Under Wildwood Page 14

  “Run, Elder!” shouted Bion, the gray fox, as he dove in the way of the pouncing Kitsunes. The bodies crashed together in an explosion of teeth, fur, and flesh. Iphigenia, thrown from her meditations, fell backward, landing with an agonized yawp on the ground. Were it not for the fact that the very blades of grass at her feet rose up to cushion her fall, she might not have been able to regain her footing. The human woman Mystic, Eutropia, helped her to her feet and held her arm as the foxes behind them fought bitterly.

  “To the trees!” said Iphigenia, with some difficulty. “Our only hope.”

  Dutifully, the two Mystics escorted the Elder toward the line of trees at the edge of the clearing. The sound of the three foxes’ melee could be heard behind them. A scream came from Bion; he shouted to the retreating Mystics, “RUN!”

  Iphigenia turned to look and saw that he had been struck down, his muzzle flattened against the muddy ground. Blood seeped from his nostrils. The two Kitsunes bared their teeth and gave pursuit. Eutropia let go of the Elder Mystic’s arm and turned to face the assassins.

  Darla saw this. “Watch the plants!” she hissed to her fellow.

  Eutropia held out her hands, palms open, to the ground below her feet. The tawny blades of grass leapt alive at her command and began whipping at the arms and legs of the approaching Kitsunes. But the assassins had better judged their opponent; they stepped quickly through the thickets of grass and avoided the larger bushes; the quivering greenery could not hold their prey. Before the Mystic had a chance to engage, the foxes had leapt with fearsome agility and barreled the woman to the ground, teeth gnashing.

  Iphigenia and the antelope Timon heard their fellow Mystic’s screams as they fled for the safety of the tree line; they did not hazard a backward glance for fear of losing what little distance they’d put between themselves and their pursuers. “Quick, Elder,” said Timon. “Climb on my back.” Iphigenia did so, wrapping her arms around the antelope’s slender neck. With a grunt, the Mystic kicked into a gallop, racing for the edge of the clearing. They could hear the foxes behind them, freed of the clutching grass, tearing after.

  Iphigenia, astride the antelope, did what she could to hamper the assassins: The varied plant life of the meadow struck out wildly at the sprinting foxes. It wasn’t until they’d made the line of trees, though, that she was able to create any significant obstacle. She looked to the high boughs of the trees—the fir, the maple, the hemlock—and she beseeched them to help in their flight.

  Branches, whipping lightning-fast from the heavens, descended on the two black foxes as they reached the edge of the clearing, and they yelped in pain, the wood making bright red lacerations along their sides. Timon leapt the trunk of a bent hemlock that had tipped sideways into the ground, and Iphigenia grunted at the collision when the antelope made landfall on the other side.

  Darla, neatly dodging an arcing cedar bough, bounded over the hemlock while the other Kitsune ducked low and scrambled beneath. Iphigenia saw this; she breathed deep and conjured. The male Kitsune made it only halfway under before the tree bore down in a quick, groaning motion and pinned the fox, hard, to the loamy ground. He yelped loudly, but his compatriot, Darla, did not stop to assist. She did not see him pushed farther down into the ground; she did not see the little fingers of plants’ roots make a white web over his head and suck him deep into a furrow that closed over him like a lapping mouth.

  Despite the tactical advantage of the woods, the trees and bushes all working in tandem to check the pursuit of the assassin, Darla was gaining on the two Mystics. Timon was unable to fully gallop carrying the weight of the Elder Mystic; he faltered by a stand of willows. Iphigenia slipped off and whispered in his ear, “Go. Go to the two half-breed children. Warn them.” He gave her a quick worried look, and then, in a shot, disappeared into the knot of trees. Iphigenia turned to face her attacker. She calmed the quaking greenery. It trembled to a stop.

  Untrusting, Darla slowed her pace to a deliberate, silent stalk. “This is it, crone,” said Darla as she rounded the old woman.

  “Yes, it is, isn’t it?” said Iphigenia. With that, she sat down on the cushion of salal vines at her feet and deftly wrapped her legs in lotus position. Her eyes fell peaceably closed.

