“Ohhh no,” said Kestrel as she thought of the answer. “No, no, no.”
The orchard was going to swallow her whole.
The bonebird started struggling again, twisting its head from side to side.
Kestrel ran. The ground sucked at her feet and rumbled as purple-and-red fruit juice pattered down from the trees.
She hadn’t even thought to leave a trail, something her grandma would kill her for if she were here now. Kestrel stumbled on blindly, pushing through the plants. The ground convulsed and she nearly tripped, but she steadied herself and continued.
Kestrel saw the gap in the thorns and sprinted toward it, praying she’d make it in time. The ground tilted backward, and the fruit on the floor rolled toward the middle of the orchard. It was as though a hole had opened in the middle, and everything was being pulled into it. Racing upward, Kestrel threw herself through the thorn gap and tumbled into the bright green grass and fresh sunlight.
Kestrel turned and watched in disbelief as all the trees leaned toward the middle of the orchard, creaking and trembling. The huge gray stones crashed against one another as the ground shifted. There was a long, low gurgling sound.
Then slowly, almost gracefully, the orchard began to unfold again. The trees uncurled toward the sky, stripped bare of their fruit. Kestrel could see that new, younger pieces were already beginning to bloom on its branches.
The orchard had devoured the bonebird and the fruit and the wolf-skin cloak and everything else inside it.
Everything was peaceful for a moment. Then the Marrow Orchard belched, and bones pattered down around Kestrel’s ears.
She shielded her face until it had finished, then wiped her forehead on the back of her sleeve. She was covered in goo and sweat and pieces of half-chewed fruit. But she had the bloodberries in her pocket, and she was alive.
“I did it,” she said, astonished. She’d kept her promise to her dad. She had the bloodberries. She was going to get out!
Something hit the ground in front of her in a flurry of stiff feathers and snapping teeth. Kestrel backed away as the bonebird righted itself and clacked its teeth at her.
“Hoot,” said Kestrel, trying to edge around it, but she didn’t have her disguise anymore. The bonebirds had all fled for the trees when the Marrow Orchard swallowed, but now they were pelting down from the sky, heavy and ungraceful. Some of them were already picking through the fresh bones the orchard had spat out, but as soon as they realized Kestrel was there, their eyes sharpened greedily. Kestrel shoved past the bonebird in front of her, but others formed a ring that blocked her from the trees.
They came rushing toward her with their wings open, reaching for her hair and her face, her arms, her skirt. One of the bonebirds grabbed Kestrel’s shoulders and pulled her backward toward the thorns. Kestrel screamed in surprise, beating the creature with her spoon, but it made no difference.
She desperately drove her elbow into the bonebird’s stomach and it fell aside, howling. As they snapped and pecked at her, trying to tear her clothes with their long nails, she realized that they were looking for something. They knew what she had stolen.
Kestrel dug into her pockets and flung a handful of bloodberries away from her. The bonebirds grasped at them as they flew past, but then they came toward her again, scrabbling and pushing. They didn’t stop until Kestrel turned her pockets inside out and flung every single one of the berries away.
They scattered like marbles in the emerald grass. For a split second the bonebirds were transfixed by the bright fruit, and taking her chance, Kestrel quickly dropped to her hands and knees. She scrambled through the forest of legs as the bonebirds kicked and fought to reach her, but there were too many of them, and their wings were in the way so they couldn’t bend down and grab her. One of the bonebirds snatched at her neck, but it caught its fingers on another creature’s wings and the two grappled with each other, screeching.
As Kestrel fought her way through the chaos, she spotted two bright red berries out of the corner of her eye. Before the bonebirds could tell what she was doing, she grabbed them with her free hand and shoved them in her mouth.
They were cold and sour, and she gagged, careful not to bite down. She desperately wanted to spit them out, but she pushed them to the side of her mouth and continued to wriggle through the bonebirds.
As soon as she was able she scrambled to her feet, lashing out with her spoon at a bonebird’s hands. The bonebird grabbed it and flung it away, but there was no time to retrieve it. She was already up, racing away from the clearing.
Kestrel ran straight across the waterlogged tree that stretched across the pond. Some of the bonebirds had followed her from the clearing, but they stopped at the edge of the water, frantically beating their wings. They were too slow and heavy to fly more than a few yards. She slowed down on the other side of the pond and looked back.
The bonebirds jeered at her, but not for long. Losing patience, they turned and flung themselves against one another. Their cries rose through the trees and made the real birds scatter.
Kestrel automatically reached for her spoon. Her fingers closed in her empty pocket. She’d had the spoon in her pocket for years, ever since her dad gave it to her. It was the last thing she had of his, and now it belonged to the Marrow Orchard.
Kestrel felt a lump in her throat, but she forced it away. She turned to look at the gap in the trees again, wanting to run back, but she knew that as soon as she returned they would chew her to pieces.
It’s just a piece of cutlery, she told herself unconvincingly.
At least not everything had been lost.
Kestrel wrinkled her nose, then spat the two last bloodberries into her hand, where they shone like new buttons.
“Yuck,” she said, and slipped them into her pocket. Their taste still lingered in the back of her throat.
She crept back toward the village. Mud squelched under her feet. She looked down and realized that there was a damp trail leading from the edge of the pond into the forest, as though something had been dragged out of the water.
Kestrel ignored her feeling of unease and sped up. She imagined slipping the bloodberries into her mother’s food. Soup would be best, she decided—something dark and murky.
But the more she thought about it, the sicker she felt. She had no idea what the berries would actually do. They might weaken her mother’s magic and get rid of the dog, but they might do more. They might kill her.
Within minutes she wanted to throw up. She must be mad. She was going to try to poison her mother. Her mother, who could throw her to the floor with a single twitch of her finger.
Her mother, who had raised her and looked after her.
Her mother, who had helped make her into the hunter she was today.
Kestrel stopped walking. Her heart was in her throat and she was struggling to suck air into her lungs. She was scared of what would happen if she gave her mother the berries, but she was terrified of being stuck in the forest with her grabber, too. She had to do it.
And she couldn’t.
She saw something ahead of her, and froze.
The fat, greasy brown fish she’d seen in the pond was lying in front of her. The wet trail led right up to it. It had been torn open, and its bones were scattered on the ground. The air smelled sour, like a bucket of milk gone bad.
Kestrel’s heart started beating at double-speed.
It was just a big animal, she told herself. Don’t think about it. Even so, she found herself hurriedly stepping over the dead fish. She continued through the forest, following the path of squashed plants she’d carved on the way to the Marrow Orchard.