by M. E. Breen
“It’s a deal, then!” he cried. The other man reached out and laid his hand over Uncle Jock’s. It was a light touch, almost gentle, but a spasm of fear crossed Uncle Jock’s face.
“Not like the first,” the man said. “I want the living child.”
Uncle Jock managed the barest of nods. Before releasing it, the man gave Uncle Jock’s hand a couple of soft pats. There, there.
Uncle Jock snatched back his hand and rubbed it with the other hand as if to warm it.
The man rose to leave.
“Wait! You wanted to know about anything unusual, right? Any odd marks?”
“On the girl? Yes.”
“Not on the girl, but …” Uncle Jock spoke in a rush. “Kinderstalk got into the neighbor’s yard and left behind a tuft of white fur.” He looked up hopefully. “That’s unusual, isn’t it?”
“Indeed. Any signs in your own yard?”
“My yard! No, none. None at all.”
The man drew a purse from his pocket and shook out a handful of ringstones. Even from her perch, Annie could see that they were high quality, perfectly smooth and bright white. He took a single stone from the pile and poured the rest back into the bag. He placed the stone in front of Uncle Jock.
“To whet your appetite.” He paused. “If anyone asks, kinderstalk took the girl.”
The visitor paused on the threshold to light his lantern. Cold black air blew into the cottage. Then, quickly, he turned back toward the room, as if he had just remembered something. For the first time, Annie saw his face. She gasped, a tiny sound, but his head jerked toward her, and for a second their eyes seemed to meet. Then he smiled, the lipless mouth opening onto two rows of perfectly square white teeth.
“A good night to you,” he said, and stepped out into the darkness.
Uncle Jock lunged at the door and slammed it shut.
Aunt Prim looked up from her mending. “When, Jock?”
“Tomorrow.”
Aunt Prim nodded. “When she’s finished her morning chores.”
Firelight colored the room a vivid orange. Deep shadows gathered in the corners where the light didn’t reach.
Annie stood with one hand on the ladder. She could still climb back up, climb back into bed and curl up with the cats and wait for daylight to make sense of things. But daylight wouldn’t bring sense, only the Drop. She thought of her old friend Gregor. Annie had been on her way to his house with a gift for his ninth birthday: a rock impressed with a bird’s footprint; some kind of gull, she thought, though Gregor would know for certain. A wagon had passed her going the opposite way, and she remembered thinking it odd that they had put up the rain cover in clear weather. When she reached his house she found his mother standing alone in the yard, weeping. Later, over dinner, Aunt Prim told her, “I have bad news for you. The kinderstalk have eaten that friend of yours. Last night. They ate his shoes, everything. Now, no crying. It’s a fact of life we must all accept.”
“But I saw …,” Annie began, but Page caught her eye and shook her head.
Later, Annie lay with her head in Page’s lap. “Did the kinderstalk really eat Gregor?”
“Monsters got him, I can tell you that much. But not you. I won’t let them get you.”
Annie still had the gull rock, pocketed in the hem of her dress. It kept the skirt from blowing around in strong winds.
She would need to be ready before her morning chores. And because she had never, in all her life, managed to wake up earlier than Aunt Prim, that meant she needed to be ready tonight. The only food she could find was a handful of dusty rinkle nuts that her aunt had been threatening to cook for a month. Now: money, rifle, and then the last, the most important, thing.
Of course the trunk was locked, but Annie hadn’t lived twelve years in this house without learning a thing or two. Aunt Prim kept the key in The Book of Household Virtues, tucked between page 786, “Vinegar in the Use of Removing Blood Stains,” and page 787, “Vinegar in the Use of Curing Barn-foot.” When Page was alive, Aunt Prim used to make them sit after dinner and listen to recipes, medical cures, or worst of all, favorite sayings:
Hard work and no complaints turns chaff into wheat.
Quiet mouse gets the apple; noisy mouse chews the pip.
If a cow wanders into the yard, be quick to shut the gate.
