Wildwood Imperium (Wildwood Chronicles 3)

Curtis stiffened. “I didn’t mean to cause anyone any grief.”

“Well, that didn’t really work out, did it? What did you expect?” She stared at her brother, waiting for his response.

Curtis shrugged defensively. “I don’t know, Rach. I thought maybe you guys’d understand.” He corrected himself before his sister had a chance to pounce. “I mean, if you’d only known what was happening. That I was wrapped up in this bigger thing. People depended on me, Rachel. And I figured that if you could see me, you would get it.” He gestured to their surroundings. “I mean, look at all this. I belong here.”

The fire crackled between them; Rachel didn’t respond.

Curtis continued: “Not to say I didn’t belong there, in the Outside. I love you guys, and there’s really not a day that goes by I don’t miss you and think about you. Mom and Dad and Elsie. Even you, though you were kind of a jerk to me, back home.”

“What?”

“You were! There was a moment where we got along, but it was so long ago it’s like it didn’t even exist. I just remember old photos of us sitting together when I was, like, a baby. That’s the last time I remember ever hanging out with you where you were nice to me.”

Rachel felt her dander getting up. “Don’t pin this on me. I’m not the reason you ran away from home.”

“No,” said Curtis, waving his hand in objection. “No. You weren’t the reason. But it was a part of it. Like, all these little things building up. School was awful. Everyone had moved on from the stuff they’d loved as kids. All my friends had changed—since middle school began, it was like they were different people. I felt like they’d figured out something that was totally a mystery to me. Like, how to grow up. I just didn’t get it. And then I found this place, and suddenly I could grow up—but in my own way, you know?”

“I guess so,” said Rachel. “Couldn’t you have done this out there?”

“Maybe. But I wasn’t open to it. The stakes weren’t high enough. Or something.”

There was a pause between them as the fire snapped and flickered and the light of the day grew sharper as the sheen of clouds parted; it peered in through the open windows. Curtis was about to say something, perhaps something peaceable, to assuage his sister’s anger, but he was interrupted by a very large crashing noise.

“What was that?” said Rachel suddenly.

Curtis leapt up and looked out one of the windows; the air was suddenly alive with the noise of frantic birdsong. “I don’t know,” he said. “Sounded like a tree falling.”

It came again, the crashing. It sounded like someone had taken a particularly branchy tree and dropped it from a great height. Nico came rushing in through the door.

“Curtis!” he shouted. “You’re going to want to see this.”

Together, they rushed along a series of rickety bridges and up a staircase that spiraled the trunk of another cedar. From this vantage, they towered above the forest canopy and could see, seemingly, for miles. Nico scanned the vista; another crash sounded.

“There,” he said, pointing his finger at a gap in the trees. “Please tell me what that is.”

Curtis squinted, trying to make out what the saboteur had spotted; the forest was very thick here, in deepest Wildwood; something would have to be fairly big for one to spot it on the ground from their high vantage point. But then, just as he was about to question Nico once more, he saw it.

There, in the break between a circle of trees, was a tranquil meadow. Curtis could make it out plainly from their treetop. Another crash came, and Curtis saw the grassy soil of the meadow undulate as if it were a down comforter and someone had just given it a he

althy shake. The source of this little quake soon presented itself: The thick and telephone-pole-tall leg of some bizarrely fashioned humanoid creature stepped out onto the grass of the meadow. Curtis gaped; soon, the rest of its body followed, and the creature was completely exposed in the center of the clearing, an awful smudge on this pastoral scene.

It was the ivy; and yet it was not the ivy. Rather, it was as if someone had taken a vast patch of the plant and, having molded it into the shape of the poor approximation of a human figure, fed it some monstrous fertilizer that let it grow to the size of a small building. And then, by some magic, imbued the creation with life. The ivy hung from the creature’s frame like a shaggy coat and draped in long tendrils from its faceless head, like an overly hairy dog; it was a shambling, leafy hedge, come to life.

The ivy hung from the creature’s frame like a shaggy coat and draped in long tendrils from its faceless head, like an overly hairy dog.

With every step the creature made, ivy took root and began to spread. Where trees stood in its way, it reached out its long, spindly arms and merely knocked them aside like traffic cones.

“Oh God,” said Nico. “There’s more.”

Sure enough, just as soon as the ivy giant had lumbered across the meadow, another appeared on the edge of the clearing, great waves of ivy extending out from its every step. Another followed, close behind. Their footfalls and the ensuing tide of ivy crashed together, and soon whole trees were being swallowed by the leafy stuff; it clung to the trees’ trunks and snaked up through the limbs until the shorter trees were all but swallowed whole, the wood aching and wheezing from the weight.

“Quick!” said Curtis, breaking from his trance, from the horror he’d felt to see such awesome, terrifying things waltz into his domain. “We’ve got to get everyone up.”

“This isn’t something that regularly happens, I take it,” said Nico, breathlessly stepping away from the edge of the lookout post.

Curtis shot the man an annoyed glare. “No,” he said flatly, before leaping down the staircase away from the platform.

“I don’t know,” said Nico. “Where I’m from animals don’t talk, either.” He quickly followed the bandit down the stairway.