“Up we go,” came her brother’s voice, and she saw that she was next in line at the ladder, the rest of the group having already climbed. Her arms felt rubbery and spent, but she found the energy to heave her little body up into the boughs of the great tree where Curtis had built his own wooden world.
And what a world it was.
It became startlingly clear that he and Septimus had utilized every idle minute of their days in the construction of this new hideout. The ladder led up through a small opening onto a platform that encircled the trunk of an ancient cedar tree. From there, a staircase had been built that spiraled up and around the trunk, the steps made of planed beams that seemingly sprouted from the tree’s surface. The group fell into a single file, at Curtis’s instruction, as they made their way up the stairs. The climb was enormous; soon, the canopy of the tree and its surrounding neighbors had completely concealed their whereabouts from the ground.
“Wow, Curtis,” Elsie said, watching the world disappear below her. “You built this?”
“Me and Septimus, yeah,” said her brother. “I’d learned a lot of this from Bandit Training. Pretty basic hideout construction, actually.”
“And Mom and Dad were all worried that you were missing school,” said Rachel, from a few steps above them.
Finally, the seemingly endless string of steps climbed through an opening to arrive at another wooden platform, this one much larger, made of rough logs that fanned out from the tree’s trunk. The floorboards seemed to be tied together with more handwoven rope and were supported by rough-hewn joists from below. Elsie gasped to see that several rope bridges led out from this platform, connecting the tree to its neighbors. There, she could see more structures had been built: Small huts with neatly shingled roofs and wooden walkways dotted the tops of the surrounding firs and cedars. It was a neat little village, camped some several hundred feet above the forest floor.
“This is incredible,” said Nico, inspecting the handiwork.
“I had a bit of a one-up on the other guys in training,” said Curtis modestly. “They hadn’t heard of an Ewok village. I just followed that model, really.”
A holding pen, crudely constructed of crosshatched pine boughs, had been built in a close-by fir tree, accessible by a wooden platform. Once their captive, Roger Swindon, (whose hands had been freed for the ascent) had been ushered into the cage, Curtis waved Nico and Rachel back across the platform, which he then raised, like a drawbridge, by cranking a wooden winching contraption.
“You’ll be sorry for this,” shouted the man from behind the wooden bars. “You’re going to wish you’d never done this, mark my words! I’m not a man to be meddled with!”
“He’ll be safe there,” said Curtis, ignoring the man’s shouts. “Never used it before, but I’m pretty sure it’ll hold.”
Roger hollered a few more threats at them, from across the gulf between the trees, before finally quieting down and lapsing into a pouting silence.
Atop another spiraling staircase, though still concealed within the mighty cedar’s limbs, Rachel and Elsie’s brother, along with the talking rat, had built an impressive structure—a kind of cottage with rough-hewn walls and open-air windows with conifer branch shutters. A stone fire pit had been built to one side, safely away from the host tree’s trunk, and the remnants of an earlier fire were still smoldering, the little smoke there was flowing up through an opening that had been cut in the house’s slatted roof. Curtis quickly walked to the fire and, pulling from a neatly stacked pile, began feeding new logs onto the embers. Soon, the renewed flames were warming the interior of the cozy tree house.
“It’s not much,” said Curtis shyly. “But it keeps you dry.”
“I’d say,” said Nico, who walked around the house, inspecting the dovetailed joints and the carefully knotted twine that held the beams together.
Elsie felt her face distort in a massive yawn; Ruthie asked their host, “Can I take a nap?”
A little bed, made of gathered moss, had been laid to one side of the fire pit, and Curtis offered this up to the young Unadoptable. He’d made a collection of similar moss tufts, just outside the door, and he gathered these together. Strewing them about the floor, he made a humble gesture. “This is the best I can do,” he said. “Hope that’s all right.”
For Elsie, it was fine. As soon as she’d laid her head down on the green stuff, she found herself drifting into a deep and immediate slumber.
CHAPTER 25
A Meal for the Marooned;
Intruders on the Perimeter!
