Under Wildwood , livre ebook

Canongate Books - Colin Meloy

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252 pages

English

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In UNDER WILDWOOD, Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis reveal new dimensions of the epic fantasy-adventure series begun with the bestselling WILDWOOD. Ever since Prue McKeel rescued her brother from the malevolent Dowager Governess and returned home from the Impassable Wilderness, life has been pretty dull. Prue's mind is constantly returning to the verdant groves and sky-tall trees of Wildwood, where her friend Curtis remains as a bandit-in-training. But all is not well in that world. A hard winter has come and discord reigns. Dark assassins with mysterious motives conspire to settle the scores of an unknown client. A titan of industry employs inmates from his orphanage to work in his machine shop, all the while obsessing over the exploitation of the Impassable Wilderness. Under a growing threat, Prue is drawn back into Wildwood, where she and Curtis will face their greatest challenge yet: to save themselves and the lives of their friends, and to bring unity to a divided country. In order to do that, they must go under Wildwood.

Informations

Publié par	Canongate Books
Date de parution	21 mars 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780857863294
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0000€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Published by Canongate Books in 2013
Copyright © Unadoptable Books LLC, 2012
The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
First published in the United States of America in 2012 by Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Children’s Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022
This digital edition first published in 2013 by Canongate Books
www.canongate.tv
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 85786 327 0 eISBN 978 0 85786 329 4
Typography by Dana Fritts
For Steve Malk
CONTENTS

PART ONE

ONE A Boy and His Rat
TWO The Messenger; Another I.W.
THREE The Secret Language of Plants; North Wood Ho!; The Janitor’s Warning
FOUR The Corporal’s Story
FIVE Enter the Assassin
SIX The World Waltzes to Wigman; Welcome to the Unthank Home
SEVEN Return to Wildwood
EIGHT A Dream Remembered; The Great Race

PART TWO

NINE Unadoptable
TEN The Foundering Antelope; A Long Journey
ELEVEN Across the Boundary
TWELVE The Uninvited Guest
THIRTEEN A Promising Commission
FOURTEEN Icy Water, Water Everywhere
FIFTEEN A Place of Salvation and Solace
SIXTEEN Under Wildwood

PART THREE

SEVENTEEN Return of the Overdwellers
EIGHTEEN The Great Siege; Elsie and the Road
NINETEEN Sir Timothy’s Conveyance to the Beyond
TWENTY Follow the Green Cable
TWENTY - ONE Return to Childhood; A Cog in the Hand
TWENTY - TWO Procession; Final Performance Tonight!
TWENTY - THREE Out of the Periphery; Unthank’s Unwanted Visitors
TWENTY - FOUR Rebellion!
TWENTY - FIVE Season’s End

LIST OF COLOR PLATES

1. The strange wolf stared silently into the glow of the fire.

2. A length of bright golden filigree connected each of these objects in the mandala, one to the other, a sign of the interconnectedness of the Wood.

3. The three girls crested a small hillock and found themselves looking down into the trough of a narrow vale, where lay nestled a quaint wooden cottage.

4. She approached the City of Moles, carefully watching each footfall so as to avoid adding any undue bloodshed to the chaos.

