Where the Woods End Read online

  “Don’t forget what I can do!” her mother screamed at the village. None of them dared look at her. Her voice was high and cut through the echo of Runo’s sobs. She licked her lips, then stared at Kestrel.

  “Mushrooms,” she said. “I want food. Now.”

  Kestrel’s mother picked up the wool and stepped inside, slamming the door shut. Kestrel’s legs gave way. She sat down, shaking with a horrible, curdled combination of fear and relief. The villagers disappeared into the depths of their houses. Everyone left except Runo and Briar. Briar was trying to pick him up, desperately hissing at him to move.

  It took a moment for Kestrel to understand that she wasn’t going to get hurt. She ran over to the well.

  “Is Runo all right?” Kestrel asked breathlessly. He was clutching his leg and making terrible sniveling noises.

  “Don’t you dare,” Briar said coldly. Her usual sneer was gone.

  “I thought she’d hurt me,” Kestrel said weakly. “I wouldn’t have attacked the dog, otherwise.”

  “You’re her daughter,” Briar snorted. “You can do what you want. You’ll always be safe from her.” She finally dragged Runo to his feet. “But you won’t be safe from us,” she added coldly, turning away.

  Kestrel wanted to tell Briar that it wasn’t true, that her own punishment was coming later, but Briar was already leading Runo away, limping.

  Kestrel stared at them as they retreated, her eyes prickling.

  Stupid tears.

  She felt something scratch her leg. She bent down and picked Pippit up, trying very hard not to sniff.

  “Mushrooms,” Pippit reminded her. “Get mushrooms or Nasty does a bad.”

  Pippit was right. If her mother didn’t have mushrooms in the next twenty minutes, she’d go crazy. Maybe she’d hurt someone else.

  Kestrel moved quietly through the trees with Pippit clinging to her head, while he quietly muttered about mushrooms and snacks. She found a tree stump covered in quietly squirming fungi and dug around for a stick she could use to knock them off. The last time she touched them, they tried to eat her fingers.

  A branch snapped. Kestrel looked up, her fingers tightening around her spoon.

  “Finn?” she said doubtfully. Deep down, she knew Finn wouldn’t come this far into the forest alone—at least not on the ground.

  She saw something move in the trees to her right. She quickly turned to face it, taking care not to make any sound. Fifty paces away, two bright yellow eyes hovered in the air.

  They blinked out immediately, as though the creature hadn’t meant to be seen. Kestrel stared at the space where they had been, dread oozing through her body. She had a terrible feeling about the eyes. Were they following her? She reached for her slingshot, but her hand closed on her notebook instead, and she cursed inwardly. She kept forgetting that she’d lost it.

  Kestrel fumbled for her spoon instead. She crept toward the space where the eyes had been. She could see a dark outline standing in the trees, as though the creature had turned its back. Kestrel’s blood raced as she approached. Then, when she was only a few paces away, it fled, and before she knew what was happening, it was in the trees behind her instead. It was so fast. She whirled around to face it, but it moved again, so she could only catch a glimpse of its shadowy outline.

  The creature was circling her like a wolf.

  “What are you?” Kestrel snapped. “What do you want?”

  But the creature was already gone. It had disappeared into the forest with the silence of a moth.

  Kestrel slowly slid her spoon into her pocket, still staring after it. Her hand touched an empty space, and she stopped breathing. Something was missing. She checked again, touching all her pockets, then digging her hands into them. But she could feel its absence like a missing limb.

  Her notebook was gone. It had been there just moments before. Kestrel looked around desperately, scanning the ground all around her, but there was no sign of it.

  “Where did it go, Pip?” she said, feeling her throat constrict.

  The answer was bearing down on her like a landslide. She tried not to think about it, but the answer was so big, so horrible, it was almost impossible to ignore.

  The thing with yellow eyes had stolen it.

  “Grurbbb,” squeaked Pippit, and she couldn’t suppress her thoughts any longer.