The day bore down, harsh and brilliant, a blinding light rising over the flat, watery horizon to the east. Prue and Seamus lay huddled in the protection of a south-facing wall, and the light hit them as the rays of sun made a sharp angle against the flagstones and the ropes and the bones.
Hours passed, achingly slowly. The day ebbed into evening.
The two captives immersed themselves in an all-consuming silence.
Prue found herself in a kind of steely mediation, haunted by the premonition she’d had the night before that Alexandra, the Dowager Governess, had somehow returned. It wasn’t something she could really put her finger on—it was as if the void left when Alexandra had been swallowed by the ivy had always stayed with her, a kind of notable, tangible absence. And now she’d felt that absence filled again. It felt different, for sure, but she was certain that the Dowager Governess had awakened and had returned in some form. She could only imagine how or why this had transpired—had it been the aim of the Synod? What kind of magic could possibly have brought back the spirit of a soul gone for these many long months?
Seamus, at her side, rubbed his eyes with his weathered hands. He, too, gazed out at the field of human and animal remains that stretched out before them and, like Prue, seemed to slowly and deliberately reconcile himself to their very sad fate. A flock of scavenging seagulls wheeled about in the air above them, perhaps excited by the new additions to this hopeless place and the promise of a fresh meal.
“Hi,” he said, finally breaking the long silence between them. His voice was an aching creak.
“Hi,” said Prue.
“Still get that feeling?”
She knew what he meant. “Yeah,” she said. “Still got it.”
The two of them lapsed back into silence, both of them wrapped in the sad, brutal realization of their current situation, which, charitably, could be called unfortunate. It seemed to Prue, for one, that everything that could’ve gone wrong, did go wrong—though the mind-bending set of terrible events that were now currently overshadowing the people of the Wood paled in comparison to her own, terrible circumstances: She was stuck on a rock in the middle of the ocean, wondering exactly how long she would survive before she became just another addition to the scattered refuse on the ruined fortress’s flagstones.
“Hungry for dinner?” asked the bandit, attempting a smile.
“What, gnaw on some bones?”
From the pavers beneath them, Seamus picked up a healthy-sized chunk of stone, what had once been a piece of the broken wall, and weighed it in his hand. “Been a while since I was reduced to this,” he said, feeling the knobby, heavy thing. “But I expect it’ll come back to me.” With some difficulty, he pushed himself up from his seat and began kicking the bones aside, clearing an area in the middle of the veranda. He then began searching the sky, watching the circling seagulls. He held the rock at an easy angle away from his body, a baseball pitcher loosening up on the mound.
Prue looked up to the sky, shielding her eyes from the sun, and guessed at the bandit’s intentions. “Really?” she asked.
“Really,” said Seamus.
“I’m not sure I’m that hungry.”
“You will be,” he said. “Might as well get our larder going. We’re gonna be here a while.”
“I’m a vegetarian, you know,” said Prue.
“A what?”
“Someone who doesn’t eat meat. You don’t have those in bandit-world
, vegetarians?”
“Nope. Sounds awful.” His eyes were still trained on the milling seabirds.
To be honest, ever since Prue had gained the extraordinary ability to confer with the plant world, she started to see her vegetarianism in the same stark light she saw meat eating; she’d had a revelation when she was young, having read Charlotte’s Web, and had vowed to never touch animal matter again. But she’d never actually spoken to Wilbur, a kind of communication she’d shared with any number of her fellow organisms of the green, leafy variety. Still, one had to survive.
“Well,” said Prue, “I’ll pass.”
“Suit yourself. We’ll see how many days go by before you ditch the vegetablism and enjoy some lean”—he cocked his shoulder—“dreamy”—he flexed his wrist—“SEAGULL MEAT!” The rock launched from his hand and sailed up into the crowd of flying seagulls above their heads. It missed one of the large ones by mere inches, flying over the side of the ramparts and down into the churning ocean below. Seamus shook out his hand, smiling, and began to scout the ground for another projectile. “Out of practice,” he explained to Prue.
