Where the Woods End Page 20

  Kestrel almost forgot where she was until she heard Ike’s labored breathing. Everyone around her was staring at the face painter, waiting to see if it would move.

  “Bury it,” said Walt suddenly. “We can’t have the body aboveground. The wolves will smell it.”

  “Are you mad?” snapped Ike. “Do you want to touch it? How do we know it’s not just pretending?”

  The face painter’s head slowly fell to the side, making them all jump. As she watched the last piece of life leave the face painter’s body, Kestrel felt something cold tickling the inside of her head.

  She clamped her hands over her ears. She didn’t want to remember anything else, not now. But it was too late—the face painter was dead, and whatever other memory it had hidden from her was sliding out.

  Pop.

  * * *

  It was night, and the cottage was dark. Kestrel could feel her mother’s fingers dug tightly into her neck. She struggled to get free, kicking her feet against the wooden floorboards, flailing at the strings crisscrossing the walls. But her mother didn’t relent. In her other hand, she was holding a piece of string with Kestrel’s tooth tied into it.

  Granmos was standing against the door, her blue eyes narrow with fury.

  “Are you scared yet?” her mother hissed at Granmos. “You know I’ll hurt her.”

  “I’m never scared,” Granmos said coolly, but Kestrel could see that her hands were shaking.

  There was a movement at the window that only Kestrel noticed. Horrow, her grandma’s grabber, was pacing around agitatedly. It was usually so calm that Kestrel waved to it every evening. She’d known it for weeks now, ever since it first came out of the forest, and all it ever did was watch Granmos. She even fed it bits of meat and bread. But Kestrel sensed that something was now deeply wrong. Something had changed.

  “Granmos,” Kestrel wavered.

  Kestrel’s mother clenched her fist around the tooth in her other hand. A world of pain exploded behind Kestrel’s eyelids. She screamed. Her grandma screamed.

  “Stop hurting her!” Granmos shouted.

  Then the pain subsided, but sobs were forcing themselves from Kestrel’s throat. Kestrel had never seen her grandma look so frightened before. Her mother licked her lips.

  “After I break her bones, I’ll stop her heart,” she said to Granmos.

  Something slammed against the door from the outside. Granmos turned to face it, drawing a knife from her pocket, but the door was already splitting in the middle, and Kestrel had to shield her eyes from a cloud of splinters.

  The grabber snarled and grabbed her grandma by the throat. Her grandma tried to strike it, but it was too strong. They struggled just for a second. Then something went snap. Her grandma was limp, and the grabber dragged her toward the forest.

  “Granmos!” Kestrel screamed, but the forest was dark. They were gone.

  * * *

  Kestrel opened her eyes and gasped for air. It was all real. She knew it.

  She’d never let the grabber in.

  Kestrel reeled under the weight of a dizzying, almost tangible relief. The terrible memory of her opening the door for Horrow was a fabrication, something the face painter had stuffed in her head. Her false memory immediately felt absurd, less real even than a dream. Finally, she could breathe again.

  She tried to scrape all the new memories together, but she didn’t know how they fitted into one piece. Only one thing gave her hope: Her grandma had been able to hold her grabber off for weeks. But something had changed at the end to make her grabber attack. Something to do with Kestrel.

  “I don’t understand, Pip,” she whispered, clutching him. Her face was damp, and she realized her eyes were streaming. Even through her relief, she couldn’t stop thinking of the terrified look on her grandma’s face. “What does it mean?”

  Walt and Ike had been prodding the face painter’s body with a long stick, but now they looked up as though they had only just remembered Kestrel was there.

  “How long has it been living here?” Ike asked sharply.

  “She was probably working with it,” Hannah said behind her.

  A wave of fury crashed over Kestrel’s head. Fury at what had happened to her mother and her grandma. Fury at the face painter, for tricking them. Fury at the villagers, for being complicit in it all.

  “Shut up,” she said quietly.