  Kestrel’s legs turned to jelly. She felt a huge, hollow emptiness, that horrible absence of feeling that comes before a life-changing storm. For a short second Kestrel wondered if this was a grabber she knew, one that had escaped her clutches during a hunt. But this one had no body. It was as insubstantial as air.

  And it had taken her notebook.

  Everything that had happened to her, every horror she had ever faced, in one heartbeat became as insignificant and tiny as a black beetle with a broken wing.

  The feeling began as a slow trickle, then it turned into a flood, and within moments it was crushing her, stopping her breathing and forcing her to the ground as her heart tripped and sputtered. She lost all the feeling in her arms and legs. Her bones were bending and splitting. Her fingers were breaking one by one. Her whole body was falling apart.

  Her grabber was building its body.

  Kestrel was going to die.

  She tried to put her hands around her fear, to squash it and destroy it, but for the first time it was too big for her and it swallowed her whole.

  POWER IN TEETH

  Kestrel didn’t know whether seconds or minutes had passed, but slowly, piece by piece, she came back to herself. She was sitting on the ground, her knees drawn up to her eyes and her hands around her legs, staring into the dark space between her feet and the dirt. Pippit was urgently bumping his head against her face, trying to make her move.

  She was furious with herself for sitting there like a stupid lump, a big, obvious target for anything that wanted to eat her. She saw the flash of a tail, growled, and lobbed a rock at the animal in the trees. It gave a satisfying yelp and ran away, squeaking like an old door.

  Kestrel hauled herself to her feet. Her heartbeat had slowed, but her arms were numb and heavy, as though all the blood had been sucked out of them.

  “Weak,” Kestrel whispered, anger sloshing between her ribs. Granmos would be ashamed to see her sitting on the ground in the middle of the forest, shivering like a baby. “Get a grip!”

  She pressed her fingers over her eyes and tried to decide what to do next. Her head was a jumble of words and pictures, each of them with a wavering yellow eye planted in the middle.

  Go back to the village, moron, her head said.

  “Okay,” Kestrel said obediently, wondering if she was mad. She touched the place where her grandma’s notebook usually was and felt another pang of shock when it wasn’t there.

  She walked shakily through the trees. Pippit dug his claws into her shoulder and crouched low. With every step she took, the question what will my grabber look like? thumped in her head, and each time she swept it away before she could think of the answer.

  She asked herself what her gran would do. And she knew: Granmos would ask questions. She would gather evidence, look at her options, and decide what to do next. She wouldn’t make the same mistake as the villagers, who shut themselves away when things went missing, who locked their doors and never said a word. She would pull on her big, tattered coat made of rags, light her pipe, and make a plan.

  And at least Kestrel had an advantage: Her eyes were sharp enough that she’d caught the grabber lurking. Most of the villagers didn’t see their grabbers at all, until the end, so it was easier for them to pretend that nothing was happening.

  But you did the same thing, didn’t you? said a nasty little voice in the back of her head. When her slingshot had disappeared she’d brushed it aside, but what if her grabber had it? It could have been following her for days. Even the Briny Witch had n
oticed that something was following her.

  She shivered. Maybe she was the same as everyone else. Nobody, not a single person, had escaped from their grabber once it had chosen its final form. What if Kestrel couldn’t fight hers? What if it was so terrifying that she couldn’t even move?

  She was scared, she was really scared, and she had no idea what to do. She had a choice: Kill her grabber when it had a body and came for her, or escape the forest before it could catch her.

  Kestrel knew what Granmos would say. She was a hunter. Her job was to fight. Maybe this time she’d kill a grabber before it fed. But when she started to wonder what form the grabber would take, she crushed the thought immediately.

  She didn’t want to find out.

  “I’ll discover a way out of the forest,” she said with false confidence. Her voice helped drive the darkness away. “I’ll find my grandma’s grabber, and my mum will call off the dog, and I’ll be able to leave. Easy.”

