Where the Woods End

by Charlotte Salter

The weird, cloying smell should have warned her that she was walking into a trap, but she’d been stupid. Granmos had written about these creatures. The words unfurled in front of her eyes like long, spidery streamers.

  Their sweete smelle makes you sicke, and they can transform to look like someone you trust. They steal body partes from you, and use it for their terrible magic, in whiche they controle youre body and minde. With an iteme of clothinge, they can wear any face for a shorte while. Be warned, for they are lazey and wille make you their slave.

  “Face painter,” said Kestrel. She swallowed a wave of nausea. “You’re a thief and a liar. You stole my dad’s coat and changed your face to look like him.”

  The face painter might have been grinning, but she only had the impression of countless yellow teeth.

  “I could wear his face all day long if I wanted,” it said. “All I need is a body part, and I’d have his looks forever. You’re lucky I only borrowed his coat. Bones are much better.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Kestrel growled, boiling with rage.

  The face painter snorted, and Kestrel launched herself at it. She hit the face painter square in the chest, and it fell backward with a cry.

  She reached for her spoon. But the face painter grabbed her hands with surprising strength and pinned her to the ground.

  “My mother will find you!” Kestrel cried, wriggling uselessly under its impressive weight. “She lives in the village, and she has an awful black dog with teeth like a mincing machine. She’ll rip you apart!”

  The face painter, still holding her down, looked at her with new interest.

  “I’ve heard of her,” it said. “And you’re the daughter who hunts? That’s, ha, fascinating.”

  “Yeah!” said Kestrel, hiding her surprise. “So you’d better let me go right now!”

  The face painter grabbed her hair and tore a clump out. Kestrel yelped in pain, but then it relaxed its grip on her. She backed away quickly. The face painter twirled the strands of hair between its fingers, grinning as Kestrel ran toward the trees.

  With every second that passed she knew that her dad was closer to being eaten by his grabber. Pippit poked his head out of her pocket, wiffling his nose, picking up the trail again.

  The face painter muttered something under its breath, then there was a short, sharp pain between her ears as though someone had pinched her brain.

  Snap.

  Kestrel stumbled to a halt and looked around, blinking at the unfamiliar cage of trees. Why was she in a clearing? Where was she going? She tried to grab hold of her memories, but they slipped away like water. The last thing she could recall was talking to Finn in the tree, the snow swirling around them. Why couldn’t she remember why she was here?

  “Kes?” Pippit hissed.

  Kestrel turned around. She saw a creature with a blank, smirking face and pale, greasy skin. She took a step back, catching a scream in her throat. The faceless creature snorted with laughter.

  “What are you?” she asked sharply, but it didn’t reply. Kestrel felt a bolt of panic, and marched toward it with her spoon out. “Where am I?”

  She raised the spoon, but the creature snatched it away and put it in its pocket. “Don’t get angry,” it said. “I’m only tinkering with your brain.” It twirled something between its fingers, and Kestrel recognized it as a clump of her hair.

  Face painters, her grandma had said in the notebook. They steal body partes from you, and use it for their terrible magic. Kestrel snarled.

  “Tinkering? You’re using magic to steal my memory,” she spat. “Tell me why I’m here!”

  Pippit nipped her hand. “Trapper!” he hissed. Kestrel felt a pang of fear. Something was wrong. Something to do with her dad. But what? She had to find him.

  The face painter twirled the clump of her hair in its fingers again, sneering with its empty face.

  “Don’t even think about leaving,” it said. “If you leave this clearing I’ll tie another knot and make you forget even more. I’ll make you forget how to survive the forest. You’ll be dead within seconds. You’re my slave now.”

  Deep in the forest, a wolf howled and was echoed by a dozen more. The face painter grinned, tapping the spoon in its pocket, reminding her that she had no weapon.

  At least, that’s what it thought.

  Kestrel opened her mouth and loosed a huge, teeth-shaking howl that made the face painter clap its hands over it ears. She did it exactly how her dad had taught her, bending her voice in the same way the wolves did when they found food. It echoed through the trees and sank into the depths of the forest.

