by Cat Hellisen
“I asked if he was worse,” her father said, and there was a strange new deepness to his voice, like an echo under the words, like his throat was thickening all the sounds, roughening the edges. He was starting to sound like a stranger.
Sarah pushed a little sob deep down into her chest. Maybe she could escape. After her father left, she could slip away from the ruined castle and walk until she found a farm or something. People who would understand. Maybe call the police.
And then what? Where would she go? Would the authorities put her in a home filled with other children no one wanted?
Her grandmother squinted, finally peering down to get a good look at Sarah’s face.
Sarah could feel her grandmother’s breath against her forehead, and she realized that the old woman could hardly see. Her eyes were milky with cataracts. Maybe she could run away after all, if this woman was half blind.
“Hmph.” Her grandmother drew back, as if Sarah was something vaguely distasteful. “She looks normal enough.”
“She is,” said her father. “She’s normal. She’s not cursed.” But his voice trembled on the last word.
6
THE KEY OF IVORY
THE RUST-COVERED Toyota belched thick smoke into the forest clearing. The engine spat, coughed, and then with a roar, the car lurched away. Sarah’s father didn’t even look back at her. He raised one hand in good-bye, and that was that. He dropped it back to the steering wheel almost as soon as he’d lifted it.
Sarah and her grandmother stood silently, watching the woods darken, until the sound of the car was a distant throb. “Wastrel,” said her grandmother. “Blackguard.” She sniffed. “Hard to believe sometimes that he’s my own true-born son.”
Sarah swallowed away the snot-thick feeling of her unshed tears. “I’m Sarah,” she said in a small voice.
“I know your name, girl.” said her grandmother. “You will call me Nanna. That is, after all, the kind of thing grandchildren call their beloved grandmothers.”
She was nothing like a beloved grandmother. Instead Sarah was reminded of the ink drawings in her mother’s battered old book of myths. Stern-faced goddesses and Fates. Terrible and strange.
Nanna drew herself straighter and held out one arm to the air. Down from the darkening skies, like a falling comet, came the white raven. It lit on her grandmother’s arm and bowed, raising its beak. “And?” Nanna said.
The raven answered her in human speech. Its voice was high and sweet. “The little king is past the borderlands now.” It sounded like a woman on the verge of laughing or crying.
“Hmph. Good riddance, then.” Nanna twitched her arm. “The girl,” she said to the raven. “He called it Sarah.”
Sarah had her mouth half open, staring at the bird, trying to put together the idea that it was making words. Like a parrot. Only, no. It was talking; it was having a conversation. And it was staring at her with one ice-blue eye, head twisted to get a better look. The tiny black pupil contracted as it stared at her.
“Well met, princess,” said the raven. It clacked its pickax beak. “You have your mother’s look to you.”
“My mother?” Sarah’s heart bounced up, hope catching her by surprise. “You know her?” I’m talking to a bird.
“I knew her once,” the white raven replied. “It has been long since last we looked upon each other. A thousand years have passed, and the forests have grown smaller. And outside the forests, your world has barely moved a decade. Or two—I can never keep track.”
“Er, okay.” And now it didn’t seem strange to Sarah that she was having a conversation with a raven. Vaguely, she was aware that it should seem weird, but there was a dreamy quality to the dusk that made everything seem utterly reasonable, like her brain had given up trying to make sense of things and had instead just accepted defeat. Okay, world, you win. “I beg your pardon,” she said. “but I didn’t catch your name—”
Nanna laughed. “And you won’t. ‘Raven’ will do.” She twitched her wrist and the bird took flight, an ungainly flapping of large wings beating against dragging air. The raven finally soared off, leaving only a fallen white feather on the ground to mark that it had been there.
“Now,” said Nanna, “I’ve no servants to carry your luggage about, so you’ll have to do it yourself. This way.” She turned into the squat castle tower, and Sarah grabbed her bags and followed her in.
