She nestled her scarf to her cold cheeks and watched the mist filter down through the weave of trees on the far side of the river. That would be Wildwood, she thought. She wondered what had transpired since she’d left, what incredible shifts and changes had occurred to forward the fate of that miraculous place. Her eyes followed the snow-dappled ridgeline down, across a field of chemical tanks in the Industrial Wastes, and over the river to a tawny field directly below the bluff. There, she saw something very strange.
Initially she thought it was just a weird shadow, cast from a puff of smoke or from a high-flying bird. But as the mists curled and cleared, she could tell the shadow was in fact the form of an animal. Yes: The more she squinted, the clearer the thing came into view.
It was a jet-black fox.
And it was staring right at her.
A violent noise suddenly exploded in her ears, the unmistakable sound of the rackety fauna. It came from the thicket of Scotch broom that sprouted from a rocky outcrop below the bluff’s edge. No words formed; the noise was abstract, a deafening raspy shushing, and it seemed to wipe out all hearing, like a crashing wave or television static pushed to its highest volume. Prue’s hands went instinctively to her ears, though it did little to lessen the sound. She stumbled backward, feeling her mouth issue a muted scream, her every nerve shocked by the intensity of the noise as it grew louder and louder. Something caught her heel, and she was pinwheeling downward, footless. A jolt of pain shot up her spine as her tailbone made contact with the rough ground.
The noise blotted out everything; Prue promptly lost consciousness.
All was darkness.
All was darkness.
This was because Curtis had his eyes squeezed as closed as they possibly could be. His mouth was fixed in a rictus grin, so great was his effort to keep any visible sunlight from getting past his eyelids. That way, he stood a chance of pretending that he wasn’t flying. He could more easily pretend that the wind that was currently ruffling the fur of his chin-strapped ushanka and whipping at his clothing and chilling his cheeks was not from flying; no, it was just a heavy wind blowing—it was February, after all. And that feathery texture that he had gripped in his fingers so tightly? Perhaps it was a pillow—a cozy, goose-down pillow—giving up its dander. And that bit of turbulence? That certainly wasn’t from flying. It was…
He peeked his eyes open.
He was flying.
“RAMMING SPEED!” hooted Brendan as his mount, the long, lithe egret who’d accompanied the heron, took a sudden dive to buzz Curtis’s furry hat. Curtis panicked and gripped his fingers tighter to the heron’s neck. They were far above the trees now; those towering Douglas firs looked like leafy, snow-covered toothpicks from this height. The vista stretched on into the distance; the sun, setting low behind a deep veil of clouds, graced these high flyers with the day’s last light.
“Ouch!” shouted Maude, the heron. “Not so tight around the neck, please.”
“I’m s-sorry!” Curtis shouted back, tears streaming down his face. He couldn’t tell whether the tears were from the wind or from his very genuine fear. “I’m just not that good with heights!”
“Why didn’t you say that before we left?” the exasperated bird replied.
“It didn’t seem appropriate!?
?
“It didn’t seem what?” The wind was very loud. It made for difficult conversation.
“It didn’t seem …,” Curtis began, but he was cut off by another of Brendan’s loud, celebratory WOOPS! The egret and the bandit had flown ahead by several bird lengths and had just executed a terrifying-looking loop-the-loop; they again fired directly over Curtis’s head, causing him to bury his face into the down of the heron. “I wish he would stop doing that,” said Curtis.
“Just relax!” said Maude. “You’re too tense! It’s throwing off my pitch!”
A clutch of song sparrows erupted from a mist-shrouded piece of the canopy, causing Maude to bank sharply to the right. Curtis squealed.
“GAH!” he cried. “Can you not do that, please?”
“You mean this?” asked Maude. She banked again, this time more severely. They were now just skimming along the highest tips of the trees. A sputter of snow sprayed across Curtis’s clenched face.
“YES! THAT!” he responded.
The heron, tired of the game, ascended to a more comfortable cruising altitude and began to glide. The turbulence passed, and Curtis was able to relax his grip on the bird. “So where are we going again?” he asked.
“To the Great Hall in North Wood,” replied Maude. “A clandestine meeting has been called.”
“A meeting with who?”
The bird sighed. “If I knew that, it wouldn’t be terribly clandestine, now would it?”
“But why us?” asked Curtis, perplexed.
The egret pulled up alongside the heron. “Yes, waterbird,” called Brendan, “why have we been summoned? Why should bandits be called to a secret meeting among the North Wooders?”