The ivy giants, emboldened by their creator’s success, fought off the Irregulars’ aerial bombardments with increasing skill. Prue, through her tear-blurred eyes, saw each of their fellow Irregulars go down in a shower of vines, thrown from the fingers of Alexandra, battered by one of the giants’ fists or caught in the gripping talons of the ivy birds.
They heard Brendan’s call, followed by a scream of the little girl behind him; they’d been snagged by the ivy and were going down. The plant had wrapped itself around the bird’s wing feathers and cinched tight like barbed wire; the bird had immediately lost control and plummeted in a deep spin into the layers-thick tangle of ivy on the ground.
They fell like meteorites: tangled bales of ivy falling from the sky.
“No!” she heard Curtis shout, seeing the Bandit King plummet. One of the ivy birds, its mouth open in full gape, came crashing toward them and exploded in a flurry of ivy, covering the heron from beak to talon in a mesh of vines. Prue felt her stomach drop out as the heron abruptly lost its glide and began crashing toward the earth.
“Hold on!” Curtis shouted, and Prue held tight to his torso.
The ground came rushing toward them, full force, and they fell headlong into the sea of ivy.
The stuff was so thick and ingrown, here at ground zero of the invasion, that it was not unlike being buffeted about in a surging ocean. Prue, separating from Curtis and the heron in the fall, plunged deep into the plant; her vision went blank for a moment before she opened her eyes and saw that she was submerged in the green sea. She held her breath and waved her arms; her feet couldn’t touch the ground. Kicking frantically, she found she could actually swim through the stuff, and she fought hard to get to the surface, gasping for air as she did so. The vines grabbed at her ankles and snagged in her hair; she screamed and shook, treading through the deep growth, trying to keep her chin above the ivy ocean’s surface. She felt herself moved along by the rush of the ivy; a kind of spiraling mountain was being created around the broken heap that had been the Council Tree, where the Verdant Empress stood, her feet now two solid columns of ivy, her long braids lashing in the wind.
Prue saw Curtis just a few yards off, struggling to stay above the surface as well.
“Curtis!” she screamed. “Stay moving!”
“I can’t!” he shouted back. “It’s pulling me down!”
Using all her inner strength, she commanded the ivy and made a kind of channel between the two of them; she swam over to her friend and grabbed his hand as the motion of the vortex continued to grow in speed and strength. The channel she’d created was soon overcome with new vines, and Prue felt them crawling over her shoulder, pulling her down. She looked to the center of the mountain, where Alexandra stood, her long green arms whipping about her as she stirred the great maelstrom of ivy around and around, faster and faster.
“Children!” Alexandra called over the deafening hiss of the ivy, the first words they’d heard the specter issue. Her voice was both cold and radiant. “Come! Come to me!”
They were being pulled inward
in the maelstrom, closer and closer to the source and the center; the speed of the whirlpool now was nearly dizzying.
Prue looked to Curtis, her hand still locked in his.
“Just go down, Curtis!” she shouted. “We’ll just go to sleep!”
“Sleep?” Curtis yelled back.
“We’ll sleep. Maybe forever. Don’t be afraid!”
“I’m afraid, Prue!”
“I know. I know. But—just relax. It’ll all be over soon.”
She felt her friend’s grip relax in her hand; she felt his fingers slip from hers. She saw his head dip under the surface of the ivy sea. She watched him go down.
Prue then turned her head to the Verdant Empress, kicking and commanding all the while, her every muscle attuned to staying afloat just a little longer. She felt the ivy surge forward in its circular motion toward the broken Council Tree; she could sense that the Verdant Empress was drawing her closer.
Come, said Alexandra, now speaking directly to Prue’s mind, through the language of the plant world. Do not fight. Join me.
NO! Prue’s mind responded. LET ME GO!
But still she was pulled forward. She saw Alexandra reach out her spindly arms; she watched them, all shoots and tendrils, stretch inhumanly out from her long body. The fingers beckoned her. Prue was pulled forward, no longer in control; she felt the ivy embrace her.
She felt a long sleep begin to overcome her.
And then it all stopped.
She didn’t know how long she’d been there, suspended in the ivy. It could have been five minutes; it might’ve been fifteen years. But Prue felt the world fall out from beneath her; the spiraling force of the ivy had come to an abrupt stop. The vines that had entwined her arms and legs, that had twisted themselves into the strands of her hair, all let go. She was dropped, and her feet felt the hard surface of the grassy meadow itself. She collapsed in a ball, drained of her strength. Opening her eyes, she saw that a long passage had been drawn in the ivy bed—a canyon of the churning vines—leading straight up to the hewn tree and the Verdant Empress herself.
Prue lifted her head from the ground and saw that Alexandra had frozen, a being in suspended animation, her gaze fixed on some point just over Prue’s shoulder. Following the spectral woman’s gaze, Prue turned and saw a monarchal figure, a boy dressed in a smart uniform, step down from the back of a golden eagle some yards behind where Prue lay crumpled. A girl had ridden with him; she stepped down as well, the hem of her white dress grazing the tips of the meadow’s grass, newly freed from the scourge of ivy. As the boy walked closer, Prue could see that his flesh vibrantly caught and reflected the intermittent rays of the dimming sun like a bright, light mirror. She could see that he was a machine, this boy, made of steely brass.
“Alexei,” she whispered, bowed by awe.