by M. E. Breen
Annie frowned at him. You want me to sleep here?
In answer, he leapt from the branch toward the trunk and disappeared. The lantern revealed an opening in the trunk, not much larger than the window to her garret room. The space inside was far too small for her to lie down, but at least she could sit upright without hitting her head. Years ago, fire had blackened the inside of the trunk and now the walls shone dark and shiny in the candlelight. Spiderwebs crisscrossed overhead and droplets of sap, as hard and bright as amber, decorated the walls. Yellow and brown leaves carpeted the floor. Was this where the cats lived before they came to her? The thought made her feel safe and a little sad. Prudence wriggled into the space between her bent knees and chest and started to purr. Annie held up the lantern. Only a stub of candle remained. She would have to be quick.
The book’s cover was made of faded black leather like the top part of someone’s old boot. The title, printed in the center in gold letters, read, The Trap of Vice, by Chilton Smalle. Annie turned to the first page.
Beware, my fellow men, the trap of Vice! She with her talons will rend your sense, your sensibility, Nay! Your very sovereignty! Turn instead to Virtue, to gently guide you.
Well, that was boring stuff. Annie flipped through the book until she came to the page with her sister’s writing in the margins. The book stayed open easily here, as if Page, or perhaps Aunt Prim, had spent hours studying it. Chilton Smalle’s words had been scrubbed away and the paper bleached dry, and then someone had written new words on top. The new text was written longhand, the writing blocky and precise like a child trying to show he had mastered his letters.
Annie couldn’t read a word of it. The letters were decorated with dots and waves and strange fillips. Some of them more closely resembled pictures. Was that a tree? A raven? Page’s notes filled the margins, but except for a few words Annie recognized—slip, graft—the notes didn’t make any more sense than the rest. Page’s handwriting had always infuriated Annie: so tiny, so perfect, even the ink splotches somehow charming. Annie’s own handwriting looked like something scratched in the sand with a stick. But now—now she could hardly bear ever having resented Page for anything. Carefully she returned the book to her hip pocket.
There had been something else pressed between the book’s worn covers: a lock of Page’s hair, pale blond, almost white, long enough to wrap twice around her wrist. This Annie tucked into a pocket hidden between two buttons, right over her heart. Then she closed her eyes, to pretend it was only the regular dark of sleep coming, and blew out the light.
A bird’s cry woke her during the night. Prue’s striped face peeped up from her lap. Annie stroked a finger down the cat’s nose. Funny I can see your stripes, she thought. Funny dream.
Thock! Thock! Thock!
Aunt Prim liked to wake Annie in the mornings by pounding on the trapdoor with her broom handle.
Thock! Thock! Thock!
Annie put her hands over her ears and tried to roll over. Her nose scraped something rough. The pounding continued, only it didn’t sound so much like pounding as relentless tapping. And the pounding wasn’t coming from beneath her, but from somewhere near her right ear. Annie opened her eyes. She could see bright blue sky and a fringe of gold leaves. She was not in her bed, and there was no Aunt Prim. Annie scooted forward and stuck her head outside the hole to look around. A woodpecker hammered away at the side of the tree, the feathers on his crest a red blur. He made her feel happy somehow. Just in time she spotted Isadore, pressed nearly flat on a branch above the bird.
“Izzy, no!”
The woodpecker flapped away. Isadore landed neatly in front of her and began to wash his paws as if nothing had happened. Annie glared at him but the light feeling around her heart remained. Then she looked down. They were a hundred feet in the air, maybe more. Prudence, standing on a branch about halfway down the tree, was no more than a dark dot.
The climb down turned out to be much easier than the climb up. It was almost fun, like walking through a giant jigsaw puzzle: a foot fitting here, a hand there, a shoulder pressed against the trunk for balance, a knee wedged into the crook of two branches. Annie did not feel afraid again until the very end, when both her feet were planted firmly on the ground. For there, at the base of the tree, deep vertical gashes had been made in the bark. Annie reached to touch the pale wood of the exposed trunk. The highest marks were more than twelve feet off the ground.
