Kestrel turned and ran over to Finn. She expected him to sit, groaning like Runo had, but he was just a small, limp pile on the floor.
“Get up,” she said. “It’s safe. Finn. C’mon.”
He was flopped in the leaves, lying on his side with a glazed look on his face. Kestrel dropped down beside him. She saw something move in the corner of her eye and realized that the other kids had gathered around the side of a cottage to watch. Not a single one of them came to help. “It’s not funny,” she said to Finn, ignoring them. “Come on.”
Nothing happened. She looked at the other kids. Runo’s mouth was hanging open, and even Hannah looked pale.
“Why aren’t you doing anything?” she snapped. Briar twitched, but didn’t say anything. Kestrel shook Finn again, but he was as limp as a scarecrow.
“Get up, you idiot,” she hissed. “I mean it!”
Finn didn’t answer. She grabbed his shoulders and shouted in his ear.
“Finn!” she howled.
Kestrel’s heart collapsed into itself, even though she hadn’t thought it could break any further. She put her head in her hands, wailing. She couldn’t cry. She could only make one long, horrified noise.
“Shut up,” Finn mumbled. “Head hurts.”
Kestrel stopped immediately and looked up, astonished. Finn blinked slowly, then sat and rubbed his head.
Briar was the first to move. She rushed over and dropped down beside Finn.
“What did that witch do to you?” Briar gasped at him.
“The same thing she did to me,” Runo said, finding his voice. “And all because of her.”
The kids all fixed their eyes on Kestrel.
“I tried to stop her!” Kestrel said, boiling over. “You saw me!”
“She hurt Finn because you wouldn’t do as you were told.”
“Are you serious?” Kestrel asked, striding forward. They all scattered backward, like they were scared of her. “She’s the one who tortures people!”
Briar’s eyes flickered to her mother’s cottage, as though she was afraid Kestrel’s mother might hear.
“Don’t worry, Finn,” Hannah said, ignoring her. She gave Kestrel a truly hateful look. “We’ll make sure you don’t get hurt again.”
“He knows it wasn’t my fault,” Kestrel said. She reached out for Finn, but he flinched away. Kestrel stopped short, surprised. “Finn, tell them.” He didn’t respond, only looked at her blearily. “Finn?”
He shook his head and turned away.
“Leave me alone,” Finn mumbled, touching the side of his face as though he had a toothache. “I’ve had enough.”
Hannah and Briar picked him up, putting their shoulders under his arms, and helped carry him away.
Pippit was watching from behind a stack of wood, but as soon as he saw them go he ran up Kestrel’s sleeve, whimpering. His tail was a tattered stump.
“Kes,” said Pippit timidly, licking her face.
Kestrel turned her face away, trying to hide the tears that were threatening to leak from her eyes.
“Kes,” he said. “Tail. Ow. Hug. Nasty!”
“Not now,” she said, her voice cracking.
“Tail! Ow!”
“Leave me alone!” she burst out. Pippit froze. Sorrow and rage bubbled up together, and she couldn’t stop herself.
“Tail,” he insisted. “Ow! Help, Kes? Clever Pippit?”
“I could have stopped her by myself,” Kestrel snapped. “You’re the one who decided to bite her. It’s your own fault your tail’s gone!”
As soon as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. But it was too late to take it back.
Pippit froze, staring at her, his nose twitching as though he couldn’t digest what she was saying. Then he hissed and leaped from Kestrel’s hand, landing in the leaves and skittering away.
“Wait,” she cried, stepping after him, trying to spot him in the leaves. It was quiet, and loneliness was already settling over her shoulders like a cloak. “Pippit! Come back!”
He was gone.
She ran after him, tripping on her skirt. She thought she could see Pippit darting ahead of her, but then he was lost, and she was alone among the black trees. Regret formed a bitter lump in her throat.
She stopped and slumped against a tree. She was alone. Completely, utterly, and irrevocably alone. Her best friend hated her, and so did Pippit. There was no one to turn to. For a second she wished her dad would come back from a hunting trip; he’d know what to do. Then she remembered he’d never come out of the woods again, no matter how bad things got.
It felt like all the air had been suddenly sucked out of her lungs. Part of Kestrel wanted to curl up on the forest floor and stay there forever.
But another part of her was trained to fight. She’d made her dad a promise, and she was going to keep it.
She dragged herself to her feet, wrapping her fingers around her spoon. Three black crows were sitting in the branches above her, kicking needle leaves at each other, but as soon as they saw her they croaked and flapped away.
Maybe she looked as dangerous as she felt.
She would do it all herself. She would find the Marrow Orchard and steal the bloodberries to feed to her mother. She would wrestle her secrets away from her, because now she was sure her cellar was crammed full of them. She would find out the truth about her forgotten memories. And finally, she would find a way out of this forest. And no one—not even her own grabber—was going to stop her.
“Bloodberries,” she said, rolling the word around her mouth. It sent a shiver down her spine. She closed her eyes and imagined plucking them from the Marrow Orchard, putting them in her pocket, and bringing them home.
All she needed was a distraction, and the answer was as dreadful as the Briny Witch’s laugh.
13
THE BRINY WITCH’S EYE
Kestrel shredded the beetle dress into hundreds of tiny pieces. Off came the tight laces, off came the cruel black buttons. She ripped huge slits in the skirt so she could move again and pulled the laces apart so there was room to breathe without being cut in half. She tore the pins out of her hair and kicked them into the bushes with the scattered beetle wings, and with every piece of the dress that she ripped her determination to win grew.
Night was already creeping through the trees. Candlelight shone through the shutters in her mother’s house. Kestrel dug a hole at the edge of the forest while she waited for the light to go out, ignoring the tight, nervous feeling in her throat. She pushed the pins and beetle wings and tattered pieces of dress into the hole, then stamped earth down over the top.
She wasn’t going to leave things behind for her grabber to take.
Kestrel knew it was close. The back of her neck itched, as though someone—or something—was staring at her very hard, but every time she turned around, the forest was empty. Her brain was screaming at her to run. Every second she spent hiding was a second the grabber could use to build its body. But she knew she didn’t have a chance of escaping if her mother still had the black dog.
She backed against a tree and closed her fingers around the holey stone in her pocket, feeling like a snail without its shell.
“She’ll go to sleep soon,” Kestrel said reassuringly, watching her mother’s house. For a moment, she forgot that Pippit wasn’t there. The only thing listening was the cold, hard moon.
Slowly, the village shut itself up. The kids crept back into their houses in dribs and drabs. Walt threw a last log onto the wolf fire and slipped inside. Before retreating to his house, Ike crept to her mother’s door and left a bowl of soup outside before scuttling away like a frightened rat.