by Colin Meloy
The streets wound up through the familiar tangle of brick buildings, though South Wood seemed changed since Prue had been here last. Many of the storefronts were boarded up, with indecipherable slogans scrawled across the plywood in angry red paint. A few beggars stumbled up to the rickshaw, desperately clawing at the dangling baubles at an effort to get at the passengers within. The boys at the yoke shooed them off, citing something about them being parasites; Prue watched them, disturbed by the beggars’ presence. It was a jarring sight and something she hadn’t remembered being present in the old South Wood.
With every block they traveled, they gathered more followers. Foxes, humans, bears, and mice—all clambering to get close to the growing procession. “The Maiden!” came shouts from the throng. “She’s here!” “Returned! She’s finally returned!” An impromptu chorus among the crowd started singing “The Storming of the Prison,” adding more verses than the ones Prue had heard; their inclusion did not lessen her discomfort with the song:
We will search out all the Svikists
We will tear them from their beds
We will drag them to the Mansion
And remove their sorry heads
O the blood of all the fascists
Will flow freely in the drains
Like a pair of moldy trousers
We will wash away the stains
More self-proclaimed Spokes, men and women wearing what appeared to be biking gear from a bygone era—pleated knickers, woolen vests, and short-billed casquettes—began falling in line with the parade, becoming a kind of cavalcade of like-dressed humans and animals, bright sprocket brooches pinned to their chests. When they crested the hill and broke free of the knot of buildings to arrive at the Mansion’s front gardens, the crowd was now hundreds strong, a tide of humanity, waving pennants and singing songs and blowing horns and shouting slogans and stamping feet and dancing on the margins and crying out and clapping hands. All in all, the passage bore very little similarity to her first time making the trip, when she’d been a passenger of the charitable postmaster general, Richard, and the fantastic world had opened up to her like an unbelievably beautiful flower, strange and alien.
“The Maiden returns to the Mansion!” yelled a man at her side. “There’s a song in that!”
Prue had long since lost her ability to process everything that was happening; everything was coming too quickly for true inspection. The roar of the crowd was like a symphony of cymbals in her ears, and she truly felt like she was being carried along on a wave of unbridled enthusiasm. It was intoxicating.
That is, until they’d rounded the corner and come across a great contraption that loomed over the central square before the Mansion’s front doors. The crowd paid it no mind, fixed as they were on conveying the triumphantly returning Bicycle Maiden through the doors to confront the Mansion’s leadership, there to do whatever it was she’d come to do (expectations were raised very high). But Prue froze as she stepped down from the rickshaw, just as her right foot touched the fabric of some chivalrous young man’s proffered coat, and studied the apparatus.
It was, undoubtedly, a guillotine.
The silhouette of the gruesome thing stuck in her mind, like the blot left behind in the dark of one’s closed eyelids after looking at a lightbulb or the sun, and stayed there as she was transported by the rush of the mob into the foyer of the Mansion.
Zita had never been this far into the forest; she’d never left the safe confines of the North Wall, that wide stone edifice that stretched east to west through the vast woods and separated, as her father had described it, the civilized world and the world of the birds.
She’d known a few birds; she’d been a small child when the partition had been agreed on, and she still remembered when South Wood had been filled with birds, before their diaspora to the newly founded Avian Principality. They’d been kind, the birds she’d met, but she knew there’d been strife. When the partition had been decided and the lines drawn, it seemed to release some of the built-up pressure. Naturally, some Avians decided to stay on in South Wood and they were welcome by most quarters. It wasn’t until the Night of Broken Doors, the night that the SWORD began rounding up and imprisoning the remaining birds, that it became clear that there were still differences that could not be erased. Tensions had eased since the Revolution, but most of the birds of the Wood tended to keep to themselves and more than a few had left for the Principality, in search of a kinder community. Notably, all the eagles had left South Wood; none remained. This surprising exodus went unnoted by most people, out of fear of insulting the legacy of the Bicycle Coup—after all, there was a new dawn breaking in relations between ground dwellers and tree nesters—but the Avians, shortly after the Storming of the Prison, could be seen beefing up the security on their border with South Wood. In answer to this, a larger detachment of South Wood soldiers was assigned to the guarding of the North Gate. It was a quiet escalation, all done in the name of the old maxim “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Which was why Zita was forced to blaze a trail through the tangled vegetation of the forest, rather than tramp openly on the cobbled Long Road. She knew if she was caught, out this late and so close to the border, questions would be asked. And how would she possibly answer? She ran the conversation in her mind: “What are you doing here, miss?” comes the authoritarian voice. “Oh, just sneaking into the Avian Principality,” she would answer. “And why?” “To steal a feather from an eagle.” “And why would you need to do that?” “To satisfy the Verdant Empress, who’s leaving me notes in writing on the mirror in my bedroom.” She had to stifle a laugh; it was perfectly ludicrous, the whole situation, and she was undoubtedly going completely insane. But there was something about it—something about following the will of the spectral Empress—that seemed to save her from going completely, willy-nilly, over the cliff of sanity. Being a gofer for a ghost—it had a kind of purpose to it.
