Claws (9780545469678)

by Grinti, Mike; Grinti, Rachel

  More cats weighed down her legs, and Cricket was curled up under her arm, her tail tickling Emma’s nose. She sat up, pushing them all away.

  “What happened? Where am I?”

  “In the trailer park,” the Toe-Chewer said. “Chloe saw you fall off the roof. She saved you. Good thing you’d turned her back into a harpy before you went into the club. Good thing your parents aren’t here, too.”

  The last thing Emma remembered was falling, after she and Jack had —

  “Where’s Jack?” she said. She looked around, trying to spot his white fur.

  “Recovering from what your giant chicken did to me,” Jack said from behind her. “I tried to tell her that we should stay there, that we needed to find a way back in, but she wouldn’t listen! And now we’re running out of time!”

  “Next time I’ll leave you on the roof, then,” Chloe called from her perch on the trailer roof. “Anyway, you wouldn’t have gotten pinched if you hadn’t moved so much. My instincts kick in when small, furry animals are squirming in my talons, all yummy and delicious.”

  “Thank you,” Emma told Chloe. “For saving me and Jack.” Her shoulders were aching, probably from where Chloe had dug in her talons to fly her to safety. She must have passed out.

  “Everyone needs a harpy on their team,” replied Chloe, but she looked pleased. “It’s been a long night. I’m going to grab a nap.” She tucked her head under one of her wings.

  “We have to go back in there and find the twenty-seventh floor,” Jack said. “I might have found it if she hadn’t swooped in!”

  “I don’t think we’ll find it that way,” Emma said. She rubbed her eyes, trying to think. “We have to get to Helena before they turn her into a faerie. There might be others, too.” She stopped, remembering. “Those girls at the club said something about the twenty-seventh floor connecting to the Deep Forest, but that doesn’t make any sense? New Downtown is nowhere near the forest, or Old Downtown.”

  “The Deep Forest isn’t the same as Old Downtown,” Jack said. “It’s somewhere else. The forest over Old Downtown can take you there, if you know where to look, but the Deep Forest goes to other places, too.”

  “Is it still a forest, though?” Emma asked. “Some kind of super-extra-magical hidden forest that leads right to Helena?”

  “Something like that,” Jack said.

  “We don’t go there,” Cricket said. “Nothing to hunt. And it’s easy to get lost.”

  “It can’t be that bad,” Emma said. “Can it? Isn’t there some kind of magical forest map we could use or something?”

  The cats stared at her in that way they had, which said that no matter how much magic she could do, she was still a really strange Pride-Heart.

  “So the little cat returns,” a too-sweet voice said from behind her.

  Emma turned. The hag was peering at her over the fence separating the two trailers.

  “They were looking for you last night. Mommy calling the police, yelling at trees, waking harmless old ladies from their dreams and making accusations. I told them I wouldn’t eat cat even if I had my teeth.” She smacked her lips. “The woman’s crying reminds me of older times, ah, when my belly was still full. They left with police.”

  Emma flinched and walked to the fence. “I didn’t mean to worry them. But I found my sister. I was trying to get her back.”

  “Playing with faeries, eh?” the hag said, smiling her toothless smile. “It’s a wonder you came back at all. They hunts in packs instead of all alone like hags, but not so different. Both needs childrens, only faeries wastes them on stupid things.”

  “What do you mean? Why do they need children?”

  The hag laughed. “Yes, clever faeries. They likes to live near humans, near human childrens.”

  “At least they don’t eat anyone,” Emma said.

  “That they don’t,” the hag said sadly. “They turns them into little wisps of dream instead of nice, soft meats. So thin a tiny breeze could blow them all away. Maybe soon hags will be like that, too. All the skin and bones melting away until only shadows is left.”

  “You’ve seen them turning children into faeries?”

  “Long ago,” the hag said. “When I still had my teeth. Hiding in the Deep Forest, trying to forget my aching belly. No hiding from it now.” The hag sighed heavily.

  “But that means you know how to get to them! To the ceremony.”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “Hags can walk through the dark places. Forest is bigger than it looks, and has deep roots.”