Annie had never seen so many trees so close together, or so many different kinds. Some she recognized: tall pines, like men with sloped shoulders, strong-armed oaks, fancy-dress maples. Others she had never seen even in books, twisted trees with black trunks and long mossy beards, trees with gray bark and scarlet leaves, yellowish trees with wood so soft her finger left a dent.
She unfastened her cloak and pushed it back over her shoulders. Most of the morning’s chill had faded, which meant she had about six hours of daylight left. Enough time to get to town, surely, if only she knew what direction to take.
“Izzy?”
But Isadore was busy tidying the fur between his toes.
“Prue?”
Prue eyed a nuthatch and pretended not to hear.
She walked a few yards in one direction, but when she turned around and could no longer see the oak tree she felt afraid and retraced her steps. She tried another direction, but the cats did not follow so she hurried back. Fear squeezed her ribs. Every minute she remained here was another minute lost to the darkness.
A hawk screamed overhead, no more than a black dash against the blue sky. Hawks loved to hunt the cutting fields at the forest edge, full as they were of little dazed creatures knocked from their nests. She would follow the hawk.
She ate whatever she could find. Most of the plants in the forest were unfamiliar to her, but the bracka bushes she recognized. They grew everywhere in Dour County, in thick hedgerows along the roadways and in straggly clumps along the cliffs that overlooked the river. In summer, Annie filled milk pails with their fat purple berries. These berries were the last of the season, too small and hard for the birds to pick off the branches, and so sour they made her jaws ache. At least I’m not eating porridge, or—she watched Prue bat an insect to the ground and pounce on it—or that.
The trees had started to shed their leaves and blue sky showed patchily through the branches. Just ahead a stream ran through a small clearing. Annie knelt to drink. A face stared back at her with wild eyes and a ragged halo of hair. Quickly, she broke the surface of the water.
Annie sat back on her heels and wiped her mouth.
“Prue, aren’t you thirsty—”
Prudence was standing several yards away, her body strangely stiff. The cat arched her back, flattened her ears against her head, and hissed. Isadore had seen it too, whatever it was, and darted upstream to crouch behind a stand of reeds. Annie scrambled after him.
Prudence had disappeared. In her place stood a kinderstalk.
It was twice the size of a sheepdog, but rangier, with long legs and a compact body. Rusty black fur grew shaggy around its neck and shoulders. The head was large in proportion to the body, with a narrow muzzle and close-set gold-colored eyes. Those eyes scanned the clearing, pausing—or had she imagined it?—at the stand of reeds before moving on.
The creature yipped twice. A second kinderstalk appeared, and then two more. Soon kinderstalk were appearing as if out of the air, and they all made their way to the same place. They sniffed the ground and snuffled and whined, but except for the first, not one turned toward her. She didn’t dare move, scarcely dared breathe.
Then something truly strange happened. A man walked into the clearing, carrying a musket and a bulging burlap sack. He had a round, pale face and round, pale eyes that protruded slightly. But his mouth—it was like something drawn by a young child, a red line reaching almost ear to ear. The flesh around the lips bulged, as though the man held something in his mouth he could not swallow. Annie’s heart hammered against her ribs. This was th
e man who had come to her uncle’s last night. This was the man the king had named—had touched with his own gloved hand—to run the western mines. This was Frank Gibbet.
Gibbet dropped the sack to the ground. The first kinderstalk, larger than the others, stalked over to him and rose up on its hind legs. Annie closed her eyes, afraid to see what must surely follow. Nothing happened. When she opened her eyes, the beast was still balanced uncannily on its hind legs. Gibbet remained where he was, his musket now resting casually against one leg, the barrel pointing into the earth. The kinderstalk began to make a garbled noise, something between a bark and a whine. As Annie watched wide-eyed, Gibbet made a similar noise back. The kinderstalk dropped down on all fours and Gibbet reached into his bag. He pulled out a dead rabbit and flung it toward the circle of kinderstalk. It hit the dirt and one of them lunged forward and then backed away, snarling, before turning to run into the woods with the rabbit dangling from its mouth.
