“You little weasel!” Mardy cried.
Kestrel put her spoon away, breathing a sigh of relief. Only one person was capable of infuriating Mardy like that.
Mardy was outside her house, wielding the paddle she used for beating her beloved wolf-skin rug. Kestrel stopped by the well, just out of sight. Mardy’s fingers were hooked over Finn’s collar as he struggled and squawked.
“Let me go,” he howled, lifting his feet, trying to keep them from touching the ground. He was clutching a squashed, paper-wrapped package in his arms.
“Not until I’ve beaten some sense into you!” shouted Mardy.
Finn’s clothes were covered in black feathers and his face was streaked with dirt. All the buttons were hanging off his jacket, and as he wriggled he shed an impressive collection of leaves from his hair.
“What would your parents think of you, Finnigan?” Mardy yelled, tightening her grip so Finn choked. “What would your poor mum and dad say about you stealing my food, eh?”
“Nothing, ’cause they’re dead, aren’t they!” gasped Finn. “Their grabbers got ’em, ’cause they weren’t clever, like me.”
“Living in the trees won’t help you, stupid boy,” said Mardy, finally dropping him. Finn sprinted toward the nearest tree and scrambled up the trunk, shivering. “Your grabber will make itself some wings and fly!”
Hanging behind her on the wash line was her wolf-skin rug. Kestrel always felt a twinge of pride when she saw it. Her dad had hunted that wolf years ago and given the skin to Mardy as a present for curing his fever.
“If I see you anywhere near my house again I’ll get the Trapper to flay the skin from your body,” Mardy screeched at Finn. “He’ll make a rug out of you!”
Kestrel snorted with laughter. Her father would never hurt another person. Finn scrambled up the tree and leaped away. Kestrel ran after him on the ground below. He beamed madly when he saw her and helped haul her up.
Kestrel, despite trying to look cross, felt giggles explode inside her. Finn snorted, too, and within seconds they were both helpless.
“You idiot!” she gasped as Finn howled. “One day she’ll rip your head off!”
Finn was laughing so hard he couldn’t answer. Kestrel waited for him to calm down, but her own giggles were rising in her like hiccups. They both rolled around, snorting, until Kestrel hit him on the head and he stopped.
“Cake?” he said, offering the squashed brown package.
There was an excited chirrup from somewhere in the tree, then Pippit shot out and scrabbled up Finn’s arm.
Finn scratched him under the chin, and Pippit stretched out.
“Ffffff,” Pippit said, so overcome with adoration that he couldn’t speak.
“Suck-up,” Kestrel said, rolling her eyes.
They all ate fistfuls of sodden cake, letting crumbs patter onto the ground below. The day was ending and the moon was coming out, smooth and pale in the dimming sky. A cold breeze stirred the trees. Kestrel leaned back, her bones aching, enjoying the cool air on her face. For a few minutes all she wanted to do was sit down and rest. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine where the breeze had come from—maybe the sea, which Granmos had described over and over in her stories.
Those stories were the only good things she could remember about her grandma. Kestrel automatically looked down at her scarred hand. She couldn’t remember where the scars all came from, but she had a vague memory of being taught to fight with a knife. She could see Granmos lunging at her again and again, her colored-rag coat flapping, her silver rings and her locket glinting as they caught the moonlight. Kestrel clenched her teeth, willing the memory away, and pushed her hands into her lap so she couldn’t see the scars anymore.
Her gaze fell on the woodchopper’s house instead, half-visible through the trees. She remembered Hannah, standing outside her house, staring at the grabber’s trail.
“Finn,” she said, opening her eyes. Finn was almost asleep. “Will you go see Hannah tomorrow?”
“No,” he said bluntly. “We hate her, remember?”
“Just check that she’s okay. It’s her dad who got taken. Please?”
“Fine,” he said. He looked up at the sky. “It’ll snow soon,” he added, brightening. “We can make snowballs and drop them on people’s heads.”
The thought of snow made Kestrel’s skin prickle.
Her dad always, without fail, came back to the village before it snowed. He could smell the weather coming days in advance, and as soon as there was the slightest hint of a snowflake he returned. The forest was even more dangerous than usual in the snow. Sometimes you were lucky and it was only a light smattering that quickly melted away, but other times it became a chilly death trap. Even Kestrel got lost when the snowdrifts were as high as her head, and there was no telling what monster would leap out at you when you couldn’t see anything but vague shapes. If you were outside of the village when it snowed, you were practically asking to fall off a ledge or wander straight into the grasp of a slavering beast. That was the only reason she was back in the village now. If she had her way, she’d be stalking through the places in her grandma’s notebook for days, only returning when the black dog decided it needed to check up on her.
If her dad didn’t come back soon, it meant something was wrong. Kestrel looked up, praying for the weather to hold, but the sky looked ready to burst.
“Finn,” she began, feeling silly.
“I didn’t see him,” he said awkwardly. Kestrel tried to ignore the empty ache in her ribs. “I found one of his burned-out fires the other day,” he added more kindly, pulling her hair to distract her. “It was only a few hours old. So he’s been around. He’ll be back before the snow comes.”
“Yeah,” said Kestrel. “I know. It’s just that . . . it’s been weeks.”
“Don’t worry about him,” said Finn, and Kestrel nodded. But she wanted to talk about him so much. She wanted to ask questions like Do you think I’d know if he died out there? And What if his grabber got him?
Finn blinked as though he’d only just seen her, then tilted his head and inspected her face. “Where’d your eyebrow go? You’re all lopsided.” He wriggled his own eyebrows, making them dance like caterpillars, and Kestrel snorted with laughter.
“It was my mum,” she said. “Now the other kids will have something else to laugh at.”
“They’re idiots,” he said. “They’re just jealous. We have way more fun than them.”
Kestrel felt her mouth curve into a smile. Finn was as different to the other villagers as Kestrel. He wasn’t stuck to the ground like they were; he wasn’t slowly rotting inside, turning dark and sour. He saw the sky and the sun every single day. He slept in a wooden crate, and he ate birds for dinner. His feet didn’t touch the ground for weeks on end.
Pippit, who had quietly finished eating the cake and was now as fat as a balloon, burped and head-butted Kestrel’s hand for attention. She felt like all she needed in the world was on the branch with her.
“Oh. I was going to tell you,” said Finn, looking sheepish. “I think the kids found your burrow. They’ve been through your stuff, and, er . . .”
He tipped a pile of things into Kestrel’s lap. All that remained was an old shoe, a tarnished candleholder, a broken cup, and a fork with two prongs missing. Kestrel reached into her boot and added the silver ring from Pippit, seething.
Three years of finding things in the forest, gone. She’d always thought they meant something—that they were a puzzle to solve—that they would help her understand the way out. They couldn’t belong to the villagers, who would never venture into the forest, let alone carelessly drop their things. They must have come from the outside.