That’s why her grabber had been drooling as it watched her emerge from the Marrow Orchard. That’s why her dad’s grabber had spent so long dragging the chase out, making him even more terrified.
Kestrel swept thorny branches out of her way, gasping for breath. The grabber was so close she could almost feel its breath on the back of her neck, but she knew that she was on the brink of something important. Her grandma had been trying to tell her something about fear. What had she told Kestrel the night she defeated the faces in the door?
Monsters want you to be scared. Otherwise they’d have nothing.
There was a loud crack behind Kestrel. She dodged to the side, her lungs burning, trying to lose the grabber just for a second. Just so she could think.
If grabbers fed on fear, all Kestrel had to do was stop being scared. That was the answer, right?
But she couldn’t control it. She tried to shut it away, like she always did, but she couldn’t stop her heart bursting through her chest, her breath swelling in her throat. She was too full of terror. The more she tried, the harder it felt, until she thought she was going to shatter into a million pieces.
The grabber drew nearer, crushing things underfoot.
Kestrel put her foot down on a rotten log and fell over. Pippit pressed himself closer to her head, hissing.
“Run,” he squeaked, pulling her hair.
With a huge effort, Kestrel grabbed him round the middle and pulled him off her head. It felt like she was wrenching one of her limbs off.
“It doesn’t want you,” she said. “Stay safe, okay?”
Pippit tried to dig his nails into her hand, but she flung him away as hard as she could. He landed in a pile of leaves, and before he could get his bearings Kestrel found a last burst of energy and sprinted.
She swerved into an overgrown thicket. She flung herself against the trees, but they were too close together for her to get through. Their roots were tied together, their branches knitted over her head like a roof. Except for some gently glowing fungus, it was very, very dark.
Kestrel gasped for breath as she scrabbled at the trees, but there was no way through. The forest was plunged into a deep, cold silence that made the back of her neck tingle. It knew the grabber was about to feed. She could feel it in her bones, a deep shiver of unnamed dread, the sensation of a universe that had shifted slightly from its axis.
Kestrel turned around.
The grabber was so close she could see the seams of its skin, the cracks in its splintered bones. Its lips curved upward, giving Kestrel time to appreciate its hideous smile.
It had her grandma’s blue eyes, the same canny intelligence. It had her grandma’s expression, too, like she was staring right through you, rummaging around in your head and discovering every shameful secret you had. The grabber twitched when Kestrel did, flexing its fingers at her quickening heartbeat, and licked its lips. It was enjoying itself.
Kestrel tried one more time to crush her fear. She tried to pack it into a tight ball and hide it inside her stomach, but there was nowhere left to put it. Every piece of training her grandma had given her, every single thing she’d done to teach her not to be scared, was useless. Kestrel scrambled through her memories for something that would help, anything. But nothing could squash a terror this big.
The grabber took a deep breath. Kestrel tightened her grip on her spoon, sweating, her throat burning with horror. She had to fight it. There was no other way.
The grabber lunged, and Kestrel met it.
It was heavier than a well-fed wolf. Its bones might as well have been made of stone, and its hands slapped against Kestrel’s shoulders so hard that she was knocked backward. They crashed into the trees so hard it felt like her spine had cracked in half.
Kestrel brought her knee up, just like she’d been taught. She shuddered as it crunched into the grabber’s bones, then the grabber pulled away with a surprised snarl. Kestrel squared up to it, brandishing her spoon, but the grabber had already recovered.
They reeled around the clearing, crashing into branches and squashing mushrooms until they were both speckled with fungus and glowing like the night sky. Kestrel was getting weaker. She couldn’t push it away anymore.
Kestrel twisted her body, determined to drive her shoulder into its chest, but it knocked her over with a single swipe of its hand and pinned her to the floor.
The grabber bared its teeth like a hungry dog. Its face was so close to Kestrel’s that she could see through its stolen eyes, into the bright burning space in its skull. She tried to drive her spoon into the grabber, but it twitched its head away and she missed, again and again. It was grinning.
Kestrel fell still, and the grabber licked its lips.
It lowered its head further, until she could see the moss stuck between its teeth. Kestrel stared at it, nauseated by the smell emanating from its body, her face wobbling with horror. It was dribbling, enjoying the smell of her fear, but that only made her more terrified. All the courage had gone from her body. She couldn’t even lift her spoon.
The grabber’s face was perfectly her grandma’s, from the crooked teeth to the cold, blue eyes.
Kestrel gave an involuntary sob. She was going to live her nightmare one last time. The one where her grandma was pinning her down, screaming at her, just as she had done when Kestrel was little.
Tell me what you’re afraid of!
Kestrel shrank away from the grabber, from the veins in its eyes to the terrible expression on its face, and the snarl on its lips. She could hear her grandma again, as clearly as though she were there.
Tell me what scares you! her grandma screamed. Say it!
Something cracked inside Kestrel. She was weak and full of terror, and she couldn’t keep it to herself anymore.
“I’m scared of you, Granmos,” Kestrel blurted, the words coming out in a sob. “You’re what I’m most afraid of.”
Her words hung in the air, full of shame and defeat. But there was something else, too. It took Kestrel a second to realize that she felt lighter, like she’d dropped a pile of stones from her arms. And just for a second, she felt a tiny bit stronger.
She opened her eyes, shuddering, determined not to die like a coward.
But instead of eating her, the grabber hesitated. As though she’d done something it didn’t expect.
As though speaking to it had changed something.
Kestrel thought quickly, hardly daring to hope that she’d done something right. Why wasn’t it eating her?
“Do you like the truth?” Kestrel asked, her mind racing. “Is that it? Do you like hearing how much my grandma . . .” The words got stuck in her throat. The grabber licked its lips. Kestrel forced them out. “How much she . . . scared me?”
Saying those words felt like expelling poison from her body. The grabber’s eyes flickered, almost as though it was panicking. Kestrel’s mind raced on, all the voices condensing into a single stream of thought.
She knew she was getting close to the truth; it was there, in her head, just out of reach. Kestrel searched through her memories, desperately trying to stick everything else together. What had Granmos said about her own grabber? Had she told Kestrel anything useful?
The grabber looked at her sharply, as though she was about to do something it wouldn’t like.
Kestrel took herself back to the cottage, standing by the window with her grandma behind her, hands on Kestrel’s shoulders, murmuring in her ear.
I call him Horrow, Granmos said.
“Horrow,” Kestrel said aloud. Excitement rose slowly through her body like a fever. “She gave it a name. And she told me to choose a name for the faces in the door, to help me stop being afraid of them. And then she tried to make me name the thing I was most scared of. It’s all about names. She wanted me to work it out by myself, but I wasn’t listening.”