  “What?” Hannah said. Kestrel turned to face her and the villagers, her fists clenched.

  “You heard me,” she said. “All you’ve ever done is hide and whisper, telling one another how terrible I am, and you’re still doing it now!” She stepped forward, and several of them automatically backed away. “At least I tried to stand up to my moth- the face painter,” she snapped. “You just kept feeding it, and making it stronger, and doing everything it said, and helping it by torturing me. Because you’re all weak.”

  Kestrel stopped to take a breath. She could feel their disbelief rising off them. None of them seemed to know what to do.

  In the end, she didn’t have to say anything.

  “You were its servant,” said Hannah softly. “You were the one who made it strong.”

  Kestrel lashed out without thinking. She caught Hannah in the face, leaving a long scratch down her cheek. Hannah screamed. Kestrel grabbed Pippit and scrambled away as the villagers fell on her. She swam through her mother’s fallen hair and crooked arms as everyone roared and tried to grab her.

  “Go!” shouted Pippit.

  Kestrel didn’t have a plan.

  She stood up, ran, and threw herself to the hungry forest.

  THE GRABBER

  The villagers came after her, hurling abuse, many of them braving the clutches of the forest for the first time in their lives. Kestrel ran until she was sure that she’d lost them, but she could still hear their voices curling through the trees.

  So she stumbled on. Deep in her heart she knew that she wouldn’t find an end to the forest. It was too cruel and clever to let her out.

  She crashed through the undergrowth and fell over, gasping for breath. The forest was plunged into silence. Kestrel got up, feeling ill. Something wasn’t right.

  She’d only heard silence like this when a grabber was on the loose.

  She heard a long, ragged breath in the trees.

  “Hello?” she whimpered.

  No answer. She looked around, a silent scream building inside her.

  Her grabber was standing behind her. It was waiting for Kestrel to notice it. Beetles crawled over its shock of gray hair and squirmed under its coat, which was made of different colored rags. The grabber breathed in deeply, its whole body swelling until it seemed that it would burst at the seams.

  Bile rose in Kestrel’s throat. She meant to back away, but the grabber had her caught in a strange kind of gravity, and she found herself rooted to the spot. She was drowning in panic. It was stuck in her throat and swamping her lungs. The air was too thick to breathe.

  She was going to die.

  The grabber reached toward her, its fingers wriggling in anticipation.

  Its hands didn’t match. One was small and elegant, thick with tarnished silver rings—the rings she’d found in the Salt Bog, the ones that had belonged to her grandma. The other was the bluish, waterlogged hand of the Briny Witch. The holey stone Kestrel had given him was jammed on its middle finger. Kestrel’s heart did backflips when she imagined what it would have taken to kill the half-drowned man.

  Its back was slightly hunched, but it was larger, much larger than Granmos had been, as though the old woman had been stretched in all directions. It had dipped its hands in blood to mimic her grandma’s permanently stained nails.

  The grabber shivered in recognition when Kestrel met its eyes.

  You always know what your grabber’s going to be, deep down.

  Kestrel couldn
’t speak. She could barely move. The grabber took one step forward, and its tongue darted out to lick its lips. Kestrel finally regained control of her legs, and she took one step back, then another. The grabber waited a moment.

  Then it lunged.

  Kestrel turned and fled, plunging back into the trees with no idea of her direction, or where she was going, only that she had to get away from her grabber. The forest came back to life, trying to catch her with its teeth and nails. Wild dogs danced behind Kestrel, snapping their jaws, and shining blackbirds crashed around her head as she ran through the grasping trees. She ran into a tangle of thorns which dug into her clothes and her hair. She ripped them away in a blind panic, hardly noticing them tear her hands, and looked for a way around them.

  The grabber wasn’t behind her anymore; it was coming from her right, as though it was herding her somewhere. She could hear it coming toward her, crushing branches under its feet. Kestrel’s legs were shaking so hard she could barely run anymore, but she finally got free of the thorns and stumbled on.

  A tiny, desperate part of Kestrel wished the grabber would just get it over with. Why couldn’t it just attack her? She knew it was chasing her like this for a reason, but her thoughts were shouting over the top of one another, and she couldn’t make sense of them. All she knew was that she had to get away.

  Suddenly, without any noise at all, the grabber was in front of her with its arms outstretched. Kestrel screamed and swerved to the side. She fell over a branch and hit the ground with a bone-crunching oomph, and the grabber stepped toward her. It wasn’t even out of breath.

  Kestrel was ready to roll over and plead with it, but a creaky, familiar voice rang through her head.

  Get up, you stupid girl. Run.

  Granmos’s voice was as clear as ice. Kestrel obeyed numbly. She dragged herself to her feet again and sprinted, just as its claws closed over where her head had been. The grabber was only surprised for a second; then it was a moment behind, running swiftly through the trees, immune to the screaming animals and the shadows. Kestrel would never outrun it. It would never tire.

  Just when it seemed that there was nowhere left to go, nothing left to try, Kestrel heard her grandma’s voice again.

  Think! Granmos snapped, just like she had when Kestrel was training, a hundred times over. How did I stop my grabber?

  Kestrel tried to squash the dozen clamoring voices in her head, the ones screeching at her to give up. She forced them into the dark space at the back of her mind where she’d hidden everything else, her huge fears and her sorrow, and made herself concentrate.

  But she didn’t know how Granmos had kept her grabber from eating her for so long. She’d died anyway, alone and frightened, sucked into the belly of her monster. Her grandma, who had never been scared of anything in her life.

  Fear had gotten the better of her. Kestrel stumbled over a stone in surprise. The thought was so huge it was almost blinding. She leaned over and gasped for air, then staggered on, desperately turning it over and over in her head.

  That’s it! her grandma urged.

  The grabber had eaten Granmos when she was scared. That’s what changed—she was scared that Kestrel was going to be killed.

  That’s why her grabber had been drooling as it watched her emerge from the Marrow Orchard. That’s why her dad’s grabber had spent so long dragging the chase out, making him even more terrified.

  Kestrel swept thorny branches out of her way, gasping for breath. The grabber was so close she could almost feel its breath on the back of her neck, but she knew that she was on the brink of something important. Her grandma had been trying to tell her something about fear. What had she told Kestrel the night she defeated the faces in the door?

  Monsters want you to be scared. Otherwise they’d have nothing.

  There was a loud crack behind Kestrel. She dodged to the side, her lungs burning, trying to lose the grabber just for a second. Just so she could think.

  If grabbers fed on fear, all Kestrel had to do was stop being scared. That was the answer, right?

  But she couldn’t control it. She tried to shut it away, like she always did, but she couldn’t stop her heart bursting through her chest, her breath swelling in her throat. She was too full of terror. The more she tried, the harder it felt, until she thought she was going to shatter into a million pieces.

  The grabber drew nearer, crushing things underfoot.

  Kestrel put her foot down on a rotten log and fell over. Pippit pressed himself closer to her head, hissing.

  “Run,” he squeaked, pulling her hair.

  With a huge effort, Kestrel grabbed him round the middle and pulled him off her head. It felt like she was wrenching one of her limbs off.

  “It doesn’t want you,” she said. “Stay safe, okay?”

  Pippit tried to dig his nails into her hand, but she flung him away as hard as she could. He landed in a pile of leaves, and before he could get his bearings Kestrel found a last burst of energy and sprinted.

  She swerved into an overgrown thicket. She flung herself against the trees, but they were too close together for her to get through. Their roots were tied together, their branches knitted over her head like a roof. Except for some gently glowing fungus, it was very, very dark.

  Kestrel gasped for breath as she scrabbled at the trees, but there was no way through. The forest was plunged into a deep, cold silence that made the back of her neck tingle. It knew the grabber was about to feed. She could feel it in her bones, a deep shiver of unnamed dread, the sensation of a universe that had shifted slightly from its axis.

