by Colin Meloy
When the first fir sapling came into view, its midsection neatly knotted with a green ivy stalk, Elsie didn’t take a single look behind her. “There it is!” she shouted, and began urging Carol along. Even his mutterings of caution could not dissuade her from pulling him by the elbow quickly through the weave of trees. They now came in a steady succession, these waymarked trees; as soon as she thought she’d lost the way, another one would hove into view in the distance. After a time, a rise in the terrain appeared, and, reaching its crest, Carol let out a cry of surprise to find his feet resting firmly on the gravel surface of the road.
Elsie, nearly out of breath, smiled widely. “You see?” she said. “It’s not an illusion!”
Carol let out a loud guffaw, despite himself. He patted Elsie fondly on the head, his face beaming. “You weren’t kidding, were you?” He took a deep breath, as if inhaling the air for the first time. “How far does it go? Can you describe it?”
Summoning all her descriptive prowess, Elsie began breathlessly cataloging every detail of the road. “It’s long. It’s all snowy. It looks like it’s been driven at some point; look, there are little wheel tracks underneath last night’s fall of snow. And—I don’t know what those are—hoof prints, maybe. Horses.” She took in the scene behind her. “It kinda snakes along. It’s like a ribbon, or something. Like a country road. It reminds me of … We rented a cabin one summer, my family. In the Sisters Wilderness. The road that led to the cabin looked like this. An awful lot like this. And there’s the stone thing, across the road, with the picture on it. A picture of a bird and an arrow. Just like we told you.”
Carol remained smiling through Elsie’s long monologue. “Indeed,” he said. “Indeed. This was no illusion. This was no trick of the light. You, Elsie, have a gift.”
“Well, my second-grade teacher did say I described stuff well.”
“No,” corrected Carol. “Your gift is the ability to pass through the Periphery. You are not beholden to its laws. You, Elsie, are of Woods Magic.”
The wind whistled along Elsie’s ribbon of road. The girl was at a loss for words. She heard a noise from the side of the road; looking over, she saw her sister break through the bracken, her jumpsuit streaked with mud. “Sorry,” she said. “I kinda fell back there. Glad I found you.” She paused, taking in the two figures’ silent pose. “What’s up? You found the road. That’s good.”
“Is it Rachel?” asked Carol. “It’s your sister!”
“Yes,” was all Elsie managed to say.
“She too!” said the ebullient old man. “I knew it! As soon as I saw—or felt—you both. I could just feel it. Couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but now it’s clear. Clear as crystal. Woods Magic, the both of you. It runs in your family—it must! But how …” Here he paused as the corners of his mouth folded into a ponderous frown. “How did you manage to …” His hand slipped to the fabric of his coat at the elbow, to the place where Elsie’s hand had so recently been. “You—you—” he stammered. “You walked me in. You brought me with you. By touch. By touching.” The smile returned to his lips. “That’s it! That’s been it all along!”
The old man, unanchored from his helpers, began stumbling in a little celebratory dance in the middle of the road. “How simple!” he called, his voice reverberating in the air. “So incredibly simple.” His hands flew out, searching for a body with which to connect. “Elsie, Rachel,” he called. “Come here! Come here!”
The two of them obeyed the old man’s call; he grabbed their shoulders and gave them an affectionate squeeze. “You’ve saved us!” he said. “Who knew? Who ever knows what they possess in the deepest depths of their being?”
Elsie stood with a smile plastered across her face. There were so many things streaming through her head, it was nearly impossible to get them all straight. What did it mean, this Woods Magic? And how could it run in their family? Immediately, her mind flashed to her brother, Curtis. Necessarily, he must be of Woods Magic as well. The idea unleashed a multitude of possibilities in her mind. Briefly she surveyed the scene. “Where’s Martha? And Michael?” she asked. She wanted them to share in the celebration as well.
“I thought Martha was with you guys; she had Carol’s other arm,” said Rachel.
Carol put his finger to his nose in a knowing gesture. “They’re back in the Periphery. Don’t you see? It’s simple. Perfectly simple.”
