“Get out of my way,” she said, Pippit in one hand, her spoon in the other. She tried to sound as terrifying as possible.
“Not until you give me your eyes,” said the Briny Witch, his mouth opening in a horrible greenish grin.
Then the Briny Witch twitched, as though he’d heard something. He paused with one hand stretched toward her. Nothing in the Salt Bog had changed, but Kestrel suddenly felt icy cold.
“You didn’t tell me you had one of those,” the Briny Witch said, looking panicked.
“One of what?” she asked. The Briny Witch turned around and sniffed the air frantically. Kestrel tried to see past him, but his floating rags formed a dark cloud around his body. “What is it?”
“What do you mean, what is it?” the Briny Witch repeated, and turned back to her, seeking her out with his blind eyes.
“That’s what I asked!” she yelled, caught up in his obvious panic.
“Go!” he commanded, then hesitated before adding: “If you change your mind about your eyes, I’ll be in the water.”
Without warning the Briny Witch collapsed into a heap of rags and frogspawn-y slime and rattling bones, all of which slid backward into the hole he’d risen from. There was a final slurp, and the water closed over him. Kestrel looked around wildly, but she couldn’t see anything at all, only the salt-encrusted animals.
“Thanks for nothing,” Kestrel said to Pippit, who had shamefacedly gone limp in her hand. “You don’t mind fighting grabbers, but as soon as you see a witch you’re useless!”
She wasn’t really mad, but the sound of her voice helped her feel less alone, less like something was watching and waiting in the bushes. As soon as she stopped, the icy feeling came back stronger than ever.
A nasty voice in the back of her head was telling her that she knew exactly what would scare something like the Briny Witch.
I’m paranoid, she thought, and took a deep breath. Her heart was fluttering nervously, even though she thought the Briny Witch’s damp brain was probably playing tricks on him.
“There’s obviously no path to the outside here,” she told Pippit loudly. She was too embarrassed to admit that she didn’t like the way the Salt Bog made her skin crawl.
Pippit nudged her hand with his wet nose, looking worried.
“Nasty,” he said. “Eyes. Follow. Agh!”
Kestrel ignored him. “We’ve got time for one more place,” she said. “To the Pit of Doom!”
And she fled through the corridor of frozen animals to the next deep, dark place in the forest.
7
THE PUNISHMENT
The cold was as sharp as a paper edge. Kestrel scrunched her frozen toes and kept working, scooping handfuls of rancid fat out of the burrow where she slept. She could see the forest from here, at least. Maybe she could even spot her dad.
“Lessgo,” Pippit said, shivering in her pocket. His breath made tiny puffs of condensation in the air, and his teeth were chattering.
“I haven’t finished,” Kestrel said determinedly.
The Pit of Doom had been nothing more than a ditch with a pile of bones in the bottom of it. According to Granmos’s notebook, it had once been home to an arthritic troll with a face on both the front and back of its head. She was disappointed that she’d never gotten to see it firsthand. Its skull, with its two jaws and four eye sockets, had grinned at her from the bottom of the ditch. She’d felt like it was laughing at her attempts to find a way out. Path? she imagined it saying. There’s nothing like that here.
Kestrel sighed, scooped another handful of fat out of the burrow, and threw it away. It landed with a gross splattering sound. Some of the village kids liked to sneak in and dump things there. Playing tricks on Kestrel helped establish a pecking order of the brave, and messing with the gutter was the ultimate challenge. They’d egg one another on until someone gave in. Then they got to wear this stupid badge one of them had made of wax.
“Snuh-h-h,” chattered Pippit as a tiny white snowflake landed between his eyes.
“I know,” said Kestrel unhappily, and looked at the edge of the forest for the tenth time. Her dad was going to freeze if he stayed away much longer.
Pippit curled himself into a tighter ball. For an animal that had come from the forest, he wasn’t particularly well-equipped to deal with the cold. Kestrel wondered if she’d spoiled him.
She wrinkled her nose and scooped the last of the fat out of the burrow. Then she took her trinkets—the shoe, candle holder, cup, fork, and ring—and made sure they were hidden right at the back, under a pile of leaves.
Kestrel had half expected Finn to come looking for her by now, but he’d disappeared entirely, and Hannah wasn’t in her house, either. She wondered if they were out somewhere together.
Maybe they’re having a horrible time in the cold, she thought, cheering up a little bit.
That’s when she heard it, far away but clear as ice. The familiar, thrilling sound of metal clanking against metal deep in the trees. The forest shivered, and Kestrel felt its worry deep in her bones. Then she saw it, almost hidden by the trees—brief glimpses of shining iron.
“Trapper!” shouted Pippit. “E’s back!”
Kestrel’s dad was tall and broad, and he wore a waxed brown overcoat that made him look like a tent. Around his neck he wore strings of wolves’ teeth, and the brim of his brown leather hat was studded with black claws. There were metal traps hanging from his belt, swinging into one another, their sharp teeth clashing. If you saw him in the forest you would probably run from him, because he was bristling with sharp points and trophies, and covered in great, twisting scars from the neck down.
When Kestrel reached him, he was standing by a gnarled tree, his back turned to the village, watching for something in the shadows. Kestrel crept through the dirty tendrils that were blowing from the wolf fire, her hand over her mouth to stop her coughing.
She felt suddenly shy. She almost didn’t want him to turn around. He hadn’t been back in such a long time, a small part of her wondered if he wanted to see her at all.
Kestrel was so close now that she was almost touching his shadow. She was still working up the courage to open her mouth when he turned around, quick as a fish in a bog, and caught her with his great paw.
“You’re getting better,” he said. “But it’ll take more than that to catch a wolf hunter.”
Kestrel wriggled out of his grasp and flung her arms around him, all her doubt melting. The top of her head barely reached his chest. He crushed her into him, and she breathed in the smell of the deep forest, the bonfires he lit way out there, the fur and the blood, and something a bit like bacon. He was the greatest wolf hunter that had ever lived, and he smelled like home.
She pulled away and raised her chin for the usual inspection. She was glad the smoke was there, so he couldn’t see how much she was smiling.
“You’re stringier,” he said. “You don’t eat enough.”
“I’ve got to be stringy so I can hide,” she fired back. He didn’t need to know how much she longed for the cake and stew her mother ate. “You’re so fat you have to pretend to be a rock or a boulder.”
“But I get to eat wolf meat every day,” he said, patting his stomach and laughing. The sound was deep and rich, as though it came from a place made of butter.
It had been three months. Kestrel wanted him to say it. The words were hanging explosively in the air, but he just smiled in that mild way of his.