Where the Woods End

by Charlotte Salter

  Everyone turned their attention to Finn.

  “It doesn’t work like that,” he said awkwardly.

  “So you don’t know that she kills the grabbers,” said Hannah.

  “She does kill them,” said Finn. “She brings trophies back.”

  “Might be having a chat with ’em instead,” said a girl called Erin. “Might be telling ’em who to eat next.”

  Kestrel wanted to launch herself out of the tree at them, but she clenched her teeth and stayed quiet. Finn would tell them to shut up.

  “Do you help her kill them?” Hannah asked. Kestrel rolled her eyes. Finn wouldn’t fall into her trap.

  “I help a bit,” said Finn, twisting his fingers together nervously. Hannah continued to look at him. Finn wriggled. “I mean, I don’t actually see much.” He looked at Hannah pleadingly. “She won’t let me get close.”

  Kestrel was so outraged that the words slipped out before she could stop them.

  “Liar!” she shouted, and everyone looked up.

  “What do you mean?” Hannah asked, so unsurprised by Kestrel’s presence that Kestrel wondered if she’d known she was there all along.

  She opened her mouth to say that Finn had always refused to go near a grabber. He made terrible excuses, like the trees are too slippery or, time to steal cake from Mardy! He didn’t even like touching the ground in case his grabber came after him. And now he was lying about it.

  “Coward!” she screamed. Her voice was full of ice, but her face was burning.

  Finn looked like he’d been slapped.

  She strode away, violently pushing branches and twigs out of her path. They were meant to stick up for each other. Finn was different to the other villagers.

  Wasn’t he?

  A few seconds later she heard Finn scramble up the tree and follow her.

  “Take it back!” he shouted. Kestrel sped up. She didn’t want him to see her face, or her probably red eyes. She heard Finn pause, then two thumps as he flung his shoes away. Then he was right behind her, and she knew she’d never outrun him in the trees. She stopped and turned to face him, her arms crossed.

  He looked like an alien. His face was approaching clean, and he wasn’t wearing any feathers. He smelled like soap. All of his Finn-ness had been washed away.

  “Why are you friends with them?” she asked, hating how petty she sounded. Pippit was sitting on her shoulder, his hair raised, baring his teeth at Finn in solidarity. “They’ve bullied us for years, and now you’re wearing their clothes!”

  “They never bullied me,” Finn said. “Now take. It. Back.”

  “What about the time they greased your ropes and you fell out of a tree?” she said, ignoring him. “What about when they set your coat on fire? Or when they—”

  “That was ages ago,” he snapped. “They’re different now. If you were nicer—”

  “Nicer?”

  “You know what I mean. Hannah said—”

  “Hannah hates me, and she’s using you to get to me,” Kestrel yelled.

  The dead leaves crackled on the ground below them. Pippit stiffened.

  “Something important,” he hissed under his breath. But Kestrel didn’t have time for the other kids now.

  She still had the terrible wolf-skin cloak under her arm. She threw it around herself and fastened it at the neck. Finn flinched as she raised the hood, two long, wolfish incisors dangling in front of her eyes.

  “This cloak is to remind me who I am,” she said savagely. “I’m a hunter. I’m going to find my way out of here. And,” she added imperiously, fixing him with her coldest stare, “you can come as well, if you stop being such a monumental cowardly idiot!”

  Finn looked at Kestrel as though she’d told him she could fly.

  “You’ve lost it,” he said. “We’re never going to escape.”

  “You’re just too scared to try,” she replied coldly.

  Finn clenched his fists. His face twisted spitefully.

  “It was just a game,” he said, deliberately slow. “There’s no way out.”

  Kestrel gaped at him. The world was falling over. All the weeks they’d spent planning their escape—all the plans they’d made—all the promises. There had to be an outside. How would she escape her grabber otherwise?

  “It’s not a game!” she yelled. A flock of razor-winged blackbirds flew up from a nearby tree, squawking.