“I don’t get it,” said Rachel.
“In those last moments, Elsie was the only one guidin me; Martha had fallen back. That must’ve occurred some time ago; before we crossed the Periphery Bind. If my guess is correct, and I’m of a good mind that it is, they’ll be way behind us, stuck in that refractin, infinite expanse of sameness that we’ve all come to call home. Come on! Let’s get them!” At this he began shuffling toward the end of the road, quite free of any helping hand—as if he’d momentarily forgotten his disability. He stopped and snapped his fingers. “Sorry. Gettin ahead of myself. I can’t actually see the way.” Rachel and Elsie, stunned to silence with this new information they’d been given, grabbed his elbows. Together, the three of them stepped back into the woods.
CHAPTER 20
Follow the Green Cable
“Will that be all, Mr. Unthank, sir?”
To Joffrey, the voice arrived as if it had issued from across some vast vacuum of space; like the faint sound of a radio turned on at its lowest volume and murmuring from the attic of a house in which you are sitting at the dining room table. It was undeniably there, yet so removed as to be almost imperceptible. But wait: It came again.
“I think I’ll turn in for the evening, Mr. Unthank. If that’d be all right.”
For the eternity of a moment, Joffrey Unthank pulled himself away from the thing he was holding in his hand and focused his attention on the present circumstances: He was in the machine shop. The mechanical burble of the various belching machines colored the air. The windows were dark. He had no idea what time it was or how long he’d been standing in this position. In fact, it was as if everything in his mind had been erased in this fraction of a second. Looking down, he saw that he was standing with his hands cupped closed at the level of his stomach, like a pontificating priest. And then it all came back to him.
“Sir?” sounded the voice again. It was, unmistakably, Mr. Grimble.
“Yes, Grimble,” responded Joffrey.
“So I’ll see you in the morning, then, sir.”
“Yes, Grimble.”
“Bright and early.”
“Bright and early, Grimble.” It all flooded in; he glanced at his closed hands. Slowly opening them, he saw a thing in his hand. He saw that it was made of brass. And he saw that it was very nearly perfect. The most exacting and immaculate thing he’d ever produced in his history as a maker and crafter of machine parts. It, on its own, was enough to make the most hardened machinist break down weeping, so flawless was its diamond-cut teeth, its smooth parabolic curvature. To imagine its intended function, to fly seamlessly with its sibling gears in a dance of liquid, flowing motion was to see the deity itself.
And yet, it was only nearly perfect. It was not perfect enough.
He turned and chucked it into a nearby garbage canister, where its landing was broken by a pile of similarly nearly perfect but similarly discarded gears. It made a little sorrowful clink!
“Better luck tomorrow, eh, Mr. Unthank, sir?”
“Yes, Grimble,” Joffrey began before adding, “What day is tomorrow?”
“Why, it’s Wednesday, sir.”
“Wednesday.” He repeated it softly, as if the word were some magic sigil. It held a particular resonance: It was the final day of his labors. The strange man with the pince-nez would return, expecting his finished piece. Unthank had never let a client down before; he’d always outmatched his competitors in quality and speed. It was unnerving to him the amount of trial and error involved in the creation of this single piece. The thoughts swam in schools around his skull: Why had he even agreed?
It was ludicrous, the deadline. To create such an exacting piece in such a short amount of time. Even with every state-of-the-art machine at his disposal, he’d gotten so very close, and yet not quite close enough. He was a practical and industrious man; what had driven him to agree to such a ridiculous proposal?
In one word: monomania. It was a word that he remembered being taught in school, when the teacher had written the words “MOBY DICK” on the chalkboard in tall white letters. The captain of the ship in Melville’s novel had been monomaniacal in his desire to catch the titular white whale. Every decision he made was in relation to this all-consuming obsession. In the end, it had been his undoing. The realization dawned on Unthank with cold precision; it was as if someone had suddenly set a bright, unfeeling spotlight on his face. His vanity was laid bare. He was the captain of this ship and the white whale was the Impassable Wilderness. It was too late to turn back; the harpoon had already been thrown. The line was pulling taut.