  Emma tried to stay calm, but her hopes were already rising. “Take me there. I have to find my sister before it’s too late, before she turns into one of those things.”

  “Ha! And why would a hag do something like that?” the hag said. “The Deep Forest is dangerous. There is more there than poor hags.”

  “I have power,” Emma said. “I’ll protect you.”

  “And who will protect you?” the hag said, chuckling. “Even cats fear the Deep Forest, as do any who can feel afraid.”

  “Please,” Emma said. “If you know the way to the faeries, help me.”

  The hag shuffled back and forth, muttering to herself for several moments. She tapped her long fingernails against her trailer. Then she turned back to Emma, a strange gleam in her eyes. “Yes, yes, will takes little cat to Deep Forest and will sniffs out your sister, but you must finds your way back out again.”

  “So you’ll do it?” Emma asked. Getting there in time was the important thing right now. Once she found Helena, she’d figure out how to get home.

  “Hags not meant to waste away in little metal boxes,” the hag said. “Hags belong in the Deep Forest. Starving here, and still hunted. But not so helpless as they all thinks. Wait on that side. Don’t crush my mushrooms.”

  The hag hunched down and dug in the dirt at the back corner of her yard. She dug until Emma heard her fingernails clink against glass, then she pulled out a dingy-looking bottle with a stopper. Clutching it to her chest, she hobbled back toward Emma.

  “What’s that?” Emma asked.

  The hag grinned. “Hags is sneaky, too. I hids it before they came to tear out the rest. The smallest one.” Then she opened the bottle and tipped it over her hand, shaking it gently. A small, white object fell into her palm. It looked like a shark’s tooth. The hag picked it up and held it against her gums. There was a soft sucking sound and the tooth disappeared into the hag’s mouth. “Now, what will I have to taste? Have you brought a nice little finger bone for me to suck the marrow from?”

  Emma stared openmouthed at the hag. “You mean one of Helena’s? No, of course not! Why would you even think something like that?”

  “Needs to have something to start with. I can finds faeries, but if you wants your sister I needs a taste, a smell, the sound of little tears. Too much distance. Too many lost little childrens. Hard to find just one.”

  “I could bring you a photograph. And some of her clothes might still smell.”

  The hag chuckled to herself. “I taste and smell and hear, but not like a cat. Nothing like a cat. Needs a part of her. Bones is best, but flesh and blood will do. Have you brought me some of that? Yes, yes, of course you have. A little treat for a poor old woman.”

  “You can’t have one of my fingers, if that’s what you mean,” Emma said. “I’m still using them all.”

  “Not all of them. Not the little ones,” the hag said, smacking her lips together. Then she scowled. “But no, the cat will be all in your bones now, settling in and making them bitter. But a little bite should do the trick. Easy enough to tell you and sister apart now that you smell of cat.”

  “I don’t trust her,” Jack said, from behind Emma. “You don’t need her kind of magic.”

  “It’s fine. We made a bargain and everything. Bargains between crags are always magic in the movies: You can’t break them.” She tried to sound flippant, but knew she wasn’t really pulling it off. She raised her voice. “Besides, I’ll have my p
ride with me in case she tries anything.”

  As if on cue, Emma’s pride came forward to surround her in a protective semicircle.

  “The Heart-Killer’s right,” Fat Leon said. “A hag’s kind of magic doesn’t help anyone but her.”

  “And hunters do their own hunting,” added Cricket, her tail flicking from side to side.

  But Emma held out her arm. It was the only way to find Helena in time. “Just a small bite and that’s it. Will it, um, hurt much?” She immediately felt stupid for saying it. She was supposed to be a Pride-Heart now. She had to be braver than that.

  The hag’s fingers twitched as if to grab Emma, but she hesitated, glaring at the cats. “Yes, yes, a little bite, that’s all,” she whispered.

  “Do it, then,” Emma said.

  The hag grinned and wrapped one hand around Emma’s wrist, and her mouth opened. And then Emma saw her shadow move. It was too dark and solid to be cast by moonlight, too real. The shadow opened its mouth, wider and wider, wide enough to swallow Emma whole. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She wanted her claws, wanted to fight. Was this what it was like for the children the hag had eaten? Her cats hissed and spat, and Emma felt her palms tingle. You made a deal, she told herself. And it’s Helena’s last chance.

