Where the Woods End

by Charlotte Salter

  “Remember what you are,” her mother said. She had the calm, glassy voice of someone seething with rage. “You’re a selfish brat who fed your own grandmother to her grabber. If your father knew, he’d never come back.”

  Kestrel’s stomach curled.

  “If you continue to be rude, I don’t see why I should keep your secret,” her mother continued, in that horribly flat voice. She put the candle down. “Now,” she said, “let me give you a kiss.”

  Kestrel leaned forward, feeling like a puppet, and stiffly received a dry peck on the cheek. As she did so, she caught a glimpse of herself in a shard of mirror nailed to the wall. There was a red mark on her face and half her right eyebrow had been scorched off.

  She kept her rage down with superhuman effort, and forced a smile.

  “Sorry,” Kestrel said lightly, but the word was sour in her mouth. “I didn’t mean to forget my manners.”

  “There, sweetie,” her mother said, looking pleased again. “It’s not hard to apologize. Now won’t you stay and share some food with me? I can smell cake outside the door.” She sniffed the air. “And cream.”

  Kestrel noted, feeling slightly disgusted, that her mother’s face was already shining with delight at the thought of the feast outside. “It’s all yours,” Kestrel said. Her stomach was growling with hunger, but she was determined not to take food from her. Not with her knowing, anyway. Getting angry drained her mother, and she always fell asleep shortly after. She slept so deeply she never heard Kestrel making off with biscuits and bowls of stew.

  “Why so keen to go?” her mother asked lightly, but there was a sharp edge to her voice. “You’re not meeting someone, are you? Ike tells me you were climbing trees yesterday.”

  “I was alone,” Kestrel said, her stomach plummeting.

  “You weren’t with that nasty Finnigan boy, were you?”

  “No,” Kestrel said weakly. But Finn’s milk teeth were hanging over her mother’s head, and she couldn’t help looking at them. Her mother reached up and brushed her fingers over the row of them. Kestrel tried not to react, desperately ignoring the horrified lump in her throat.

  “You know I can hurt anyone,” her mother said.

  Kestrel nodded numbly. Years ago, her mother had made her go door-to-door collecting the teeth. Now, when one of the villagers got hurt by her mother, Kestrel knew it was her own fault.

  “There will be consequences if you get distracted and forget your purpose,” her mother continued, staring right at her. “Which is hunting.”

  “Friendship is weakness,” Kestrel said, repeating one of her mother’s mantras. She could almost feel the sweat rolling down her nose. “A person shared is a person halved. I know.”

  Her mother continued to stare at her. What did she want?

  “I don’t want to be distracted, either,” Kestrel said, desperate to make her stop. “I just want to hunt, and one day find Granmos’s grabber. You know that.”

  At least it was true. Her mother finally blinked.

  “You will,” she said. “One day. Her grabber is still out there, Kestrel. I see it in the weave. Just be patient, and do as I say in the meantime.”

  “I promise.” Her feet were itching to run. “Now can I go?”

  “Wait,” her mother said. She eagerly touched Kestrel’s arm with her long fingers. “At least stay while I eat. I know you doubt it sometimes, Kestrel, but I worry about you. I don’t like to think of my daughter being hungry.”

  For a moment Kestrel believed that she really was concerned. Her mother looked troubled, maybe even guilty. Then she touched her missing eyebrow and shook herself out of it.

  “I’ve got monsters to catch,” she said. She was already backing through the weave. She had to find the grabber that took her grandma. She was going to get rid of the dog and find the path out of this place, so she and Finn could run away. So they could be free.

  “If you’re worried about your silly eyebrow—”

  But Kestrel was already out the door.

  * * *

  Kestrel slid into the shadows behind the dark, soulless houses. She wanted to get across the village and find Finn, but Ike had already gathered the villagers together to look at the woodchopper’s ax. The black dog had dragged it to the wolf fire for everyone to see.

  The villagers were leaning in, staring at Ike so intently it looked like they were going to eat him. Several kids had crept up to the fire as well, nudging one another and whispering, delighted that their parents hadn’t noticed them. Kestrel was going to slip past, but then she heard the word grabber and froze.

