She actually felt a bit sorry for them. Nothing deserved to end up as food for the orchard, even the nasty things that bit.
The Marrow Orchard stretched out in front of her. The ground was a carpet of tree roots, all knotted together in a huge, complicated mess. The branches were all tangled up, too, so apples were crushed together with berries and lemons were squashed against plums. Now that she was inside the stench of the place was overwhelming, like a compost heap in the sun. Most of the fruit was fat and ready to fall. Everything was sticky, and the air had the tang of blood.
The roots around her feet were slowly squirming, almost as though the orchard was wriggling its toes. She pulled her feet away from a curling root and curiously touched a cluster of plums hanging over her head. They were as warm as flesh, and they were quivering.
She snatched her hand away and looked closely at the apples next to her. They weren’t apples at all. They were round and ripe and red, but they squirmed rhythmically like hearts. She stepped back, feeling nauseous. The oranges were curled-up livers, and the white berries with red veins were actually eyeballs. They swiveled to watch her pass. The trees were covered in thick, wrinkled skin.
Now Kestrel wanted nothing more than to run away, but she couldn’t turn back, not if she ever wanted to get away from the black dog and escape the forest. She picked her way through the fleshy orchard, making herself look at every disgusting, quivering fruit she passed. She hoped she’d recognize the bloodberries when she saw them.
Something moved behind her. Kestrel turned quickly, withdrawing her spoon, and realized in that second that she was waiting for her grabber.
But instead, it was the bonebird whose fruit she had stolen. Kestrel glared at it, her heart tripping over itself with relief. Its head twitched and it smiled widely at Kestrel, revealing teeth stained purple with fruit. It turned and innocently plucked an apple from the tree.
Kestrel snapped her new teeth at it, warning it to stay put, and carried on.
The more Kestrel looked at the trees, the more difficult it became to see anything that might be called a bloodberry. There were so many colors she felt blinded, and the smell was overwhelming all her other senses. She stumbled through the orchard, no longer bothering to hoot and strut. It felt like she’d been in there for days, but the slowly lightening sky told her that she’d only been in there for half an hour.
After a while she realized that the bonebird was following her again, always stopping when Kestrel did, staying just a few yards behind. Maybe it suspected something. Or maybe, she thought unhappily, maybe they’re cannibals. Kestrel growled at it, but the bonebird only looked at her interestedly.
Birds, she realized, didn’t growl.
She hurried on, becoming more desperate. She’d already taken too long, and she had to get out before her time was up and her disguise failed.
She pushed between two trees, kicking rotten pears from under her feet and sweeping a low branch out of her way. Her hand came back scarlet with blood. She stifled a cry, wiping her hand on her skirt, then looked up.
The tree next to her was dripping red. The thick, dark liquid oozed from cracks in its bark, forming a sticky, sweet-smelling puddle at her feet. Its branches were laden with thousands of tiny red berries, each as bright as a bead and attached to the branch by a thin red artery.
As Kestrel stepped back from the red puddle she saw that there were creatures lying in the roots of the tree. A fox, a hare, a small bird. The fox’s mouth was stained red with juice, and the bird still had one of the berries clasped in its beak. They were all deathly still.
She reached up to touch a heavy cluster of the berries. They shivered under her fingers as though they carried the heartbeat of the tree. There was almost no doubt that these were the berries she was looking for, and that they were deadly in large doses.
Her fingers hovered in the air. A question hung in front of her, her choice as delicate as a bubble. Was she really going to take them? Was she really going to feed them to her own mother?
Then she thought of Finn curled up on the floor, and her fist closed around a cluster of the berries. Before she could think, she pulled hard. They rained down on her, bouncing off her head and arms. She fished around for them on the ground, shuddering as her fingers touched the warm, bloody puddle, and stuffed them in her pockets until she couldn’t carry any more.
She turned away from the tree and came face-to-face with the bonebird.
It grinned with all six rows of teeth, and Kestrel immediately knew that it could see right through her. She looked down at her feather-free arms and felt her own smooth, white teeth. The wolf-skin cloak hung limply from her shoulders.
“I can explain,” she said, holding her hands up, forgetting that they were smeared red. The bonebird screamed, making the trees shudder, and before Kestrel could blink it launched itself at her in a blind frenzy of teeth.
15
THE FIGURE IN THE TREES
Kestrel’s spoon was in her hand before she could think, its pointed edge slashing toward the bonebird.
There was blood. For a dizzying moment Kestrel thought it was her own, but then she pulled the spoon back and dislodged it from the feathered chest of the dirty gray creature, which fell away with a scream. More red liquid rained from the bloodberry tree, mixing with gray feathers on the ground and forming a big, gloopy mess.
The bonebird was surprised, but not hurt enough to run away. It clacked its jaws and flexed its neck. It was getting ready to fly at her again, and Kestrel was trapped with her back to the tree.
“I’m not afraid to use it again!” she shouted, waving the spoon maniacally.
But the smell of the Marrow Orchard, all rotting meat and redness, made her so light-headed she could barely point the spoon. She held it out in front of her, but her hands were shaking.
Weak, she thought miserably. What kind of hunter can’t kill an overgrown pigeon?
The bonebird lunged, and Kestrel reacted too late. She tried to fight it off, but her spoon bounced off its feathered arm.
The bonebird held her tight by the shoulders, and they stared at each other for a long moment, Kestrel completely in its grasp. Then it pulled Kestrel’s head toward its face as its mouth snapped open.
In the second that she knew it was going to try and bite her ear off, she also knew that if she flipped her arm like this and brought her leg around like this—
She threw the bonebird off balance, and it reeled to the side, its teeth snapping shut on the wolf-skin cloak. It tore away from her shoulders, and the bonebird cackled. Kestrel grabbed its arm and shoved it into the oozing trunk of the bloodberry tree.
It squawked and flapped and Kestrel raised her weapon again, but there was no need for the spoon now. The bonebird’s back was stuck to the viscous goo coming from the tree. Its wings twitched uselessly, then it stopped and stared at Kestrel with its awful orange eyes. It was still clutching her cloak.
Kestrel wiped the spoon on her skirt. The bloody trees shivered and the multicolored fruits pulsed on their branches. There was a new kind of quiet, the dangerous sort. The bonebird, now silent, knew it, too.
Kestrel chewed her lip. She hadn’t stopped to consider the most obvious question: What would a carnivorous orchard do if something wandered into its stomach?