There was another reason, a deeper reason, for her giving in to the spirit’s whims, but she hadn’t allowed herself to consider it too closely. Every time it surfaced in her mind, she pushed it away. Best to focus on the task at hand, she reasoned.
A task that was now bringing her close to the wall—the darkness seemed to lighten as the flickers of gas lamps illuminated the tree boughs. Through a break in the bushes, she could see a small gathering of soldiers on the road: talking among themselves, calmly pulling on cigarettes. Four had settled down around a battered tree stump for a game of cards. Just beyond them, Zita could see the wide gate in the wall itself: the North Gate, the only passage between South Wood and the Avian Principality.
She counted the soldiers: ten in all. They swarmed like khaki-clad mice around the gate; there would be no getting through this exit. She watched as one of the soldiers, his bayonet-topped rifle slung over his shoulder, began walking idly toward her hiding place. Before he got too close, she ducked back into the bushes and began moving her way eastward, away from the road and the gate.
The light dwindled here, away from the gas lamps, and she waited until she was a safe distance from the road before she struck a match and held it to the wick of the lantern she carried. Holding it aloft with her left hand, she walked along the base of the wall, her right hand feeling the rough, weathered stone and the mossy chinks in the rock. The wall itself was easily twice her height, but the stone was uneven and she soon found a spot, some fifty or sixty feet from the road, that she thought she could scale without too much difficulty. She tied the lantern to the bottom of her knapsack and tested the first jutting stone; the soles of her moccasins held fast and she began to climb.
No sooner had she arrived at the top when she heard a crunching in the vegetation below her; a soldier had stepped away from his cohorts and had begun a solitary walk up the perimeter of the wall. She pressed her body flat to the stones and slowly, achingly dragged the lit lantern toward her face, so she might extinguish the flame. The thing glanced against the rock, and a metallic ting echoed out i
nto the night. The soldier below her swung his flashlight toward her position, shouting, “Who’s there?”
Panicked, she threw her weight toward the Principality side of the wall and tried to make quick purchase on the stones of the other side; she found the surface to be not so obliging as the one she’d just climbed, and the rough-hewn stone tore at her skin and her clothing as she slid the distance of the wall to the ground.
By this time, the soldier’s comrades had been alerted and the gate had been thrown open. “There’s an intruder on the wall!” came the shout. Zita barely had a moment to consider her injuries from falling before she was bounding through the forest, a host of angry soldiers giving chase.
“Stop!” Zita heard one soldier shout. “You are a trespasser in the Avian Principality!”
A wild flapping of wings alerted her to the fact that several Avians had taken up the chase from the air; the unmistakable voice of a bird sounded from the tree boughs. “Human! You must surrender immediately!”
Zita’s heartbeat slammed in her chest; her breathing came in frenzied gasps. She ducked under bent saplings and leapt over fallen tree trunks, the spindly bracken of the forest whipping at her skin like a million tiny fingers. Just as she felt her pursuers were about to overtake her, she found herself within feet of a mighty hemlock, as big around as a small house, and she dove into the protection of its gnarled roots. There, she found she could winnow her way deep into the tree’s inner recesses, and soon she was completely concealed.
Within seconds the soldiers’ footsteps were beating down the brush outside her hiding place; they circled up in a glade just beyond the hemlock and could be heard speaking loudly to the hovering Avians.
“She hopped the wall—east of the gate,” explained one. “A girl. I swear it was a young girl.”
A bird responded, “You have no authority beyond the wall, soldier. Please return to your post. This is a matter for the Principality.”
“But she’s j-just—” was the stammered response.
“Soldier, you are in direct violation of the Border Treaty. Return to your post before I have you arrested.”
This threat, barked from the air, seemed to silence the South Wood soldiers, and Zita heard their slow footsteps retreat through the woods toward the gate. The girl stayed huddled in the nook of the massive tree for a while longer, listening as the wing beats of the birds cycled farther away until it became clear that she’d been given up for lost. Breathing a sigh of relief, she extracted herself from her tight hiding spot and continued on her way.
She knew from her father’s tutoring that eagles built their nests high in the exposed limbs of trees; great confusions of salvaged wood called aeries. As the night gave way to a bright morning and her breath stained the air in a cloud of fog, she searched the high branches for such creations. She kept an eye out for any bird sentries, though as she traveled farther, she knew that she had eluded them. It wasn’t entirely uncommon for a human to be in the Principality; a few non-avian settlers, South Wood expats, made their homes among the ground cover. If she were to be caught, she could merely explain that she was out foraging, a daughter of the Principality’s few human citizens.
Finally, after a few hours of searching, she found what she’d been looking for: Cresting a small hill, she got a view through the trees and saw the wide, woody bowl of an eagle aerie perched in the top of an ancient cedar tree. An adult had just disrupted the branches around it as it came in for a landing, bearing some bit of food in its mouth for the awaiting juvenile who lay in the cavity of the nest. No sooner had the bird done this than it was off again, presumably in search of more forage. Zita prowled her way to the base of the tree and began searching the ground for a feather, hoping that one might’ve fallen during molting. Admittedly, she wasn’t sure if eagles molted.
