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“What’s happening?” hissed the bandit Ned. He jabbed his pitchfork into the writhing wall of brown vines and was surprised to feel it snag some of the woody plant.
“I’m stopping it!” shouted Prue, her fists still planted in the earth. Great bulbs of sweat appeared at her brow, and she gritted her teeth against the onslaught.
All around them, the barrier made a perfect circle around the tree and around the meditating Mystics. Prue realized it wasn’t her force alone that was creating this magic shield; the silent Mystics were helping too—she could feel their power channeling through her as she held back the wave of ivy and buffered the incredible sonic crush of hiss the plant was broadcasting to those few ears who could hear it.
“Cut it back!” shouted another voice—it was a farmer who, armed with a mowing scythe, had cut a huge chunk of the plant by the roots. A slag pile of vines had fallen at his feet, gray and dead.
The gathered defenders, the bandits and farmers, followed the man’s example, but the ivy kept coming; for every yard of the plant they took out, more rushed in to take its place, lapping against the unseen wall.
The beating of wings sounded behind them; the birds, who had been circling the air above the tree, landed in the free space defended by the ragtag group, the circle of untouched meadow that surrounded the Council Tree. “To the air!” shouted Owl Rex, among them. The defenders, still brandishing their farming implements, backed uncertainly away from the embankment of ivy and climbed astride the large birds: They were herons, egrets, pelicans, and owls, and they took their riders with ease, bending low before unfurling their wings and, with a few swift steps, taking to the air. Prue stayed earthbound, channeling the meditations of the Mystics into the great barrier currently protecting the tree from being overrun.
Then came the crashing, explosive noises—like elephants’ lumbering footfalls; Prue, caught behind the ever-rising bulkhead of ivy vines, couldn’t see where the noises were coming from or who was creating them, but she felt a surge every time one of them sounded.
She could feel the tree behind her, still throwing her strange, disjointed images. What was it saying? She found it nearly impossible to split her attention between holding back the flood of ivy and trying to make sense of the tree’s weird symbols that were appearing in her mind. Did it want her to hold the ivy back? There was something almost resigned about the communications. It was as if it wanted to be overrun, it wanted to be torn down.
Above her, she saw the whirling flock of giant birds as they dove down beyond the wall of ivy; they were attacking something, though she couldn’t see what. The screams of the birds and the angered shouts of their riders rent the air. More crashes sounded; more heavy surges of the vines. Her strength was beginning to wane; she felt like she’d just sprinted a mile around a muddy track and her lungs were aching for reprieve. A glance behind her confirmed that the Mystics remained in their placid spot—each in a delicate lotus position, their gazes fixed on the central point of the Council Tree.
Suddenly, she felt something give. It was as if she’d been a part of a long line of grapplers on a tug-of-war course and her teammates had begun to fall away one by one. The ivy pushed forward, pressing its advantage against this new dip in resistance.
“No!” shouted Prue, calling over her shoulder to the Mystics. “Help me!”
But then the dam broke and the barrier fell away and the ivy cascaded down into the last defensible circle of grass on the meadow. Prue knelt down and held her arms out straight, commanding the ivy back, but she could only hold the scant few feet of ground that she occupied. Unable to break the field she’d created, the ivy formed into a giant funnel around her, a cyclone that rose and rose high into the air. The hissing noise was now enough to blot out all other sounds and all other thoughts, and she felt the numbing crush of gravity slowly reducing her power. The spinning cyclone shot higher and higher, and soon the blue-gray sky became an unreachable hole in the darkening vortex the ivy was creating around the girl.
“HOLD TIGHT!” shouted a voice; even amid the din of the ivy’s swarming noise, Prue recognized the voice. It was the voice of an old friend.
She looked upward and saw a dazzling sight: a coat of brass buttons glinting in the dimming sunlight, the plunging form of a heron in free-dive. She saw Curtis Mehlberg, astride this white heron, threading the eye of the ivy cyclone. She felt his hand grasp her arm, and with what little energy she had, she managed to throw herself behind him onto the back of the bird, and the bird rose up as the spiraling funnel of ivy vines collapsed below them in a shower of tangling green leaves.
CHAPTER 29
The Body of a Prince;
The Battle for the Tree
The molds were carved from the broken husks of walnut trees, their cavities meticulously routed by Carol’s nimble fingers as Esben gave him calm words of guidance. Seamus and Martha, working together, continually added wood to the fire while its heat poured ever farther out from the ring of the smithy. The ivy, which was so thick and pernicious that they had to keep their sabers at the ready, to cut the bolder tendrils before their ankles were ensnared, seemed to bow away from the heat of the flames, and soon a clear swath had been laid for the task at hand.
The two machinists bantered back and forth casually as they labored, two old friends deeply engaged in their true life’s work.
“Not bad,” said Esben, admiring the third mold they’d carved. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘work of art,’ but it’s a work of something.”
“Oh, I see how it is,” replied Carol. “Easy comin from the guy who can’t even pick his nose without runnin the risk of givin himself a lobotomy.”
“Okay, I’ll level with you,” said the bear, smiling. “You actually haven’t been carving out the molds—I’ve been doing that. You’ve just been making a series of ornamental toilet paper dispensers.”
Carol let out an explosive laugh. “Here,” he said. “Catch one.” He tossed the finished mold in Esben’s direction, giggling to hear the bear’s
hooks clack noisily together as he tried to catch the thing.
“Easy there,” said Esben, who, after a few fumbling grasps, managed to have the thing spinning on his left hook. “You’re dealing with a trained circus professional, you know.”
“How fitting,” said Carol.
With Esben guiding the way, Carol and Martha, together, lifted the crucible from the flames, their hands protected by thick gloves (and Martha’s eyes shielded behind her plastic goggles). They poured the molten brass into the mold; after dousing it in a bucket of water, Esben held the template in the fire until the cast burned away and the sprocket was revealed. The bear looped it onto his hook and studied it in the light of the fire.
“That’ll do,” he said.
“Damn right, it will,” chided Carol. “Now we can keep sittin here, admirin our own armpits, or we can get back to work. Last I checked, we got two more to do.”
Seamus, having dumped another load of logs onto the ever-growing pile by the fire, put in, “I hate to interrupt the repartee, gents, but if I’m not much mistaken, we’ll need something to put this thing into eventually, right?”