It was gloomy. The stones were frozen slabs, and Sarah couldn’t help but shiver. Her grandmother wore a long, thick woolen dress, and over that a coat of thick fur, dusty and moth-eaten. Dirt and black decay lay over everything. The cold seeped up from the flagstones, chilling Sarah right through her feet, all the way up her legs, so that she was shaking hard enough to rattle her teeth together.
She trod along in dejected silence, pausing only when her grandmother stopped to light sputtering candles along the walls. The candles made the air smell greasy, and they flickered and guttered in an unwelcoming way, casting leaping shadows that played out a grotesque puppet show on the stained walls. Sarah was half certain she could see actual figures choking each other, raking with their claws, could hear their screams and dying moans. She caught up quickly with Nanna, just about walking on the old woman’s heels so that she wouldn’t be left behind. Sarah held her bags closer.
“This will be your bedroom,” Nanna said, throwing open the door of a room near the apex of the castle tower. They had taken what felt like a million stairs to get there, and Sarah was sure that her legs were going to collapse out from under her and her arms were going to fall off. She’d tried switching the suitcase from left to right, but now her arms were rubbery and limp as half-cooked spaghetti.
“It’s very nice, thank you,” Sarah said without really looking. All she wanted to do was curl up and sleep for a week, and hope that when she woke she would discover that all of this was just some awful nightmare.
It had to be. She lifted her head. The room was one step up from a cell. There was a single plain bed covered with dull red blankets that looked like they’d been made out of rags, and a desk with a basin and a jug. Both were yellowed enamel, the edges rough with rust.
“Good. You can clean yourself up and rest some before dinner,” Nanna said. “There’s an hour yet before I eat.”
I, singular. Sarah cleared her throat. “Is—does my grandfather live here too?”
Nanna snorted. “In a manner of speaking.” She smiled then, revealing teeth that were white and even and perfect, and Sarah wondered what she had looked like when the rest of her had matched her teeth.
There is no such thing as a perfect beauty, her mother would have told her. Only magic.
“Will I see him?” Sarah asked.
Nanna stared past her, eyes narrowed.
Sarah resisted the urge to look behind herself to see what the old woman was looking at. The skin on her neck began to itch. She could well believe the half-fallen castle was as thick with ghosts as it was with dust and cobwebs. Even the air smelled like fog and fallen leaves and moss.
Then Nanna blinked and shook her head. “Perhaps,” she said, in a way that Sarah already knew meant no.
After her grandmother left, Sarah stood in the middle of her new bedroom and gazed numbly around her. The walls were grimed and spotted with continents of damp, and a carpet of ashy dirt covered the floor. A colony of spiders had softened the corners of the ceiling, knitted up the dust with thick skeins of silk. There was nothing caught in their webs.
Warm red light from the setting sun flowed through the narrow windows, and the lines of shadow were growing longer, creeping toward Sarah across the wooden floorboards like spilled ink. She stepped away from one particularly dark tendril and counted under her breath.
It didn’t help. The tears she’d been fighting against ever since her father had told her to pack her things finally came flooding out. Sarah unzipped her suitcase, half breathless with tears, and pulled out Steg and Hedge. She didn’t care if it made her seem like a frightened
little kid right now. All she wanted was something familiar and cushiony to hold. With her arms wrapped tightly around the stuffed animals, crushing them against her chest, Sarah collapsed onto the small bed and sobbed until her face stung and her eyes ached and her throat felt like it had been scraped out with a fork.
When she lifted her head, the shadows were swirling all about her, and the last few red-gold gleams of the sun were just outlining her windowsill. The raven was there, cloaked in fire.
Sarah sniffed and sat up, the toys falling to the rough blanket. The raven shifted. Its claws ticked against the stone, and the sunlight slipped away, leaving the bird looking like a smear of bluish gray against the darker indigo of the sky.
“You should clean your face,” the raven said in its incongruous womanly voice. “There’s water in the bowl, and towels in the second drawer.”
“How long were you watching me?” Sarah rubbed at her eyes and cheeks with her knuckles, then pulled one sleeve over her hand and used that to wipe her face again. “Ugh, gross.” There was gunk sitting in her nose and throat.
