Wildwood Imperium (Wildwood Chronicles 3)

So she understood the Verdant Empress’s pain. She understood her loss. And in many ways it felt like she owed this service to a mother, a mother who very well could be much like her own, as a way of completing some kind of circle.

These were the thoughts that occupied Zita the May Queen as she sped farther into the Avian Principality.

There was no wall marking the boundary between the Avians’ province and Wildwood—the birds had no need for wall

s. Instead, a series of signs had been posted, one after another, along the side of the road:

YOU ARE LEAVING THE AVIAN PRINCIPALITY.

YOU ARE ENTERING WILDWOOD.

WILDWOOD APPROACHING; TRAVELERS BE WARY.

JUST BEYOND THIS SIGN IS WILDWOOD.

ACTUALLY, THIS SIGN.

THERE ARE BANDITS AFOOT.

YOU ARE NOW IN WILDWOOD.

A final sign, tipped over on its post, read GOOD LUCK.

Zita cranked the throttle and rode her motorcycle and sidecar across the border and left civilization behind.

She rode for the better part of the day. The rattle of the front forks and the roar of the engine began to turn her arms into rubber, and she finally stopped at what appeared to be an old way station. There was little there: just a stone front stoop and a gnarled tree guarding what would have been the entrance, but the ground was flat and relatively free of brambles; she laid out her sleeping bag in the crook of a large hemlock, shielding herself and the motorcycle from the road. The dark came on quickly, casting the deep-green surroundings in a gray haze. Zita ate her dinner: a peanut-butter-banana sandwich and a box of raisins, washed down with stale-tasting water. She curled up in the nook of the tree’s roots and looked up at the sky, the pinpricks of stars appearing between the arrowlike treetops. An owl hooted; the wind rustled the leaves of the surrounding bushes. She fell into a deep, powerful sleep.

She started early, struggling against the aching of her limbs. The motorcycle was old but reliable, and the engine ignited without much trouble. Straddling the bike, she studied the map she’d brought, a pencil sketch she’d traced over the map in her father’s atlas. Rocking Chair Creek was not far off, she guessed: another day’s ride. Judging from how far she’d gone in the first day, she supposed she could be there by nightfall. The squiggly line of the creek bed wound its way, three tines of a fork, through a section the map had called the Ancients’ Grove.

The sky grew cloudy and the forest took on an ominous aspect as she stepped the motorcycle into gear and made her way down the rough gravel of the Long Road. She kept a keen eye on the roadside, wary of bandits or other dangerous characters. She’d never seen a bandit herself; she’d only heard about them. Apparently, they’d come to South Wood during the Bicycle Coup—the Bicycle Maiden had managed to tame their wildness and win them to her side. But once they’d left, many citizens of South Wood breathed a sigh of relief. They were known to be a vicious lot, and Zita, for one, was dearly afraid of them.

Before long, in fact right around lunchtime, she arrived at the first of the three bridges that, according to her map, crossed the three forks of Rocking Chair Creek. The water here cut a deep gulf into the hillside, and Zita stopped the motorcycle at the edge of the bridge to look down into the gorge. The snowmelt had turned the creek into a raging torrent, and while she assumed that there’d be many pebbles to be had in that particular creek bed, the chance that she’d break her neck in the trying was a little too off-putting. Looking back at her map, she decided she’d check out the middle fork of the creek, to see if there wasn’t a place where a pebble could be easier got.

She was there within the hour; a rough wooden bridge, layered in moss, allowed precarious travel over the rushing creek bed below. Again, the seasonal rains and melted snow had turned what she assumed would be a placid trickle of a creek into a small river, and the idea of climbing down the bracken-covered bank to retrieve a pebble seemed awfully dangerous. Looking farther eastward, up the hillside, she saw that the ravine grew shallower; she decided she would try her luck off the road. Letting the motorcycle laze on its kickstand, she stepped off the path and into the trees.

The going was hard, the terrain unkind. As she climbed higher, she found herself crawling into a bank of clouds that obscured her vision ahead. The trees took on strange shapes, like giants with spindly heads, and she thought she saw movements in the trees, spectral movements, and she wondered if the stories were true: that spirits and sprites haunted these woods. Suddenly, a shape came into view, through the shroud of mist: It was a toppled white column, its fluted shape covered in a web of ivy. Zita’s jaw dropped to see it; she hadn’t expected to see any sign of civilization in these woods, let alone a shape that suggested a former, carefully wrought structure. As she walked, more of these objects presented themselves until she saw that she was standing in the middle of a wide courtyard, surrounded by these white columns, all in various states of decay.

She could hear the rushing of Rocking Chair Creek, and she followed the sound up a worn stone stairway that let onto a man-made pool, where the creek spilled down a white stone sluice to feed a bubbling cistern. Looking inside the bowl of the object, she saw a single, opaline stone.

“There you are, pebble,” said Zita, aloud, like some crazy person.

She reached in and grabbed it; it was smooth to the touch. The water was frigid, and it sent a violent shiver through her body. Shoving the pebble in her pocket, she turned to head back to the motorcycle when the world around her seemed to shift.

The mist had grown closer, like a blanket smothering a fire, and even the closest trees and columns grew hazy. She thought she saw lights flicker through the fog: firefly-like flickers, like starfalls. A howl erupted, not far off, followed by a series of whiny yips. She recognized that call: coyotes.

She’d heard that the coyotes that had fought in the Battle for the Plinth, now returned to their natural state, were a lawless and savage kind. She chose not to wait and find out if this was true. She bolted back down the hill, following a winding stone path that led away from the cistern.

She’d lost track of which direction the road was in; the mist consumed everything. It seemed to fall on her, to enshroud her. She leapt over trickling brooks and under fallen marble columns. She threw herself through a clutch of thistles, the thorns tearing at her coat. The sounds of the coyotes’ braying grew louder; the lights flickered on all sides. A noise like a whisper suddenly shushed at her ear and she screamed, once, loudly. She fell into a wide glade, like a sea of ivy, and there she saw the Plinth.

A feeling of horror overtook her to see this thing, this stone thing that she’d only heard about. It was here that all those good folk died, the Wildwood Irregulars, when they fought the Dowager Governess’s coyote army. It was here, the stories told, that the Governess nearly conducted her horrible conjuration. Zita stood, transfixed, and very suddenly she was stripped of her fear—even though the fairy lights continued to flash around her and the braying of the coyotes sounded as if they were growing closer and closer—she suddenly felt an incredibly placid wave come over her.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the pebble she’d stored there. The size of a walnut, it had a surface as smooth as glass and as white as an ivory tusk.

The ivy rustled at her feet, as if it were alive.

PART TWO

CHAPTER 12