Her search was interrupted when she heard a voice in the air above her. “What are you doing down there?”
She jerked her head up; she couldn’t find the speaker.
“Up here,” came the voice again. “In the nest.”
Shielding the rising sun with her hand, she saw the beak of the juvenile eagle pointing out from the lip of the aerie. “I’m . . . ,” she responded, unsure how to answer. “I’m looking for a feather.”
“A feather? Why would you do that? What, are you making a pen or something?”
“Yes,” said Zita quickly. “I’m making a pen. A quill pen.”
“Well, I don’t think you’ll find any feathers down there,” said the eagle. “I haven’t molted yet.”
“Oh,” said Zita.
“But tell you what,” said the eagle. “If you can get up here, I’d be happy to give you one.”
Zita eyed the height of the tall tree. “Really?” she asked.
“Sure thing. Got plenty of ’em.”
The girl grabbed hold of the lowest reachable branch. It was solid, rippled with bark. She looked back up at the distant aerie. “This is going to be hard.”
The eagle answered, “I’d fly it down, but I don’t think I could get back up.”
And so Zita began to climb, limb by limb. She heaved her midsection over the lower, solitary boughs and stepped gingerly on those that presented themselves in series like woody stairs. Occasionally she would stop on a wider branch and gauge her position in the tree. The eagle in the nest egged her on, saying, “Almost there! Don’t give up now!”
“I’m not going to,” was her reply.
“My dad’ll be back soon,” said the eagle, when she’d stopped again. “I don’t think he’ll take too kindly to a human climbing up to our aerie.”
Zita grimaced at the bird, still some thirty feet above her head. “That’s news,” she said.
“Hmmm,” said the bird. “I should’ve mentioned that earlier.”
With renewed vigor, Zita scrambled the rest of the distance between her and the nest, weaving her way through the branches. When she arrived at the aerie, her hair was as tangled with cedar tree detritus as the nest itself; she heaved a sigh of relief to see that the juvenile eagle was still alone.
“Hi,” said the eagle. “So what do you really need a feather for? I don’t buy the quill bit.”
“Long story,” said Zita, catching her breath.
“I’m patient.”
“Really? You’re going to make me go into all this?”
“C’mon, I’m bored. All I do is sit up here and wait for my dad to bring me little bits of food. I can’t even really fly that well,” said the eagle.
“Okay,” said Zita. “But I’m warning you, it’s sort of weird.”
“Weird? Curiosity: piqued.”
“It’s part of a charm. From, like, a spirit. The Verdant Empress. I’m supposed to bring her three things. She’s commanded me.”
The eagle looked at her, his head cocked sideways. “And then what happens?”
“I honestly don’t know,” said Zita.
The eagle paused, considering what the girl had said. “That doesn’t seem very smart,” he said finally. “I mean, what’s she going to do with these three things? What’s so important that she needs you to do all this?”
Zita stared at the eagle, perplexed. In all honesty, she hadn’t really considered all the implications that thoroughly. She’d been lost in a haze, following the instructions that had miraculously appeared on her bedroom mirror. “I guess I don’t know,” said Zita.
“Well, it smells funny to me,” said the eagle. “But whatever. You do your thing.”
“Can I have that feather now?” asked Zita.
“Oh, yeah,” said the bird. “What color?”
“What?” Zita thought she felt the air near her disrupted; she heard a loud cawing in the distance.
“What color, like, the plumage?” asked the bird. “And quick: My dad’s coming back right now. He’ll probably pick you up and drop you from the air.”
“I don’t know,” said Zita, petrified. “Silver?”
The eagle rolled his eyes. “We do
n’t have silver feathers. What do you think I am, a griffin or something?”
“Whatever color you’ve got, I really don’t care,” said the girl, hastily, as the eagle’s father approached. The massive bird had made a great arc in the air and was beginning a winding descent toward the nest, something large and furry and very dead in its talons.
The juvenile in the nest began rummaging around in the cavity of the aerie. “Dark brown? No, too pedestrian. Something mottled would be nice. Like, a little spackle of white on tan. That’d be very pleasing, I think.”
“Yeah, sure,” said Zita, watching the eagle’s father approach. “That’s fine.” The adult eagle had spotted her, and she saw a look of affronted anger cross his brow. He screeched loudly as he zeroed in on his approach.
“No, maybe you do want plain brown. Sometimes simple really is the best.”
Zita lost her patience. “Whatever! Just please! I just need that feather!”
The father eagle began his furious descent; his talons, having already dropped their furry cargo in preference to this trespassing human, began to extend like sharpened knives. The juvenile tossed Zita a simple brown feather with its beak, and the girl shoved it in her pocket and scurried desperately down the topmost branches of the tree. She’d barely reached the nearest branches below the nest when the eagle made contact with the aerie, and the treetop swayed under his enormous weight. Zita practically threw herself down the first twenty feet of the tree trunk, diving from one bough to the next like a loosed monkey, the eagle’s screaming echoing behind her, and she didn’t stop until she’d reached the ground, eagle feather safely nestled in the pocket of her jacket.
The first item had been won.
CHAPTER 7