  The shadow’s mouth closed over her arm just below the elbow. There was a sharp pain, and a numbness, like she’d been stung by a wasp. Then the shadow melted away.

  The hag made a face like she’d just bitten into something rotten. “Not so sweet now. Not so sweet at all. But maybe for the best, maybe not so good to taste and not feel full.”

  “Can you find her? My sister?” Emma asked anxiously, rubbing her elbow. There was a bright red mark where the skin had been pierced.

  “Maybe, maybe. If this little cat can get past howlers, not much farther to faeries. I sniffs out your sister then we parts ways, yes?”

  “Yes,” Jack said. “We have to go now, before we’re too late.”

  Emma’s pride looked tense, excited. Their tails swished back and forth, and their eyes were shining.

  “I’ll wait here for you,” said Chloe, raising her head from her wing. “If your parents come back, I’ll tell them you were here.”

  “You aren’t coming?” Emma asked.

  “Can’t,” the harpy sighed. “Even I’m not stupid enough to fly in the Deep Forest, and someone has to make sure your parents don’t go charging after you. That’s the sort of thing human parents do, right? Like in that episode about the kidnapped twins and the evil robots from the opposite dimension. But you have to tell me everything that happened when you get back. I’m sure you’ll make it. You have some crazy luck!”

  Emma nodded. “I’ll be back. Don’t worry about me. Tell my parents not to worry, either, okay?”

  Chloe put her head back under her wing. Loud snores began to shake the trailer.

  Then Emma and her pride followed the hag into the forest.

  * * *

  “How long will it take to get there?” Emma asked.

  “Hard to say, hard to say,” the hag mumbled. “Maybe short for us, long for them. Or long for us, short for them. Moonlit paths is never the same, especially when the forest wakes.”

  Soon the ruined buildings of Old Downtown loomed over them. They walked past the Red Caboose, toward the spire of a cathedral. Water trickled out of a cracked fire hydrant in front of a convenience store. The store’s windows were smashed and the ground was littered with candy wrappers. Strange noises broke the silence. Maybe a squirrel darting away, or a deer. Maybe not. Were there still trolls around? Cats and hag and human moved quietly in some unspoken agreement. The darkness seemed to cling to the hag, and she mumbled as they walked, counting trees and old houses, turning occasionally or doubling back.

  Emma gave Jack a look as he padded beside her. He seemed tense, not quite himself — whatever that really was.

  “You’ve been to the Deep Forest before, haven’t you?” she said.

  “Once, when I needed to escape,” Jack said. “It’s no place for a lone cat, weak and starved for magic.” He shook his head. “But that was far from here, and years ago. I’d never have remembered how to get back there. All I remember is the journey home. I followed a tiny red star, and that’s what brought me to Old Downtown. Convenient.”

  “Was it when you killed your Pride-Heart?” Emma asked.

  Jack said nothing, and Emma knew she’d guessed right.

  “Why’d you kill her? Why’d you become a Heart-Killer at all?”

  For a while he didn’t say anything, and Emma thought he wasn’t going to respond. But then, very softly, he said, “Because to her I was nothing, and to me she was everything. I cared too much about her, about the magic she gave me. The magic was a leash. Or a cage. I was like those crags in the faeries’ zoo. I had no choice. I needed to be free of her.”

  His words sent a cold shiver up Emma’s spine. So what does that make me? she wondered. But he was the one who’d offered her the Heart’s Blood to begin with. They were friends, and he couldn’t use magic anymore anyway. It wasn’t the same.

  The hag stopped in front of an old house. Or at least, what remained of the house — a plain front door, barely hanging on by its rusted hinges, and the remnants of a moss-covered brick wall.

  The hag walked up to the door, knocked on it, and then ducked through.

  Emma eyed the broken wall suspiciously and went around instead. Only, when she reached the other side, the hag wasn’t there.

  “Not that way,” came the hag’s voice. “You has to go through door.”