  The fox leapt. The surrounding forest, under no command or request, convulsed mournfully as the assassin hit her mark.

  Prue collapsed on the wooden floor of the tower, suddenly overcome with the worst pain she’d ever experienced; it felt like all her blood had stopped flowing and her every nerve ending was set to flame. Her mouth was opened to scream, but no voice came. Everything green around her was shouting at her, hollering through the cavity of her skull, as if each and every piece of vegetation, from the smallest patch of moss to the tallest tree, had witnessed some horrible degradation. She put her hands on her ears to blot the sound, but it was no use.

  Her eyes darted around her, trying to figure out how and why this was happening. She saw Curtis above her; his lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear his voice. She felt him grab her shoulders and shake them. Her whole frame felt frozen and impotent. She found herself teetering on the edge of unconsciousness; and yet the screaming was so much more intense than it had been that day on the bluff. And then, as soon as it had begun, it all stopped.

  She stared up at Curtis, wild-eyed, and grabbed his arm, her voice suddenly returned to her in this new vacuum of silence.

  “It’s Iphigenia, Curtis,” she choked. “She’s … she’s …” But what, exactly, Prue couldn’t know.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 9

  Unadoptable

  They had all borne witness. Clearly, that had been the intention; that way the boy would serve as an example to them all. It had happened quickly and it was over quickly. After it happened, the other children in the machine shop returned, seemingly unmoved, to their duties, and the puffing and clanking of the room’s machines continued unabated. They had seen it before, many times.

  The boy’s name was Carl. Elsie had spoken to him once in the cafeteria. He was a year older than her and was a heavyset child with red curly hair. He’d been nice to her—he’d noticed her Intrepid Tina doll and had said that he’d been a fan of the TV show, when he was still living with his birth parents, before they’d perished in a strange Jet Ski accident. And that was the sole interaction Elsie had had with the boy.

  The incident began with a whimper, literally. A whimper that could be heard throughout the ringing shop. It came from Carl himself as he stood at his station, manning a machine that was easily one hundred times his size and mass. It was called a Bifurcated U-Bolt Bender, and it did what its name implied: it bent bifurcated U-bolts. He’d obviously been spacing out, as he’d pressed the purple button when he should’ve pressed the black. He let out his knowing whimper; at that point, the Bifurcated U-Bolt Bender had ceased bending bifurcated U-bolts and began bending itself. Two loud popping noises sounded from within the machine, and then it came to a rattling halt, smoke belching from its riveted seams.

  Some sort of emergency power shutoff must’ve been triggered, because all the machines in the shop suddenly ground to a stop, and the pale fluorescent light that typically bathed the warehouse was replaced by a demonic, flashing red. Everybody began casting about, trying to figure out what had caused the stoppage; their eyes eventually landed on Carl, who was standing by the smoking Bifurcated U-Bolt Bender with a guilty look on his face. Martha, at the conveyor belt, had removed her goggles and blanched. “Oh no,” she’d whispered.

  “What?” hissed Elsie, standing back from her inoperative machine. The upside-down ice-cream-cone-shaped insignia was flashing angrily. It was the only time Elsie’d seen it actually do something.

  “He’s already got two,” said Martha cryptically.

  “Two what?” asked Elsie, but in the time it took to say those words, she understood. “Demerits?”

  Martha nodded.

  The room flooded with light, and the machines made a strange hu
m; footsteps pounded the stairs to the factory floor. It was Mr. Unthank, who had apparently restarted the power to the room. A glower clouded his goateed face, and it looked as if he’d been interrupted from his lunch: A narrow band of what appeared to be tomato soup made a kind of second mustache on his upper lip.

  “What was that?” he demanded. No one answered. He stalked to the obvious culprit, Carl and his machine, and glared.

  “What have you done, boy?” he asked.

  “I’m really sorry, Mr. Unthank, sir. I didn’t mean nothin’. I just …” Here, he swallowed so loud that Elsie heard the gulp! from across the room. “I just pressed the purple button when I shoulda pushed the black one.”