“A few minutes only,” the raven said. It sounded a little sad. “Your grandmother sent me to call you down.”
“And you’re her messenger or something?”
“Her eyes and ears and voice, if I need to be. I am bound to her.”
“Creepy,” Sarah said. She slipped from the bed and padded to the table. There were the towels, neatly folded in the second drawer as the raven had said. Ice crinkled the edges of the water in the bowl, but after the shock of the cold against her cheeks, Sarah found that wiping away the heat and shame of her tears was almost exhilarating. She glanced across at the raven, which was still watching her patiently from the windowsill. “So you’re basically a spy.”
The raven made no move. “Light the lamps,” it said. “Unless you want to return to darkness.” It spread its wings, then paused as if it was debating with itself. “By the laws of my curse, I am bound to tell her all the things I see, hear, and say within the castle,” it said. “If she asks.” With a crackle of feathers, it launched itself into the night.
Sarah looked at the empty place where the raven had stood and touched one thumb to her lower lip. The bird was warning her. It was a spy, true, but it sounded like it was also a slave.
It was cursed. Like everything else around her, it seemed. And as Sarah knew from her books, curses could be broken. Curses were designed to be broken. All it took was passing tests, she knew that. Tests of courage, of love, of wit, of faith. She frowned. How was she supposed to know what to do if she had no idea how any of this worked in the first place? There were mysteries here in this castle, in the forest, and secrets that no one was going to tell her willingly.
The thing with secrets was that they didn’t want to stay secrets, Sarah mused. Someone always knew more than they should. It took the right leverage, the right pressure, and people told their hidden truths. And if that didn’t work, then there was always snooping, which seemed to be the logical route in all the adventure books she loved.
Kids in stories are always going where they shouldn’t and discovering hidden treasure and evil plots and unmasking villains. And so what if that isn’t real life? Sarah looked down from the castle window to the darkling forest, its whispering shadowy treetops. Nothing about this feels like real life.
Whatever secrets were waiting to be dug up, they had something to do with Nanna. Weirdness was gathered around her—the raven, the ruined castle all alone in the strange forest.
A new feeling crept up Sarah’s back, ticking along her spine and spreading out through her shoulders. Determination. It made her feel more solid. She was going to get to the bottom of the mystery of her family. Of the curse, and what had happened to her parents.
And why.
* * *
Sarah did not get lost going down the stairs. The path she was meant to walk had been lit for her with the stubs of fat yellow-white candles in dim glass cases. The rest of the castle was dark and smelled of mouse droppings and dripping water and moldy straw, so she had no desire to stray from the lit way. Maybe tomorrow she’d have a better look in the daylight; perhaps it wouldn’t seem so creepy.
She rushed down the last set of stairs, and the slap of her sneakers against the stone echoed through the hallways. Sarah’s last meal had been the ham sandwich her father made for her, and a bag of chips and a soda from a gas station. She was hungry enough that she could have put up with a great deal just to fill her stomach. And the smells coming from the hall that the lights led her to were making her mouth water. Whatever Nanna might be, she could cook—that much seemed certain. Witches could cook, Sarah thought. Well, they could brew potions, which seemed more or less the same thing.
The large hall was as gloomy as the rest of the neglected castle, but at least here the flagstones had been swept clean. Mice rustled in the cracks in the walls. At least, Sarah hoped it was nothing more unusual than mice. A few striped and ragged cats prowled the edges of the hall, their eyes stabs of pale green fire. Every now and then, one would hunch, tail whipping, then pounce on some flutter in the shadowy edges of the room.
Yes—mice. Sarah shuddered and picked her way to the large round table, where two places were set out. There were several chairs, all of them mismatched. Steaming bowls had been set before one grand chair of polished black, with threadbare red velvet cushioning, and another, smaller one, with a seat of striped blue and gold. The material was worn, and the stuffing was sighing out of the rips. Sarah supposed this smaller one was hers.
There was no sign of her grandmother, but the raven was on the table, pacing between the dishes. “Sit,” it said, and Sarah slipped into her seat.
