Kestrel could feel the anger of the village broiling behind her. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, as though a storm was coming overhead. She wondered who would find their voice first. She stared at the red string tied around her mother’s wrist, trailing back into the house, and had a horrible idea. Her mother saw her and protectively grabbed the string, winding it around her hands.
“You should be flattered that I picked you,” her mother said. “I watched your family from the forest. I knew you could be a great hunter, with those eyes. I wanted to keep your grandma, too, but she was too difficult to work with. She wouldn’t forget things.”
Kestrel heard twigs snap and turned around. Ike was slowly backing away. Rascly Badger had put his hand on his knife, but he hadn’t drawn it. Runo and Briar were standing with Hannah, and for the first time, they looked unsure of themselves.
“They’re too scared,” her mother said lightly. “What are you going to do now, sweetie?”
Kestrel couldn’t stand it any longer. This woman—this monster—was a murderer. She’d done something with her real mother, and Kestrel was never getting her back.
Her mother suddenly grabbed her ankle, but Kestrel kicked her away with a terrible snarl that made the face painter flinch. The second Kestrel’s foot connected with her mother’s hand, everyone moved, as though someone had poured courage down their throat.
“You made me burn my watch!” Ike shouted, with a half-terrified, half-furious cry of rage. Mardy and Walt elbowed past each other to get to her mother. Rascly Badger thrust Runo aside to join in.
Kestrel balked as the village came toward her mother with a hundred hands. Before she could work out what to do, she was elbowed in the back of the head and pushed to the ground in the chaos. The villagers swarmed over them, burning with a horrible, bloodcurdling excitement.
“Stop!” her mother screamed at them. “Stop, or you’ll all die!”
Kestrel twisted away, throwing herself at her mother through the melee. She wanted answers, and the only person who could make it happen was the face painter. Her mother was kicking the villagers with her legs, snarling and biting, but she was weakening quickly.
Kestrel crawled along the ground until she was level with her mother’s wavering face.
“There’s nothing left for us here,” her mother hissed. “Come with me into the forest. We’ll rule it all. I love you, Kestrel. I love you more than any mother.”
Kestrel choked. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Pippit dash through the jumble of legs and hands. As someone grabbed her hair, she saw him pick up the piece of red string that trailed from her mother’s wrist to the house.
And Kestrel understood.
Kestrel reached out and grabbed the string from Pippit’s mouth. She hesitated for half a second, her heart aching.
Then she tore through the wool with her teeth.
Her mother shrieked and stiffened. Her body jerked twice, and her legs curled inward so they looked like a broken umbrella. Then she lay completely and utterly still.
Kestrel stared at the face painter, a lump in her throat. She tried hard to remind herself that it was a murderer, and not her real mother at all. Ike shoved everyone away and held his arms out. The villagers backed away until they were behind Ike, staring with horror at the broken creature on the floor.
The face painter was stuck with half her mother’s face on one side, and its own blank, featureless face on the other.
And it was dead.
Kestrel closed her eyes and shuddered with grief, trying to remember her real mother. The one who used to make beautiful dresses without beetles on them, who smiled and gave Kestrel her first story. But she could barely remember anything. For years, her real mother had been a pile of bones in the cellar.
Kestrel almost forgot where she was until she heard Ike’s labored breathing. Everyone around her was staring at the face painter, waiting to see if it would move.
“Bury it,” said Walt suddenly. “We can’t have the body aboveground. The wolves will smell it.”
“Are you mad?” snapped Ike. “Do you want to touch it? How do we know it’s not just pretending?”
The face painter’s head slowly fell to the side, making them all jump. As she watched the last piece of life leave the face painter’s body, Kestrel felt something cold tickling the inside of her head.
She clamped her hands over her ears. She didn’t want to remember anything else, not now. But it was too late—the face painter was dead, and whatever other memory it had hidden from her was sliding out.
Pop.
It was night, and the cottage was dark. Kestrel could feel her mother’s fingers dug tightly into her neck. She struggled to get free, kicking her feet against the wooden floorboards, flailing at the strings crisscrossing the walls. But her mother didn’t relent. In her other hand, she was holding a piece of string with Kestrel’s tooth tied into it.
Granmos was standing against the door, her blue eyes narrow with fury.
“Are you scared yet?” her mother hissed at Granmos. “You know I’ll hurt her.”
“I’m never scared,” Granmos said coolly, but Kestrel could see that her hands were shaking.
There was a movement at the window that only Kestrel noticed. Horrow, her grandma’s grabber, was pacing around agitatedly. It was usually so calm that Kestrel waved to it every evening. She’d known it for weeks now, ever since it first came out of the forest, and all it ever did was watch Granmos. She even fed it bits of meat and bread. But Kestrel sensed that something was now deeply wrong. Something had changed.
“Granmos,” Kestrel wavered.
Kestrel’s mother clenched her fist around the tooth in her other hand. A world of pain exploded behind Kestrel’s eyelids. She screamed. Her grandma screamed.
“Stop hurting her!” Granmos shouted.
Then the pain subsided, but sobs were forcing themselves from Kestrel’s throat. Kestrel had never seen her grandma look so frightened before. Her mother licked her lips.
“After I break her bones, I’ll stop her heart,” she said to Granmos.
Something slammed against the door from the outside. Granmos turned to face it, drawing a knife from her pocket, but the door was already splitting in the middle, and Kestrel had to shield her eyes from a cloud of splinters.
The grabber snarled and grabbed her grandma by the throat. Her grandma tried to strike it, but it was too strong. They struggled just for a second. Then something went snap. Her grandma was limp, and the grabber dragged her toward the forest.
“Granmos!” Kestrel screamed, but the forest was dark. They were gone.
Kestrel opened her eyes and gasped for air. It was all real. She knew it.
She’d never let the grabber in.
Kestrel reeled under the weight of a dizzying, almost tangible relief. The terrible memory of her opening the door for Horrow was a fabrication, something the face painter had stuffed in her head. Her false memory immediately felt absurd, less real even than a dream. Finally, she could breathe again.
She tried to scrape all the new memories together, but she didn’t know how they fitted into one piece. Only one thing gave her hope: Her grandma had been able to hold her grabber off for weeks. But something had changed at the end to make her grabber attack. Something to do with Kestrel.
“I don’t understand, Pip,” she whispered, clutching him. Her face was damp, and she realized her eyes were streaming. Even through her relief, she couldn’t stop thinking of the terrified look on her grandma’s face. “What does it mean?”