“Give me your cloak,” the Briny Witch said. Kestrel stared at him, aghast. He snatched the wolf skin away from her.
“That’s mine,” she snapped, trying to grab it.
“You’ll get it back,” he said, rolling it into a ball.
“What are you doing? What are they?”
“Minions,” said the Briny Witch, disgusted. “They’re awful. I don’t recommend them at all.”
The bog coughed and sputtered. The Briny Witch dropped the cloak in, which hissed like water in an oil pan. Then he picked up a stick and slowly stirred the soup. Kestrel hopped from foot to foot impatiently.
“They’ll take their time,” the Briny Witch said. “There’s no point fidgeting.” He poked the soup, then sniggered. “Did you find that grabber you were looking for?”
Kestrel frowned. It looked like the Briny Witch was enjoying himself.
“My grandma’s grabber? No,” she said cautiously.
To her surprise the Briny Witch gave a wicked smile. He pointed at the edge of the bog, just a few hundred yards away.
“Look over there,” he said, grinning.
Kestrel looked at him suspiciously, then trod carefully toward the edge of the bog. There was a large bone on the ground, half covered in dirt. She circled it slowly, peering at it from every angle. Then she felt something underfoot, looked down, and saw a slim finger bone poking out from under her boot. She drew back quickly.
She was in the middle of a bone graveyard. There were hundreds of bones on the ground, all different sizes and shapes. There were teeth as well, from huge fist-size molars to tiny incisors that could have belonged to a mouse.
Kestrel gingerly picked up a bone and inspected it. It wasn’t old; it could only have been here for a couple of years. There was a thin layer of salt on the outside, enough to make it undelicious to the scavengers that lived in the forest.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and not because she was being watched. Kestrel dropped the bone and looked around again. She could see other small things among the bones, like horribly familiar tarnished silver rings and the broken chain from a silver necklace.
Kestrel got up quickly, shivering as a bone crunched under her foot. She backed away until she was almost in the bog again. She could see the whole thing clearly now.
She had been standing in the remains of a dead grabber. She could even see its outline, as though it had gently lain down and fallen to bits.
And near its hip bone was a huge, bronze key.
For a moment she thought she would be sick. She knew that key. It was the key her grandma’s grabber had stolen from her, to help make its body. And those rings—she saw them flashing on her grandma’s fingers. She saw them swing toward her as her grandma surprised her with a knife in a training exercise. She stepped back, the bog swinging sickeningly around her, and put her foot down on a tarnished silver locket. She remembered it pressing against her ribs as her grandma forced her against the wall and shouted at her. The grabber had taken it all.
“It’s been there a few years,” the Briny Witch said conversationally. “The grabber dragged itself all the way over here, then collapsed.”
Kestrel turned away from the remains, feeling ill. She couldn’t make herself look at them any longer. Her grandma was among those remains, the woman who she’d helped kill. And that was her grandma’s grabber. Dead. How?
“There must have been something wrong with it,” Kestrel said, trying to ignore her racing thoughts. “That’s why it died. Maybe Granmos was too tough for it.”
Over in the bog, the Briny Witch sniggered.
“Think again,” he said, clearly having fun. “I see grabbers crawling past sometimes. All half dead. All full up after their meals. They disappear into the forest and collapse, and they never come past again.”
Kestrel put her hands over her ears, blocking him out.
“If grabbers were just lying down and dying all the time, I would have come across their bodies,” she said. “I would have seen all sorts of weird things in the forest, like . . .”
Like silver rings. Like old shoes. Like forks and candleholders and cups. All the trinkets she’d picked up from the forest.
Kestrel’s stomach dropped. Was that why she’d never seen a grabber again after it had eaten? Did they just crumble to pieces?
She thought of her dad’s grabber running toward the cliff after eating him. The image made her queasy, but now she couldn’t brush aside what else she’d seen. The grabber had scattered tiny pieces of its body behind it, as though it was already falling apart. As though now that it had taken its victim, there was nothing left to hold it together.
She’d never been able to catch a grabber before it ate, but afterward, it was easier. She’d thought it was because they were bloated and slow, but what if she was wrong? What if they were already dying? It wouldn’t take long for the wolves and the birds to carry away all the tasty old bones. Unless they were covered in salt, like these.
She made herself look at the bones again. The piece of paper it had stolen from Granmos—the section of her journal about the grabbers—would have long since rotted away. Now only her rings and her locket and the big bronze key were left.
“You finally got there,” the Briny Witch said, seeing her face. “Your cloak’s ready, by the way.”
Kestrel floated toward him in a daze.
Had her mother known the truth all along?
The thought made her cold. It was a huge lie, a groundbreakingly and fantastically cruel one. It would mean that Kestrel had been risking her life hunting grabbers for nothing. It meant that her mother never had any intention of letting Kestrel go, because Kestrel would never fulfill her end of the bargain and catch her grandma’s grabber. And the villagers thought they needed her mother to send Kestrel hunting, but they were all completely and totally wrong.
Kestrel shivered. How much of the forest had actually grown from their bodies? How many of the trees had come from an acorn that a grabber had stuck between its ribs? She looked at the nearby tree line and felt even more trapped than ever.
“One invisibility cloak,” the Briny Witch said shortly.
Concentrate, she told herself fiercely. You have a job to do.
Kestrel forced herself to look at the cloak. It was exactly the same, if a little damp.
“Shouldn’t it be invisible?” she asked, struggling to speak through the fog in her head.
“No,” the Briny Witch said, turning his head toward her so quickly she was sprayed with water. She could see that he was losing his patience. “How would you ever find it?”
Kestrel reached out for it, but the Briny Witch held it over his head.
“Once it’s on, it lasts for an hour,” he said. “Consider this fair warning.”
That was enough to get Kestrel’s attention.
“One hour?” she repeated, outraged. “That’s nothing!”
“We didn’t discuss terms,” he said. “Take it or leave it.”
“How will I know it works?”
“Are you calling me a liar?” he said, his mouth widening to show his teeth.
Kestrel hesitated with her fingers around the stone. She had no reason to trust the Briny Witch, but it wasn’t like she had another choice. She was now certain that her mother was lying to her, and the only way of getting rid of the dog was to destroy her spells with the bloodberries. For that, she needed the cloak.
“This stone’s worth a lot to me,” Kestrel said, her stomach scrunching up. She’d promised Finn she’d always keep it.
“I know,” the Briny Witch said.