Gibbet pulled rabbit after rabbit from his sack. The kinderstalk snapped them out of the air and, one by one, disappeared into the wood. Finally there was just Gibbet and the large kinderstalk left, and one dead rabbit.
“A token of my esteem,” Gibbet said in his own language, and tossed the rabbit on the ground. The creature lowered its head and with great delicacy took the rabbit between its teeth. Just as carefully it laid the rabbit at Gibbet’s feet and walked slowly from the clearing.
Gibbet stared after the kinderstalk for a long time. Then he picked up his empty sack and his gun and went away in the same direction he had come.
Annie crept from her hiding place. She could not shake the chill that had gone through her when she saw Gibbet and the kinderstalk standing together. Watching Gibbet’s face she had felt a spasm of fear, but not for herself. She had been afraid for the kinderstalk.
As she walked, Annie noticed signs that Gibbet had come this way before: a leaf pressed into the earth by the heel of a boot, new growth snapped off the ends of branches. The trail wound upward for a bit, then ended abruptly at the top of a steep drop. An oak tree clung to the hillside, half of its roots exposed where the soil had washed away. Gibbet’s footprints overlapped at the base of the tree, carried on to the edge of the wash where they overlapped again, and finally headed down the hill to the open field below.
Annie had been so intent on trailing Gibbet it took her a moment to realize where she was. The cutting fields spread below her like a brown lake. Stumps of every size stuck out of the bare ground. At the northern end of the fields whole trees lay on their sides, leaves softening into mulch. To the west, where the road from Gorgetown abutted the field, stacks of chopped firewood sat waiting to be hauled away.
She had been here twice before, once with a pail of fish sandwiches her uncle had forgotten to take for lunch and another time exploring with Gregor. They hadn’t wanted to come back.
No one cut alone. The men worked in pairs or groups, taking turns cutting and keeping guard. Uncle Jock had been her father’s partner.
Page had told her the story a hundred times but Annie was never satisfied.
“Again?” Page would ask in mock exasperation. “Very well. Come here.”
It was autumn, two years after their mother died. Their father and Uncle Jock had been cutting long hours all week. Uncle Jock wanted to cut extra wood and drive east to sell it. Father said no, no more than the family needs for winter. They were fighting when they left that morning. Aunt Prim hadn’t expected them back until near dark, but Uncle Jock returned alone only a few hours later. He barred the door behind him and leaned his whole weight against it.
“Prim. Primmy. They took Shar.”
“Took him! In broad daylight?”
“Only a moment I stepped away, only a moment. And there it was, and his clothes on the ground in tatters.”
“Are you hurt, Jock? Should I fetch Grandmother Hoop?”
He held his big hands in front of his face. They were shaking. “It never touched me.”
Annie wondered what it had been like to die here. Was he terrified? Was it painful? Gregor once told her the kinderstalk ate you a piece at a time, starting with your feet. She thought of Uncle Jock. Had he reached the house in time?
And then, improbably, there he was, jogging across the field. Annie ducked behind the precarious oak. A second man appeared, walking swiftly from the opposite direction. Both men carried rifles. They reached each other and spoke briefly, heads bent. Uncle Jock pointed to the hill. The other man shrugged and they turned and walked toward her. They stopped near the base of the wash. Uncle Jock had been holding the other man’s elbow, and now the man shook off his hand impatiently.
“You said you have a message for him?”
This was far and away the most hideous man Annie had ever seen. His skin was gray and thick and full of holes, like poured wax, with little round black eyes stuck into it. A puffy white scar parted his hair, as though someone had tried to split his head open with an ax.
“This.” Uncle Jock produced a purse and pressed it into the man’s hand. “We sold our cow for it this morning. It’s all I’ve got.”
The scarred man cocked his head to the side. “What happened to the child?”
“She’s dead.”
“Dead? This one too?”
“Look, how long do they last? A year? Two?” He jabbed a finger at the purse. “That should cover her take for the first few months. I can get more. I just need time.”
