearing her white gown, and her wreath of flowers still atop her braided hair. A thorn from the climbing rose made a thin incision in the taffeta as she reached the ground. She stopped and studied her surroundings. She could hear the muffled, distant sounds of the celebrations in the town square; a few straggling partygoers, homeward bound, laughed over some joke on the street. She whistled, twice.

Nothing.

Again, she pursed her lips and gave two shrill whistles. A rustle sounded in the nearby junipers. Zita froze.

“Alice?” she asked to the dark. “Is that you?”

Suddenly, the bushes parted to reveal a girl, dressed in a dark overcoat. Remnant pieces of juniper stuck obstinately to her short blond hair. Zita frowned.

“You didn’t have to come that way,” said Zita.

Alice looked back at her improvised path: a hole in the bushes. “You said to come secret.”

Another noise. This time, from the street side. It was Kendra, a girl with wiry, close-cropped hair. She was carrying something in her hands.

“Good,” said Zita, seeing h

er. “You brought the censer.”

Kendra nodded, proffering the thing in her hands. It was made of worn brass, discolored from decades of use. Tear-shaped holes dotted the vessel; strands of gold chain clung to its side, like hair. “I need to get this back tonight,” she said. “It’s serious. If my dad knew this was missing. He’s got some weird thing he has to do tomorrow.” Kendra’s dad was a recent recruit to the rising Synod, an apostle to the Blighted Tree. She clearly wasn’t very happy about his newfound religiosity.

Zita nodded. She turned to Alice, who was still brushing needles from her coat. “You have the sage?”

Alice nodded gravely and pulled a handful of green leaves, bundled by twine, from a bag slung over her back. The earthy smell of the herbs perfumed the air.

“Good,” said Zita.

“Is that all we need?” asked Alice, stuffing the herb bouquet back in her bag.

Zita shook her head and produced a small blue bottle. The two other girls squinted and tried, in the half-light, to make out what was inside.

“What is it?” asked Kendra.

“I don’t know,” said Zita. “But we need it.”

“And isn’t there something about a mirror?” Again, this was Kendra.

Zita had it: a picture mirror, the size of a tall book. The glass sat in an ornate gold frame.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” This was Alice, fidgeting uncomfortably in her too-large coat.

Zita flashed her a smile. “No,” she said. “But that’s half the fun, right?” She shoved the bottle back in her pocket, the mirror in a knapsack at her feet. “C’mon,” she said. “We don’t have a ton of time.”

The threesome marched quietly through the alleyways of the town, carefully avoiding the crowds of festivalgoers on their weaving ways homeward. The red brick of the buildings and houses gave way to the low, wooden hovels of the outer ring, and they climbed a forested hill, listening to the last of the brass bands echo away in the distance. A trail snaked through the trees here; Zita stopped by a fallen cedar and looked behind them. The lit windows of the Mansion could be seen winking some ways off, little starfalls in the narrow gaps between the crowding trees. She was carrying a red kerosene lantern, and she lit it with a match; they were about to continue when a noise startled them: more footsteps in the underbrush.

“Who’s there?” demanded Zita, swinging the lantern toward the sound.