5. The children of the Unthank Home for Wayward Youth were revolting.

PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
A Boy and His Rat
S now is falling.
Snow as white as a swan’s feather, white as a trillium bloom. The whiteness is nearly blinding against the dark green and brown of the surrounding forest, and it lies in downy heaps between the quiet, dormant clutches of ivy and blackberry bushes. It is heaped against the bases of the tall fir trees, and it carpets the little trenches in the shallows around the wide cedar roots.
A road carves its way through the deep forest. It, too, is covered in an untouched shroud of snow.
In fact, if you didn’t know there was a road beneath the snow, if you didn’t know there were centuries of footsteps and hoofbeats and miles of weathered flagstones beneath the snow, you might just think it was a fallow stretch of woods, somehow left untouched by the forest’s teeming greenery. There are no wheel tracks, no tire treads on this road. No footprints mar the delicate white of the snow. You might think it was a game trail, a stretch of ground where no tree could take root because of a constant traffic of silent walkers: deer, elk, and bear. But even here, in this most removed area of the world, there are no animal tracks. The more the snow falls, the more the road disappears. It is becoming just another part of this vast, unending forest.
Listen.
The road is quiet.
Listen.
A distant clatter suddenly disrupts this placid stillness; it is the sound of wagon wheels and the whinnying of a horse, pushed to the limit of its strength. The horse’s hooves beat a mad rhythm against the earth, a rhythm dulled by the mute of the snow. Look: Around a bend comes flying a carriage, two of its four wheels lifting from the ground momentarily to make the turn. Two sweat-slick black horses are harnessed to the coach, and plumes of steam blow from their nostrils like smoke belching from a chimney. Perched above the horses is the coachman, a large man piled in black wool and a tattered top hat. He barks gruffly at the horses at their every stride, shouting, "GYAP!" and "FASTER, ON!" He spares no strike of the whip. There is a look of deep consternation on his face. He spends the brief moments between the snaps of his whip eyeing the surrounding forest warily.
Look closer: Below him, in the simple black carriage itself, sits a woman, alone. She is dressed in a fine silk gown, and her face is covered in a shimmering pink veil. Rings studded with bright jewels glint on her fingers. In her hands, she holds a delicate paper fan, which she opens and closes nervously. She, too, watches the flanking walls of trees surrounding the carriage, as if looking for someone or something within them. Opposite her sits an ornate chest, its sides decorated with gold and silver filigree. A lock holds the chest’s twin clasps closed, the key to which hangs at the woman’s throat by a thin golden cord. Antsy, she raps at the ceiling of the carriage with the fan.
The driver hears the rapping and spurs the horses on, raining even more blows from his whip down on their heaving flanks. A sudden flash of movement on the road ahead catches the driver’s attention. He squints his eyes against the blinding white of the falling snow.
A boy is standing in the middle of the road.
But this is no ordinary boy. This boy is dressed in what appears to be an elegantly brocaded officer’s coat, like some infantryman from the Crimean War. His hair is black and curly and sprouts from beneath the coarse fur of an ushanka hat. He is idly swinging an emptied sling. There is a rat on his shoulder.
"STOP!" shouts the boy. "THIS IS A STICKUP!"
"You heard him!" shouts the rat. "Rein it in, fatso!"
The coachman hisses a curse under his breath. With a quick turn of his wrist, he has dropped the whip and has taken the reins in both of his hands. He snaps them eagerly, and the horses lean into their gallop. A cruel smile has appeared on the coachman’s face. "HYA!" he shouts to the beleaguered horses.
The boy’s face, formerly buoyed with confidence, falls. He swallows hard. "I I’m serious!" he stammers.
The coachman’s cracked lips have pulled back to reveal an astonishing row of yellow teeth. He is not slowing. The lady in the carriage gives a slight shriek as it careens along the snowy road. The boy quickly reaches down and pulls a rock from the ground. He wipes it clean of snow on his trousers and sets it into the cradle of his sling.
"Don’t make me do this," he warns. It’s not clear whether the coachman hears this; he is barreling toward the boy and the rat at an alarming rate.
With a casual expertise he’s evidently been practicing the boy lets loose the stone from the sling, and it flies toward the coachman, who ducks just in time; the stone sails over his head to fall into the deep, snowy bracken of the forest. The boy does not have time to pick up another; the coach is so close that the boy can smell the sweat coming off the horses.
The rat gives a little ulp! and dives into the gully at the side of the road. The boy follows him, and they tumble into a pile together. The carriage roars by. The horses, spooked at having so nearly missed hitting the two brigands, whinny noisily as they pass.
The veiled woman in the carriage clutches at the key at her throat. She gives a high-pitched warble of fear. The coachman, somewhat chuffed at his bravado, throws a look over his shoulder at the boy and his rat. "Better luck next time, suckers!" he shouts. His attention thus diverted, he does not see the cedar trunks as they fall, domino-like, in a crash of splinters to block the road ahead. Three of them. One after another. Bam. Bam. Bam.
The woman screams; the coachman swings his head to face forward and gives the reins a violent yank. The horses yawp. Their hooves scramble desperately against the slick surface of the road. The carriage tips and shimmies and emits a shuddering groan. Thinking quickly, the driver hollers an impassioned "HYA!" and deftly navigates the horses and carriage through the obstacle course of the fallen trees. Bodies, male and female, are appearing from the woods; they are dressed similarly to the boy, but their uniforms are mismatched. Some wear tattered shirts; some have bandannas covering their faces. They are all children. The oldest might be fifteen. They are staring with disbelief at the coachman’s ability to thread the cumbersome carriage with its two panicked horses through their trap. Within moments, the coachman has cleared the obstacles and has returned to his whip, urging the horses on.
In the meantime, the boy and the rat have picked themselves up from the roadside ditch and have brushed the clinging snow from their clothes. The rat leaps back up to the boy’s shoulder as the boy puts his fingers to his lips and gives a shrill whistle. From the dense scrub of the forest comes a horse, a dappled brown-and-white pony. The boy throws himself astride the horse, the rat holding tight to the boy’s epaulet, and kicks it into a gallop. Arriving at the fallen trees, he leaps the horse and clears the three cedars. A spray of snow and mud flies up when the horse makes landfall. The children in the woods have shaken themselves from their shock and are calling their mounts; soon the road is filled with galloping riders giving chase to the fleeing carriage.

The coachman, ahead, marks this. He curses the bandits’ temerity. The wind is lashing at his face; the snow is now driving, icy.
Of the pursuing riders, the boy with the rat is clearly among the fastest. Many are unable to keep up the pace that the carriage is setting and fall away. Within