by Colin Meloy
“What, the bandits?” asked the soldier, clearly uncomfortable having an officer speak to him this way.
“Yeah,” said Curtis.
“They’re in the trees, over there, sir,” said the archer, pointing to the far hillside.
“Ah, okay,” said Curtis, still unclear. “Got it. Thanks. As you were.” Muttering excuses, he pushed his way back to the rear of the formation and found the Governess speaking to a small group of officers. When she saw Curtis, she turned and smiled.
“Curtis, just in time,” she said. “We are about to begin our advance. I was thinking of depositing you in one of these high tree limbs, that you might have a better view of the battle. Would you like that?”
Glancing up at the looming branches, Curtis nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe that would be best.”
A small group of soldiers helped Curtis into the lower limbs of an obliging cedar, and from there he scaled up to the thicker branches that sprouted at the ancient tree’s gnarled midsection. Selecting a particularly hearty branch, he scooted himself out along the woody surface until he found a spot where the branch split and he was able to couch himself in the intersection, looking out over the ravine. From this vantage, he could see the entire legion of coyotes stretching away down the ridge. He still could not, however, see anything on the other side of the ravine. He heard a command below and watched as the fusiliers lifted their muskets to their shoulders in taut unison. The orderly rows of soldiers behind the rifles ceased their restless movement and stood vigilantly at the ready. The barking of orders came to a stop and there was silence in the ravine, save the slight whisper of the wind and the rustle of the high tree branches. Curtis found himself holding his breath as he searched the opposing hillside for sign of movement.
Suddenly, the trees came alive.
Prue leapt out of her bath, hearing the mirage of a knock at the door. Hoping it would be one of the Governor’s attendants, come to give her good news, she threw on the bathrobe and ran to the door, peeking out into the hallway beyond. Her heart sank to see no one was there.
“Hello?” she called.
Her eyes fell on the figure of a large dog, a mastiff, clad in dress blues, standing against the wall at the very end of the hallway. He glanced at her briefly before looking back down at his paws. He lifted a cigarette to his teeth. The glow of a lit match suddenly illuminated the smooth fur of his face as he brought it to the end of his cigarette. He took a ponderous drag and looked back at Prue. He nodded.
“Oh, hi,” said Prue.
The mastiff said nothing. Prue squinted, making out a patch on the shoulder of his jacket. There, the word SWORD was spelled out in all capital letters.
“Excuse me,” called Prue. “Do you work here?”
The dog gave no answer.
“I don’t suppose you know anything about my brother, do you? Did the Governor send you here?”
Still, silence. The dog shrugged his shoulders and looked away down the hall.
Well, that’s pretty rude, thought Prue. She was about to ask what the dog was doing there when a tall man in a suit rounded the corner and greeted the dog. They shook hands and began speaking to each other in low voices.
He was just waiting for someone, thought Prue despondently. That’s all.
She closed the door and returned to the bathroom, where she began toweling her wet hair. Some song from the radio snuck into her head and she began humming it, singing an approximated version of the chorus when it came around. Absently running the towel over her neck and nape, she wandered the room in the early evening’s dimming light.
The better part of an hour had passed before a sudden sound from below brought her to the window. She arrived in time to see the multitude of finches she had seen earlier swing down from their nooks in the building and hover before the double doors of the Mansion’s entrance. After a few moments, the doors were heaved open and out walked the resplendent Owl Rex, attended by Roger, the Governor’s aide. Prue watched transfixed as the massive owl turned and nodded to his companion. Roger repeated his shallow bow and walked back into the Mansion, the doors closing behind him. Alone in the courtyard, the owl hesitated before taking flight; he scanned the horizon and seemed to savor the air for a moment before, astonishingly, he craned his horned head around to gaze directly up into Prue’s window.
Prue jumped back from the glass with surprise. His bright yellow eyes continued to hold in place as she stared back. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, he swiveled his head back around, crouched low, and unfurled his immense dappled wings. With a tremendous lunge, the owl launched himself into the sky. He wheeled twice above the driveway, almost prehistoric in his carriage, before flying off into the forest, the mass of finches gliding in his wake like static against the graying sky.