Always, before she closed the book, Aunt Prim turned to the page in the back where she wrote down the names of children eaten by kinderstalk: Phoebe Tamburlaine was the first, followed by Cowley Crawford, Meg Winters, Walter Rout, and on and on until the last, Gregor Pepin. Annie couldn’t resist looking at the page now. To her surprise, there were more than a dozen new names added after Gregor’s. Beside each name Aunt Prim had printed the date of death and another number. Gregor’s number was nine, the same as most of the children listed before him. But the numbers beside the children listed after him got smaller and smaller, and the dates of their disappearances closer and closer together. The last name was Minnie Wythe, taken a month past, age three.
The trunk was nailed to the floor at the foot of her aunt and uncle’s four-poster. Aunt Prim slept in the narrow slice of bed between Uncle Jock and the wall. Uncle Jock’s huge feet, kicked free from the blankets, gave off a smell of wet wool. Annie knelt in front of the trunk and eased the lid open. Linen. But underneath the linen was hidden a smaller chest, tightly buckled with leather straps. She had seen it once before.
Aunt Prim had stepped out to the privy; Uncle Jock was off cutting.
“Annie, quick, I want to show you something.” Page was kneeling over the trunk, her face flushed.
“What is it?”
“Proof.”
The ringstone was beautiful, most of it a soft brilliant pink, with some stones reflecting mauve and green tones. Colored stone was less valuable than white, but Annie thought it much nicer to look at.
“Proof of what?” Annie whispered.
“That Uncle Jock is as bad as we think. There’s Aunt P. Hurry!”
Annie opened the chest. I’ll only take what I need. Only a few, and only the darkest. But there was nothing inside. Not one stone. She looked around the spare cottage in disbelief. Had he spent it all? There had been enough stone in that chest to buy a farm like Uncle Jock’s twice over.
There was nothing else of value in the cottage. Nothing, unless—did she dare?
Every night before bed Uncle Jock dropped his clothes on the floor and put on his long underwear, and every night Aunt Prim picked up his clothes and put them away in the dresser.
After the man left, Uncle Jock had poured himself another drink and patted his knee.
“Come here, Prim, and have a look at this.” He held the white ringstone up to the light. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Aunt Prim put aside her sewing, but she sat on the bench, not his lap.
“It’s so beautiful!” She smiled, and almost looked beautiful herself. “It’s how I imagine a star might look. A fallen star.” She reached for the ringstone but Uncle Jock raised it over his head.
“Tut, tut, Primmy. This is my special burden.”
Aunt Prim scowled. “Is it from the Drop?”
“Could be. Awfully fine for the Drop, though. Awfully fine.”
“What did he mean about whetting your appetite, Jock? This was to be the end of it.”
“We’ll be free, my wild Primrose. We’ll be free.” Then he kissed not his wife but the stone, and tucked it into his front shirt pocket.
It would be easy enough for Annie to get his shirt from the dresser and the white ringstone from the pocket of his shirt, except for one thing. Uncle Jock had made the dresser, and Uncle Jock was as lazy about carpentry as everything else. The drawers squeaked.
He’s had five cups of whisky at least. Five cups! That should keep him snoring. Still, Annie’s heart beat faster as she eased open the first drawer. Socks and underpants. She tried the second. There it was, neatly folded but still smelling sourly of her uncle.
Aunt Prim was right. The white ringstone was as beautiful as a star, so clear and brilliant she almost expected it to give off heat.
The stone in her pocket made her feel bold and she shut the drawer too fast. The drawer jammed, the dresser shuddered, and The Book of Household Virtues toppled to its side with a bang.
Uncle Jock was on his feet in an instant. “Kinderstalk!” he roared, aiming his rifle at the dresser. When he saw Annie standing there he dropped the muzzle.
“You?”
Annie looked at her uncle and then at the book. Her mind said, What if you miss? But her hand knew what to do. The book struck him full in the face. He yowled and doubled over. Annie darted past him to the bed and thrust her hand between the mattress and the frame. Her eyes found Aunt Prim’s stricken face, then she was across the room and up the ladder to the garret.