  Finn opened his mouth again, but he was cut off by a growl. Kestrel looked down, her stomach plummeting. It wasn’t the village kids below them. The black dog was staring up at them from the ground. And it had seen her and Finn together.

  Kestrel tried to duck from sight, but it was too late. The dog’s nostrils flared as it took them in, dribbling in anticipation.

  “Finn,” said Kestrel. Her mother would kill him. She was going to kill Finn. “You’ve got to run!”

  “Why?” he said, backing away. “What’s happening?”

  “Go, you moron!” she shouted. The dog yapped. Finn yelped and scrambled away. Kestrel started running after him, but her feet got tangled in the beetle dress, and she stumbled. The dog leaped, its powerful jaws snapping around the bottom of her boot, and she plunged to the ground.

  BONES IN A BOX

  “Let go!” Kestrel shrieked.

  The black dog had her by the shoelaces. It was pulling her through the forest at a terrific speed, panting and growling under its breath. Kestrel grabbed fistfuls of earth, but nothing could stop it.

  “Kestrel!” Finn yelled in the distance, but she was moving too fast even for him. They were going toward her mother’s house. It was too late.

  Pippit bounded up behind her. He landed on her face and ran into her pocket. She wanted to clutch him in her arms, but all the breath was being knocked out of her by the lumpy ground.

  The wolf fire had been abandoned and the path to the house was clear. The dog headbutted the door open and dragged Kestrel inside. She scrambled to her feet as the door slammed behind them, feeling like a sack of bruises.

  Kestrel slammed her fists against the door, but it was locked tight. The dog yawned, as though it had known exactly what she would do.

  Everything was cold and silent. Kestrel peered into the gloom, but for the first time she could remember her mother wasn’t there.

  The trapdoor to the cellar was open, and there was a strange scraping sound coming from below.

  “What’s she doing?” Kestrel asked the dog suspiciously. The dog had planted itself in front of the door to stop her leaving, but its eyes kept flicking to the cellar. It obviously hadn’t known her mother would be down there, and it didn’t know what to do now.

  It just growled at her instead. Pippit shuffled and nudged his way up her sleeve, where it was safe.

  Kestrel trod softly toward the hole in the floor, scattering the abandoned dressmaking pins. What was it her dad said? I think she’s hiding things. She felt a cool shiver in her spine. If her mother was hiding something, where would she keep the evidence?

  The dog twitched an ear, sensing that something had changed. Kestrel took her chance. She threw herself at the trapdoor and pitched headfirst into the gloom.

  She landed on stone, her arms breaking her fall. She scrambled up quickly, reached for the trapdoor, and slammed it shut just as the barking dog tried to wedge its muzzle through the gap.

  Pippit snickered gleefully in her sleeve.

  Kestrel waited with bated breath, certain her mother would have heard the commotion, but nothing happened.

  “Mother?” Kestrel whispered, regretting her impulsive behavior. The cellar was a lot bigger than she’d imagined, spreading far away from the house and quietly absorbing any kind of noise. It was cool and crammed with leering shadows. “Are you here?”

  No answer.

  A candle had been left by the stairs. It il
luminated the long, thin cellar, which was piled with junk and covered in soft, gray spiderwebs. It was like a museum of her early childhood. Kestrel could see her old bed, her books, her toys—everything that had been moved to make room for her mother’s weave. It was all heaped against the walls, leaving a narrow passage down the middle that Kestrel could only just about squeeze through. The end of the pathway was pitch black.

  As Kestrel squinted into the gloom, she heard the long, low scraping sound come from it.

  She couldn’t turn back now.

  She stretched her arms out and moved forward, feeling her way through the shadows, although part of her was shouting to run back upstairs and take her chances with the dog. She could hear its toenails clicking on the floorboards above them as it paced back and forth.

  As Kestrel walked, her fingers brushed against a patch of wet mushrooms. She shuddered and almost moved on, but then recognized the chair they were growing on. It used to sit by her bed, back when she slept in the house.

  There was something carved in the left arm.