The man tossed the purse lightly from hand to hand. “He won’t like it.”
Uncle Jock licked his lips. “I know he wanted her alive. I know. But he can be reasonable, yes? He understands about accidents. He understood before.”
“I was there before,” the scarred man said. Then his eyes narrowed. “What happened to your face?”
Uncle Jock raised his hand to the scratches on his cheek. The cut over his eye looked puffy and discolored.
“A branch, maybe, while I was cutting. It’s nothing. So are we square, then? Am I square with him?”
“How did she die?” asked the scarred man.
“Kinderstalk. How else? We had a fight, she ran outside after dark. There’s the end of it.”
“Not quite.”
“What do you mean?”
“Isn’t there something you’ve forgotten?” The scarred man put out his hand. He wiggled his fingers.
Uncle Jock blanched. “It’s gone.”
“Where?” the scarred man asked sharply.
“The girl. The girl stole it.”
“That stone was your pledge, Jock. You’ve gone and lost your pledge.”
“I didn’t ask for any pledge.”
“He’ll be sorry to hear that.”
“No, don’t tell him,” Uncle Jock said quickly. He was wiping his hands over and over on his pant legs. “Are we square?”
The scarred man shrugged. He turned to go. “There is one thing, for next time.”
“What? What is it?”
“You know he likes proof.”
“Proof?”
“A finger might be anyone’s. Better to take an eye.”
Annie watched them leave, the scarred man brisk, Uncle Jock slouching off like a beaten dog. Izzy had come to stand beside her. He flicked his tail.
“I know,” Annie whispered. “Part of me wished they’d caught him too.”
Chapter 3
If I catch you in my store one more time, I’ll feed you to the kinderstalk myself. Just see if I won’t.”
“And I’ll help her. Truth’s my witness.”
Annie pushed back the heavy tangle of hair covering her face and sat up. Two figures loomed over her, one skinny, one stout.
“Oh! Well now, that’s the last straw. That is the very last straw!” Annie followed the woman’s gaze. One of the flour sacks she’d been using as a mattress had burst. Dozens of little white footprints covered the floor.
“Stealing my food, messing my place, and now vermin!”
“They’
re not verm—,” Annie started to say, then gave up. She couldn’t blame them. They’d been nice enough the first morning. Old Man Mutts had even given her a taste of spirits, “To bring you back to the living, gal.” But it had been nearly a week now of sneaking between the tavern and Miss Gilly’s shop, stealing food and sleeping in corners.
“I’ll go,” Annie said. Miss Gilly glared.
“I promise.”
Standing on the edge of the village green in the cold morning air, Annie wished she could take the promise back. Aside from the tavern and Miss Gilly’s, the only shops not vacant belonged to Beard, the blacksmith, and Mr. Crake, who carved headstones. Across the green the church squatted sadly in the middle of its crowded churchyard. The roof of the schoolhouse was just visible behind the church, boarded up years ago for lack of pupils. Perhaps she could hide there. And then what, Annie? Hide forever?
“Ha! Little gal! Yes, you. Care for a chuff? It’ll warm you.”
Grandmother Hoop was sitting on a wooden bench smoking her pipe. Between puffs she arranged her vials and jars on the seat beside her. She didn’t have a proper store, but Grandmother Hoop did even more business than Old Man Mutts. She offered the pipe to Annie.
“No thank you, Grandmother.”
“Suit yourself. But you could use some warming. Right here.” Grandmother Hoop rapped her knuckles against her skinny chest. She studied the array of bottles for a moment, then chose one and tapped a few grains of red powder onto the heel of her hand. She pressed her hand up against a nostril and sniffed hard.
Then she laughed, showing wet pink gums.
“Ha! That one’s not for you. I’ve got something else for what ails you.”
She held up a vial filled with oily black liquid. “Now this …”
Annie shook her head vigorously.
“Very well, very well. Another one dead this week past, did you hear? An older child, older than they usually take them. Dawdled on the way home, or so her auntie says. Wouldn’t trust that sly weasel in my hen house, mind you …”
