Wildwood

How five crows managed to lift a twenty-pound baby boy into the air was beyond Prue, but that was certainly the least of her worries. In fact, if she were to list her worries right then and there as she sat spellbound on the park bench and watched her little brother, Mac, carried aloft in the talons of these five black crows, puzzling out just how this feat was being done would likely come in dead last. First on the list: Her baby brother, her responsibility, was being abducted by birds. A close second: What did they plan on doing with him?

And it had been such a nice day.

True, it had been a little gray when Prue woke up that morning, but what September day in Portland wasn’t? She had drawn up the blinds in her bedroom and had paused for a moment, taking in the sight of the tree branches outside her window, framed as they were by a sky of dusty white-gray. It was Saturday, and the smell of coffee and breakfast was drifting up from downstairs. Her parents would be in their normal Saturday positions: Dad with his nose in the paper, occasionally hefting a lukewarm mug of coffee to his lips; Mom peering through tortoiseshell bifocals at the woolly mass of a knitting project of unknown determination. Her brother, all of one year old, would be sitting in his high chair, exploring the farthest frontiers of unintelligible babble: Doose! Doose! Sure enough, her vision was proven correct when she came downstairs to the nook off the kitchen. Her father mumbled a greeting, her mother’s eyes smiled from above her glasses, and her brother shrieked, “Pooo!” Prue made herself a bowl of granola. “I’ve got bacon on, darling,” said her mother, returning her attention to the amoeba of yarn in her hands (was it a sweater? A tea cozy? A noose?).

“Mother,” Prue had said, now pouring rice milk over her cereal, “I told you. I’m a vegetarian. Ergo: no bacon.” She had read that word, ergo, in a novel she’d been reading. That was the first time she had used it. She wasn’t sure if she’d used it right, but it felt good. She sat down at the kitchen table and winked at Mac. Her father briefly peered over the top of his paper to give her a smile.

“What’s on the docket today?” said her father. “Remember, you’re watching Mac.”

“Mmmm, I dunno,” Prue responded. “Figured we’d hang around somewhere. Rough up some old ladies. Maybe stick up a hardware store. Pawn the loot. Beats going to a crafts fair.”

Her father snorted.

“Don’t forget to drop off the library books. They’re in the basket by the front door,” said her mother, her knitting needles clacking. “We should be back for dinner, but you know how long these things can run.”

“Gotcha,” said Prue.

Mac shouted, “Pooooo!” wildly brandished a spoon, and sneezed.

“And we think your brother might have a cold,” said her father. “So make sure he’s bundled up, whatever you do.”

(The crows lifted her brother higher into the overcast sky, and suddenly Prue enumerated another worry: But he might have a cold!)

Excerpt from Wildwood by Colin Meloy

Photos by TOCTPFAS