In
Wildwood, everyone is either of The Wood, or is an Outsider, or, in the special case of the protagonists, a "half breed", that is, an Outsider who is able to enter The Wood. A sort of "aura or shine" makes it possible to visually identify which of these things a person is. The first human Prue meets in The Wood is an old man driving a mail truck, Richard, the South Wood
Postmaster General. She sees in him something she "couldn't put her finger on that seemed to exude from him, something that made him seem like no one she'd ever met before. It was a kind of aura or shine, like the way a familiar landscape is transformed in the light of a full moon." The natives of The Wood are consistently able to recognize Prue and Curtis as Outsiders, who ought not to be able to enter through the Periphery Bind surrounding The Wood, while only the people of the pastoral and meditative North Wood can see with an unexplained sense that Prue and Curtis have a dual nature, born outside The Wood yet unhindered by the magical barrier that keeps the Outsiders out.
Prue Prue McKeel, age 12, is a precocious
seventh grader with a talent for nature drawing, an encyclopedic knowledge of birds from a book, and takes
Honors English with her classmate Curtis. Like her parents, and Curtis, Prue is "very-Portland", with stereotypical interests like
yoga, vegetarianism, and
single-speed bicycles, which she repairs and tunes herself. Prue is decisive, determined, and courageous, finding inspiration in
Nancy Drew in her effort to rescue her brother, and along the way, save Curtis and The Wood itself. Unlike Curtis, she is not cowed by anyone, standing up to Lars Svik the Governor-Regent of South Wood, Crown Prince Owl Rex of the Avian Principality, and even the fearsome Alexandra, the
Dowager Governess, as well as her parents. Because Prue's birth came about by Alexandra using witchcraft to overcome Prue's parents' difficulty conceiving a child, she shares some essence of The Wood, along with being an Outsider, which is what made it possible for her to cross the magical barrier that protects The Wood. Meloy said that Prue is a
composite character, "partly Carson as a kid," with her "inner world" coming from Ellis's childhood. She is also based on the niece of a friend, a girl with "an amazing independent streak that we've always admired."
Curtis Curtis Mehlberg is a 12-year-old, and a seventh grade classmate of Prue's, though not her close friend at the beginning of
Wildwood. In the past Prue and Curtis shared an interest in drawing
superhero fan art, but Prue has moved on to
botanical illustration, leaving Curtis and his love of comic books behind. He is an awkward "persecuted loner" who lacks Prue's confidence, and is, at first, easily intimidated and manipulated by Prue, Alexandra, and others. He grows in the course of the book, gaining a more definite sense of who he is after being forced to choose sides and stand up to the Dowager Governess Alexandra. His relationship with Alexandra recalls the seduction of
Edmund Pevensie by the
White Witch in
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. After being hustled into an ill-fitting role as an officer in the
coyote army, he inadvertently distinguishes himself in battle. Later, by free choice, he becomes a full member of the bandits, and decides to stay behind with them in Wildwood, even as Prue returns home to St. Johns. Like Prue, Curtis is a "half-breed" who has a dual nature that allows him to enter The Wood, but the exact nature of this connection not revealed in
Wildwood, other than Curtis speculating that he has a strange reclusive aunt, and a number of odd relatives. Curtis's choice to stay in Wildwood leaves behind a grieving family in Portland. Meloy said that reading fantasy stories growing up, about "kids going to other worlds or crossing over to another place, it would invariably involve them coming back at the end," and "Whenever that character made a choice to come back, it didn't feel true to me for some reason." Meloy wanted to experiment with a character who did what Meloy wanted to do, even though he had a happy childhood and loving family. Meloy was able to connect with Curtis: "I think of Curtis as being a version of myself." As a child, Meloy "desperately longed to be taken away to another world."
Alexandra Alexandra, the exiled Dowager Governess of South Wood, is the main antagonist of
Wildwood. She is charming and beautiful, and vastly more sophisticated and civilized than her anarchic coyote soldiers she only recently domesticated. In spite of her ruthlessness and murderous intentions, she is a somewhat tragic figure as a grieving mother whose madness is somewhat explained by the loss of her child. Ellis said, of the illustration of Alexandra holding a knife over Mac, "as a mom of a little kid, just drawing that made my blood run cold." The action of
Wildwood is driven by her plot to take revenge on everyone and everything in The Wood, in which she intends to use Prue's brother Mac as a blood sacrifice in a spell to control The Wood's Ivy, which will then grow out of control and consume every living thing in The Wood. The
invasive threat of the magical ivy apocalypse that Alexandra plotted in the book is similar to the threat of an "ivy desert"
monoculture from invasive English ivy (
Hedera helix) in the real Forest Park.
The Bandits The bandits are a small community of thieves led by the Bandit King, Brendan, a wild, tough man, whose curly orange hair is always tangled in leaves and twigs from the forest. Curtis helps him and a few other bandit prisoners escape from Alexandra's prison, and so he is named a bandit. Their small community isn't very thriving, especially with the economy being down. The bandits are threatened by the Dowager Governess' ivy, as well as the whole forest, and so he is cornered into having to fight along the citizens of North Wood and Prue. ==Setting==