  But even if she got what she wanted, she’d be doing something terrible. Escaping meant abandoning everyone to their own grabbers. She’d have to find her dad and persuade him to come with her. And she had to find a way out of the never-ending forest, which suddenly felt as impossible as telling a moth to carry a suitcase.

  Kestrel stopped. She realized she’d been walking for too long; she should have hit the village by now. She closed her eyes and sniffed the air, but she couldn’t detect the usual smokiness of the wolf fire.

  “I’ve gone the wrong way,” she said bitterly, fighting the urge to kick something. What was wrong with her? She couldn’t let herself get distracted by the grabber. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the nearest tree, and seconds later it began to snow.

  “Pffft,” Pippit said. “Pffft.”

  A thin layer of snow was already covering his fur. He shook himself, but within moments it settled back on him.

  “Pffft,” he said again, then looked at her so pathetically that she had to hide a snort of laughter.

  “You’re meant to be a fearsome hunter,” she reminded him, picking him up and bringing him to eye level. He ran up her sleeve, dragging wet snow with him. Kestrel yelped and tried to shake him out, but he popped out by her neck and planted himself there with an air of satisfaction.

  “Not moving,” he said.

  She shielded her eyes from the snow. At least she felt better when Pippit was with her. “Let’s try this way.”

  She started walking again, but she couldn’t get her bearings. The more she tried to concentrate, the more she thought about her grabber instead. As the snow swirled around her face Kestrel began to shiver uncontrollably. Her brain was playing tricks on her. She saw the wide, bright eyes of the grabber in every chink of light that came from the stars. She saw its shadowy, unformed body behind every tree she passed. It was going to grow and twist and change—so what part of its body was her notebook going to be? What would it be? Would it look like—?

  Kestrel stamped on the thought as hard as she could, and wrapped her arms around herself.

  Seconds later Kestrel’s foot plunged into a stream. She yelped and tried to step back. Something snatched at her ankle, and she slipped and landed with her chin in the water. Bits of gravel tumbled past her, catching her on the cheek and making her face sting as she floundered. Cold water sloshed through her clothes, and chunks of ice swirled around her.

  “Brrr,” Pippit warbled miserably as Kestrel finally scrambled to her feet, her heart pounding.

  She stumbled to the other side of the stream, then hesitated and looked back at the water. She was sure something had caught her ankle on purpose. For a moment she couldn’t see anything except frothy scum and swirling clumps of snow. Then the face of the Briny Witch floated into view, spinning on the surface of the water so fast she felt dizzy.

  “What do you want?” Kestrel snapped, embarrassed by how relieved she was that it wasn’t her grabber.

  “I just wanted to say hello,” the Briny Witch gurgled, sounding very far away. “Have you reconsidered my offer? You know your time’s running out now.”

  “No,” Kestrel said, stepping away. But even as she spoke she was imagining the help he could give in return for her eyes, and before she knew it the words were out of her mouth. “Can you tell me how to get rid of my grabber?”

  “You can’t,” he said, grinning nastily.

  “Fine,” Kestrel snapped. “Can you at least tell me where my grandma’s grabber is?”

  The Briny Witch laughed, as though she’d just said something very funny, his face still swirling in the eddies of the water.

  “All right,” she said sourly. “Then I don’t need you.” She splashed her hand in the water, scattering the image of his smirking face.

  Kestrel turned back and tried to retrace her steps, but her footprints were filling in with snow. She started to hurry, tripping over tree roots in her haste. She was close to screaming with frustration when she heard a high-pitched whistle above her. The sound made her heart leap into her throat, and she fumbled to reach her spoon, but Pippit dug his claws into her shoulder and chattered excitedly.

  “Snacks!” he shouted, which could only mean one person.

  Kestrel’s heart leaped. There was a fraying rope wound tightly around a nearby tree. She scrambled up, her fingers numb with cold. She found Finn sitting in a cocoon made of blankets with a lantern wedged between his knees.

  Finn’s face cracked into a grin when he saw her, and despite the guilt and the deep terror lurking inside her, she felt herself do the same.

  “I thought I heard you stamping around,” he said as she sat down with him, knee to knee. “Why do you look so pale?”

