Wildwood Imperium (Wildwood Chronicles 3)

Until another voice spoke. “Your chance has come and gone.” It was Elgen. He spoke now to a mob of acolytes who’d arrived at the scene of the scuffle. “Get her on a ship,” he said, wiping the bits of Spongiform from his mask. “Let her rot on the Crag.”

Prue, in despair, let her body surrender completely, and she was pushed rudely away from the congregation at the Blighted Tree. Every possible iteration of the previous year’s events was flowing through her mind as the HUM receded and she stumbled in the captivity of the two acolytes down the sloping hill toward a line of trees. She found herself numbly mumbling to herself, saying things like, “Brendan. Here. The Synod. How could this?” She looked up at her captors: the masked acolytes. “Who are you?” she asked. They did not answer.

The illumination of the line of torches in the meadow had faded away; a group of men holding lanterns met the group of Caliphs and their prisoner at the tree line at the far side of the meadow. The men seemed shocked to see it was Prue.

“This is the one? The one for the Crag?” asked a bearded man in a dark mackintosh.

The acolyte at her side said nothing; she was pushed forward into the arms of the group of men. They held her fast, each one looking at the others in confusion. Prue shook herself from her reverie and said to them, “This is a terrible mistake. The Synod, they’re poisoning people. All the acolytes, they’ve been drugged!”

The men looked back and forth between Prue and the acolytes, drawn between two resisting forces. In the end, the more powerful won out.

“Bind her wrists, men,” said the bearded man. “Get her down to the ship.” His tone was sorrowful, surrendering.

“NO!” shouted Prue wildly. Tears were now streaming down her face. “I need to get to Esben!”

“Shhh, Maiden,” said the man at her right arm. “Don’t make it worse for yourself.”

They marched her into the trees, down a well-worn and rutted path. A thick cord had been tied quickly around her wrists, and the tough material bit into her skin. The men smelled of sweat and pitch; Prue noticed they each wore the same little black stocking cap, the same weathered mackintosh; the thick, waxed material of the coats reached down to their knees. They seemed to be fully bearded, to a man. “Where are you taking me?” asked Prue, when she’d gathered her sense

s.

“I’m very sorry it’s turned out like this, Maiden,” said one of the men. “But it’s for the good of all.”

“What ship? What ship are you taking me to?”

“The Jolly Crescent, Maiden,” said another man. “She’s in dock now. Won’t be long. Best to just be quiet. Don’t put up a fuss.”

Prue frowned and watched the road ahead of her; with her hands shackled behind her, she could feel her shoulders smarting in their sockets. She tried to relax, to focus on something other than the pain her rope manacles were causing her. She looked to the vegetation surrounding the path and began to speak.

WHIP, she thought.

A branch above their heads bowed a little, but soon shot back into place. That ever-present ticking noise, the one coming from the acolytes, had suddenly risen in a crescendo, and she looked behind her to see that they were being closely followed by a group of hooded, masked Caliphs. She tried again: willing her thoughts to the surrounding woods in hopes that some assistance might be given, the way that she had briefly ensnared the shape-shifting Darla Thennis when they had faced off in the refuse heap. Still, nothing. She was being blocked somehow.

She tried another angle: “You know they’re cutting peoples’ heads off for stuff like this. I mean, I’m the Bicycle Maiden. I’m the face of the revolution.”

This got no response. The men’s faces were steely and quiet.

“Aren’t you afraid? I could raise an army! I could have all of you, each one, up against the wall in the bat of an eyelash.” The color was rising in her face, she could feel it. She was speaking from some deeply recessed well; she was channeling all her anger into her voice.

“Times have changed,” said one of the men dolefully. “It’s the Synod, now, that everyone is looking to.”

She jerked her head over her shoulder, looking at the several Caliphs who were following them down the rocky path. “You!” she shouted. “Who are you? Are you bandits? Are you Wildwood bandits?” She focused on them, hearing the ticking noise, trying to deduce some kind of language or syntax from the sound. The Caliphs did not respond. Their mirrored face masks glinted in the low light.

They walked for many hours, following a maze of paths that led down a steep hillside and through the thick of the trees. After a time, a light could be seen glimmering through the woods: Prue saw that it was the city lights of Portland, of the Outside. They were nearing the Periphery, the edge of the Wood. The path they were following snaked along the steep bank of a rushing creek that, some many yards down the hill, opened up into a watery inlet, surrounded by a thick weft of trees. In this inlet was anchored a very large and very old-looking sailing ship, its bevy of massive sails sitting dormant in the still air.

It looked to Prue like the ship had been swept ashore from some long-gone century, something that would be more at home battling Nelson’s tall ships at Trafalgar than sitting dockside in a quaint, twenty-first-century Pacific Northwest river inlet. A moon-woman, half flaxen-haired lady and half crescent moon, was the ship’s figurehead, and the shutters and eaves of the vessel’s many windows were painted bright blue. The ship’s central mast reached easily as high as the closest Douglas fir tree, and a veritable spider’s web of ropes and rigging stretched down from its spire to the dark decks below.

Several fellow mariners came rushing up from the dock when they saw Prue and her captors approach. “What’s going on?” shouted one. “Who’s this?”

“Our instructions,” said one of the men holding Prue, “are to bring this one to the Crag.”

Soon, a crowd of seamen had gathered to greet the newcomers. “Ain’t that the Bicycle Maiden?” said one.

“Aye, ’tis,” confirmed one of the men at Prue’s side. “She’s been indicted.”

Before any of the men had a chance to speak their disbelief, they saw the hooded Caliphs appear from behind the group. It was all the proof they needed that the sentence was lawful. They cowed, visibly, under the presence of the masked men. A man with a blond, wiry beard and a black visored cap came forward. The other men seemed to step aside in deference to him, and he spoke with an uncompromising authority: “This is the one?”

One of the Caliphs nodded solemnly.