Prue’s eyes felt as if they’d developed a crust of salt, and it took some time, with her carefully rubbing them, before her vision was unblurred. She let her renewed gaze sweep their present living quarters. The castle had been the sort of structure one would expect to be built atop an inhospitable rock in the middle of the ocean: small, squarish, and, were it not for the fact that the entire roof had caved in long ago, it would’ve been completely devoid of natural light. A broken staircase was cut into the far corner of the structure, and it climbed a few, meandering flights before it, too, ended in a crumbled ruin.
A rock suddenly fell, with a loud crack, just inches from her fingers. She jerked her hand back and glared at Seamus, who was standing in the middle of the veranda, searching for another rock.
“Hey!” she shouted. “Watch it!”
“Oh,” replied the bandit. “Sorry.” He found another stone and began choosing his next target among a seagull flock, which seemed to be suddenly mindful of their predator; they were scattering now, cawing madly, flying just out of reach.
Momentarily defeated, Seamus put his hands on his hips and looked at Prue. “Buck up, lass,” he said. “We’ll get off this thing.”
“How?”
“Time. Patience. Bandit-sense.”
“Bandit-sense? How’s that going to help us?”
“Nimble thinking. Stuff like that. Goes a long way. Been in worse scraps, myself.”
Squinting up at Seamus in disbelief, Prue said, “Worse? Like, what?”
“Spent three days in a tree, whilst a hungry bear sat at the bottom.”
“Doesn’t really compare.”
Seamus thought for a second before saying, “I got caught by the Mountain King, once, when I was trying to burgle his scepter—took it up on a bit of a gamble, actually. Brendan bet me I couldn’t do it, and you know, a good bandit never passes up a wager. Got the scepter, so there’s that.”
“Why is that worse?”
“Fell in love with his daughter in the process. Tried to take her along. Didn’t fare so well. A lot of extra weight. Got nabbed, spent a week dangling by my big toes in a cavern filled with poisonous spiders. Hence the name, Long Toe Seamus.”
“Didn’t know that you had that name.”
“Doesn’t come out much. Sore subject. But I cleared that scrape just fine.”
“What happened to the princess?”
Seamus scratched at his beard and replied, “Funny you should ask: After I escaped, she ended up running away from her father—awful guy, the Mountain King—and finding me in the bandit camp. Nice woman, we married. Turns out bandit life wasn’t to her liking, and she ended up going back to her father’s fiefdom in the caverns below the Cathedral Mountains and overthrowing the Mountain King’s regime with an army of rat soldiers. Good story, that. Miss her from time to time. I get the occasional letter. Gotta hand it to her, the woman made a really good borscht.”
“That’s heartening,” said Prue lightly. “You ever been captured by a power-hungry religious sect and stranded on a deserted rock in the middle of the ocean? If so, how did you escape using your bandit-sense?”
Seamus shook his head at Prue’s sarcastic tone. “Listen up, lass. You might be some chosen apostle for the Council Tree and a half-breed Outsider with the ability to chat with plant life, but you’re a far sight removed from banditry. It’s all about remaining limber, opening yourself up to the possibilities. And the like.”
“I’m open,” said Prue. “Look, I’m open.” She held her palms out to the bandit.
“No. I’d say you’re not. I’d say you’re rather closed, actually, lassie. Time is our friend here. It’s one resource we currently have a very lot of. Let’s use that time wisely. We can start by cataloging our problems. Organization is the bandit’s best ally.”
“Is that a bandit saying?”
“Should be. Now, naysayer, Gloomy Gus, let’s go down the list. First off, we have our fellow bandits, captured, assumed brainwashed.”
“Infected by a parasitic fungi,” added Prue.
Seamus cringed at the mention. He rubbed his nose. “Right,” he said. “Assimilated into a religious sect of dubious morality. Correct?”
“Aye,” said Prue in her best bandit voice.
