Now the tortoise’s head appeared in its completeness above the cover of the desk. It was green, scaly, and fairly mushroomlike and sported as frightened a look as Prue had seen grace any human’s head. She immediately felt sorry for the thing.
“Fine!” he shouted. “Fine! Fine, fine, fine.” The tortoise then stood up fully from behind the desk (he wasn’t much taller than the structure he’d been hiding behind) and waddled over to the wall of bookshelves. “No need to look it up in the card catalog,” the tortoise fumed, having suddenly become almost manically fearless. “I just put it back. That’s helpful!” He laughed, once, madly. “The whole file’s up here. Institutional Punishment, Exile, years 340–345, Common Era. Ha, ha! Look at the memory on the turtle!” Arriving at one of the bookshelves’ ladders, he began climbing it. His journey took him to the very topmost rung, where he splayed a single flipper out to the limit of his reach and there grabbed one of the yellowing white binders. “Here, catch!” he howled.
Luckily, Charlie and Prue had both followed the tortoise over to the bookshelf and were there to catch the binder as it fell from its great height. Two more followed, the binder’s direct neighbors, with a fourth and fifth tagging along for good measure. The tortoise on the ladder cackled as he dropped the binders, muttering things that were thankfully just out of hearing of the two humans on the floor—they didn’t seem quite cleared for twelve-year-old ears.
“Satisfied?” shouted the tortoise once both Charlie’s and Prue’s arms were full.
The two staggered with their loads over to a long table and dumped the binders on the surface. They quickly set about arranging them in some semblance of order and began their search. The binders were filled with manila folders, three-hole punched, and were labeled on the top right corner in an orderly script with the names of the convicted.
It was a sad odyssey, searching through the records of the long-exiled convicts of South Wood, and strange. Charlie, who’d never so much as left his garage, where he’d worked on salvaged automobile parts and old cassette machines, fell into his role as co-researcher with gusto. Both he and Neil tore through the manila folders and translated much of the language for Prue when it proved too arcane.
“‘WW’: I assume that means Wildwood,” she said, leafing through the pages.
“Must be,” responded Charlie, peering over at her stack. “I’m seeing a lot of that too. Pretty common, looks like. Do you think Carol ended up in Wildwood?”
“He’s from the Outside, like me,” said Prue. “I’m not sure if there’s a particular punishment for Outsiders.”
“Don’t know that there’s been many Outsiders in the Wood. You’re the first I ever met,” said Charlie.
“And what’s this?” asked Prue, returning to her folders. “Something about the Crag—‘imprisonment on the Crag,’ it says. Some poor guy named Lucky. Doesn’t sound lucky.”
Neil nodded. “You never heard of that? I guess, how would you?”
“What is it?”
Charlie put in, “My mother used to warn me when I was a kid—I think a lot of folks in South Wood got the same warning. ‘If you don’t shape up, I’ll put you on the Crag.’ Get you into order quick, that would. It’s off somewhere, in the middle of the ocean. A rock in the ocean where they built a prison. If you end up on the Crag, it’s over.”
“Suppose Carol ended up there?” wondered Prue.
“Could be,” said Charlie, licking his finger and flipping through more of the pages. “But that’s imprisonment, not exile.” He paused for a moment in his searching, watching as the tortoise returned, muttering, to his desk. “You say this guy was an Outsider?”
“Yeah,” said Prue.
“There was talk—when I was a kid—I remember asking about the Outside, the place beyond the boundary. There was rumor about that world and what went on. Didn’t ever sound like the sorta place I’d want to visit, but we’d all get worried that some Outsider was gonna come in and terrorize the Wood, you know. But I remember my parents telling me, ‘Nah, quiet down. The Periphery would stop ’em.’ And they said that if ever they caught an Outsider, say he somehow got walked through—you know, like escorted by a Woodian—well, they’d throw him in there, into the Periphery, and he’d live out his days stuck in a kind of nowhere forever. Wonder if they’d do that sort of thing to your Carol Grod.”
Prue was struck by the idea. “How would we ever find him then?”
“We wouldn’t, I don’t guess,” said Charlie. “So our best bet is just to hope that didn’t happen.”
“Not much of a strategy,” said Prue, and she continued shuffling papers. Before long, she came across a folder that bore the name ESBEN CLAMPETT written in the selfsame black script. Opening it, she was bemused to find its contents missing.
“Someone’s taken Esben’s too,” she said, showing it to Charlie and Neil. “This is not helpful.”
“Do you suppose they were after the information themselves?” asked the badger.
“Yeah. Either that or they didn’t want me finding out.”
Charlie continued his search; only a few moments passed before he let out a little yelp. “Here’s your man, Carol Grod!” He held up the folder—Carol’s name was there, written on the top corner.
The tortoise at the desk must’ve overheard the exclamation. “Empty,” he said. “You’ll see.”
Charlie smirked at the grumpy tortoise; as if to appease his own curiosity, he opened the folder and peered inside. “Yep,” he said. “Gone.” He paused, cocking an eyebrow, before saying, “Though not quite.”
“What’s up?” asked Prue.
The bearded man reached into the folder and retrieved a small, folded-up piece of paper. He held it up between his thumb and forefinger; the name PRUE had been written on the surface. He tossed it across the table.
Unfolding the paper, Prue read the following message, scrawled in a delicate hand: