Where the Woods End Page 6

  She could see two small candle flames flickering just ahead of her. They were so small and dim they would be easy to miss, but Kestrel fixed her eyes on them determinedly. She walked toward them, holding her breath. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would be watching her sleep, unless it was Runo and Briar, coming to play a trick on her again. She curled her hands into fists.

  “Nasty,” said Pippit suddenly, pulling her hair as hard as he could. “Nasty!”

  “Be quiet,” she said, swatting him. She was only a few yards away from the lights, but she could tell now that they weren’t candles. Maybe they were glowworms, or necrotic moths.

  The lights flickered. Kestrel realized with a small shock that she was looking into a pair of bright yellow eyes.

  The eyes didn’t blink. Kestrel found herself instinctively taking a step back. She knew those eyes. The lights flickered, and Kestrel jumped.

  “Go!” Pippit screeched, and Kestrel jerked away.

  She ran back to the village, suddenly not caring that it was the most awful place in the world. She didn’t slow down until she’d reached her mother’s house, and then she scrambled into the gutter as quickly as she could. She buried herself in a pile of brown leaves so only her head was poking out the top, and compulsively felt around her pockets for her notebook and her weapons.

  She pressed her left pocket urgently. Something was missing.

  “I can’t find my slingshot,” she said to Pippit. “I had it earlier, didn’t I?”

  “Uh-huh,” Pippit confirmed.

  “I must have left it in the burrow,” she said, wanting to kick herself for being so careless. “I should go back and look.”

  “Er,” said Pippit.

  Kestrel chewed her thumbnail. For some reason she couldn’t bring herself to move.

  “Scared?” Pippit asked.

  “No,” Kestrel said quickly. She felt a lot better now she was in the center of the village, and she couldn’t think why she’d been so afraid. “I think they were the same eyes as the ones in the grabber’s stomach. But whatever it is, it’s lost two of the eyes. It probably got hurt.”

  Pippit nodded, and Kestrel curled up under the leaves. But for some reason, all she could think about were the small yellow eyes floating in the trees.

  THE BRINY WITCH

  Kestrel was standing in the middle of her mother’s house. The familiar scent of wood smoke and soap was so strong it made her dizzy. She surveyed the clean floorboards, the gleaming mirror, and the neat furniture. The place was huge and empty, and totally weaveless.

  She heard the sharp shrrrrk of metal against metal and turned around to see Granmos.

  Granmos was hunched over the table, sharpening her knives. She was wearing her heavily embroidered clothes under a huge, shapeless coat made of mismatched rags. Colored threads, loose with age, trailed behind her like kite tails. Her fingernails were stained red with the weird tobacco she smoked; her skin was tanned and deeply furrowed, and her hair was tufty and gray.

  “This is an important part of your training, Kestrel,” her grandma said without looking up, exhaling a puff of smoke from her long, curved pipe. “Surviving the forest isn’t just about using weapons and being clever. It’s about using this.” She fixed her pale blue eyes on Kestrel and tapped the side of her head.

  “Can we do it later, Granmos?” Kestrel asked. She’d been dangling from a tree all morning, and her head was pounding. She wanted to sink into the corner and go to sleep.

  “Do you think the forest will wait? Do you think the wolves and the god-knows-what-else will let you pause and take a nap before they catch you?” She put the knife down and swiveled to face Kestrel properly. “Do as I say. Tell me what scares you.”

  Kestrel’s mouth was dry. She stared at her grandma’s feet.

  “I’m scared of wolves,” she said, somewhat truthfully.

  “You can knock a wolf out with your eyes closed. Don’t avoid the question.”

  “Ghosts,” Kestrel said, scrunching her fists. “Those birds with teeth.”

  “Nobody likes them,” her grandma snapped. “What scares you? What keeps you awake at night and gives you nightmares? What makes your guts shrivel?”

  For a moment, Kestrel knew what she was going to tell her grandma. Then she pressed her lips shut.

  “You’ll use it against me,” Kestrel said bitterly.

  Her grandma stood up so fast the chair fell over. In one second she’d crossed the room and grabbed Kestrel’s shoulders. Then Kestrel was pressed against the wall, and her grandma’s face filled her vision. She was so close that Kestrel could see the veins in her pale blue eyes, and smell her dry, sour breath. The locket her grandma always wore pressed against Kestrel’s ribs, so hard she knew it would leave a bruise.

  “Say it,” her grandma snapped.

  “Get off me,” Kestrel said, wriggling desperately. Her brain was shrieking at her to run. She felt the same as when she was cornered by a slavering monster, a bundle of jangling nerves and horror.

  “Tell me!” her grandma shouted, her fingers digging into her shoulders. Her mouth was open in a snarl, her yellow-stained teeth as long as wolves’. “Say it!”

  Kestrel felt a short, sharp pain, and woke suddenly, drenched in cold sweat. Pippit was on her face, scratching her with his claws. She gasped and fell out of the gutter, landing in a pile of dead leaves by her mother’s doorstep. Her spoon landed point-down in the ground next to her.

  Pippit launched himself after her and landed on her chest, and started licking her cheeks.

  The smell of Pippit’s breath was a horrible way to start the day, but at least it was real. Kestrel hugged him so tightly she could have crushed him.

  “Nasty?” he said, wriggling to get out.

  “It was just a dream,” she said, although she could still see her grandma’s veiny eyes, and her heart was thumping so fast she felt dizzy. “It happened a long time ago. It’s over.”

  Pippit tilted his head, as though he could tell exactly how awful she felt. Kestrel had never answered her grandma’s question; it was the first time Kestrel had really disobeyed her. And only three days later, she let the grabber in.

  She was a murderer.

  The scene was printed behind Kestrel’s eyelids forever. On that night, she saw the grabber approach the house. It was very tall, and very old, with a thin neck that didn’t look like it should support its large skull. Its clothes barely hid the jumble of bones that poked out from its shirt. It wore some of Granmos’s stolen jewelry around its neck. One of its ears was hanging by a thread, and there was a large brass key dangling from its belt.

  Kestrel’s grandma had always been afraid of her father. When she was young he used to lock her in the cellar. The day she became lost in the forest was the day she’d finally escaped the cellar, stealing his key as a terrible souvenir which she’d kept over the fireplace, until one day it had gone missing.

  Even though Kestrel’s grandma was old and her father probably long dead, the old woman had always been worried, deep in her heart, that he would come looking for her and drag her back to the cellar.

  Her grabber had brought a vision of the old man back to life.

  Kestrel remembered glimpsing it through the shutters. The grabber pressed his pale, wormy lips to the other side, as gently as a moth bouncing against a lantern.

  That night, Kestrel slipped away from the shutters and walked toward the door.

  She reached out and started to twist the handle, feeling nothing except this slow, horrible anger that pushed everything else away. All she could think of was making the constant torture stop.

  She heard her grandma turn around and drop the knife she was sharpening.

  “Don’t!” Granmos shouted, in a voice filled with sharp, sheer panic, but it was too late. The next thing stamped guilt into Kestrel’s heart every time she remembere
d it.

  The grabber was inside, striding toward her grandma, who was frozen, and it was reaching out for her with his long, cold fingers—and then it was dragging her outside.

  Suddenly Kestrel realized what she had done, and she raced after them. She could see her grandmother’s face, furious with betrayal and something she’d never seen before: fear.

  Then Granmos was gone, dragged into the belly of the forest.

  Kestrel knew she was a terrible person. She was so ashamed of herself that she’d dreamed of her grandma almost every night since. But something deep in the pit of her stomach was also shamefully, horribly relieved.

  She tried to tell herself that the grabber would have caught her grandma anyway, even if Kestrel hadn’t let it in. But it didn’t change what she had done.

  “Kes?” Pippit said worriedly, licking her nose. Kestrel blinked the image away.

  “Let’s find some monsters,” she said weakly. “We’ll grab Finn and go to the Salt Bog. Can you imagine if we found the path? Or my grandma’s grabber? I could kill it, and my mother would let me go. This could be the day.”

  Pippit looked at her skeptically. He wrinkled his nose as though he wanted to say something else, but then he thought better of it and started to wash himself.

  Kestrel slipped by the houses. It was a cold morning, and most of the doors were still shut tight. As she walked she flipped through her grandma’s notebook until she got to the entry about the Salt Bog, which contained lots of warnings about not going near it, absolutely not, no matter what, understande? There was also a description of something called the Briny Witch that had been almost completely obscured by mud.

  “Yum?” said Pippit, spying a poisonous-looking mushroom on the ground.

  “No,” said Kestrel quickly, and slammed the book shut so she could keep an eye on him.

  It didn’t take her long to find Finn, who was hanging upside down from a tree and whistling. Pippit snickered as Kestrel crept up behind him.

  “BOO!” she shouted. Finn yelped and fell out of the tree.

  Kestrel laughed so hard she had to sit down, but Finn didn’t join her. He made a face that meant shut up and act normal, and flicked his eyes at the tree. Kestrel stopped and looked up. Perched in the branches, her skirt drooping like the tail feathers of an exotic bird, was Hannah.

  “What’s she doing up there?” Kestrel said, astonished. She’d never seen anyone else in the trees before.

  “I went to see her, like you asked,” Finn muttered. “She just sort of . . . followed me back. She said she wanted to learn how to climb trees. It’s weird. She’s being nice.”

  “Where are you off to?” Hannah asked. She slid down from the tree with surprising grace, landing next to them with a tiny thump that barely even ruffled her skirt.

  “Nowhere,” Kestrel said quickly, at the same time as Finn said, “Just for a walk.”

  “Can I come?” Hannah asked, and without warning slid her arm through Kestrel’s. Kestrel froze, her whole arm on fire. She had no idea what to do. Nobody except Finn or her mother ever touched her. She was so close she could smell Hannah’s soap.

  “Um,” said Finn.

  “Er,” Kestrel said, panicking.

  “Oh, goody,” said Hannah, beaming. “I’ve been so bored. And you know what, Kestrel, I feel like we’ve been a bit childish toward each other lately. We should actually get to know each other.”

  “Yeah?” said Kestrel dumbly.

  “I know I’m not the easiest person to get on with,” Hannah added. “I kind of follow everyone else sometimes. I hope you don’t hate me.”

  Hannah started walking, and Kestrel found herself trotting alongside her. She was so shocked she felt like she was going to collapse. Maybe, she thought, hardly daring to think about it, we’re going to be friends.

  “I left my scarf in the tree,” said Hannah suddenly, and Kestrel jerked to a halt beside her.

  Hannah looked at Finn unhappily.

  “Uh,” said Finn. “I guess . . . I could get it?”

  “Could you really?” asked Hannah. Finn shrugged.

  “I could do it with my eyes closed,” he said.

  “I bet you can’t,” Hannah fired back.

  “I can.”

  “Go on, then.”

  Finn snorted and leaped into the tree. Kestrel watched him disappear into the branches, then jumped in surprise as Hannah grabbed her and pulled her close.

  “Go away, freak,” Hannah hissed in her ear. “We don’t want you here.”

  “What?” Kestrel said, shocked.

  “Finn’s friends with me now.”

  “You said—”

  “You idiot. I don’t want to hang out with you. Seriously, how stupid can you be? Nice eyebrow, by the way.”

  Kestrel’s hand flew to her face. She’d forgotten about her missing eyebrow. Hannah turned away and beamed just as Finn landed on the ground, the scarf tied around his head.

  “Okay, if you want,” Hannah said loudly to Kestrel. “I guess we’ll see you later.”

  “Oh,” said Finn, looking slightly confused. Hannah bounced up to him and grabbed her scarf.

  “Come on,” she said. “I found this amazing place the other day.” She looked at Kestrel snakily. “See you, Kes.”

  “I’m coming, too,” Kestrel said impulsively.

  “It’s fine if you don’t want to,” said Finn, looking insulted. Kestrel glared at him. What an idiot.

  Hannah grabbed his wrist and pulled him away. Kestrel took a step after them, expecting Finn to protest, but he shrugged and traipsed after Hannah. Even if she went with them, Hannah would find a way to torture her all day. Kestrel turned away. She pushed into the trees, clenching her hand around the holey stone she still had in her pocket, trying to fight the shame and loneliness stuck behind her ribs. Of course Hannah didn’t want to be her friend. She was idiotic to think anything else.

  “Why does she suddenly want Finn, anyway?” she said out loud. “He smells funny and burps all the time.”

  Pippit gave a muffled snigger.

  “And what was wrong with him?” she added, getting more annoyed. “Couldn’t he see me wriggling my eyebrow?”

  “Duh,” agreed Pippit.

  “I’m going to the Salt Bog by myself,” she continued out loud. “That’s right. And if I find a way out, I’m not telling Finn about it until he stops being an idiot.”

  Pippit was still making snorting sounds. Kestrel stopped.

  “What are you laughing at?” she said.

  “Did a bad,” he said.

  “What kind of bad?” said Kestrel.

  She reached behind her and pulled him out of her hood. Without warning, a giggle rose in her throat. It grew and grew until it cut through all her rage, and she laughed helplessly.

  Pippit beamed at her proudly, a chunk of Hannah’s shiny hair in his mouth.

  * * *

  The Salt Bog was a vast white landscape completely bare of trees. The whole place was blindingly white, carpeted in a fine layer of salt. Long paths of salt-encrusted earth twisted through the water, which was frozen in place, covered in a thick, crystalline layer of white with air bubbles rolling around underneath it.

  Kestrel suppressed a shudder. It looked different in the daylight, but she’d been here before. The smell of salt brought it all back.

  When she was eight, Granmos made her spend the night here alone. As soon as the sun went down ghosts had oozed from the forest and drifted across the bog. They swarmed around Kestrel all night, attempting to leech off her warmth, touching her with their long fingers and leaving frozen white patches on her skin. Kestrel was so cold she thought she might freeze to death. The ghosts tried urgently to speak to her, but their voices only came out as soft, unintelligible clattering sounds.

  Granmos had promised to rescu
e her if she ever wanted to stop a training session, but Kestrel had always stood her ground. She would rather fight any amount of snarling wolves and starving bears than admit weakness. But that night, with the ghosts, Kestrel was terrified beyond belief. She screamed for Granmos, but the old woman had vanished. Kestrel was too scared to move, and too cold to fight, and too lost to find her way back. She curled up in a ball until sunrise, shaking, slowly solidifying under a fine layer of salt.

  I taught you something important, girl, Granmos said when she came to collect her the next morning. You can’t rely on other people to save you, no matter what they say.

  Kestrel wrapped her arms around herself, trying to shake the memory. The smell of salt made it feel too real, and for a second Kestrel expected the old woman to appear behind her. She stepped hurriedly into the bog, the back of her neck crawling at the thought of her grandma’s cold eyes.

  Every now and then the ground belched and released huge wafts of unspeakable smells that lingered like a guilty burp. Kestrel stood at the side of a path, picking out a route with her eyes. When she finally moved she realized that rings of salt had formed around her legs. The bog crystallized anything that stood still for too long. Every few seconds a spray of salty water burst into the air, covering everything in a fine layer of brine.

  A short distance away stood a crystallized fox. You could almost think it was happily asleep, if it didn’t have salt icicles hanging from its nose.

  Pippit made a loud crunching sound, oblivious to the fantastic landscape. He was chewing some gray knucklebones he’d found in a puddle.

  “Share bones,” he offered as Kestrel shielded her eyes. “Have crunch.”

  “No thanks,” she said, and picked him up. Something had caught her eye. Halfway across the bog was something that looked like a vast white maze, a corridor of pillars and tortured, twisted shapes. It hadn’t been there the night of her training. “Let’s see what that is.”

  The maze grew larger in front of her, but it wasn’t until she reached the first twisted pillar that Kestrel realized what it was made from. It was a corridor of frozen statues, each one preserved in a thick layer of salt. There were dogs with crystals hanging from their whiskers, wolves twisted up like they had a backache, and deer with milky eyes. There were hundreds of smaller animals, too, like tiny rabbits and frogs. The roof was made of trees and plants, their white branches forming a ceiling over the animals.