Moving up to the netting, the ivy-made Alexandra reached one of her leafy hands out and touched the forehead of the captured giant, like a mother would the brow of a child or a cowering dog. Just as her fingers made contact with the giant’s head, the ivy form dissipated and the netting collapsed in on itself, suddenly freed of its contents. The leaves and vines that had made up the giant’s form simply fell apart, like a bubble bursting, and returned to the laden earth, to the swelling ivy at the plant-woman’s feet.
Then, to the horror of the three onlookers, the woman raised her arms out and extended her fingers. The ivy below her hands ruptured and split, and suddenly two new forms began to rumble into shape. Before long, the budding shapes of two new ivy giants had been produced and were squirming into life. They started as little pupa, two burping embryos on the forest floor; they bawled and brayed in new life. Then, as the woman continued her conjuration, they found their footing and they sprouted new growth: Their arms and legs lengthened and found strength; a writhing crown of hair jetted from each of their heads. As stunted preadolescents, they were dwarfed by the other two, fully grown ivy giants. Soon, however, their spines straightened and they grew tall and strong, having achieved a kind of developmental adulthood in a matter of moments.
Nico said something, loudly, having finally broken the barriers of his own disbelief. “You have got to be kidding me,” he said. Curtis tried to shush him, but it was too late; the plant-woman, Alexandra, had twisted her neck around and was staring with her baleful, hollow eyes in the direction of their hiding place. Her mouth gawped open; a horrible scream emitted from the dark space it made.
“GO!” shouted Curtis, and he thrust himself up from the ground. He could hear Nico and Rachel scramble behind him; he threw his hand out to his sister, who’d slipped on something in her desperation, and the two of them tore away from the scene in the clearing, not looking back. They didn’t see Nico falter, strangely transfixed by the ivy-woman, but they heard him scream as a flood of ivy, sent by one of the giants’ crushing footfalls, poured toward him.
They both looked around in time to see the man become swallowed in the wave, a wave that engulfed his black-clad, turtlenecked body in a short matter of seconds. His scream dissipated in the air and then he was gone.
“Nico!” yelled Rachel desperately. She hesitated momentarily, wanting to return to the small lump of ivy that remained where the saboteur had stood, but Curtis pulled her away.
“We have to go!” he shouted as the crest of ivy approached them. Rachel turned her attention away from her friend, the funny saboteur who’d become such a canny part of he
r world, and instead watched as the rolling ivy, having swallowed the man whole, galloped toward them. She let go of her brother’s hand and started sprinting through the woods as fast as her legs could carry her.
CHAPTER 27
Deluge!
The trees blew by her like mile markers on a highway; she threaded the obstacle course of the forest, following the practiced path of her brother, who leapt the fallen tree trunks and dodged the shrubbery with an exceptional skill. The sound of the ivy and the thundering steps of the giants only pushed her onward until the noise fell away behind them. She broke through a thicket of blackberry brambles and slid down a muddy embankment; when she looked up, Curtis was nowhere to be seen.
“Rach!” came a hissed voice.
Down the gully, Curtis was lying flat by a fallen tree. Rachel threw herself down the ravine, scrabbling along the incline madly, and took cover beside him. Just then, the trees above the gully broke open and five ivy giants came lumbering across the landscape, handily making the small gap with one stride. The little flurries of ivy exploded at their every step. Taking up the rear of the procession was the spectral woman, who paused momentarily at the far side of the embankment. Rachel sat against the fallen tree, her hand cupped over her mouth and her eyes streaming panicked tears. Curtis stared at his sister with his finger to his lips, willing her to fight the instinct to scream.
She stared at him, hard; together, they wished the world away.
Then the crashing footsteps began again and the ivy-woman was gone, leaving a trail of flowing green in her path. Only the sound of that creeping plant could be heard. Rachel let her hand fall from her mouth and said, “We have to go back for Nico!”
