43 pages • 1 hour read
Colin MeloyWildwood
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 13-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary: “To Catch a Sparrow; Like a Bird in a Cage”
In South Wood, Prue remains hidden in her wicker hamper while SWORD police search the room. When the coast is clear, she emerges and finds a single sparrow named Enver who escaped the raid. They make a plan to get Prue to the Avian Principality where someone can fly her the rest of the way to North Wood. Before that, they need to cautiously make their way across town to Richard’s post office.
In Wildwood, Alexandra asks Curtis if he will join her army. He refuses and tries to rescue Mac. Alexandra orders her guards to lock him up as a traitor. He is taken to a part of the warren where massive cages are suspended from the underground root system of an enormous tree: “The viney maple boughs that made up the cages’ bars joined in a crown at the top; they looked like birdcages in a giant’s aviary” (228). One of the other prisoners is a coyote soldier; the rest are captured bandits.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Among Thieves”
In Wildwood, Curtis endures the insults of the other prisoners. When the bandits get tired of abusing their enemies, they ask one of their fellow bandits to give them a song to lift their spirits. He sings a song about a clever thief. Meloy writes, “The cavern erupted into laughter and applause at this last verse, and the cages shook beneath the weight of the guffawing bandits. Curtis cracked a smile despite himself” (249).
In South Wood, Prue takes refuge with Richard. She asks him to smuggle her all the way to the Avian border. He thinks about the heavy price he would pay for defying the authorities and decides to help Prue anyway, telling her, “I said before you were likely here for a reason; maybe you were sent here to make rightful change in this place—get folks back up on their feet. That’s a kind of cause I can stand for” (243-44).
Chapter 15 Summary: “The Delivery”
In South Wood, Richard packs Prue into a wooden crate at the back of his mail truck. When they reach a checkpoint, the guard grows suspicious of the crate’s contents and asks Richard to open it. Richard bribes the guard with a crate full of contraband beer, and the van is allowed to pass through to Avian territory. They are met by the General who agrees to fly Prue to North Wood.
In the Wildwood prison, the rest of the inmates warm to Curtis when he amuses them with an Outsider song. Just then, the warden arrives with their evening gruel. Curtis is so put off by the unappetizing mess that he gives the food to a rat named Septimus, who has scurried inside his cage. Curtis tells the other inmates about Alexandra’s plan to sacrifice Mac to the ivy. Septimus wonders if the ivy is the invasive species or regular ivy. Another prisoner says:
Septimus, if the ivy needs to consume a human child to become all-powerful, it’s safe to assume it’s the invasive stuff […] And let’s not forget the tenacious WITCH whose plan it is to feed it human blood and make it do her bidding. (266)
Chapter 16 Summary: “The Flight; A Meeting on the Bridge”
In the Avian Principality, Prue climbs on the General’s back and experiences the wonder of flying. As they cross the Wildwood border, the General cautions her to keep a lookout. Prue fails to see the coyote archer who shoots the General out of the sky. Once she tumbles to earth some distance away, Prue is rescued by a party of bandits. They bring her to Brendan the Bandit King’s log cabin. He tells her about his encounter with an Outsider boy during the coyote skirmish, and Prue realizes that Curtis is alive and helping the enemy.
When someone reports that a coyote patrol is on the outskirts of the bandit camp, Brendan knows they are after Prue. He mounts a horse with the girl, intending to lead the coyotes away from the camp. The chase continues all the way to the Gap Bridge. Brendan is halfway across when he sees Alexandra on her horse, blocking the far side. Trapped in the middle with the coyote pack behind him, Brendan surrenders. Alexandra orders the coyotes to bring Brendan to the cages, but demands they bring Prue to her.
Chapters 13-16 Analysis
All the outcasts in the novel dwell in the region known as Wildwood, but despite their shared outcast status, they don’t live in harmony with one another. Alexandra and her coyotes represent one faction, while Brendan and his bandits represent another. This segment foregrounds the theme of alliances as both Curtis and Prue lose untrustworthy allies and find better ones.
When Curtis rejects Alexandra’s offer to rule at her side, he is forced to give up his outcast alliance with the Dowager and her coyotes, who view him as a traitor to their cause. Curtis then finds himself thrown into prison with a different set of outcasts—the bandits. Initially, they refuse to accept him because he helped Alexandra defeat them in their woodland skirmish, but the bandits eventually warm toward him when Curtis explains how he tried to rescue Mac.
Prue, likewise, abandons any hope that the South Wood government will help her find her brother. Instead, she turns to others for advice and support. A sparrow named Enver guides her to Richard, who agrees to smuggle her to Avian territory. Once there, the General consents to fly her to North Wood but gets himself killed in the process. Back on the ground, Prue meets up with the bandits—the same group of outcast allies who are aligning themselves with Curtis.
At this point in the novel, the storylines of Prue and Curtis cross but don’t yet converge. The Bandit King tells Prue that Curtis is alive and, as far as he knows, is still helping Alexandra. Brendan becomes Prue’s unlikely ally when he flees with her on horseback to draw the coyote army away from his bandit camp. Prue and Curtis are pulled nearer once Alexandra captures Brendan and Prue at Gap Bridge and has them brought back to her warren headquarters where Curtis is imprisoned.