  “What kind of magic is this?” Emma asked, walking back. The hag was waiting for her on the other side of the door, just as before.

  “Door magic,” the hag croaked. “Simplest kind. Takes you into places. Takes you out again.”

  “Wait!” Jack said. Emma looked behind. He seemed different somehow. Smaller. There was an unfathomable expression in his one eye. “Are you sure you want to do this? The Deep Forest is dangerous. If your sister really wants to be a faerie . . .” He sounded strange, almost unsure.

  “What are you talking about?” she said. “Come on, you’re the one who made this possible. You’ve taught me cat magic. You’ve made me a Pride-Heart. It’s okay if you’re scared. I’m scared, too, but we’ll be all right.”

  Cricket snorted. “A Heart-Killer worried about a Pride-Heart. How ironic.”

  Jack glared at Cricket, then turned back to Emma. When he spoke again, he sounded like his old self. “You’re right. We can’t turn back now, not when we’re so close. You go first.”

  Emma shook her head, then stepped through the door. Her cats followed. She looked around. The ruins of Old Downtown had gone. Now there were only trees. And there was a strange moonlight, more blue than any she had ever seen. It reminded her of the fake moon in the faerie nightclub on Ocean Avenue. Emma sniffed the air. It smelled like forest. Rich earth, the faint hint of some nearby animal. But there was something else — not a smell, just a feeling. Something potent and exciting and dangerous. This wasn’t just the forest anymore. It was somewhere else. She could feel deep, wild magic all around her. She felt the Heart’s Blood change inside her, become alive somehow. This way, it was saying, pulling her forward, drawing her farther into the trees.

  “We walks carefully,” said the hag. “This is the starts of Deep Forest. Is dangerous, tonight most dangerous. High Spring. Time for things to change and grow. Many creatures abroad worse than hags, and without love of cats or humans.” The hag grinned, her mouth like a dark pit in the strange moonlight.

  “We don’t have time to walk carefully,” Emma said. “We have to hurry.”

  “Humans is always hurrying,” the hag grumbled. “Even when they is cats, dragging poor old hags into the dark places. But little cats must take care or they never comes out again.”

  CRAG FACT OF THE DAY:

  “The average hag is one thousand times more likely to die of starvation t
han from being shoved into an oven.”

  CragWiki.org

  Lights gleamed in the darkness as they made their way into the Deep Forest. Some flickered like distant bonfires, others glowed steadily like streetlights.

  “What are they?” Emma asked the hag.

  But it was Jack who answered. “Wisps. They lead you off your path until you’re lost, then they vanish. It’s easy to get lost here.”

  Emma didn’t doubt that for a moment. Though the moonlight was unnaturally bright, a thick fog seemed to lie between the looming trees, and beyond them was only a hazy, impenetrable blackness.

  There was a tension in the air, like the Deep Forest was waiting for something. Somewhere far away a horn blew, and there was the distant sound of hooves thumping on the ground. A wolf howled, and others picked up the sound. Was that what the hag meant by howlers? Branches seemed to appear suddenly out of the darkness, scratching at Emma’s arms and face, pulling at her hair. She knocked one of the branches away, and there was a flutter of leathery wings. Then they were gone.

  She paused. She smelled something different. Musk and damp fur. The hag seemed to sense it, too, for she stopped abruptly and sniffed.

  “What is that?” Emma whispered.

  “Howlers,” the hag said, and she shrank back into the forest shadows.

  A pair of red eyes appeared among the trees. It was almost impossible not to stare at them. Then Emma heard a growl. The sound reverberated in her chest and made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Her pride hissed and pulled magic from her, and their hissing turned into roaring as they became large cats.

  More red eyes appeared, drawing closer, and Emma could make out the howlers now: saber-toothed wolves, as big as any of the huge cats behind her. Emma’s heart pounded as she scanned the trees, trying to figure out some clever magic that might prevent a bloody fight.

  Then one of the wolves stood up on two legs. Reaching up with its paws — no, they were hands — it grabbed the fur of its head and pulled. The wolf’s neck split apart, and a man’s head came free. Yet even as it hung there the wolf-head still breathed, the red eyes staring at her.