Wildwood Imperium (Wildwood Chronicles 3)

“Isn’t that what she’d set out to do before? With Mac?” A feeling of gloom had come over Prue, remembering the awful rite the crazed woman had attempted to complete.

“Oh, no,” said the owl, his voice steeped in sadness. “That was a mere shadow of the power she now possesses. Her body was sacrificed to the ivy. She is the ivy now.”

Seamus, some feet off, was inspecting a little lump in the greenery, about the size of a small chair. He’d just pulled aside a few handfuls of the plant that had encompassed the object when he let out a short scream.

“What is it?” shouted Prue, rushing to his side.

“Look!” said the bandit, sounding petrified.

She peered into the parted curtains of the ivy vines and saw, there beneath the veil of green and brown, a bit of auburn fur.

“It’s someone!” she shouted as the two of them began desperately to pull the ivy aside. It clung, stubbornly, to itself, its woody tendrils locked together, and when they pulled, the plant only seemed to cinch tighter around its cocooned subject.

“It’s stuck, the shifty stuff,” said Seamus, releasing his grip on the vines. He stepped back and as he did so, the ivy collapsed across the small gap they’d made, once again transforming whatever object it surrounded into a lonely protuberance of green leaves and woody stalks.

“Hold up,” said Prue, now focusing her mind to address the ever-present hissing, which sounded in her ears like she was standing in the middle of a circle of televisions, all playing static.

The plant life below their feet gave a sudden jerk, seemingly surprised to be spoken to. Prue knelt by the ivy-enshrouded figure and held up her hands; it was a useless gesture, but she found it helped concentrate her thoughts on the thing she was asking the plant. It hissed back at her, affrighted by her presence, before it slowly relented. The taut vines slackened and began to fall away, a horde of retreating snakes. Soon, the thing it had swallowed was revealed: a homely brown beaver, sleeping restfully on a park bench.

Seamus dove in as Prue let her arms fall to her side—she found that the communication had sapped a small part of her strength—and the bandit began gently shaking the beaver awake.

“Mm-hello?” said the animal, surprised to be grasped at the shoulders by the bearded, robed man.

“Wake up!” said Seamus.

“I’ll do that on me own time, tanks very much,” the beaver sputtered. “I’d just nodded off. No harm in that.” He was wearing an overcoat, stained with oily smears; the remnants of a half-eaten meal were laid out, in stasis, on a napkin on his lap. He looked around, affronted, as if to say, Can you believe the indignity?

“You’ve been covered in ivy,” said Owl Rex, approaching them from behind. “You’ve been frozen there for some time, it would appear. You’ve quite forgotten your dinner.”

The beaver looked down at the food in his lap. He then looked out over the ivy-covered landscape, his little mouth falling open when he saw the hilly lump of green that was the Pittock Mansion. “Is that . . . ,” he began.

Seamus nodded.

“Oh,” said the beaver, suddenly reconciling himself to the situation. His face, just then, took a precipitous fall as his memories seemed to return to him: “I remember now,” he said.

“What?” prompted Prue, kneeling by his side. “What happened?”

“Ain’t you . . . ,” he said, seeing Prue. “Ain’t you the Bicycle Maiden?”

Prue nodded. The beaver, dazed, looked up at Owl Rex. “And ain’t you the Crown Prince o’ the Avians?”

Owl bowed his head regally. The beaver shook his head in disbelief. “Well, I never,” he said.

“And I’m the bandit Seamus,” said Seamus, apparently feeling left out of the beaver’s starstruck reverie.

“You don’t look much like a bandit,” said the beaver. “What’s wi’ the dress?”

“It’s not a dress,” Seamus countered, offended. “It’s a robe. Long story.”

The beaver looked down at the food on his lap and began speaking, slowly, haltingly. “I was just sittin’ down to my lunch. My midnight lunch, that is. I’m a gas-lamp tender, ain’t I? And I feel this crazy rumble, like a earthquake or some such. That’s what happened.” He paused, collecting his thoughts. “I had to grab me lunch, din’t I, lest it spill about. Nearly threw me off the bench. Well, then I look up and see, in the gaslight, this figure just spiral up from the trees, yonder.”

“A figure,” repeated the owl. “What did it look like?”

“Couldn’t see much, it being dark an’ all. At least at first. But I’m, like, frozen in place, right? Can’t even lift my hands from my lunch. Then a couple more figures appear, giant like, just through the trees.” The beaver shook his head, as if trying to dispel the image from his mind.

“Keep going,” prompted Owl. “You’re safe now.”

The beaver’s small black eyes seemed to be tearing up. “Awful things. I can only see their legs in the light of the gas lamps. Tall as any tree in the forest. Made o’ ivy, they are. And that’s when the vines came. Like a wash o’ water, they came. Saw ’em come over the Mansion, there. Like an explosion. ’Fore I could get out of me stupor, though, they came over me and I promptly tuckered out, din’t I? Must’ve put me straight to sleep.”