  “That’s when my father knew he was a goner,” Ike whispered to his terrified audience, enjoying himself. Kestrel wished she hadn’t stopped. Ike’s dad’s grabber was the first one she had been sent to hunt. Whenever she thought about it, it was so vivid she could almost smell the blood on its claws. “It was the loss of his snuffbox that tipped him off,” Ike said. “He always carried it inside his coat. He woke up one day and it was gone.”

  “You saw it, didn’t you, Ike?” Rascly Badger, the fireworks maker, said, his eyes wide.

  “I watched it carry him away,” said Ike, lowering his voice ever further. The villagers were deathly quiet, terrified but unable to move. Kestrel couldn’t tear herself away, either. “My mother tried to stop it. Then—”

  He clapped his hands and they all jumped back. Ike didn’t need to say anything else. They all knew how it ended. Ike’s mother had tried to stop the grabber, but it had scrunched her up and thrown her away like a ball of paper.

  “Poor Alice,” Rascly Badger muttered. Walt touched something in his pocket, a compulsive checking of his lucky charms. Kestrel instinctively touched the holey stone in her pocket, too, to check it was still there.

  “Don’t speak the names of the dead,” Ike muttered. “It’s bad luck.”

  Mardy Banbury screamed in the distance. The villagers looked at one another, horrified. Kestrel grabbed her spoon without thinking. Was it a grabber? Had one actually struck again? They were coming more frequently than ever before, but two in a day?

  “You little weasel!” Mardy cried.

  Kestrel put her spoon away, breathing a sigh of relief. Only one person was capable of infuriating Mardy like that.

  * * *

  Mardy was outside her house, wielding the paddle she used for beating her beloved wolf-skin rug. Kestrel stopped by the well, just out of sight. Mardy’s fingers were hooked over Finn’s collar as he struggled and squawked.

  “Let me go,” he howled, lifting his feet, trying to keep them from touching the ground. He was clutching a squashed, paper-wrapped package in his arms.

  “Not until I’ve beaten some sense into you!” shouted Mardy.

  Finn’s clothes were covered in black feathers and his face was streaked with dirt. All the buttons were hanging off his jacket, and as he wriggled he shed an impressive collection of leaves from his hair.

  “What would your parents think of you, Finnigan?” Mardy yelled, tightening her grip so Finn choked. “What would your poor mum and dad say about you stealing my food, eh?”

  “Nothing, ’cause they’re dead, aren’t they!” gasped Finn. “Their grabbers got ’em, ’cause they weren’t clever, like me.”

  “Living in the trees won’t help you, stupid boy,” said Mardy, finally dropping him. Finn sprinted toward the nearest tree and scrambled up the trunk, shivering. “Your grabber will make itself some wings and fly!”

  Hanging behind her on the wash line was her wolf-skin rug. Kestrel always felt a twinge of pride when she saw it. Her dad had hunted that wolf years ago and given the skin to Mardy as a present for curing his fever.

  “If I see you anywhere near my house again I’ll get the Trapper to flay the skin from your body,” Mardy screeched at Finn. “He’ll make a rug out of you!”

  Kestrel snorted
with laughter. Her father would never hurt another person. Finn scrambled up the tree and leaped away. Kestrel ran after him on the ground below. He beamed madly when he saw her and helped haul her up.

  Kestrel, despite trying to look cross, felt giggles explode inside her. Finn snorted, too, and within seconds they were both helpless.

  “You idiot!” she gasped as Finn howled. “One day she’ll rip your head off!”

  Finn was laughing so hard he couldn’t answer. Kestrel waited for him to calm down, but her own giggles were rising in her like hiccups. They both rolled around, snorting, until Kestrel hit him on the head and he stopped.

  “Cake?” he said, offering the squashed brown package.

  There was an excited chirrup from somewhere in the tree, then Pippit shot out and scrabbled up Finn’s arm.

  Finn scratched him under the chin, and Pippit stretched out.