Prue shook her head, unnerved by the experience. Had he been looking at her? He couldn’t have been, she decided; why would an owl prince have any interest in a human girl? It must’ve been pure coincidence, an illusion that he looked up into her window, nothing more.
Something caught her eye on the windowsill, just outside the glass. It was a small white envelope. The words Miss Prue McKeel were written on the front in a delicate, elaborate hand. She quickly threw open the sash and grabbed the letter from the sill. She looked out at the vista beyond the window; the birds were gone. Tearing open the seal of the envelope, Prue removed a piece of ivory paper, which, unfolded, revealed a short note written on the Mansion’s own embossed letterhead. It read:
Dear Miss McKeel,
It is of vital importance that I meet with you tonight. Please come to my rooms at the White Stone House, 86 Rue Thurmond. Make certain that no one follows you.
You may be in grave danger.
Yours, Owl Rex
Prue reread the note in stunned silence. She wandered the room, turning the piece of paper over and over in her hands, a pang of fear blossoming in her chest. She read the note again, this time in a hushed whisper, intoning the last sentence several times over before she folded the note into a small square.
She walked to the door and slowly cracked it open, peering out into the hall. The mastiff in the blue suit was still there at the end of the corridor. His attention was focused on his forepaws; he was picking at his claws with a little file. Prue saw him begin to turn his great, jowly head toward her, and she quietly pushed the door closed, retreating back into the room.
In a trance, she walked over to the bed, where her jeans lay. She stuffed the note into the front pocket. The light was slowly fading in the room, and she turned on the small bedside lamp. She sat on the bed and felt her heart pounding through her rib cage as if it were exploding.
Curtis had, at one point, been an avowed Animal Planet buff. Couldn’t get enough of it. Starting when he was two, he was told, his parents would set him down in front of the television after dinner and he would sit, transfixed, absorbing anything the cable channel would broadcast, regardless of the featured species, habitat, or climate. The obsession wore off eventually (to be replaced by a series of things: Robin Hood, ancient Egypt, Flash Gordon—the list went on) but he always remembered the images that first carried his fascination. One of them was the scene, ubiquitous in any program involving creatures that numbered camouflage among their evolutionary advantages, where the camera would be trained on a tranquil, empty meadow or veldt and you, the viewer, would be baffled as to why these professional wildlife documentarians would waste precious film on animal-less grassland—when all of a sudden, a lion or a snake or a panther would move out of the grass or scrub and you would be shocked at your own inability to detect it.
This is what popped into Curtis’s mind as he watched the forest on the far side of the gully breathe into life.
It started imperceptibly; the gentle movements of the swaying fern fronds and low-hanging branches slowly seemed to take on a more threatening, deliberate aspect, and Curtis thought he saw a flash of metal from behind a small pile of deadfall. Then, it was as if
the undergrowth sprouted limbs and began to move, unmoored from the forest floor. The bodies of humans soon began to distinguish themselves from the background, and Curtis gasped to see a few figures emerge from the greenery, their dark faces savagely streaked with brown and green paint. As Curtis watched, more and more bodies joined these few until the entire far ridge was crowded with people, a people swathed in tattered clothing and holding a strange and wild variety of weapons: rifles, knives, clubs, and bows. The crowd continued to grow, and Curtis estimated their number to be well over two hundred—at least as many people as he’d remembered seeing in his school’s gymnasium during a rally. Their movements made no sound, save the clicking of rifles engaging and the yawning creak of arrows being drawn.
Below him, the Governess appeared, back astride her horse. She fearlessly cantered the horse to the front of the line, drew her sword, and pointed it at the emerging army across the ravine.
“Bandits!” she shouted. “I’m giving you one last chance to drop your weapons and concede defeat. Those who surrender will be treated with fairness and leniency. Those who don’t will face death!”