Curtis shook his head, cutting away a clutch of vines that had ensnared his knees while they’d crouched in hiding. “You saw what happened. He’s gone, Rach.”
Just then, a scream sounded, distantly, from some hollow of the forest. The two Mehlberg siblings recognized the sound immediately; they’d both heard that very scream as it changed from wailing infant to petulant tween in the privacy of their own home. It was, without a doubt, their sister Elsie.
“The fort!” cried Curtis, and they both leapt up, fighting back the snaking ivy, and ran in the direction of Deerskull Dragonfighter. The closer they got, the thicker the ivy grew; soon, they were wading through a knee-deep morass of the clinging stuff, their movements reduced to a slow-motion slog. They wielded their saber blades like machetes, cutting the stuff away as it clung to their pant legs and tangled around their waists. Elsie’s screams persisted; soon, other voices joined in.
“HOLD ON!” shouted Curtis. He felt a jostling weight on his shoulder and looked to see Septimus, having leapt down from a low-hanging branch.
“The ivy!” said the rat. “It’s taking over the fort!”
“We’re trying to get there!” hollered Curtis, but with every step, the painful trudge became more and more difficult. Like the thickest mud, the stuff now clung to Curtis’s boot heels stubbornly, and it required all his reserves of strength to take a single step. It seemed that the ivy left in the wake of the giants’ footsteps continued to ensnare its surroundings in this web, and the world was being covered before Curtis’s very eyes: The low-lying bushes were long gone; the saplings were bent, wilted heaps; the twiggy alders were swallowed whole and the big-leaf maples, already encrusted in moss, had grown a shaggy beard of vines. The tenacious plant was now claiming the farthest territory of the forest: It scaled the highest firs and cedars in its ineluctable conquest for the sky.
He knew the territory well enough; even under its current transformation, Curtis could make out the large cedar tree that anchored the ladder to the fort. The bark of its trunk was completely enshrouded; even now the rigid, wide profile of the tree was being distorted by the ivy as layer upon layer of the plant was painted over it; the ivy clambered over itself to reach the higher boughs, like ants prostrating themselves at the base of some obstacle so its million-strong army could overcome it. He felt the vines making a vigorous assault up his lower back; he felt his steps falter. A vine snapped up and snagged the hilt of his sword, and he felt his arm held fast by the woody plant.
“Septimus!” he shouted. “Get help!”
“Help?” cried the rat, incredulous. “Where am I supposed to get help?”
“I don’t know!” He heard Rachel holler; looking over his shoulder he saw his sister, waist-deep in the ivy mire, as a few vines snagged the strands of her hair and jerked her head backward. The rat, seeing this, jumped from Curtis’s shoulder to a nearby tree and began scurrying up the ivy stalks, his small stature allowing him easy passage over the plant.
Up he went, his nimble legs darting away from any tendril that tried to ensnare them. Within moments, he’d reached the first platform on the tree; it was already completely blanketed. The railings dangled ivy like stalactites. The sounds of the shouting children could still be heard from higher up in the canopy. An ivy vine attacked his front foot; Septimus smacked it back admonishingly.
“Oh no, you don’t,” he sneered.
Looking for help, here in the depths of the woods, seemed like a fairly absurd task. Had he another moment, he would have suggested to Curtis that they were, in fact, the only real going concern when it came to help or assistance in Wildwood, and they seemed to be awfully busy at the moment. But appearances must be kept up, he decided, flying up the ivy-draped stairway to the main hut of the hideout. Here, the entire place had been consumed by the plant; he scrambled over to the gangway that led to the neighboring fir and, looking high into its branches, saw that everyone had congregated on the small shingle of space that was the fort’s lookout station.
“Septimus!” shouted one of the children. “What do we do?”
Even though the crow’s nest had been constructed within the highest limbs of the tallest fir tree within miles—the hideout’s location had, in fact, been chosen for this very tree’s particular qualities—the ivy was already snaking its way up the trunk, and its farthest tentacles were just touching the underside of the platform.