  “Ffffff,” Pippit said, so overcome with adoration that he couldn’t speak.

  “Suck-up,” Kestrel said, rolling her eyes.

  They all ate fistfuls of sodden cake, letting crumbs patter onto the ground below. The day was ending and the moon was coming out, smooth and pale in the dimming sky. A cold breeze stirred the trees. Kestrel leaned back, her bones aching, enjoying the cool air on her face. For a few minutes all she wanted to do was sit down and rest. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine where the breeze had come from—maybe the sea, which Granmos had described over and over in her stories.

  Those stories were the only good things she could remember about her grandma. Kestrel automatically looked down at her scarred hand. She couldn’t remember where the scars all came from, but she had a vague memory of being taught to fight with a knife. She could see Granmos lunging at her again and again, her colored-rag coat flapping, her silver rings and her locket glinting as they caught the moonlight. Kestrel clenched her teeth, willing the memory away, and pushed her hands into her lap so she couldn’t see the scars anymore.

  Her gaze fell on the woodchopper’s house instead, half-visible through the trees. She remembered Hannah, standing outside her house, staring at the grabber’s trail.

  “Finn,” she said, opening her eyes. Finn was almost asleep. “Will you go see Hannah tomorrow?”

  “No,” he said bluntly. “We hate her, remember?”

  “Just check that she’s okay. It’s her dad who got taken. Please?”

  “Fine,” he said. He looked up at the sky. “It’ll snow soon,” he added, brightening. “We can make snowballs and drop them on people’s heads.”

  The thought of snow made Kestrel’s skin prickle.

  Her dad always, without fail, came back to the village before it snowed. He could smell the weather coming days in advance, and as soon as there was the slightest hint of a snowflake he returned. The forest was even more dangerous than usual in the snow. Sometimes you were lucky and it was only a light smattering that quickly melted away, but other times it became a chilly death trap. Even Kestrel got lost when the snowdrifts were as high as her head, and there was no telling what monster would leap out at you when you couldn’t see anything but vague shapes. If you were outside of the village when it snowed, you were practically asking to fall off a ledge or wander straight into the grasp of a slavering beast. That was the only reason she was back in the village now. If she had her way, she’d be stalking through the places in her grandma’s notebook for days, only returning when the black dog decided it needed to check up on her.

  If her dad didn’t come back soon, it meant something was wrong. Kestrel looked up, praying for the weather to hold, but the sky looked ready to burst.

  “Finn,” she began, feeling silly.

  “I didn’t see him,” he said awkwardly. Kestrel tried to ignore the empty ache in her ribs. “I found one of his burned-out fires the other day,” he added more kindly, pulling her hair to distract her. “It was only a few hours old. So he’s been around. He’ll be back before the snow comes.”

  “Yeah,” said Kestrel. “I know. It’s just that . . . it’s been weeks.”

  “Don’t worry about him,” said Finn, and Kestrel nodded. But she wanted to talk about him so much. She wanted to ask questions like Do you think I’d know if he died out there? And What if his grabber got him?

  Finn blinked as though he’d only just seen her, then tilted his head and inspected her face. “Where’d your eyebrow go? You’re all lopsided.” He wriggled his own eyebrows, making them dance like caterpillars, and Kestrel snorted with laughter.

  “It was my mum,” she said. “Now the other kids will have something else to laugh at.”

  “They’re idiots,” he said. “They’re just jealous. We have way more fun than them.”

  Kestrel felt her mouth curve into a smile. Finn was as different to the other villagers as Kestrel. He wasn’t stuck to the ground like they were; he wasn’t slowly rotting inside, turning dark and sour. He saw the sky and the sun every single day. He slept in a wooden crate, and he ate birds for dinner. His feet didn’t touch the ground for weeks on end.

  Pippit, who had quietly finished eating the cake and was now as fat as a balloon, burped and head-butted Kestrel’s hand for attention. She felt like all she needed in the world was on the branch with her.

  “Oh. I was going to tell you,” said Finn, looking sheepish. “I think the kids found your burrow. They’ve been through your stuff, and, er . . .”

