A collective gasp met this revelation. Elsie, sitting on a bench by the fire, felt every eye in the room land on her.
“It’s a road.” Another gasp; the frenetic sound of excited children whispering to one another. Carol held up his hand. “Now, hold up. You should know that this road runs through the interior of this country. I’m not suggesting we follow it. However, it does make one thing perfectly clear: Elsie is not affected by the constraints of the Periphery Bind. It would appear that she—and her sister as well—are able to walk, quite freely, through it.”
Now the room could barely contain its excitement. The girl sitting next to Elsie was staring at her, as if she’d inadvertently sat down next to some Hollywood starlet and was only just now realizing it. There were a few hoots from the older kids in the back—also a few “Way to go, Elsie and Rachel!” Then it appeared that the realization dawned on the celebrating crowd. One kid asked, “That’s great for them. What about us?”
“That’s just the thing, isn’t it?” replied Carol. “I’ve asked myself the same question for a long time—how is it that those who
are unaffected by the Bind are able to come and go so freely? When I first was brought here, I was deposited by a group of the Mansion guards. And yet once they’d left, it was as if they’d thrown the lock on my cell door. And yet no door existed.”
Another voice took up the explanation. It was Michael. “What he’s saying is they can walk us out. We just need to be making physical contact with them.”
Everyone’s head had swiveled to face the new speaker. He continued, “They found out because they were walking Carol through the woods—might not’ve discovered this little trick otherwise. When they went and found us, me and Cynthia, we lost them as soon as they’d gotten very far. But if we all held hands, we were all able to make it to this road. Simple as that.”
Carol nodded. “Yep,” he said. “Simple as that. So simple, in fact, that it’s no wonder I hadn’t been able to figure it out. So all’s it took was someone of Woods Magic to come in here and we were free. Thing is, I don’t think the Mansion ever thought there’d be a couple kids born with it just wanderin into the Periphery.”
Now the girl sitting next to Elsie was looking at her as if she were a ghost; a look of surprise, intrigue, and not a little fear had fallen over her face.
“They’re, like, from there?” asked a boy, sitting cross-legged in front of Carol.
“No, no,” the old man replied. “But they were somehow born with it, this thing the Woods folk call Woods Magic. Other folks’d called it Woodblood. Whichever. My guess is, it runs in families. Somewhere in the Mehlberg family tree, there’s a Woodian, just keepin things quiet in the Outside world.”
Elsie and Rachel made brief eye contact from across the room. Rachel was sitting at the dining room table, idly drawing on the grain of the wood with her finger. She seemed uncomfortable with this new information. The room was awash with excited voices; everyone seemed to have a different opinion about what to do next.
“I want to go home!” a younger girl, Elsie’s age, cried plaintively.
“What home?” shot back another girl.
“Maybe we should explore this road. See where it leads.” This was Carl Rehnquist; he was knitting.
“No way,” replied Cynthia Schmidt. “From what Carol tells us, that place is freaky.”
“And dangerous,” added Lizzie Collins.
“What about Unthank? What about the promise of all that money?”
“And our freedom!”
“Ha!” retorted Michael, sucking on his pipe. “That’s a joke. He’ll just put us right back to work.”
“And make Elsie and Rachel take him into the woods.”
Elsie shuddered at the idea. It was true: They undoubtedly would be Joffrey’s key to getting past the Periphery Bind. The idea of being a shepherd for Unthank and what would likely be a constant stream of other industrialists seemed like a fate worse than death.
“This is our home. This is our place.” Michael had spoken the words; the entire room had fallen into silence in their wake. “There’s nothing out there for us. In the outside world, we were orphans. In here, we’re a family. Right, Carol?”
The old man wore a thoughtful frown. He was rubbing the gray stubble of his cheek, his mouth slack. Finally, he spoke. “Well, as much as I have come to love the place, I can’t say I wouldn’t mind seein that outside world again. I s’pose my son’ll be gettin on forty by now. We never did talk much after his mother died, but I guess it wouldn’t do no harm to just drop in.”
One of the children nodded in agreement. “I’d like to eat a Starburst again,” said one, and a few other kids tittered with laughter at the suggestion.
“Or chocolate!” threw in another. This elicited a new round of enthusiasm.
“Caramel sundaes! Whipped cream!”
“Nickel video games at Wonderland!”
“The Burnside skateboard park!”
“Coffee! So much coffee!” The kids all wheeled to look at this one; it was Carl Rehnquist. Apparently, now that he’d tasted the fruits of the grown-up world, he was keen to explore more of it.