Wildwood Imperium (Wildwood Chronicles 3)

Joffrey, smothered in the fabric of Jacques’s turtleneck, could only mumble a weird, “Hmm hmm tra la. Tra la.” The tears continued to fall, and they wet Jacques’s shirt.

“But you can redeem yourself, Joffrey,” continued the saboteur. “You can rise, like the phoenix, from the flames of your destroyed creation. You have arrived here, at my home, at your former fellow Titan’s home, to come face-to-face with your past and all the terrible decisions that you’ve made and that have led you, inexorably, to the place you currently, sadly, desperately inhabit. Look at your failed life, Joffrey: It is standing right in front of you.”

At this, Unthank pushed himself away from Jacques’s embrace and stared, teary-eyed, at the figures that surrounded him: the Chapeaux Noirs, the Unadoptables. Elsie, standing frozen by her sister, saw that Jacques, too, had started weeping.

Planting an affectionate kiss on Joffrey’s forehead, Jacques spoke again. “But you, like the rest of us, are a victim. You are ultimately not to blame. You were set up by a cruel and unfeeling master. You are not bad, not at the core. And fate has deposited you here to be a part of a great rebirth, a grand destruction of an empire of which you yourself have been its most recent victim.”

“Wiggggg . . . ,” mumbled Joffrey through his sobs. “Wiggggg . . .”

“Yes,” prompted Jacques. “Yes, speak his name. Speak his name as a soul newly hatched.”

“Wigmannnnn!” shouted Joffrey.

Just then, Jacques abruptly yanked Unthank from the floor and dragged him, stumbling, to the table. He held him by the scruff of his neck, as a mother cat would hold its litter, and pointed to the sheaf of pages on the table. “Here is your Babel, Joffrey. Here is your pillar of salt. Here is the beacon that has brought you to us, that has brought us all together. Look on it and laugh. For you are now free.”

And Joffrey Unthank began to laugh.

She’d placed the eagle feather on her dresser, right next to the framed mirror, in a little brass bowl. She wasn’t quite sure how the spirit wanted the things presented to her, but she figured a little bit of ceremony couldn’t hurt. It was a little disappointing to have the mirror do nothing when she’d arrived home, her hair a snag of twigs and moss, to present the feather she’d labored so hard to retrieve. True, the spirit only visited at night, when the clock chimed twelve—but she thought that maybe the ghost would make an exception now, when she’d brought the first thing the spirit had requested. When she got no response, Zita grabbed the little brass bowl, the one she herself had chosen from her mother’s belongings, the one her mother had kept her rings in at night, and set it in front of the mirror, placing the newly won feather in the dish. Still, nothing. She waited out the clock, waiting for the night to come.

When it did come, when the chime rang out in the hallway and her father was silently asleep in his room, she was prepared for the spirit’s return.

GOOD was written in the fog on the pane of glass of the mirror.

“Thank you,” said Zita, getting over her initial chill to see the words appear. What’s more, she found herself to be ever so slightly more comfortable with the fact that she was in the presence of a disembodied soul, one who was communicating with her through the mist on a mirror. “What’s next?” asked Zita timidly, her hands clutching her duvet.

The mirror cleared and again a mist, unseen in the room, clouded the surface. PEBBLE was scrawled.

Easy enough, thought Zita. A pebble could be gotten from just about anywhere.

ROCKING CHAIR CREEK. The words had taken up all the remaining real estate on the mirror. Zita’s face fell. She had never heard of Rocking Chair Creek, let alone where it might be. “I don’t have to go to the Avian Principality again, do I?” she asked to the ether.

But there came no response from the mirror. The fog disappeared. The mirror again reflected the small, dark room and the glow of the candle at Zita’s bedside. A moon, half-full, shone through the window and cast its light across the room as Zita contemplated her next move. Her father’s atlas would have an answer, she decided. Retrieving it from the hallway, she opened its cracked and dusty spine and smoothed the pages that showed the Wood in its entirety. Optimistically, she searched the area directly around her house, in the mercantile district, for the Empress’s words: ROCKING CHAIR CREEK. As she’d sadly expected, she found nothing. Moving farther afield, she crossed with her eyes the boundary of the Avian Principality and scanned the area’s many squiggly blue lines for the words—still nothing. It wasn’t until she’d glanced even farther north that she saw what she was looking for. Rocking Chair Creek did exist.

It was a creek that was deep in the heart of Wildwood.

CHAPTER 10

The Empty Folder;

Unthank Reborn

Prue cracked the door open carefully, slowly. The sounds of the angry crowd had receded, but she couldn’t be sure if there weren’t some desperate souls directly outside the door to the Interim Governor-Regent-elect’s office, waiting in secret for her inevitable escape. Through the small crack, she saw nothing; the bunting had been torn on the balcony and a few mismatched pairs of cycling shoes—evidently having been used as missiles—lay strewn about the landing.

Taking a deep breath, she pushed the heavy oak door open and saw that she was very much alone, aside from a rather disgruntled-looking janitor who was sweeping up the torn clothing, broken teeth, and casquettes that littered the granite floor. Seeing Prue, the man glowered at her and continued on with his work, mumbling something denigrating about bicycles and maidens and revolutions.

Prue walked to the top of the staircase and was surprised to see a group of people still holding vigil in the foyer; fearing they would attack, she edged backward, her heart racing. It wasn’t until she saw the crowd’s expressions turn into ecstatic smiles that she knew she was safe.

“Maiden!” called one, a teenaged girl. “You’ve come back!”

“We were waiting for you,” announced another, a man with a bushy brown beard.

“What are we to do now?” called another—it was the badger rickshaw driver.

Prue edged apprehensively to the first step of the staircase. “You guys aren’t mad at me?” she asked.

A collective look of surprise came over the gathered faithful; there were at least fifteen of them. “No, of course not,” came the response, chimed in unison.

“You’re the Bicycle Maiden, the hero of the revolution,” said a fox. “We’d never abandon you.”