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” Kestrel said, the words falling out of her mouth before she could stop herself. “I’ve seen my—”

  She was about to tell him about the grabber, but as soon as the thought crossed her mind she knew that it was a terrible idea. She could see his face now. He’d run away from her. He’d be too scared to talk to her. He didn’t even like it when she mentioned her grandma’s grabber.

  “My dad,” she said, feeling wretched.

  “Gruh!” Pippit said loudly, but Kestrel clamped her hand over his mouth and pushed him into her hood.

  “Did Hannah go back?” Kestrel added, eyeing the trees. Hannah was the last person she wanted to deal with right now.

  “Oh, yeah. She said trees were cold and dirty.” He shrugged.

  “Maybe she’s scared of snow,” Kestrel said, feeling a tiny bit pleased. Hannah seemed like the kind of person to hide under the bed when the snow came, just because it brought monsters like ice ghasts and poisonous white spiders.

  “Not like us,” said Finn

  “Obviously,” Kestrel agreed. She touched her pocket, only to be reminded her grandma’s notebook wasn’t there. Her fingers curled up with panic. It came on suddenly, with the same physical pain as a stomach cramp. She couldn’t afford to take her mind off her grabber for a single moment; it could strike whenever she wasn’t looking, stealing her things to make its body.

  “You look like you’re going to throw up,” Finn said. Something about him didn’t look right, but Kestrel felt too distracted to work out what.

  “I’m okay,” Kestrel said, pushing a piece of hair away from her damp forehead. “I’m glad I found you. We need to keep exploring.”

  “Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” said Finn, yawning.

  “We can’t wait!” Kestrel said insistently, making Finn jump. “The Gulping Pond’s next on the list,” she continued, swallowing the lump in her throat. She wondered if she sounded as panicked as she felt. “It sounds interesting. We could go now.”

  She could feel her heart hammering again.

  “Are you crazy?” Finn said. “We’ll get buried in snow. We’ll be eaten by ghosts. We’ll drown in a bog. It’s dark.�
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  “We haven’t been trying hard enough to find a way out,” she said. “We’ll never escape if we don’t push ourselves.”

  “We are trying,” said Finn, taking a shriveled plum out of his pocket. Pippit’s head swiveled toward it. “We go exploring nearly every day, don’t we?”

  “But . . .” Kestrel said.

  Finn stretched the blanket over his head and proffered it to her. She took it gingerly but didn’t wrap it around her. She didn’t like not being able to see the forest.

  “We can look at your notebook now if you want,” Finn said peaceably. “We can plan our route to the Gulping Pond.”

  “I . . . left my notebook in the burrow,” she said lamely.

  Finn looked bewildered.

  “But I remember nearly everything in it,” Kestrel added quickly.

  “Let’s just skip the exploring for a bit,” said Finn. “We could build snow-wolves instead. Or hunt for more weird junk in the forest.”

  “C’mon, Finn,” she said. “This isn’t a game.”

  “What’s the point if we’re not having fun?”

  “To get out!” Kestrel said frantically.

  “Well, yeah,” he said, and shoved the plum into his mouth. Kestrel felt her face crumple, and Finn blinked. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  Yes! she screamed in her head.

  “No,” she said, thinking the word would crack under the weight of her lie. Finn looked relieved.

  “Okay,” he said. “Want a plum?”

  Pippit dove into his pocket headfirst. As Finn wrestled with him, trying to pull him out of his pocket before all the fruit was devoured, Kestrel looked out at the snow. Stupid, horrible tears were pricking at her eyelids again. She never used to cry at all. Granmos would be horrified. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and gritted her teeth.

  “I just want to get out of here,” she said. “I’ve never wanted it more.”

  “So do I,” said Finn. He’d given up trying to save his fruit. “I know we’ll find it one day.”

  Pippit spat a plum stone out, and it ricocheted off the tree. Finn ducked his head to avoid it, and Kestrel saw him in a streak of moonlight.