Wildwood (Wildwood Chronicles 1)

“We have no choice, Prue,” was the eagle’s loud reply. The General heaved a few wing beats, bringing them to a higher altitude; the blanket of dark green below them fell away, and Prue could feel her ears pop.

“Keep an eye peeled for hazards,” came the General’s instruction. “We’re crossing over into Wildwood.”

Prue squinted and scanned the crowns of the trees; here, the forest seemed wilder, untamed by any single colony. In the understory, deciduous maple and alder trees fought for dominance of the canopy alongside their larger coniferous cousins, the hemlock, fir, and cedar trees. They seemed packed closer together, their growth unhindered in this wild country; indeed, trees were not the only vegetation that sought the concentrated light at this height—fantastic vines of ivy had clambered to the top of several unfortunate maple trees, seemingly suffocating their hosts in the attempt to reach the blue of the sky.

“Looks clear!” shouted Prue.

As they flew on, the trees began to grow taller and wider, and they overshadowed the lesser deciduous trees around them. The tops of these trees seemed to scratch at the sky, the wind swaying their high branches. The General was forced to ascend even higher, and Prue could feel her lungs beginning to struggle for air at this elevation. From the new altitude, she could see how the dense patchwork of trees below them stretched on, seemingly endless, into the horizon. The borders of the Wood appeared impossibly vast. Forgetting herself and the thrill of her flight, she was suddenly overtaken by a feeling of hopelessness at her task. From this vantage, looking out over the massive expanse of wilderness below them, she thought, for the first time, that she might never find her brother. As if for comfort, she hugged the eagle’s neck tightly and buried her head into his feathers.

And so she did not see the coyote archer.

She did not see him steady himself on the topmost limbs of a great fir and carefully nock an arrow in his bowstring. She did not see him pull the string back taut, and then release. She did, however, hear the singing whi

stle of the arrow as it sped toward its mark, and she felt the weight of the shaft as it hit its target, sinking with a sickening thunk into the breast of the eagle. And she saw the tip of the arrowhead exit from between the General’s shoulders, mere inches from her cheek, its metallic point stained red with blood.

“NO!” she screamed.

The General gave out a single, impassioned squawk and then he was silent, his head dipping low into his breast. His wings, by reflex, contorted around his body, and Prue and the eagle began to plummet from the air.

Prue, in absolute shock, began fumbling with the arrow in his chest, trying to pull it out, but it was held fast. “General!” she yelled desperately. “Don’t! No, no, no!”

His wings suddenly contracted and he began shouting garbled protests to the skies; he beat his wings just enough to keep them from crashing straight down to earth. They skimmed the tops of the trees, Prue clutching to his neck feathers as he violently canted to either direction in flight, threatening to pitch his rider at any turn. The eagle valiantly carried them a good distance from the archer’s position until he finally could labor no more; he gave one last cry, and, his wings falling limp, his body dropped from the air.

Prue shrieked and closed her eyes as they went crashing through the canopy of the trees. The thorny branches of the firs tore at her clothes and skin, attacking her body with the force of a thousand lashes. She pressed her face into the blood-wet back feathers of the eagle to guard from the whipping branches, and she felt the stillness of his body against her cheek. Finally, one stout tree limb broke their forward momentum and they toppled straight down, she and the eagle, cartwheeling through the leaves of the trees until they plowed into the ground, a rain of broken branches showering on them from overhead.

Prue was thrown several feet from the eagle, but luckily landed in the soft, rotted remains of an ancient tree trunk. Her fingers and face stung; she lifted her hands to see them crisscrossed with red scratches and abrasions. Her clothes hung in tatters from her body, and a wide patch of crimson red stained the front of her shirt. The General’s blood, she thought. She jumped up to return to the eagle when she heard the sound of movement in the trees, the distinct crunching noise of footfalls in the undergrowth. She stopped in her tracks, guardedly searching the words around her.

Slowly, imperceptibly, the dense vegetation shifted, and a circle of human figures emerged from the woods. She was surrounded.

“Don’t . . . move . . . a muscle,” commanded one of the figures.

Prue froze. These men and women wore an eclectic array of clothing: brigadier uniforms, khaki scrubs, fine silken waistcoats—but in disrepair. The elbows of their coats were frayed, their undershirts stained with dirt, and everything looked to be fairly ill fitting. More significantly, they were armed to the teeth: antique pistols and rifles, swords and bowie knives. And they were pointing them at her.

“Where did you come from?” asked one of the men.

Prue slowly lifted her arm and pointed to the sky.

Her assailants were aghast. “What, you flew?” one asked, in disbelief.

Prue nodded. Her head was spinning, and she was beginning to feel faint. A searing pain was growing in her chest.

A voice came from behind the crowd. “What is going on here?” shouted the voice, gruff and authoritative. Pushing a few of the figures aside, a man appeared in the clearing. He had a deep red beard and wore a dirty officer’s coat. A sash over his shoulder carried a sizable saber at his hip, and his forehead was tattooed with a design Prue couldn’t immediately decipher. He towered over Prue, his curly red hair gaining him another six inches, easily, and glowered down at her. “Who are you, and where did you come from?”

“I’m—I’m Prue,” she faltered. “And I was flying . . . on the eagle back there . . . and we were . . . we were shot down.” Sputtering those last few words, she suddenly collapsed in a heap on the ground.

When she came to, Prue was moving. A kaleidoscope of sunlight and tree leaves wheeled above her. She was lying down and yet, strangely, hovering over the ground, traveling horizontally at a fairly fast speed. She lifted her head slightly and saw how this was possible: She’d been laid in a makeshift stretcher—two tree boughs with some ropes threaded between—and was being carried through the woods by the strange people she’d just encountered.

“The General!” she shouted, pushing herself up by her elbows. “The eagle! Where is he?”

The woman’s voice came from behind her. “He didn’t make it.”

Prue tried to crane her body around to see the woman who’d spoken. “He’s . . . dead?” she asked falteringly. The woman nodded, and Prue’s stomach plummeted. A jolt of pain shot up her neck from her chest, and she fell back against the twine beneath her. She grabbed at her ribs. “Ouch!” she cried.

“Looks like you took a pretty bad fall,” said the woman, her breath heaving fast as she and the other stretcher-bearer ran through the woods at a near sprint.

The man at the front of the stretcher yelled over his shoulder. “Don’t move. We have to get you to safety. Never seen a coyote marksman that far from the warren. There may be others.”

Prue looked to one side and saw that the stretcher was accompanied by the rest of the people who had found her. They ran nimbly through the undergrowth, barely disturbing the bushes and bracken as they went.