Kestrel looked around for the black dog, then climbed up the nearest tree as fast as she could. She’d already wasted most of her fifteen minutes, but if she stayed in the trees until she was far away from the village, she might be able to keep ahead of it for a while.
The dress made movement difficult, but she managed to climb stiffly through the branches. She rained beetles on the ground below, and her spoon poked her in the leg like an accusation.
Kestrel was concentrating so hard on climbing through the trees in her stiff dress that she didn’t hear the village kids talking until she was right above them. She cursed under her breath. They didn’t usually come this far out.
“Her dad’s dead,” said a boy called Alec, as though he hadn’t stopped chattering about it for the last fifteen minutes. “He got gobbled up.”
Kestrel felt like her heart had been torn open. Gobbled up? She pressed her hand over her mouth, thinking that if she didn’t, she’d scream.
The kids were all sitting on the floor. Hannah, Runo, Briar, and most of the others. Kestrel held her breath, knowing that she couldn’t pass over their heads. One tiny noise and they’d all look up.
“She’s got his grabber’s skin,” said Briar darkly.
“Let’s not get carried away,” said Hannah’s voice directly below her. It was calm, but it carried a drop of poison. “We know she’s up to something, but we need evidence. The adults won’t get rid of her otherwise.”
“We’ve got evidence, haven’t we?” said Briar sharply.
Kestrel leaned over the branch, wondering if she should drop the cloak on them and make them scream. As she moved a beetle detached itself from her dress and spiraled down onto Hannah’s head, but Hannah didn’t notice. The boy next to her flicked it away. Something about the gesture made Kestrel pause.
“We don’t know what she really does with the grabbers. Has anyone actually seen her kill one?” said Runo.
“She’s probably the one who sends ’em,” said Alec, and they all gasped with a mixture of glee and disgust.
“As it happens, there is someone who can tell us,” Hannah said. “Finn must know what happens when Kestrel goes after the grabbers. Right, Finn?”
Kestrel’s heart almost stopped. Finn looked so different. He’d been given a brutal haircut, and there were stiff brown shoes on his feet. He sat with his legs stuck out in front of him as though he was trying to get as far away from the shoes as possible. And he’d come down to the ground to hang out with them. The ground. He had never done that for Kestrel.
Everyone turned their attention to Finn.
“It doesn’t work like that,” he said awkwardly.
“So you don’t know that she kills the grabbers,” said Hannah.
“She does kill them,” said Finn. “She brings trophies back.”
“Might be having a chat with ’em instead,” said a girl called Erin. “Might be telling ’em who to eat next.”
Kestrel wanted to launch herself out of the tree at them, but she clenched her teeth and stayed quiet. Finn would tell them to shut up.
“Do you help her kill them?” Hannah asked. Kestrel rolled her eyes. Finn wouldn’t fall into her trap.
“I help a bit,” said Finn, twisting his fingers together nervously. Hannah continued to look at him. Finn wriggled. “I mean, I don’t actually see much.” He looked at Hannah pleadingly. “She won’t let me get close.”
Kestrel was so outraged that the words slipped out before she could stop them.
“Liar!” she shouted, and everyone looked up.
“What do you mean?” Hannah asked, so unsurprised by Kestrel’s presence that Kestrel wondered if she’d known she was there all along.
She opened her mouth to say that Finn had always refused to go near a grabber. He made terrible excuses, like the trees are too slippery or, time to steal cake from Mardy! He didn’t even like touching the ground in case his grabber came after him. And now he was lying about it.
“Coward!” she screamed. Her voice was full of ice, but her face was burning.
Finn looked like he’d been slapped.
She strode away, violently pushing branches and twigs out of her path. They were meant to stick up for each other. Finn was different to the other villagers.
Wasn’t he?
A few seconds later she heard Finn scramble up the tree and follow her.
“Take it back!” he shouted. Kestrel sped up. She didn’t want him to see her face, or her probably red eyes. She heard Finn pause, then two thumps as he flung his shoes away. Then he was right behind her, and she knew she’d never outrun him in the trees. She stopped and turned to face him, her arms crossed.
He looked like an alien. His face was approaching clean, and he wasn’t wearing any feathers. He smelled like soap. All of his Finn-ness had been washed away.
“Why are you friends with them?” she asked, hating how petty she sounded. Pippit was sitting on her shoulder, his hair raised, baring his teeth at Finn in solidarity. “They’ve bullied us for years, and now you’re wearing their clothes!”
“They never bullied me,” Finn said. “Now take. It. Back.”
“What about the time they greased your ropes and you fell out of a tree?” she said, ignoring him. “What about when they set your coat on fire? Or when they—”
“That was ages ago,” he snapped. “They’re different now. If you were nicer—”
“Nicer?”
“You know what I mean. Hannah said—”
“Hannah hates me, and she’s using you to get to me,” Kestrel yelled.
The dead leaves crackled on the ground below them. Pippit stiffened.
“Something important,” he hissed under his breath. But Kestrel didn’t have time for the other kids now.
She still had the terrible wolf-skin cloak under her arm. She threw it around herself and fastened it at the neck. Finn flinched as she raised the hood, two long, wolfish incisors dangling in front of her eyes.
“This cloak is to remind me who I am,” she said savagely. “I’m a hunter. I’m going to find my way out of here. And,” she added imperiously, fixing him with her coldest stare, “you can come as well, if you stop being such a monumental cowardly idiot!”
Finn looked at Kestrel as though she’d told him she could fly.
“You’ve lost it,” he said. “We’re never going to escape.”
“You’re just too scared to try,” she replied coldly.
Finn clenched his fists. His face twisted spitefully.
“It was just a game,” he said, deliberately slow. “There’s no way out.”
Kestrel gaped at him. The world was falling over. All the weeks they’d spent planning their escape—all the plans they’d made—all the promises. There had to be an outside. How would she escape her grabber otherwise?
“It’s not a game!” she yelled. A flock of razor-winged blackbirds flew up from a nearby tree, squawking.
Finn opened his mouth again, but he was cut off by a growl. Kestrel looked down, her stomach plummeting. It wasn’t the village kids below them. The black dog was staring up at them from the ground. And it had seen her and Finn together.
Kestrel tried to duck from sight, but it was too late. The dog’s nostrils flared as it took them in, dribbling in anticipation.
“Finn,” said Kestrel. Her mother would kill him. She was going to kill Finn. “You’ve got to run!”
“Why?” he said, backing away. “What’s happening?”