  She paused, digging the mushrooms away with her fingernails until she could see what was underneath.

  There were eleven letters, cut deeply into the wood. Each one was in her own cramped writing: C h o o s e a n a m e.

  It was as though someone had run their fingers down her back. When had she carved that there? And why? Then it happened. It began as a slow, cold trickle inside her head.

  “Not now,” she muttered desperately, stuffing her fingers in her ears. But then her right ear went pop, and the images were as unstoppable as a flood.

  * * *

  Kestrel was in her mother’s cottage, her fingers tightly wrapped in the blanket under her. She was sitting on the bed, facing the wooden door with hundreds of faces in the wood, trying not to cry.

  Smoke poured from her grandma’s pipe and crawled over the door, making it look as though the faces were shifting. Shadows flickered on the walls, and Granmos issued another bloodcurdling shriek that seemed to come from the mouth of the biggest monster. Kestrel stuffed her fingers in her ears. This was one of the worst training sessions she’d ever lived through. Granmos had taken one of her fears and made it even worse.

  All of a sudden, the shrieks fell silent. Her grandma sighed and leaned over. Kestrel flinched, expecting her to do something horrible, like dig her fingers into her arm.

  “Putting your fingers in your ears won’t help,” Granmos said. To Kestrel’s surprise, she patted her on the knee and smiled. “Choose a name for the faces. Make friends with them. Hadn’t thought of that, had you?”

  Kestrel stared at her.

  “Training you is like trying to train a brick,” her grandma said, shaking her head and picking up her pipe again. “Just try it, duck.”

  Kestrel watched the faces through the cracks in her fingers. She reluctantly fixed her gaze on the face with wide eyes and a jagged, twisting mouth as it flickered through the smoke.

  “That one’s called Fearn,” she blurted.

  “You can do better than that,” Granmos said. “What else?”

  Fine, Kestrel thought. She screwed her eyes up, and the face twisted into a comical grin. Your name’s Fearn, she told it, feeling stupid. Your job is to keep the door locked at night, to keep me safe. You’re scared of . . . spiders. And you’re allergic to toads.

  It worked. The face twisted away and sank into the wood. Kestrel latched onto the next face, her mouth dry, and the next, and the next. Soon they no longer looked like monsters. After a while she stopped seeing the faces at all, and the door was just a door.

  “Good girl,” her grandma said, grinning widely. Had Granmos ever been this proud of her before? “Monsters want you to be scared. Otherwise they’d have nothing. So this is your birthday present. The best piece of advice you’ll ever get. Got it? Write it down somewhere so you’ll remember it. Name your fears, duck, and acknowledge them.”

  * * *

  Kestrel opened her eyes to the cold, gloomy cellar. She had an uncontrollable urge to get away from the vision. It felt so real that she couldn’t convince herself it was made up.

  “Wassat?” Pippit asked, nudging her with his face.

  “I dunno,” Kestrel said, touching her ear. She felt like she’d been privy to something important and terrible. “I think I’m remembering things. None of it makes any sense.” She shivered. “My gran told me to name the things I was scared of. I carved it in the arm of the chair, so I wouldn’t forget it. But I forgot anyway.”

  She could almost feel her grandma’s fingers tickling her under the chin. She’d never given Kestrel so much as a hug before, but in the memory, she seemed . . . almost kind.

  And what did you do? said a nasty voice in Kestrel’s head. You let her grabber in.

  A soft clattering sound came from the next room. Kestrel stood up quickly, but her mother didn’t appear. She left the old chair behind and walked toward the noise, breathing in air thick with shut-up secrets. Slowly, she passed through the doorway. There were three steps leading down, then a new space opened to the right.

  The new room was full of boxes and bags piled against the walls. Her mother had her back to the steps, and she was rummaging in a large chest with another candle on the floor beside her. Kestrel had the urge to run and push her mother in, but she held herself back.

  The red thread that trailed from her mother’s sleeve was piled on the floor next to her, and the other end snaked into the wooden chest. Kestrel knew at once that she was intruding on something very private.

