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“Cool,” whispered Harry breathlessly.
They’d traveled many miles in their journey, and morning had come to the wild forest; the air was cool and bright and lit up with birdsong.
“A few things you should know before we head up,” continued Curtis. “It’s not super entirely safe yet. Like, the banisters are mostly temporary, so don’t go putting all your weight on them.” Curtis looked at each member of his small audience, as if to underscore the importance of his words. They all looked attentive, though incredibly tired. “You guys are beat, aren’t you,” he said.
Elsie nodded emphatically. The rest murmured their yeses. It’d been a long night; they’d all agreed that they should stay a day or two before they made their way to South Wood, there to confront this strange religious sect that had enslaved Curtis’s bandit brethren. Elsie was still floored by all that had happened the night before. She’d been part of a miraculous rescue mission, a daring chase through this mysterious world and, in the end, been a part of a dramatic reunion with her brother. It was about as much as her nine-year-old mind could take.
“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?
