Wildwood (Wildwood Chronicles 1)

The General watched her, silent. The light was still dim and the air hazy; the eagle’s tawny plumage was a stark contrast to the wall of green that surrounded him. He scratched the underside of his wing with his beak, briefly, before turning back to Prue. His yellow eyes bore into Prue’s.

“He was really brave, sir,” she offered quietly. “I don’t know what else to say; I owe him my life, I guess. They came for me, not him. And he protected me. I don’t know why, but he did.”

The eagle finally broke his steady gaze. He stared off into the distance, his face seemingly devoid of emotion. Finally, he spoke. “I’ve sworn allegiance, as a general of the Avian army, to the throne of the Crown Prince. My orders come directly from our monarch. And now he’s gone; imprisoned. In the absence of his authority, I can only infer what the Crown Prince would command.” Here, he looked back at Prue, a steely reserve settling over his feathered brow. “If he has protected you, then I must protect you. If he has risked his life for you, I am duty bound to do likewise.”

Enver warbled in agreement. The General unfurled his massive wings, the wingspan stretching easily as wide as Prue was tall, and leapt from his perch to land gracefully on the ground before Prue’s feet.

“If it is your wish to fly to North Wood, then I would be honored to be your carriage,” said the General, and he bowed his head low.

Prue, at a loss for words, made an awkward curtsy. Turning to Richard, she extended her hand in thanks. He took it and shook it firmly, his face set in a grave frown. “Another good-bye between us, Port-Land Prue,” he said. “Let’s hope it’s the last.”

She smiled. “Thanks again, Richard. I won’t forget it.” She turned to Enver. “And you,” she said, reaching out her hand to run a finger along his smooth black head. “The best attendant a Crown Prince could hope for. I’m sure he’d be really proud of you, if he was here.”

Enver cooed and sidestepped shyly on his roost.

Prue heaved a deep breath and turned to the General, his head still bowed low. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.” The eagle shifted his talons and turned so Prue could climb onto his back, her fingers running through the down of his feathers to find a grip at the crook of his shoulder. She could feel the taut sinew of his muscle shift and shudder as he flexed his wings in preparation for flight.

“Hold on,” he said.

Prue pressed her body against the General’s back, her cheek nestled against his soft feathering, and the eagle took a few nimble steps before shoving off from the ground. And they were flying.

Curtis had been immersed in some strange cir

cumstances since he’d made that fateful decision to follow Prue into the Impassable Wilderness, but surely nothing was as bizarre as this, sitting in a giant birdcage dangling from a root-ball in an underground warren, trying to remember the words to “Mustang Sally.”

Mustang Sally

You probably should slow the mustang down

Mustang Sally

You probably should slow the mustang down

One of these . . . something . . . mornings

Hmmm guess you something something something something eyes.

“Something eyes?” asked Seamus, incredulous. “Whatever does that mean?”

“No, no, no,” said Curtis, scratching his head. “I forget the words. Something about eyes, though. Sleeping eyes? Oh boy, I’m really sorry, guys. I thought I knew it better.” The song had been one of his parents’ favorites and was a perennial family road trip sing-along classic. He was now mining the dregs of his pop song repertoire in an effort to match the bandits’ last offering, a tuneful song about a gypsy kidnapping a lord’s daughter. They’d been at it for hours now, trading song for song, and time was flying by. The cavern rang with the voices of the prisoners.

“But I’m a little confused,” said Angus. “So she’s a horse, this Sally? And yet there’s another mustang she has to slow down?”

Before Curtis had a chance to correct this misreading, another bandit joined in. “Angus, ya fool, it’s clearly a love song from a man to a horse. The man loves the horse, this Mustang Sally.” This caused the entire prison block to erupt in laughter.

“Aye, Curtis,” shouted another, between gales of laughter. “You Outsiders have some fairly odd ways about ya!”

Curtis tried to stem the laughter, shouting, “Guys, it’s a car! A kind of car!” But the bandits would have none of it. Rather than fight it, Curtis started laughing right along with them. One of the bandits, Cormac, managed to speak through the din. “Another, Curtis! Give us another Outsider song!” But before Curtis had a chance to insist that it was, in fact, the bandits’ turn, there came a loud banging noise from below.

“Shut yer holes, maggots!” shouted a voice. It was the warden. He stood on the floor of the cavern, banging his giant key ring against a round soot-black cauldron. “Gruel time!” A group of four soldiers had entered the cavern; two carried the wooden spit from which the cauldron hung, two stood guard by the door. The warden walked over to where the giant ladder was leaning up against the cavern wall and grabbed a pole, of similar height, on the top of which was tethered a large wooden ladle.

“Get yer bowls ready!” came the next shouted instruction.

The prisoners grumbled and shifted in their barred enclosures, causing the array of cages to twist and swing like ornaments on a Christmas tree after it’s been shaken. From between the bars of the cages emerged single arms, blackened with dirt, holding wide tin bowls. Curtis looked over to his side and noticed for the first time that his cage, too, came with a tin bowl, and he picked it up and held it out of the cage like his fellow prisoners. The warden dipped the ladle end of the pole into the cauldron and, carefully paying out the length of the wooden shaft into the air, filled each of the prisoners’ proffered bowls, one by one. A little of the gruel splashed onto Curtis’s hand as it was poured, and he flinched at the expectation that it would be hot; he was chagrined to discover that it was pretty tepid.

After the warden had finished, he put the ladle pole back in its resting place (with the ladle end down and planted in the dirt, Curtis couldn’t help but notice) and ushered the soldiers from the room. The warden, too, exited the cavern, though not before turning and issuing a sardonic “Bon appétit!” to his prisoners.

Curtis looked deep into his bowl; the “gruel” appeared to be a pale milky broth of some sort in which bobbed a flotilla of foodlike objects. Curtis picked at one such object with a finger; it appeared to be the cartilage of some indeterminable beast.