Wildwood Imperium (Wildwood Chronicles 3)

Seamus, at her side, rubbed his eyes with his weathered hands. He, too, gazed out at the field of human and animal remains that stretched out before them and, like Prue, seemed to slowly and deliberately reconcile himself to their very sad fate. A flock of scavenging seagulls wheeled about in the air above them, perhaps excited by the new additions to this hopeless place and the promise of a fresh meal.

“Hi,” he said, finally breaking the long silence between them. His voice was an aching creak.

“Hi,” said Prue.

“Still get that feeling?”

She knew what he meant. “Yeah,” she said. “Still got it.”

The two of them lapsed back into silence, both of them wrapped in the sad, brutal realization of their current situation, which, charitably, could be called unfortunate. It seemed to Prue, for one, that everything that could’ve gone wrong, did go wrong—though the mind-bending set of terrible events that were now currently overshadowing the people of the Wood paled in comparison to her own, terrible circumstances: She was stuck on a rock in the middle of the ocean, wondering exactly how long she would survive before she became just another addition to the scattered refuse on the ruined fortress’s flagstones.

“Hungry for dinner?” asked the bandit, attempting a smile.

“What, gnaw on some bones?”

From the pavers beneath them, Seamus picked up a healthy-sized chunk of stone, what had once been a piece of the broken wall, and weighed it in his hand. “Been a while since I was reduced to this,” he said, feeling the knobby, heavy thing. “But I expect it’ll come back to me.” With some difficulty, he pushed himself up from his seat and began kicking the bones aside, clearing an area in the middle of the veranda. He then began searching the sky, watching the circling seagulls. He held the rock at an easy angle away from his body, a baseball pitcher loosening up on the mound.

Prue looked up to the sky, shielding her eyes from the sun, and guessed at the bandit’s intentions. “Really?” she asked.

“Really,” said Seamus.

“I’m not sure I’m that hungry.”

“You will be,” he said. “Might as well get our larder going. We’re gonna be here a while.”

“I’m a vegetarian, you know,” said Prue.

“A what?”

“Someone who doesn’t eat meat. You don’t have those in bandit-world

, vegetarians?”

“Nope. Sounds awful.” His eyes were still trained on the milling seabirds.

To be honest, ever since Prue had gained the extraordinary ability to confer with the plant world, she started to see her vegetarianism in the same stark light she saw meat eating; she’d had a revelation when she was young, having read Charlotte’s Web, and had vowed to never touch animal matter again. But she’d never actually spoken to Wilbur, a kind of communication she’d shared with any number of her fellow organisms of the green, leafy variety. Still, one had to survive.

“Well,” said Prue, “I’ll pass.”

“Suit yourself. We’ll see how many days go by before you ditch the vegetablism and enjoy some lean”—he cocked his shoulder—“dreamy”—he flexed his wrist—“SEAGULL MEAT!” The rock launched from his hand and sailed up into the crowd of flying seagulls above their heads. It missed one of the large ones by mere inches, flying over the side of the ramparts and down into the churning ocean below. Seamus shook out his hand, smiling, and began to scout the ground for another projectile. “Out of practice,” he explained to Prue.

Prue’s eyes felt as if they’d developed a crust of salt, and it took some time, with her carefully rubbing them, before her vision was unblurred. She let her renewed gaze sweep their present living quarters. The castle had been the sort of structure one would expect to be built atop an inhospitable rock in the middle of the ocean: small, squarish, and, were it not for the fact that the entire roof had caved in long ago, it would’ve been completely devoid of natural light. A broken staircase was cut into the far corner of the structure, and it climbed a few, meandering flights before it, too, ended in a crumbled ruin.

A rock suddenly fell, with a loud crack, just inches from her fingers. She jerked her hand back and glared at Seamus, who was standing in the middle of the veranda, searching for another rock.

“Hey!” she shouted. “Watch it!”

“Oh,” replied the bandit. “Sorry.” He found another stone and began choosing his next target among a seagull flock, which seemed to be suddenly mindful of their predator; they were scattering now, cawing madly, flying just out of reach.

Momentarily defeated, Seamus put his hands on his hips and looked at Prue. “Buck up, lass,” he said. “We’ll get off this thing.”

“How?”

“Time. Patience. Bandit-sense.”

“Bandit-sense? How’s that going to help us?”

“Nimble thinking. Stuff like that. Goes a long way. Been in worse scraps, myself.”