“You don’t need to follow me,” she said. “I’m only picking apples, aren’t I?”
The dog raised its lip.
“If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, you can come get me,” she added. “Now go lick my mother’s face or something.”
The dog sniffed and trotted off. Amazing. She’d actually commanded it.
She looked around, aware that there were a great many shadows for a grabber to hide in. Part of her wanted to run back to the house. She squeezed the holey stone in her pocket, trying to draw some strength from it, and took a deep breath.
Kestrel got to work. She shoved the basket under a bush, rolled her long sleeves out of the way, and pulled the plaits out of her hair to stop her head aching. She closed her eyes and tried to think of the maps in Granmos’s notebook. Where was the Marrow Orchard?
Something nudged her leg.
“Pip,” she said. “I know you’re there.”
Something rustled between the layers of her horrible beetle-covered skirt. Pippit dropped out of the bottom, two shiny wings sticking guiltily from his mouth.
“I saw you hide,” she said.
“Food,” he said sheepishly, and sucked the wings in with a crunch.
“Eat as many as you want,” she said, trying to wriggle her shoulders. The bodice pinched under her arms when she moved. “We’re going on a mission, and we’ve got to finish it before the dog realizes we’ve gone. And when we get there I need a distraction.”
Pippit looked ecstatic at the thought of causing chaos.
Kestrel bent down to tighten her shoelaces, and blinked. There was a set of footprints next to her. They were fresh. One foot was bigger than the other, and turned outward slightly. She followed the footprints with her eyes. They came from the direction of her mother’s house and went parallel with her own before disappearing into the trees just in front of her.
Kestrel stopped breathing. The forest was silent. Slowly, she leaned over and sniffed the footprints.
Vinegar. Just like the trail left by the woodchopper’s grabber.
It’s here. She saw a tiny flicker of movement in the trees and looked up, dread knotting her stomach. Something huge and person-shaped detached itself from the shadows and fled into the forest.
The grabber.
Kestrel froze, her blood curdling. She wanted to give in to her instincts and run the other way, but then years of training kicked in, and she bolted after it. It was just ahead of her, running with barely a noise, almost invisible in the gloom. As it passed through a gap in the trees she caught sight of something brown and moldering embedded in its chest, or where its chest should be. Her grandma’s notebook. Its cover was pressed open like the wings of a huge moth, forming a solid rib cage.
“Wait!” Kestrel screamed.
The grabber melted into the shadows. It left a trail of cold air and the smell of rotting meat behind it.
Kestrel stumbled to a halt, breathing hard.
Her grabber had two feet. It was shaped like a person.
Kestrel’s insides were doing belly flops as she scanned the trees. She wanted to know what form it was taking.
No—she didn’t.
But she couldn’t stop herself wondering.
What keeps you awake at night and gives you nightmares? What makes your guts shrivel? Granmos hissed in her memory. She could see the old woman’s face as clear as day, her cruel, milky eyes threaded with angry veins as she pinned Kestrel against the wall. She could feel her silver locket pressed against her ribs, her heavy rings digging into her shoulders. Say it!
The forest shivered. Kestrel backed away from the footprints. She suddenly felt too close to them for comfort.
“Gruh,” Pippit warbled, pushing his nose into her ear. “Nuh, nuh.”
“It’s not ready yet,” Kestrel said. She was trying to comfort herself as much as him. She picked him up and held on to him tightly, shivering. “We have time. We’ll get out. But we’ve got to get a head start on the dog. I think the Marrow Orchard’s . . . this way.”
“Dark,” said Pippit, his nose quivering.
“We don’t have time to find a lantern,” Kestrel said.
She stopped short and blinked. It felt like cold water was running through her head, just like it had in the face painter’s clearing.
She clapped her hands over her ears. Something went pop.
And then she remembered.
Kestrel shuffled impatiently in her chair, the heavy book sliding around in her lap. She was meant to be learning to read, but she couldn’t tell the difference between b and d. Granmos was in the corner, knitting, and her mother was twirling pieces of string between her fingers, peering at the hidden pictures inside them. She’d only begun weaving recently; the walls and the ceiling were bare. The lantern on the table cast shadows of her spidery, dancing fingers on the wall.
Kestrel allowed her eyes to wander around the room, irritated by the way her mother’s elbows clicked as she weaved. She watched a tiny spider climb up the wall opposite her, scuttling over the cracks and toward the door, silently willing it toward freedom.
As she stared at the spider, Kestrel saw her mother’s elbow move in the corner of her eye, and she immediately knew what was going to happen.
She leaped out of her seat without thinking, a split second before her mother knocked the lantern and gasped. Kestrel landed on the floor, her arms outstretched, and caught the lantern in her bare hands. For a moment she didn’t feel anything; then the pain ripped through her fingers. She screamed and dropped the lamp.
The glass shattered and sprayed all over the floor. Kestrel shoved her blistered fingers into her mouth, trying not to cry. It took a lot to stop her mother weaving, but her hands were frozen, and she was staring at Kestrel.
“Your eyesight is even better than I thought,” her mother said. She thoughtfully ran her tongue over her teeth. “There’s a lot we could do with that.”
Despite her scorched fingers, Kestrel felt a proud grin spread over her face. Her mother smiled back, then swept the lantern glass from the floor and carried it outside. As soon as she was out the door, Kestrel’s grandma swiveled in her chair and jabbed a knitting needle at her.
“Don’t you be clever in front of her,” she hissed. Her voice was so venomous Kestrel backed away. “Do you understand?”
“What did I do?” Kestrel asked. She twitched as her grandma tightened her grip on the knitting needle.
“Don’t question me,” her grandma snapped, and slammed the needle point-down into the table, where it quivered. Kestrel nodded dumbly.
“Your eyesight is normal from now on. Get it?”
Kestrel shook her head. Her breath was catching in her throat, and she had to remind herself that Granmos wasn’t there anymore and couldn’t punish her. She glanced down at her hands, almost expecting to see fresh blisters, but all she saw were the same patchy scars she’d gotten from her training. Except—
Kestrel caught her breath.
“How could I have forgotten?” she whispered.
The scars weren’t cuts from training—they were burn marks. She could even remember Granmos plunging her hands into a bucket of ice water to stop it hurting.
She rubbed her eyes, trying to clear the image of her grandma’s face. Questions were fighting for attention in her head, but she couldn’t afford to waste time on them now.
“The Marrow Orchard,” she said determinedly, trying hard to push the new memory aside.