This is what happened next:
Septimus stood with his claws on his darning-needle hilt, shaking his head. Curtis stared at the mole in disbelief as Prue nearly swept down to grab the Sibyl and hoist her into the air for a celebratory shake. She thought twice, seeing the look of terror cross the mole’s face when she sensed what was happening. Instead, she gave Gwendolyn a happy chuck on her shoulder with the tip of her finger.
“I can’t believe it!” she said. “This is crazy!”
The Sibyl, still confused by the Overdwellers’ sudden swelling of emotion, handled the barrage of questions that followed as willingly as she could.
“So he was a machinist, a maker?” asked Prue, somewhat rhetorically.
The mole nodded.
“And he made this … replica of a boy.”
Curtis added, “For a crazy Governess. I mean, queen.”
Again, the Sibyl responded in the affirmative.
“Gwendolyn, you wouldn’t believe the coincidence in this. We have to find him, your architect.” Prue was smiling ear to ear. Not only had the tree’s advice proved true, but it seemed, in many ways, to be subtly pointing them in the direction they needed to go.
“What did he look like?” asked Curtis.
The Sibyl made a bemused gesture at her hidden eyes.
Curtis, chastened, blushed. She was blind. “Oh yeah. Sorry.”
Prue took up the line, though. “But were there any distinguishing features—anything we could use to identify him?”
“WELL, THE TWO GOLDEN HOOKS IN THE PLACE OF HIS HANDS. THAT SHOULD BE A GOOD STARTING PLACE. BUT WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT? WHY MUST YOU FIND THE ARCHITECT?” The congregation had passed them by; Bartholomew the Seer, hobbling slowly on his knobby cane, stopped to see what the excitement was all about.
“Long story,” said Curtis.
Prue ignored him. “There’s … there’s problems. In the Overworld. Lots of ’em. The tree—the Council Tree—told me—via a little boy, a strange little boy—that we needed to reanimate the true heir. The true heir, apparently, being Alexei. Who is the son of this crazy queen, who was actually known as the Dowager Governess.”
Curtis made a kind of spinning motion at his temple with a finger to illustrate the description. The moles didn’t see it, being blind, and he again blushed at his own forgetfulness.
“WAS?” asked the Sibyl.
“She got swallowed by ivy,” Curtis explained before turning to Prue. “Keep going.”
“The tree said to find the makers. The makers of the boy, the replica. And it sounds like we know who at least one of them was.”
The interrogation continued for some time; both Gwendolyn and Bartholomew offered as much assistance as they could. The architect, they said, had been a quiet individual. He had kept to himself, choosing to sleep in one of the more isolated redoubts of the tunnel system. He had worked tirelessly, though, to rebuild the city. His eyes were very powerful, even if he had lost the use of his hands. And then one morning he was gone, explained the moles, leaving without so much as a forwarding address. He’d simply followed the green electrical cable he’d run to give light to his workspace; it was the direction he’d gone every day in search of more building material. He’d left them a perfectly functioning modern city; for that, they were eternally grateful.
“HIS NAME WAS ESBEN CLAMPETT,” said Gwendolyn. “HE WAS A VERY KIND SOUL.”
Prue and Curtis agreed to stay for the Sibyl’s coronation as the new queen of the City of Moles, to reside in the Fortress of Prurtimus; it was to happen that evening. The consent had been unanimous. She was the sister of the deceased victor, Sir Timothy; there were no other claimants to the throne. What’s more, she was immensely popular, having spent her time while imprisoned feeding Dennis the Usurper far-fetched prophecies that stayed the executioner’s ax for many an unjustly convicted mole. Once she’d been released, she was the toast of the city. When the idea of naming her queen was floated, there were no objections from the Mole Council, nor from any of the citizens.
It was a beautiful ceremony; but the three Overdwellers were itching to head out, though they differed in direction. For Prue, it was simple: They had a clear route to the surface—they needed only follow the fat green electrical cable—and an unimpeachable lead on one of Alexei’s two makers. The tree had spoken true and had not misled them. One of the makers was out there, and they knew how to find him.