The horse sidestepped and whinnied on the lush slope. There was no response from the other side. A breeze disturbed the quiet tree branches. The afternoon light came through the woods sideways, casting long, looming shadows on the ground.
“Very well!” continued Alexandra. “You have chosen your fate. Commandant, prepare your—”
She was interrupted by the snick of an arrow, speeding past her cheek and lodging itself with a woody pop into a nearby tree. Her horse reared and she struggled to calm it, all the while training her eyes angrily across the ravine.
A man stepped forward from the throng on the opposing ridge. He wore a thick red beard and what looked to be the salvaged remnants of an officer’s coat, its red cloth and decorative braiding defaced by dirt and ash. Finger-wide streaks of paint scarred the cheeks of his weather-beaten face. He held a gnarled yew bow in his gloved hand, its sinewy string still quivering from the shot. A crown of ivy and salal was tangled in his matted, curly red hair, and his forehead was branded with a tattoo of some totemic aboriginal design.
“This country ain’t yours for the taking!” shouted the man. “You’ll be queen of Wildwood when we’re dead and laid in the dirt!” The army of bandits surrounding him let out a boisterous cheer in response to the man’s defiance.
The Governess laughed. “Couldn’t agree more!” she cried, finally steadying her horse. “Though I am unclear as to what authority crowned you king, Brendan!”
The man, Brendan, grumbled something under his breath before shouting, “We follow no law, accept no governance. They call me the Bandit King, but I’ve as much right to that title as anyone here, any animal, avian, or man who follows the bandit code and creed.”
“Thieves!” shouted Alexandra, furious. “Low thieves and brigands! King of the Beggars is your rightful mantle!”
“Shut it, witch,” was Brendan’s steady reply.
The Governess laughed and clicked her tongue at her horse, spurring it away from the ravine. Passing the Commandant, she turned to him and said flatly, “Wipe them out.”
“Aye, madam,” said the Commandant, smiling. Standing at the front of the line, he raised his saber and shouted, “Fusiliers! Aim!”
The line attended his command; together, their rifles were raised to their shoulders.
“FIRE!”
An erratic staccato of cracks followed, and the air of the ravine was filled with a dense, acrid smoke as the fusiliers fired into the opposing bandit forces.
Through the clearing haze, Curtis watched as several bandits toppled into the gully, their lifeless bodies rolling down through the ferns, while others crowded into their abandoned posts. There was a sort of half second of shocked silence that seemed to Curtis to last an eternity before the quiet was broken by a collective, impassioned cry from the entire hillside and the bandit line burst into action, tearing down the ravine, their swords, clubs, and knives brandished savagely above their heads. A loosely organized line of archers behind them let fly a dense volley of arrows into the coyotes’ forces, and Curtis gaped to see the line of fusiliers decimated, dozens of the coyote riflemen keeling over into the gully with arrows lodged in their chests.
Before the bandit ground forces had a chance to reach the other side of the ravine, the coyote archers, on command, stepped forward into the fusiliers’ position, their arrows nocked. “Archers!” shouted the Commandant, standing in their midst. “FIRE!”
The wash was again bridged by a tight weave of arrows in flight, this time in the opposite direction, and the gully became littered with the bodies of those unfortunate bandits who should find themselves in the arrows’ path. The bandit archers, reaching for more ammunition, allowed a straggling few riflemen to step forward and fire into the coyote formation; many shots struck home and more bodies of coyotes began to join the bandits’ in the smoky ravine. Curtis stared at the growing number of dead and wounded, and the battle had scarcely begun.
“Infantry!” came the Commandant’s holler. “MARCH!”
The grunts in the rear of the formation marched forward past the archers and fusiliers, just in time to meet the bandits as they clambered up the gradual incline of the ravine. The two forces crashed together in an explosion of sound: clashing sabers, wild howls, fiery shouts, and cracking bones. Curtis grimaced, his stomach turning. The romance he’d associated with these sorts of battles, chiefly from historical novels he’d recently taken a liking to, was beginning to tarnish. The reality was proving much uglier.