  “What was that for?” the face painter snapped.

  Kestrel flexed her fingers, willing the wolves to hear her. For a moment it seemed that nothing was going to happen.Then softly, something padded out of the woods behind her, its paws crunching over the ground. The breeze stirred, and she caught a whiff of something animal, something dirty and hungry and bloody.

  The face painter’s expression changed.

  On the other side of the hollow, standing in the shadows, was a tall and bony wolf. The wolf’s eyes were covered in a cloudy film. It looked half starved, and clumps of its fur were falling out. It had a slavering expression that screamed I will eat the first thing I knock to the ground.

  The face painter silently backed away from her. Kestrel grinned triumphantly, then realized that she was standing between the wolf and the face painter, alone in the clearing.

  “Oops,” said Pippit.

  The wolf sniffed the air, straining toward her. Kestrel scanned the ground, looking for something to defend herself with. Her eyes fell on her dad’s coat, and she caught a faint whiff of blood and bacon. There was no time to question how it had gotten there. The wolf crouched, ready to pounce, whimpering excitedly.

  It took a moment for the pieces to connect in her head. She grabbed the coat half a second before the wolf started running toward her and lobbed it at the face painter. The face painter caught it without thinking, bewildered.

  The wolf twisted away from Kestrel in a blur of gray fur and leaped in the other direction. The face painter screamed and dropped the coat as the wolf’s teeth snapped. The mangy wolf drew back, its mouth dripping red where it had sunk its teeth into the face painter’s arm.

  Kestrel grabbed a branch from the ground and held it in front of her, but the wolf wasn’t interested in attacking her yet.

  It flew for the face painter’s throat. The face painter was strong and almost pushed it to the ground, but the wolf was starving and desperate and filled with fury, and it sunk its teeth into its neck.

  The face painter gurgled, slumped to the ground, and fell still. The wolf dug its nose into the face painter’s shoulder, then withdrew sharply, realizing it had made a mistake. It turned its attention to Kestrel. She backed away, grabbing a branch from the ground and holding it out in front of her.

  “Good wolf,” she said, digging her fingers into the heavy branch. Her shoulder was burning. “Enjoy your tasty treat. You don’t want me. I’m just a—”

  The wolf jumped. It flew toward her with its mouth open, a blur of teeth and tongue. Kestrel swung the branch without thinking. The wolf and the branch connected midair with a sharp smack, and the branch was knocked from her hands.

  Kestrel readied herself for another attack, but the wolf was on the ground, breathing shallowly, a red patch on the side of its head.

  Pippit charged over to it.

  “Geddit!” he yelled, pulling out tufts of its fur.

  “No!” Kestrel said, surprising herself by pulling him away.

  Pippit gave her a look of pure disgust.

  “It’s just a mangy old wolf,” she said. Really, the thought of killing something as it lay on the floor made her feel ill. Some hunter she was. “It probably won’t last much longer anyway.”

  Kestrel le
aned over the face painter’s body and snatched her spoon from its hand. She ripped the clump of her hair from its fingers and pulled it to pieces, letting them fly away in the breeze.

  Without warning, the face painter coughed and grabbed her ankle with astonishing strength. Kestrel screeched and tried to kick it away, but its fingers were locked tight.

  “We’re not done with each other yet,” it wheezed. “I’m going to leave you a, hnur, gift. When I took your hair, I, hnur, saw a few things. Things you’ve forgotten. Shall I shake them loose?”

  “Let me go!” Kestrel shouted, bending down to pry its fingers away.

  The face painter grabbed her ear and pulled her head to the ground, holding her down with an iron-like grip. She struggled to get free, but the face painter inserted a long nail in her ear and wriggled it around.

  “Get lost!” she yelled, wrenching its hand out.

  Suddenly, the hand went limp. The face painter was dead. Kestrel jumped away and rubbed her ear, wishing she could unscrew it and wash it in boiling water.