“You see?” said Prue, her understanding of the world having suffered another strange imbalance. They were preparing to leave, and she couldn’t stop talking about the prescience of the Yearling’s words. “It’s as if the tree was leading us, all along. As if it knew our fates. ‘You have to go under to get above.’ It’s all falling into place in the weirdest way.”
Septimus was chewing on another of the granola bars; the stash was considerable. The moles had brought them to it. There had been other food items in the remote grotto that housed the Overdweller rations: cans of pork and beans, tomato soup, Hormel chili. They’d also found a yellowed pamphlet, much abused by the mildewing elements of the underground tunnels, which boasted the title: So You’ve Survived the Nuclear Holocaust. What Next? Whoever had made this place his fallout shelter had gone to great lengths to get away from the above-ground.
“Mm-hmm,” said Septimus, his mouth full of an Oats ’n’ Honey Trail Bar.
“What about the bandits?” Curtis asked Prue as she began packing her knapsack full of traveling supplies.
Prue bit her lip and responded as if she hadn’t heard the boy’s question. “Well, I still think you’re right—I still think we’ll be safer aboveground in South Wood. Once we’ve found the maker, we’ll head to South Wood. I have a feeling there are a lot of folks there who would be happy to help us. Who knows, maybe someone in the Mansion will even know where the second maker is. Maybe there are records that will tell us where he was exiled.”
Curtis frowned.
“Or where the bandits are,” added Prue.
“Wildwood,” said Curtis, after a moment of contemplation. “That’s where we belong. Or where I belong.”
“Back at the camp?”
Curtis nodded.
“And then what?” challenged Prue.
“And then … I don’t know. Put together a search party. Find the survivors.”
“You won’t be safe there, Curtis. The Kitsunes could still be lurking. Darla could still be alive.”
“It’s a risk I’ll have to take. I made a vow.”
“I know you did,” said Prue. “And I think you’re keeping it by helping me. You’re not doing anyone any good by getting yourself killed. Even Brendan would tell you that.”
Curtis looked at her blankly.
“It’s for the good of the Wood, I know it,” she continued, her voice growing more urgent. “You have to trust me on this.”
Curtis looked over at Septimus; the rat had made his way through one granola bar and was about to sink his teeth into a second. When he saw Curtis looking, he froze. His eyes darted bac
k and forth between the two kids before he shrugged and kept eating. “Meither way,” he said through his full mouth, “sounds mrisky.”
“Okay,” said Curtis. “One thing I did swear: I said I’d keep you safe. I intend to do that. But only till we find your maker. And then you’re on your own. I’m going back to the camp.”
“Fine,” said Prue, relieved.
They picked through the stockpile for the least suspicious food items and the ones that wouldn’t require a can opener; they fit what they could into Prue’s knapsack. There was no telling how long they’d be traveling. The shadows of their complaining and empty stomachs from the days prior to discovering the moles still hovered in their minds.
A grand send-off was arranged; Prue, Curtis, and Septimus were each given the highest decoration the moles could offer: the Star of the Underwood. The medal itself was a tangle of rusted wire around a salvaged badge that had clearly found its way to the moles’ possession from the Outside: Prue’s read I’M A RAINBOW READER! above the crude drawing of an open book sprouting the identifying rainbow. Septimus’s badge boasted the logo of some forgotten food co-op. Curtis’s just had a picture of a middle-aged man giving the camera a thumbs-up. Below the face it simply read ZEKE in bold letters. They accepted the medals with a quiet dignity.
Leaving the city behind, the three travelers followed the thick green cable that had been stretched along the floor of the tunnel. It led them over long, thin bridges across wide wells. It led them up staircases and down raked floors. It led them down iron ladders and up wooden ones. So many were the twists and turns in the cable’s path that they became amazed by the amount of attention and diligence the marking of the way must’ve demanded of the mole and her Overdweller friend. Prue, for one, could only imagine the potential wrong turns one could take in the maze of tunnels. It was best to just concentrate on the green cable, to follow it blindly.