  “Purple,” repeated Unthank, as if needing to restate the words for comprehension. “Black.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Unthank rubbed his small beard thoughtfully. His hand recoiled when his fingers met the tomato soup remnant, and he studied them before licking them clean and wiping them on his argyle sweater. “What’s your name, little boy?”

  “Carl, sir.”

  “Carl, do you know how much one of these machines costs? Hmm?”

  “N-no sir.”

  “A LOT OF MONEY!” Unthank yelled abruptly. He took a deep breath and regained his composure. “Not only that, Carl, but it’s going to take time to repair. Time this machine could spend bending bifurcated bolts.” The words seemed to trip from his lips effortlessly.

  “Right, sir,” said the boy.

  “I’m afraid I’ve got no choice but to hand down a demerit for this mistake, Carl.”

  The boy began to cry. Little tears fell from his eyes and cascaded down his cheek. Unthank guessed at his dismay. “Miss Mudrak?” he called out.

  The loudspeaker popped with static. “Yes, Joffrey?” came Desdemona’s voice.

  “Will you look and see how many demerits are on record for Carl …” He paused and motioned to the boy. “Carl … ?”

  “Carl Rehnquist, sir.”

  Unthank nodded, attempting empathy. Then, to the loudspeaker: “Carl Rehnquist.”

  There was a moment of absolute silence, broken only by the sound of the machines slowly rebooting.

  “Two demerits, this boy has,” came the answer from the loudspeaker.

  Carl began to sob unabatedly. Unthank frowned. “It would seem, Carl, that you’ve managed to rack up a third demerit. You know what that means?”

  The boy tried to respond between fits of crying. “Mm-hmm,” he finally managed.

  “What does it mean? Help me here, Carl.”

  “Unadoptable,” said Carl quietly.

  “Why don’t you say it so the rest of the room can hear you.”

  “Unadoptable,” said Carl, a little louder.

  “Right,” said Unthank as he surveyed the room. “Listen up, kiddos. You break my machines, you pay with your freedom. Is that clear?”

  The room murmured understanding.

  “Now, if you wouldn’t mind, Carl,” said Unthank, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder and leading him away from the factory floor, “I’d appreciate it if you went upstairs and got cleaned up. Miss Mudrak will then escort you to my office. Yes?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Unthank turned to the rest of the children in the room. “Back to work, kids,” he said. “And let this be a lesson to you all.” And that was how Carl Rehnquist, machinist, orphan, Intrepid Tina fan, was led out of the machine shop and out of the lives of his fellow internees at the Unthank Home for Wayward Youth.

  That night, Rachel steamed over the incident. She sat in her bed, her knees pulled tight against her chest, and glared into the half-light. The other girls were chatting with one another, enjoying what little free time they had after the long work day.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said. “He’s just gone? Like that? I mean, what did they do to him?”

  Elsie shrugged. She was combing Intrepid Tina’s hair; it had become somewhat of a pre-bedtime routine for her. She found it calmed her when she was most anxious, and that seemed to be just about every day. Her nerves felt particularly jangled this evening, and that was why she was combing Tina’s hair in an almost frenetic, distracted way. The Mehlberg sisters were nearly a week into their internment at the factory and Elsie wasn’t in the mood to ask too many questions.

  “I mean, don’t you wonder?” asked Rachel.

  “Yeah, I s’pose so.” She paused in her combing and looked at her sister. “Don’t you think they just let him go somewhere else? Like, he’d just go to another orphanage or foster home or something? Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.”

  “Maybe, though I don’t know,” chimed in Martha from the other side of Elsie’s bed. She was lying on her mattress with her arms behind her head. “They all get taken to Mr. Unthank’s office. And then—who knows? But I never saw any Unadoptable be, like, escorted from the building or anything.”

  “That’s the thing, huh, Goggles,” said Rachel, spinning sideways on her bed and dropping her feet to the floor. She looked at Elsie and Martha conspiratorially. “They don’t come back out. And you know why, I think?” Here she slid her finger across her throat. “Chop ’em up into little bits. Feed ’em to the stray cats in the neighborhood.”

  Martha made a face. Elsie blanched. Really? she mouthed to her sister.

  “Your sister’s weird,” said Martha.

