Hands for feet, Kestrel thought dizzily. Actual hands. For feet.
The grabber roared. Kestrel grabbed her spoon, raised it above her head, and drove it into one of the grabber’s feet with a furious battle cry.
The grabber screamed. The noise was high-pitched and cold and it made Kestrel’s hands wobble, but the feeling only lasted a second before she squashed it away. She saw one of the grabber’s hands swing toward her, and she flung herself out of the way just before its nails could catch her face. It reeled, confused by her quick reactions.
Kestrel’s spoon was still embedded in the ground, pinning one of the grabber’s hands down. The grabber twisted its leg and tore it free, leaving the hand pinned and still flailing.
She scrambled away from the grabber on her hands and knees, then turned to face it, her fists raised. Despite her fury and determination, the full view of the monster in front of her made her falter, just for a second.
“Ungh,” she said.
It was a spider.
A massive, hairy, sharp and bristling spider.
It was almost twice her height. Each leg was as long as a ladder, and together they supported a fat, bloated body that hovered higher than Kestrel’s head. It was covered in tatty, stretched skins that had been stolen from a multitude of bristly and slimy animals. She could see bones bulging underneath its flesh, and in some places they poked right out through the skin. An ax was embedded in its back like a jaunty accessory.
The grabber had hundreds of eyes which looked like they had been violently smushed into its face, all of them rolling in different directions. It had a jagged, zigzag mouth which didn’t close properly and a collection of teeth that would make a hardened dentist faint.
Kestrel had fought plenty of grabbers, and she knew that there was only one way to kill them. You had to get them in the heart. But her spoon was still stuck in the ground, holding down a set of wriggling fingers.
She took a deep breath. This wasn’t the time to lose her nerve.
The grabber straightened its legs, raising itself high, its dozens of knees making arthritic snapping sounds.
Kestrel could hear the blood pounding through its veins. She could hear its heart thumping double-quick as it walked toward her on its creaking legs. She waited for it to come, preparing to spring.
That’s when Pippit burst out of the trees, a furious, spitting, grabber-killing machine the approximate size of a glove.
“AAAH!” he screamed. He flew at the grabber and attached himself to one of its legs, digging his teeth in and growling. The grabber jerked back and snapped its own teeth, spraying the ground with a shower of loose molars.
Kestrel sped forward, thinking she could grab her spoon from the ground, but Pippit’s distraction only lasted a second. The grabber staggered toward Kestrel, Pippit still attached to its knee. Its mouth was hanging open, revealing a long, dark tunnel of a throat. Its stolen organs pulsed and squirmed inside it as though they were trying to get away from the nightmarish creature. As it stamped toward her, Kestrel fell back again, her mouth dry. It clawed the ground with its fingers and left a trail of yellow grease behind it, shaking the trees and dislodged a cascade of dead leaves. They flew around in a tiny storm, blinding Kestrel for a second, but not before she saw one spiral into the grabber’s mouth and make it splutter.
Kestrel’s heart skipped a beat. She knew what to do.
She reached into her pocket and felt around for a missile. Her fingers closed around Finn’s lucky stone. Even then, faced with the huge monster, she felt a twinge of guilt for using his gift. Then she grabbed her slingshot, pulled the stone back, and took aim.
Pippit dug his teeth in with a furious cry. The grabber twitched and roared, and Kestrel released the stone.
It disappeared down the grabber’s throat with barely a rattle. For a moment it had no effect. Then the grabber started to cough. It began as a low rattle deep in its chest, which turned into a terrible hacking sound. The grabber’s legs buckled and it swayed, trying to regurgitate the stone that was lodged deep in its throat. “Les geddit!” Pippit yelled, clinging to the grabber’s shaking legs.
Kestrel hurtled toward the grabber. She dodged through its jumble of legs, its snapping teeth missing her by inches again as it coughed and quivered. She reached her spoon on the other side and pulled it out of the ground, pausing only to stamp on the disembodied hand, which was trying to run away by itself.
The spoon was like an extension of her arm, and Kestrel immediately felt stronger. She drew herself up tall. The grabber turned to face her. It was wheezing, but the stone hadn’t been big enough to choke it, and now it was angrier than ever.
Kestrel waited as it stamped toward her, its eyes rolling furiously. It was difficult not to back away, but she dug her feet into the ground and gritted her teeth. She was good at ignoring her instinct to run.
Hold . . . it . . .
The grabber was so close she could smell the mold on its rotting body parts. It opened its mouth, and she flung herself through its legs again so she was under its body. The grabber tried to catch her with its hands, but it was too slow. She held the spoon above her head and listened for the echo of its heart.
Kestrel drove her arm upward. The blade went in. There was a crunch of wood as its makeshift bones splintered. The grabber moaned and in an instant collapsed, and Kestrel was pushed to her knees. She tried to make herself as small as possible, hoping the grabber wouldn’t crush her to the ground. Then the weight stopped pressing down, and her spoon slid out, and she opened her eyes.
The grabber was dead. It was propped up on its bent legs, its horrible body hanging an inch above her head. She crawled out and flopped down on the ground beside it.
“Yeah,” hissed Pippit, running back and forth over the forest floor, leaping over Kestrel’s head in a victory dance. “Yeah! Yeah!”
“We did it,” she said wonderingly, rolling over in the leaves. She’d hurt muscles she didn’t even know existed, and she could hear blood pounding through her ears like rows of soldiers, but she wanted to leap up and run around the forest. She couldn’t believe she’d lived to kill another grabber. “We got it!”
As Pippit ran around the clearing, picking up bits of splintered bone and gobs of who-knew-what, Kestrel got up and walked around the grabber. It was still warm, and it stank like the bottom of a bin. She grabbed the handle of the woodchopper’s ax sticking from the grabber’s back and pulled it out.
It left the grabber with a disgusting squelching noise. She wiped it on the ground, trying to ignore the sound of Pippit enthusiastically chewing things up. She had to take it back as proof that she’d gotten revenge and killed the grabber, or her mother would be furious.
As she dragged the ax over the ground she felt something cool on the back of her neck, like a breeze was shifting through the trees.
Then she heard it. A quick, faint thumping sound.
She held her breath and tried to pinpoint the noise. She could feel the hair on her arms rising, and in the corner of her eye she saw a shadow creep over the forest floor.
The stupid, evil, stinking monster had two hearts.
The grabber coughed up some phlegm from deep in its lungs. Without thinking Kestrel turned and swung the ax with all her strength, driving it into the grabber’s chest with pinpoint accuracy as it loomed over her. It screamed again, its hundred eyes rolling into the back of its head, and fell down. Kestrel yanked the ax out, ready to swing again, but the grabber only twitched once more before it was silent.