“That’s the spirit. Secondly, one of our team has experienced a, shall we say, premonition about the possible rise and return of the Dowager Governess, someone who was last seen making an evening meal for a patch of animated ivy. Correct?”
“Aye, aye, Cap’n,” said Prue, getting into the spirit of the exchange.
“That’s a pirate voice. There’s a fine distinction between bandits and pirates, I’d have you know. Show a little respect.”
“Sorry.” And then: “Aye.”
The bandit continued. “So that’s two fairly dire predicaments. Before we begin managing the solutions to them, do you have anything else to add?”
“You forgot ‘marooned on a rock in the middle of the ocean.’”
“Right, that. I figured that was, you know, assumed.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
The bandit smoothed his beard and began juggling the rock he held in his right hand. “Right. Now, a good bandit sizes up his obstacles and sees them for the trivial things they are, in the grand scheme of things.” Prue was about to interject and challenge him on the “trivial” bit, but Seamus waved her away. “Stick with me here. Consider, for a moment, the vastness of the universe.” He looked at Prue to make sure she was, in fact, envisioning this. “Consider the untold stretches of space, the unexplored and unknown lights that glint in the skies. The watching eyes of deities? Perhaps. Sand grains kicked into the heavens by the Great Sky Crab? There are those who believe that.”
Again, Prue was set to interject and explain to Seamus what several generations of forest-living bandits had apparently failed to grasp, that those shining lights were, in fact, shining suns burning in far-off galaxies of their own, but it seemed a lot to put on him now, when he had such a head of steam going. “Go on,” she said.
“Now, stand up. Come over here, in the middle of these flagstones.”
Prue did as the bandit instructed, pushing herself up from her seated position against the ruined wall, and joined him in the center of the courtyard.
“Perspective is key. Imagine yourself one such celestial being, for whom human and animal existence, in its entirety, is one strand of hair on their knuckle. One such celestial being for whom time and its passing is such that a million years pass in the blinking of a single eyelid. Now, once again, let’s, in our minds, catalog those few trivial events that transpire against us from the perspective of such a being. And how we and our struggles must appear to it. These flagstones, these bones. Our very bodies. The wheeling seabirds in the sky—how little they must appear! How infinitesimally small!??
?
Prue was really falling for this bit; she had her eyes closed and was gently swaying to Seamus’s calming tone of voice. She let herself be lost in it, envisioning herself watching everything that had happened to her, all these tumultuous events at this perspective-transforming height.
“Very small . . .” A pause.
“Just, really, really small . . .” His voice trailed off. Then: “Though you have to admit, that’s a pretty big bird.”
Prue opened her eyes and saw, just on the horizon, amid a flock of swooping seagulls, a birdlike shape. At its present distance, it seemed to be roughly the same size as its neighboring birds, except for the fact that it was even farther off than the little shapes amid the flock; indeed, it appeared that it dwarfed its fellow seabirds by a good amount. As it drew closer it became clear that it was not just a big bird, but a massive bird, a gigantic bird, unlike Prue had ever seen before.
Or, actually, she had—once before.
“Is it . . . ?” she began, but stopped for fear of dashing her expectations. Instead, she grabbed Seamus by the hand and together they ran up the ruined staircase to the top of the ramparts. From here, it seemed, they could see to eternity. Clouds, lit red and pink by the setting sun, swept the distant horizon. The large, dark shape flew through the flock of seabirds and scattered them in a torrent of frightened cawing. Prue could now make out the little spikes at the top of the figure’s silhouette: the horns of a great horned owl. It was, without a doubt, the Crown Prince of the Avian Principality, Owl Rex.
“See?” said Seamus, his voice steeped in disbelief. “See what a little bandit-sense gets you?”
The owl, its huge wings splayed, came up near the rock and lengthened his mighty trunk, his wings all mottled gray and white and his large black eyes wise beyond their years. His long body cast a wide shadow over Prue and Seamus as they backed away from the top of the fort’s balustrade; they found themselves cowed by the bird’s size and majesty, and not a little bit of fear was struck in both of their hearts at the sight of their rescuer.