  He tipped a pile of things into Kestrel’s lap. All that remained was an old shoe, a tarnished candleholder, a broken cup, and a fork with two prongs missing. Kestrel reached into her boot and added the silver ring from Pippit, seething.

  Three years of finding things in the forest, gone. She’d always thought they meant something—that they were a puzzle to solve—that they would help her understand the way out. They couldn’t belong to the villagers, who would never venture into the forest, let alone carelessly drop their things. They must have come from the outside.

  And now it was ruined. Kestrel wanted to shout at the kids who had done it, but even through her cloud of anger she knew it would only provoke them to do something even worse.

  “Where are we going tomorrow?” Finn asked, clearly trying to distract her.

  Kestrel pulled her grandma’s notebook from her pocket and felt for the dog-eared page she’d marked earlier. Her grandma’s spiky handwriting crawled across the paper, sharp and black and cramped.

  Granmos had made it difficult to read anything in the notebook. She’d written in zigzags instead of straight lines, or put the words back to front. She threw the letter e around like confetti and drew pictures in the middle of paragraphs. Kestrel hadn’t made it any better. Her own additions dodged in and out of each sentence, weaving through a mess of arrows and diagrams and wonky letters. And every page contained a pencil map she’d drawn of a different part of the forest, traced over the top of the writing, as part of her attempt to make sense of its never-ending paths and infinite trees.

  Kestrel flipped past pages about giant spiders which can jump a surprisingley longe way, believe you me; strangling ivy whiche can take down a bear, really, I’ve seene it; and face painters, whose sweete smelle makes you sicke, and they can transform to look like someone you trust. . . .

  “The Salt Bog,” she said, finding the page. “I’ve got a good feeling about it. Like something big’s going to happen there.” Kestrel wanted to jump up and go immediately, but it was stupid to brave the forest after dark unless you had to.

  “Maybe we’ll find the way out,” said Finn.

  “I have to find my grandma’s grabber first,” Kestrel reminded him. When she said the word grabber, Finn twitched and looked around.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Kestrel asked, watching him closely.

  “Don’t say that word,” Finn snapped. “They . . . they might be able to hear you.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” she
said. “You’re not scared, are you?”

  “No,” he said quickly. “I’m not scared of anything, am I?”

  “’Course not,” she said.

  Finn stared grumpily into the trees.

  “I know,” Kestrel said after a moment, desperate to break the silence. “Let’s play a game.”

  “Can’t we play tomorrow?”

  “We’ve escaped the forest,” she said, nudging him. “Go on.”

  “Okay,” said Finn, grudgingly uncrossing his arms. “But we’re not on the ground. I hate walking.”

  “Okay, we’re in the sky.”

  In her mind the village was blowing away, and the tree they were in was stretching toward the clouds. If she tried hard enough she could even feel the wind on her face. “We’re walking in the air,” she said. “We’re being chased by—”

  “Lightning,” said Finn, and he grabbed her hand, sending a jolt of fierce joy up her arm.

  “We’ve got to keep moving,” said Kestrel. “We’ll die otherwise.”

  “I know,” said Finn, and they ran into the darkening sky, shouting, the air crackling all around them.

  * * *

  That night the sky was as dark as oil. The wolf fire was dull and orange, and it sent up great, dirty plumes of smoke that hid the moon. Kestrel was curled up in an old fox burrow at the edge of the village, dead leaves piled around her for warmth. She’d tried to get Finn to come down, too, but he insisted on sleeping at the top of a tree, which rocked and swayed like a ship.

  Kestrel was half asleep when Pippit uttered a terrible hiss. Kestrel’s eyes flicked open. Something slipped between the trees, but it was gone in an instant.

  “Dad?” she said, then realized how stupid she sounded. Of course it wasn’t her dad. She would hear his traps clanking from a mile off.

  “What can you smell, Pip?” she asked. Pippit tugged on her ear, urging her to stay in the burrow, but she pulled herself up and stepped toward the shadows.