And now it was ruined. Kestrel wanted to shout at the kids who had done it, but even through her cloud of anger she knew it would only provoke them to do something even worse.
“Where are we going tomorrow?” Finn asked, clearly trying to distract her.
Kestrel pulled her grandma’s notebook from her pocket and felt for the dog-eared page she’d marked earlier. Her grandma’s spiky handwriting crawled across the paper, sharp and black and cramped.
Granmos had made it difficult to read anything in the notebook. She’d written in zigzags instead of straight lines, or put the words back to front. She threw the letter e around like confetti and drew pictures in the middle of paragraphs. Kestrel hadn’t made it any better. Her own additions dodged in and out of each sentence, weaving through a mess of arrows and diagrams and wonky letters. And every page contained a pencil map she’d drawn of a different part of the forest, traced over the top of the writing, as part of her attempt to make sense of its never-ending paths and infinite trees.
Kestrel flipped past pages about giant spiders which can jump a surprisingley longe way, believe you me; strangling ivy whiche can take down a bear, really, I’ve seene it; and face painters, whose sweete smelle makes you sicke, and they can transform to look like someone you trust. . . .
“The Salt Bog,” she said, finding the page. “I’ve got a good feeling about it. Like something big’s going to happen there.” Kestrel wanted to jump up and go immediately, but it was stupid to brave the forest after dark unless you had to.
“Maybe we’ll find the way out,” said Finn.
“I have to find my grandma’s grabber first,” Kestrel reminded him. When she said the word grabber, Finn twitched and looked around.
“What’s wrong with you?” Kestrel asked, watching him closely.
“Don’t say that word,” Finn snapped. “They . . . they might be able to hear you.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “You’re not scared, are you?”
“No,” he said quickly. “I’m not scared of anything, am I?”
“’Course not,” she said.
Finn stared grumpily into the trees.
“I know,” Kestrel said after a moment, desperate to break the silence. “Let’s play a game.”
“Can’t we play tomorrow?”
“We’ve escaped the forest,” she said, nudging him. “Go on.”
“Okay,” said Finn, grudgingly uncrossing his arms. “But we’re not on the ground. I hate walking.”
“Okay, we’re in the sky.”
In her mind the village was blowing away, and the tree they were in was stretching toward the clouds. If she tried hard enough she could even feel the wind on her face. “We’re walking in the air,” she said. “We’re being chased by—”
“Lightning,” said Finn, and he grabbed her hand, sending a jolt of fierce joy up her arm.
“We’ve got to keep moving,” said Kestrel. “We’ll die otherwise.”
“I know,” said Finn, and they ran into the darkening sky, shouting, the air crackling all around them.
That night the sky was as dark as oil. The wolf fire was dull and orange, and it sent up great, dirty plumes of smoke that hid the moon. Kestrel was curled up in an old fox burrow at the edge of the village, dead leaves piled around her for warmth. She’d tried to get Finn to come down, too, but he insisted on sleeping at the top of a tree, which rocked and swayed like a ship.
Kestrel was half asleep when Pippit uttered a terrible hiss. Kestrel’s eyes flicked open. Something slipped between the trees, but it was gone in an instant.
“Dad?” she said, then realized how stupid she sounded. Of course it wasn’t her dad. She would hear his traps clanking from a mile off.
“What can you smell, Pip?” she asked. Pippit tugged on her ear, urging her to stay in the burrow, but she pulled herself up and stepped toward the shadows.
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.
6
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.