  “You guys are kidding yourselves if you don’t think that’s what happens,” said Rachel. “You think there’s, like, a magic chute in Mr. Unthank’s office and he just throws them down it and—poof!—they’re back in the outside world?”

  “Well,” said Elsie, “whatever happens, we’ve only got another week here, huh, Rachel? So we should just try not to get any demerits.”

  Rachel swiveled back on to her bed. “I’ve already got one. It’s like I’m marked. I could end up like that kid Carl at any moment.” She shivered visibly, her voice having grown low and serious.

  “C’mon, Rach,” said Elsie, “cheer up. We really don’t have much time left.”

  “Yeah,” said Martha. “Count yourself lucky.”

  The three girls fell silent. Finally, Rachel said, “I’m going in there.”

  “What?” said Elsie and Martha in unison.

  “Into Mr. Unthank’s office,” said Rachel. “I’m going to find that boy Carl—or what remains of him—and I’m going to expose this whole insane place for what it really is.”

  “Rachel!” This was Elsie, her voice a quavering whisper. “You’ll—you’ll get a demerit!”

  “Or two. Or five,” said Martha. Then, almost to herself: “I wonder what happens to you when you get more demerits than you need to be Unadoptable.”

  Rachel ignored them. She popped off her bed and kneeled down by Elsie’s. She waved Martha in close. “I’m sneaking in there. While you guys have been dead asleep, I’ve been watching; two nights ago, I had to pee and on my way back I noticed there wasn’t anyone at the door. Turns out Miss Talbot does a shift change at midnight and it takes, like, fifteen minutes for the replacement to come. I made it all the way to Mr. Unthank’s office door before I got too spooked and came back.”

  “But doesn’t he keep it locked?” asked Elsie.

  Rachel smiled knowingly and reached behind her, pulling from beneath her pillow a little brass key on a yellow ribbon. She dangled it playfully in front of the two girls.

  Martha gasped. “Where’d you get that?”

  “Janitor’s closet,” said Rachel. “A pit stop on the way back to the dorm. Couldn’t help myself: Miss Talbot had left it open. It had spare keys for all the rooms. This one was labeled ‘J. U. Office.’”

  “Whoa,” said Martha.

  Elsie was not so impressed. “You stole that, Rachel,” she said, feeling perturbed. “You shouldn’t steal stuff.”

  “I’m just borrowing it.”

  “Still.”

  “When you gonna go?” asked Martha.

  “Tonight,” said Rachel,
flipping the key back into her palm and tightly closing her fist around it. She gave a quick look at the loudspeaker above the doors. “After lights-out,” she whispered. “When Miss Talbot does her shift change.”

  Martha, by this point, had climbed out of her bed and was kneeling on Elsie’s, her body leaning forward to better hear Rachel’s plans. “I wanna go,” she said.

  Elsie stared at her. “You guys. This is crazy. You’ll get demerits! Rachel, you’ll get a second demerit!”

  Rachel cocked an eyebrow at Martha.

  “I’m a clean slate,” Martha responded. “No demerits. I’ve been here, what, five years? And always the good girl. I’m sick of it, actually. I’m ready to make some mischief.”

  Rachel reached her hand out; Martha shook it firmly.

  “Tonight it is,” said Rachel.

  “Oh no,” said Elsie.

  Martha Song’s first march into the dormitory of the Unthank Home for Wayward Youth, some five years prior, came back to her in a sudden, lucid flash as she and Rachel Mehlberg crept into the darkened hallway and made their way toward the proprietor’s locked office. It was strange; she’d walked the hallway many times since and had never experienced such a flash of remembrance. But now she could feel her father’s calloused hand in hers, the citrus blossom of her mother’s perfume. They were being sent back to Korea, they’d explained. They’d come back for her in time.

  Maybe this sudden memory-recall was why she didn’t see that Rachel had stopped suddenly and Martha bumped into her, hard. Or maybe it was because she was wearing her goggles.

  “Hey,” whispered Rachel angrily. “Watch it.”

  “Sorry,” said Martha.

  “Why do you have your goggles on?”

  “For good luck.”