Annie half kicked, half dragged the heavy old mattress over the hatch, then stood on it for good measure. But what now? Already Uncle Jock was pounding on the door, lifting the mattress higher with each blow. One hand appeared through the hole. He heaved a shoulder through, then reached around and groped for Annie’s ankle. She cried out and leapt clear of him, but soon his head and torso were visible. Annie looked desperately from her uncle to the window and back again.
“Don’t you do it, girl!” Uncle Jock shouted. The nose of his rifle emerged through the trapdoor. She had no pistol, no knife, nothing.
Her uncle must have had the same thought, because he began to laugh. Blood trickled from a cut over his eye.
“You’re caught now, kitten.”
Annie snatched up her cloak and lantern, stuffed her feet into her boots, and threw open the window. Outside, though she couldn’t see it, was the steeply slanting roof of the passageway that led to the privy. Prudence streaked out and Annie wriggled after her. Isadore stayed back. Annie’s front end came through all right but her hips stuck in the window frame. Uncle Jock had one knee through the trapdoor now. Desperately, Annie pushed against the window frame with her free hand and kicked with her legs like a swimmer. Still she didn’t budge. A hand closed around her ankle. She kicked frantically with the other foot and caught him in the throat. He gasped and coughed and then, with a shout of pain, let go of her leg. Her hips slid through. Before the darkness swallowed her she got a glimpse of orange fur flying and her uncle’s fingers pressed to his cheek.
She was outside, after dark. She was outside. The roof’s sharp peak pressed into her belly. For a long moment she just hung on, too terrified to move. Then a pair of familiar green eyes glinted ahead of her, reflecting the faint light from the garret window. Prudence.
Annie inched along in the direction of the cat. Now she could smell the privy, and feel the flat boards of the privy roof under her hands. Prudence disappeared and Annie stopped, groping forward with one hand. There was the edge of the roof, and the empty air beyond it. Starting at her waist, she walked her fingers carefully up her side until she found them: twenty-two pilfered matches, nestled in a pocket against her rib cage.
The lantern light penetrated no more than a few feet in any direction, not enough to see the ground below—How far was it? Six feet? Ten?—but enough to see Izzy’s orange forehead and white chin as he came up beside her. She felt the slight disturbance of air as he leapt from the roof. Then she held her breath and jumped after him into the darkness.
Chapter 2
Annie landed hard on her feet, then staggered forward onto her knees. The lantern sputtered but did not go out. Then she was up and running, the tip of Isadore’s tail just visible ahead of her within the halo of lantern light. Prudence was waiting for them at the yard gate. Annie balked. Leave the yard? But the cats ran on.
“Prue, Izzy!” Annie ran and ran, stumbling over rocks and tree stumps, until she felt the sting of pine needles lashing her face.
“Izzy, wait!”
In front of her was the forest, behind her the cleared ground of her uncle’s land. Annie took a step forward and stopped. Impossibly, the air here seemed denser, blacker than the air where she had just been standing. She could hear her own breathing, the who-whooing of an owl, the wind sifting the pines. Then, behind her, came a thud, thud, pause, thud thud, the sound of a big man running, stopping for a moment, then running on. A light bobbed in the distance, moving steadily closer.
Annie looked frantically toward the forest, then back at the approaching light, then toward the forest again. The forest belonged to the kinderstalk. Whatever the people of Dour County took by way of lumber, the kinderstalk took back: in livestock, in human life.
The thudding grew louder, until she could hear the crunch of stones under her uncle’s boots. She looked down at the cats. They were sitting just within the ring of light from her lantern, staring up at her calmly. Oh, not this. Anything but this.
She opened the little glass door in the lantern and blew out the light.
The darkness roared over her, a landslide, an avalanche. The black air, heavy as earth, filled her throat and banked in her lungs. Her eyelids, too, felt heavy, as though caked with darkness. With effort, she closed her eyes and opened them, but there was no difference between the two.