The two warring forces became a tangle of bodies, fur and flesh, metal and wood, as their respective artilleries fired round after round of arrow and bullet into the opposing ridgeline. But however many bandits spilled over the edge and into the gully, more appeared from the forest to replace them, and for a moment it seemed as if the coyotes would be horribly outnumbered.
That was when the cannons were called in.
With four coyotes to each gun, they were heaved through the remaining line of archers and fusiliers to stand at the top of the ridge. One coyote stood beside the cannon and howled commands to the others, who in turn packed powder and ball into the cannon’s wide shaft with a disciplined efficiency. When the guns were loaded, the commanders raised their sabers and, on the Commandant’s mark, yelled “FIRE!” and the forest resounded with a series of thunderous booms.
The cannonballs smashed into the bandits’ line, sending bodies flying in every direction. The balls, hitting their mark, sent up giant plumes of dirt and splintered even the most massive of tree trunks as if they were toothpicks. Ancient, sky-tall trees that looked as if they’d been born when the earth was new came lumbering to the ground, crashing into their neighboring trees and sending splintered branches and limbs flying in every direction. More than a few unlucky fighters in the ravine, in heated battle, were crushed by these falling behemoths.
Curtis’s ears were still ringing from the cannon fire when he saw the bandits regrouping on the hillside. The fusillade had temporarily disarmed them, but they were growing again in number, their forces continually feeding from the woods behind the ravine. Their line of archers was pulling back for another deadly volley. In an attempt to capitalize on the artillery’s initial success, the Commandant quickly ordered that another round be fired. Curtis watched the coyotes’ movements intently, fascinated by the quickness of the artillery team below him.
Just as the Commandant barked his order to fire, an arrow shot over the ravine and directly into the neck of the coyote tasked to light the wick. He fell back, dead, and the smoldering slow match in his hand toppled into a pile of dried vines at the foot of the tree in which Curtis was cradled. The rest of the artillery team was suddenly beset by bandits as a wave of them crested the slope, and the coyotes were forced to leave their posts, locked in combat.
The ember from the match quickly caught fire in the dried vegetation, and little flames b
egan licking at the base of Curtis’s tree. Curtis flinched, staring down at the growing fire.
“Darn,” he muttered. “Super darn, darn, darn.”
He hastily pushed himself back from his perch on the branch and slid down the trunk of the tree, the rough bark scraping through his uniform at his knees and elbows. Landing on the ground, he grabbed the slow match from where it lay and began stamping out the fire at the roots of the tree.
“Darn, darn, darn,” he repeated incessantly.
The dried leaves quickly crumbled beneath his shoes, and the fire was extinguished. The tip of the lit slow match glowed in his hand. He stood for a moment, paralyzed by the action around him, and then looked over at the abandoned cannon, its tenders still blade-to-blade with their bandit foes.
“Might as well . . . ,” his internal voice decided.
He ran to the cannon and held the lit match to the wick. In an instant, the fuse caught, the cannon fired, and Curtis was thrown as the gun mule-kicked backward and a shower of smoke and sparks filled the air and the world around him was silenced save for a slight, distant high-pitched ring.
“Wow,” he felt himself whisper, though he couldn’t hear a thing.
Prue couldn’t remember ever being as impatient for the sun to go down as she was now. She sat at the window of her room in the Mansion and watched the big orb descend behind the distant peaks of the Cascades until the forest was dark. With the dimming of the day, the activity in the Mansion seemed to ease and calm, and the comings and goings she had witnessed all afternoon at the front doors came to a quiet end. The clatter of footfall in the hallway outside her door had ceased, and the Mansion seemed to fall into a silent nocturnal slumber. Prue figured her chance was now.
She padded quietly into the bathroom and turned the sink faucet on full blast. The rush of water spattered against the white tile of the floor. She then returned to the main room and grasped the handle of the door. Taking a deep breath, she turned the knob. Here goes nothing, she thought.