  Kestrel turned around.

  The grabber was so close she could see the seams of its skin, the cracks in its splintered bones. Its lips curved upward, giving Kestrel time to appreciate its hideous smile.

  It had her grandma’s blue eyes, the same canny intelligence. It had her grandma’s expression, too, like she was staring right through you, rummaging around in your head and discovering every shameful secret you had. The grabber twitched when Kestrel did, flexing its fingers at her quickening heartbeat, and licked its lips. It was enjoying itself.

  Kestrel tried one more time to crush her fear. She tried to pack it into a tight ball and hide it inside her stomach, but there was nowhere left to put it. Every piece of training her grandma had given her, every single thing she’d done to teach her not to be scared, was useless. Kestrel scrambled through her memories for something that would help, anything. But nothing could squash a terror this big.

  The grabber took a deep breath. Kestrel tightened her grip on her spoon, sweating, her throat burning with horror. She had to fight it. There was no other way.

  The grabber lunged, and Kestrel met it.

  It was heavier than a well-fed wolf. Its bones might as well have been made of stone, and its hands slapped against Kestrel’s shoulders so hard that she was knocked backward. They crashed into the trees so hard it felt like her spine had cracked in half.

  Kestrel brought her knee up, just like she’d been taught. She shuddered as it crunched into the grabber’s bones, then the grabber pulled away with a surprised snarl. Kestrel squared up to it, brandishing her spoon, but the grabber had already recovered.

  They reeled around the clearing, crashing into branches and squashing mushrooms until they were both speckled with fungus and glowing like the night sky. Kestrel was getting weaker. She couldn’t push it away anymore.

  Kestrel twisted her body, determined to drive her shoulder into its chest, but it knocked her over with a single swipe of its hand and pinned her to the floor.

  The grabber bared its teeth like a hungry dog. Its face was so close to Kestrel’s that she could see through its stolen eyes, into the bright burning space in its skull. She tried to drive her spoon into the grabber, but it twitched its head away and she missed, again and again. It was grinning.

  Kestrel fel
l still, and the grabber licked its lips.

  It lowered its head further, until she could see the moss stuck between its teeth. Kestrel stared at it, nauseated by the smell emanating from its body, her face wobbling with horror. It was dribbling, enjoying the smell of her fear, but that only made her more terrified. All the courage had gone from her body. She couldn’t even lift her spoon.

  The grabber’s face was perfectly her grandma’s, from the crooked teeth to the cold, blue eyes.

  Kestrel gave an involuntary sob. She was going to live her nightmare one last time. The one where her grandma was pinning her down, screaming at her, just as she had done when Kestrel was little.

  Tell me what you’re afraid of!

  Kestrel shrank away from the grabber, from the veins in its eyes to the terrible expression on its face, and the snarl on its lips. She could hear her grandma again, as clearly as though she were there.

  Tell me what scares you! her grandma screamed. Say it!

  Something cracked inside Kestrel. She was weak and full of terror, and she couldn’t keep it to herself anymore.

  “I’m scared of you, Granmos,” Kestrel blurted, the words coming out in a sob. “You’re what I’m most afraid of.”

  Her words hung in the air, full of shame and defeat. But there was something else, too. It took Kestrel a second to realize that she felt lighter, like she’d dropped a pile of stones from her arms. And just for a second, she felt a tiny bit stronger.

  She opened her eyes, shuddering, determined not to die like a coward.

  But instead of eating her, the grabber hesitated. As though she’d done something it didn’t expect.

  As though speaking to it had changed something.

  Kestrel thought quickly, hardly daring to hope that she’d done something right. Why wasn’t it eating her?

  “Do you like the truth?” Kestrel asked, her mind racing. “Is that it? Do you like hearing how much my grandma . . .” The words got stuck in her throat. The grabber licked its lips. Kestrel forced them out. “How much she . . . scared me?”