Uncle Jock’s footsteps paused a moment in confusion, then started up again more quickly than before. Annie dropped to her hands and knees and began to crawl through the dark. The cats pressed close. When her knuckles scraped bark, she grabbed the trunk and inched her way around until she felt she must be on the opposite side from where she had started. The light from Uncle Jock’s lantern paused at the edge of the forest. She could see him now, or the parts of him the lantern illuminated, pacing back and forth: now his greasy hair, now his patched pants, now the glint of the long rifle he carried over his shoulder. Once she saw his face. He looked terrified.
So he fears that man more than this, more than the dark, more than the …
Uncle Jock turned suddenly and plunged toward her through the trees. Annie ducked behind the trunk and wrapped her arms around her knees, making herself as small as she could.
He raised the lantern and glared into the darkness.
“Girl!”
Uncle Jock put his rifle to his shoulder and fired. He jammed another bullet down the barrel and fired again. One heavy boot crunched down on Annie’s hair. She clenched her teeth and kept silent. For long minutes, Uncle Jock went on firing shot after shot into the darkness, pausing only to reload and take new aim at whatever it was he hoped to kill.
Then, as if in answer to the shots, the kinderstalk began to howl. First one, a long, single note, then another and another, until they grew into a chorus. There was no telling how many there were, or how far away. Annie imagined one for every tree in the forest, thousands upon thousands, all moving toward this one place, all moving toward her.
Quiet, quiet, quiet, she thought, to keep her fear inside.
The lantern shook in Uncle Jock’s hand, spilling light among the pines. Slowly he lowered his rifle. He took a step back. One voice separated itself from the rest, high and thin, very close by. A female, Annie thought, and wondered at the thought. What did it matter?
With a muffled cry, Uncle Jock spun on his heel and began to run back toward the cottage. The howling stopped, but now Annie heard a different sound. It began as a sort of hiss, then grew to a murmur, the sound of water over rocks. The first body brushed past her. A second followed, so close she could smell its mingled scent of blood and pine sap. Five passed, now six, without seeming to notice her. But kinderstalk could see in the dark. Surely they had spotted her? Smelled her? A seventh passed, then stopped. Shaking, biting her lip, Annie waited for the attack. Something blunt and soft touched her shoulder, and she heard not a snarl but a whine. Then silence. The thing was gone.
Annie’s fingers trembled so badly she had to try three times before she was able to light the lantern. Part of her strained toward the cottage—had they reached him? Was Aunt Prim safe? But another, stronger part urged her away, while she still had a chance. The lantern
shone on Prudence and Isadore sitting among the roots of the tree, looking at her as calmly as before.
“What now?” Annie whispered. Izzy turned and trotted deeper into the wood.
They walked for what felt like miles, crossing streams, zigzagging through thickets. She tried to concentrate on where they were going, to remember her way back, but the dark made a fool of memory. She cowered at every scuffle in the undergrowth, every birdcall, but the kinderstalk did not show themselves again. Because of Uncle Jock. They’re still … don’t think it!
At last Isadore stopped at the base of an old oak tree. The trunk was so thick that five people holding hands could not have reached all the way around it. Hundreds of branches, some thicker than her entire body, some as slender as her smallest finger, stretched up into an infinity of black sky. Prudence sat between Annie’s feet and together they watched Isadore scramble up the trunk like a squirrel. Annie looked down at Prue, who twitched her tail. She tried to smile but the flesh of her face felt cold and heavy.
With a jump she caught hold of the lowest branch, then planted her feet against the trunk and walked herself up until she could hook her knees around the branch and scoot on top of it. The next branch was easier to grab, and she climbed steadily upward through the dark. The lantern illuminated little more than her hands and the end of her braid, swinging in and out of the circle of light. Once she became so disoriented that she had to stop and spit to be sure which way was down.
Izzy was waiting for her on a branch that was perhaps six inches wide and what felt like a hundred feet above the earth.