The cushion had a tacky, squishy feel to it that made her wish she could hover above it rather than sit. “Where is she?” she whispered to the raven.
“Behind you,” said Nanna. “There are no servants, or have you forgotten?”
Sarah twisted round. Her grandmother had left off her cloak of ragged fur, and she seemed somehow smaller, daintier. Perhaps more like the way she had been as a young woman. She was carrying another covered tray, which she set down near their bowls. There was certainly a lot of food for only two people, though Sarah didn’t feel inclined to point this out. Not on her very first night. She thought of her father’s bloodstained teeth as he’d eaten his meat raw. Perhaps this was it—perhaps her family were secretly all monstrous carnivores and she was going to be fed platters of raw meat, lumps of cold flesh sitting in pools of sticky blood. She swallowed miserably.
Nanna took her seat and nodded at the bowl of soup in front of Sarah. “You may begin,” she said.
At least soup was normal-person food. Well, normalish. Sarah lifted her round spoon, and gently prodded a floating piece of gristly meat. It bobbed twice, then sank. Sarah’s stomach sank with it. Gingerly, she ladled herself a spoonful and sipped. It wasn’t as bad as she had expected, and she plodded her way through the rest, leaving only an unidentifiable mash of small bones and soggy fat at the bottom of her bowl. There was nothing in the world that would convince her to eat that, she thought.
“Hmm,” said Nanna, eyeing the remains. “Picky, are you?”
“I’m just full,” Sarah lied.
“Too bad.” Nanna leaned forward to open the covered dishes for the next course. There were all different kinds of meats simmering in thick juices, and a profusion of aromas curled across the table so that Sarah had to close her eyes and breathe in deeply. Meat, for sure, but cooked meat. “There’s boar and hare and fawn and grouse and goose and lamb and dove.” Her grandmother narrowed her eyes. “And not a bone for you, it seems. Full as you are.”
The raven cawed in laughter and tipped Sarah’s bowl so that the remnants spread in a gooey puddle over the pitted wood. It lunged forward, pecking out the choice pieces.
Sarah folded her hands in her lap and kept her head lowered so her grandmother would not see her face go blotchy.
Nanna a
te for a long time, the only sounds the wet sucking of her lips and the brittle clack of bones returned to the plate. Finally, it seemed Nanna had consumed all she could. She pushed her plate a little away from herself and leaned back in her chair.
Sarah looked up to see her scrape all the leftovers into the largest pot and cover it up. “Come along,” Nanna said as she stood. She lifted the full pot and cradled it with both arms. “I think it’s time you met your grandfather, after all.”
Sarah’s heart lurched. What was she to expect—an old, bedridden man? An ax-wielding maniac locked up for his own good? The soup sloshed about inside her, making her feel queasy, and Sarah pressed her thumbs hard against her legs, focusing on that until the feeling passed. She wished she were out of this place. Anywhere, it didn’t matter. As long as it was a million miles away from here and now.
The white raven launched itself up to perch on Nanna’s shoulder and rubbed its beak against her earlobe. “Come along, along, a long way to come,” it chattered. Sarah was now convinced that it was insane. Just like Nanna. And herself, probably.
The raven and the old woman led the way out of the castle, into the circle of empty night that surrounded the stone building. Perhaps her grandmother was going to lead her off into the forest and just … leave her there, to be eaten by whatever monsters lurked.
Instead she walked a well-worn track that curved behind the main body of the turret. In the lee of the building was a rough shack, in the same state of disrepair as the rest of the castle, its rotted straw roof ragged and dripping black mold. The smell of loam and earthy decay was everywhere, but over it was another, stronger smell, rank and musky.
Sarah edged back, the smell assaulting her nostrils. There was something in it that reminded her of one of the houses they’d once moved into. There’d been a playhouse at the back of the garden, but Sarah’s initial excitement had come crashing down when they’d found feral cats had been using it to live in. There was a sour ammonia smell of pee that no amount of scrubbing had been able to lift. That smell was here too. Only a thousand times worse, mixed with the sweet-gross smell of spoiled meat and decay.
