Wildwood Imperium (Wildwood Chronicles 3)

The ivy rustled at their feet, though no breeze disturbed the air.

And then, issuing from the ground came the distinct sound of a woman’s low, gravelly moan.

Kendra screamed and fell backward; Alice grabbed Becca and, in a state of absolute panic, threw her sister over her shoulder and stumbled for the house’s doorway. Within a flash, three of the four girls had made a hasty exit from the house and were sprinting, screaming, through the encircling woods. Only Zita remained, transfixed, the extinguished censer swinging in her hand.

All was silent. The moaning had ceased; the ivy had stopped writhing. Zita looked down at the mirror at her feet. The glass was fogged.

Slowly, words began to scrawl across the glass, as if drawn there by a finger.

GIRL, they read.

Zita’s breath caught in her throat.

I AM AWAKE.

CHAPTER 2

A Difficult Houseguest

“Pancakes, pancakes, pancakes,” Prue’s dad announced in a cheerful singsong as he stuck his head around the kitchen door. “Who wants some more pancakes?”

Prue politely demurred, saying, “None for me, thanks.” She’d already had two. Her mother and baby brother, Mac, didn’t say anything, as if they hadn’t heard a word the pancake chef had said. Instead, they were staring intently at their houseguest, who was taking up most of one side of the dining room table.

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

“I’d go for a few more,” said the guest. “If you insist.”

Prue’s mother’s eyes went wide, and the color vanished from her face.

“That’s what I like,” said Prue’s dad, undeterred. “A guy with an appetite.” He disappeared back into the kitchen, whistling some unidentifiable pop song.

“W-would you like some m-more o-orange juice?” managed Prue’s mother.

The guest looked at the three empty jugs of juice on the table. He suddenly seemed embarrassed. “Oh, no thanks, Mrs. McKeel,” he said. “I think I’ve probably had enough.”

Just then, Prue’s dad reappeared from the kitchen and heaped another five pancakes on the guest’s plate, steam hissing from the blueberries in the cooked batter. By Prue’s count, these would bring the guest’s pancake intake up to thirty-seven.

“Hope you don’t want any more,” said Prue’s dad, smiling, “’cause we’re cleaned out of flour. And milk. And butter.”

The guest smiled appreciatively at Prue’s dad, saying, “Oh, thanks very much. This’ll do just fine.” He reached across the table for the pitcher of syrup but stopped, daunted by the task of fitting a golden hook, which stood in place of his hand, through the pitcher’s handle.

“Here,” said Prue. “Let me help.” She picked up the syrup pitcher and proceeded to pour the thick brown liquid over the guest’s heap of pancakes. “Say when.”

“When,” said the guest.

“Your friend sure has an appetite,” said Mrs. McKeel.

Prue looked at her mom and sighed. “He is a bear, Mom,” she said.

That much was true: the McKeels’ breakfast guest was a very large brown bear. What’s more, he was a bear with shiny hooks in place of his claws. He could also talk. But the McKeel household had, by this time, become somewhat used to strange phenomena in their lives.

Only last fall, the youngest of the clan, Mac, barely a year old, had been abducted by a flock of crows (or, as Prue had corrected them: a murder of crows), and their daughter, unbeknownst to her parents, had gone after him, putting not only her own life in very serious danger, but also the life of her schoolmate, Curtis Mehlberg, who’d followed her. And it wasn’t as if the crows had simply deposited the babe in a nest somewhere; rather, they’d brought him to the Impassable Wilderness, a deep, vast stretch of woods that bordered the city of Portland, Oregon. It was a forbidden place—stories were traded about unlucky people becoming lost and walking into the woods, never to return. Apparently, this wasn’t the entire truth: Prue and Curtis had discovered a thriving world inside the boundary of these woods, a world of wise Mystics, savage bandits, warring moles, bird princes, and a Dowager Governess, consumed by living ivy. They’d become inextricably entwined with the events in this land, and now it seemed like the very fate of the place relied on their actions.

In normal households, a child coming to his or her parents reporting such things would mean immediate psychiatric evaluation, or, if the parent were particularly gullible, a call to the local authorities at the very least. The McKeels, having had their son Mac returned to them, did neither. In fact, it could be argued that they had themselves brought the whole episode down on their unsuspecting children. You see, in order to have children, they’d had to make a deal with a strange woman who’d emerged from the Impassable Wilderness, crossing a bridge that had appeared out of the very mist. So it didn’t strike them as being overly strange, this world inside the forest. They’d mostly just been happy to get their kids back safely.

After that, things just got weirder; Prue had disappeared some months before on her way to get naan bread from the local Indian take-out joint. They’d both, Lincoln and Anne McKeel, suffered a kind of instinctual shudder of fear when she hadn’t returned, but they both knew, deep down, that there were likely stranger things afoot. Their instincts had been proven right when, later that evening, an egret had landed on their front porch and knocked on their door with his beak. He announced, somewhat nonchalantly, that their daughter had been taken back into the Impassable Wilderness—more specifically, an area of the I.W. that this bird had called Wildwood—for her own safety. Apparently, she was someone of importance in this strange world, and an enemy had dispatched a shape-shifting assassin to end her short, preteen life. It made perfect sense to them at the time, and they immediately set about writing the requisite letters to her middle school, informing them that she had mono and would be missing class for the foreseeable future. They waited patiently for her return, knowing she was in very good hands.

And now this: Pru