  Then she felt something like a cold stream trickling through her brain and pooling in the front of her head. Something in her head went pop, as though a bubble had burst.

  And then she was no longer in the forest.

  * * *

  Kestrel was standing in her mother’s house. There were cool hands on her shoulders, with red-stained fingernails and thick silver rings. Granmos. Kestrel looked out the window, straining to see into the dark forest.

  They weren’t alone. They hadn’t been alone for weeks.

  The shadows between the trees moved, and Kestrel caught her breath. A tall and nightmarish creature slowly emerged from them. He approached carefully, a large key swinging from his waist. Kestrel could see his yellow eyes shining like wet marbles. They were fixed on Kestrel’s grandma.

  “Grabber,” Kestrel whispered as her grandma’s stalker walked toward the house. She was gripped with the desperate urge to run away, but her grandma held her firmly in place. The grabber hadn’t ever been this close before.

  “That’s right,” her grandma whispered in her ear. “I met him a couple of weeks ago. I call him Horrow. That was my father’s name. Suits him, doesn’t it? Give him a wave, duck.”

  Kestrel raised her hand slowly, transfixed by the creature’s half-dead face. It turned its head and stared at her.

  Then, slowly, it raised its own hand.

  And it waved back.

  * * *

  Kestrel opened her eyes. She was still in the face painter’s clearing, but the vision had been so strong she could almost feel her grandma’s hands on her shoulders.

  “Kes?” Pippit mumbled in her ear. “Wot?”

  “Nothing,” Kestrel said, wriggling her finger in her ear. She was disturbed. It had felt so real it was almost like a memory, but she knew that she had never waved to her grandma’s grabber. And it was impossible that the grabber had been there, fully formed, for weeks without attacking. Kestrel crumpled up the strange vision like a piece of unwanted paper and tossed it out of her mind.

  “Trapper,” Pippit urged, pushing his nose against her face. “Gruh!”

  “Where’s my dad?” Kestrel asked urgently, looking around. “What happened to him, Pip?”

  Her gaze fell on her dad’s coat, which was in a pile next to the dead face painter. Immediately her ear went pop again, and Kestrel’s memory flooded back so fast she almost fell over.

  She winced as she remembered falling from the tree, and the black dog standing over her. She’d followed the black dog to her mother’s house and promised that she would never speak to Finn again . . . and she’d done it because something awful was happening.

  In the distance, a dozen wolves howled in celebration. Kestrel felt all the warmth leave her bones.

  Her dad was being chased by his grabber.

  “Dad!” she yelped, dropping the coat. Panic swept over her. She had to catch up with him. Kestrel jumped over the face painter’s body, making for the trees.

  “Smell trail,” Pippit said. “Still there. Trapper!”

  “We’re not too late,” Kestrel said, dizzy with astonishment. “We’re going to make it!”

  They raced into the trees, leaving the dead monster and the stunned wolf behind them.

  TERRIBLE HUNGER

  Kestrel knew at once where her father had been. His footprints were stamped deep into the earth, running jaggedly from tree to tree as he tried to shake the grabber off. There were paw prints laid over the top of them, deep holes with an explosion of claw marks around each one.

  But the grabber still hadn’t caught him.

  Her dad knew the forest too well to be easily cornered. Kestrel had never come so close to finding a grabber before it ate. She could tell from the way the grabber had weaved between the fallen trees and boulders that it was stretching the hunt out for as long as possible. She prayed it would continue to lag behind.

  The trees were riddled with holes, and thick red bloodmoss covered the ground. It slid away from under her feet as she ran, revealing patches of black, wet mud.

  “Noise,” Pippit said, leaping to the top of a giant mushroom. It bent slowly under his weight, and Kestrel grabbed him before he could fall off. “There!”

  He was right. Kestrel had been breathing so hard she hadn’t heard it, but there was a crackling sound in the trees to her right, perhaps only a hundred yards away. It was like something big was shifting its weight, purposeful and patient. Kestrel knew at once from the way the noise turned and quieted that it knew she was there.

  “Do you think it’s him?” she asked, dizzy with hope.

  The hill flattened to a plateau. Kestrel wobbled to her feet, following the trail with Pippit in her arms. Her heart was hammering, but she made herself breathe deeply and evenly.

  “Hide,” Pippit said as they drew closer. He could feel the same chill in the air as her. “Run!”

  “No,” said Kestrel, sounding braver than she felt.

  The trail was at an end. The ground was all torn up as though a great struggle had taken place, but there was no blood.

  “Show yourself,” she called, her voice bending and breaking, gripping her spoon. “I’m ready!”

  “Kestrel!”

  She heard her father’s cry half a second before the shadows moved and his grabber lunged at her. She stumbled backward, surprised, and hit a tree. All she could make out was a swirling mass of teeth and raggedy fur, all pinned together with a low, rattling growl. She stabbed at it with her spoon, trying to catch its face, but it had fallen back again. It was the same color as the shadows and completely unmeasurable. Kestrel looked for a heart, an eye, anything that she could drive her blade into, but her hands were shaking, and the grabber was so big that she couldn’t make sense of any of it, and the spoon was slipping in her grasp, and what on earth was she thinking anyway, fighting with a kitchen utensil?

  “Kestrel!” her father yelled above her.

  “Dad!” She wavered, then clenched her teeth against the tremble in her voice.

  Her dad’s huge hands closed around her wrist and hauled her into the tree. The grabber leaped and snapped its jaws at Kestrel’s ankles, but she had already withdrawn them. Her dad was above her again, scrambling away from the grabber and onto a higher branch. Kestrel, shocked to her senses, clambered after him as the grabber took a chunk of wood out of the tree with its powerful jaws.

  “What are you doing here?” her father said angrily as she hauled herself onto the branch, which creaked alarmingly under their weight.

  “You promised your grabber wasn’t after you,” she snapped, even though it was the last thing that mattered right now.

  “That was for your own good,” he said, looking so furious she almost feared him more than the grabber.

  “How long have you been here?” she asked, struggling to get
the words out through the lump in her throat.

  “Long enough to know I’m beaten,” he said, his voice falling.

  The grabber lunged at the tree, taking another chunk out of the wood and making it shake so hard Kestrel’s teeth chattered. It drew back, paused, and lunged at the tree, then did it again, and again. As it struck over and over, Kestrel could see every bone and sinew, every piece of its terrible body.

  The grabber had taken the shape of a wolf, the hugest wolf the forest had ever seen. Its backbone was a string of pearls tied together with fibrous weeds from a pond. Its paws were made from chicken bones, all clasped together with gristle from a cooking pot. Tatty fur was stuck to its ribs, partially wrapped around its innards: the lungs of a deer, the heart of a bear, and the stomach of a wolf.

  Its eyes were large and white, plucked fresh and shining from something huge, with a yellow glow behind them. Its teeth were snatched from the mouth of a terrible fish, its jaws cracked from the body of an old boar. Its legs were made from shards of bark, which crackled as it moved. Its flanks were dripping with tattered rags. The grabber had risen from the belly of the forest, dragging with it all the fallen corpses it could find, taking their best and worst parts to create a body of sharp points and bristles.

  “Dad,” Kestrel said, trying to keep her voice light. She couldn’t stand how white and scared his face was. “You know when I stowed away in your bag?”

  Her dad looked surprised. Then, to her relief, his lips twisted into a rueful smile.

  “I do,” he said.

  “We were miles from home, but you marched me all the way back,” she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “You didn’t let go of my hand once. You were so mad none of the creatures dared come near you. I saw them cowering behind the trees.”

  Her father looked at the grabber again. Kestrel grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back to her.

  “Look at me,” she said fiercely. “I’ve still got the spoon you gave me. Before you marched me back you sharpened it and gave it to me. You had to tell me which end to hold. You said that if anything snuck up on me, I had to hit it hard. Do you remember?”