  Her mother was leaning over the chest, so preoccupied with examining whatever was inside that she didn’t seem to notice Kestrel behind her. Kestrel took another step forward, then another. She was so close she could almost touch her.

  Kestrel held her breath, her spine aching.

  The chest contained a large, dusty quilt with dozens of bumps in it. Before her mother could see her, and without knowing quite why, Kestrel reached forward and yanked the quilt aside.

  Her mother jumped. She grabbed Kestrel by the wrist and slammed the lid shut, but it was too late. Kestrel had seen the bones, long and white, wrapped in the quilt.

  “Why are there bones in there?” Kestrel asked, yanking her wrist out of her mother’s grasp. She backed toward the wall again until she could feel the stone pressed into her spine, desperate to put space between them.

  Her mother’s face was white. There were two red blotches on her cheeks, as bright as poisoned apples, and she was frozen like a rabbit in lamplight. Kestrel looked at all the boxes around her, wondering what was in them. More bones? More teeth? Something worse?

  “What was in the chest?” she demanded again. Her mother was staring at her as though she’d been caught chewing up a mouse. “Tell me what you’re hiding!”

  “It’s nobody you know,” her mother said, finally finding her voice. She smoothed her skirt with shaking hands, and slowly regained her composure. “What are you doing in here?”

  “The door was open,” Kestrel said. She didn’t have a plan other than dive into the cellar and look, which in retrospect was quite stupid. “The dog—”

  Her mother looked up, hearing the whining of the dog above them, and her face darkened. She stamped on the candle and grabbed Kestrel by the hair, dragging her back to the trapdoor.

  “Stop struggling, you brat. You’ll ruin your dress.”

  “I’ll struggle as much as I want,” said Kestrel, trying to kick her mother’s feet from underneath her. “I’ll scream so hard everyone will think you’re killing me.”

  “They’ll be glad someone’s finally doing it,” her mother snapped.

  She hauled Kestrel up the steps, flung the trapdoor open, and pushed Kestrel out. The dog immediately ran circles around her mother’s legs, barking. Her mother put her hand on the dog’s head, quieting it. She listened for a moment.

/>   “You broke your promise about the boy,” her mother hissed, baring her teeth at Kestrel. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out? Do you think the consequences are funny?”

  “Don’t,” Kestrel said, forgetting all about the bones in the cellar. “Please, I’m sorry—”

  Her mother pushed through the weave toward the door. Kestrel grabbed her arm and tried to pull her back, but she flung it open and shoved Kestrel outside.

  “You’ve forced me to do this,” she said, stepping into the light.

  She was holding Finn’s tooth. Kestrel tried to grab it from her, but her mother threw her to the ground with astonishing ease.

  Kestrel reached for her spoon, but her mother snatched it and flung it away.

  She could see Finn at the edge of the village, one hand planted on a tree for support. She willed him to run away, but he saw Kestrel and took a step toward her. Even though he had betrayed her, Kestrel felt a sudden rush of love for him. He was petrified of her mother, and of the open ground, but he was coming to help her.

  “Run!” she yelled to Finn.

  “This will teach you to be disobedient,” her mother said.

  Her mother yanked a ball of black wool from her pocket and started tying it around Finn’s tooth, preparing the spell. Kestrel tried to grab her hands, but her mother shoved her aside. Then she reached behind her and plucked another piece of string from the weave, the one with Kestrel’s tooth in it, and gave it a single tug.

  It felt like someone had punched Kestrel in the chest. She hit the ground with an umph, landing next to her spoon. She struggled to her feet, but her legs were numb and she fell over again.

  Finn ran toward her. Her mother finished tying the black wool around Finn’s tooth. Then she smiled at Kestrel, so sweetly she wondered if she was letting Finn go.

  “Don’t!” Kestrel shouted at him. “She’s got your tooth!”

  Her mother dropped the bundle of wool and stamped on it. Finn screamed and fell down as though he’d been crushed from above. He was on the floor, writhing like a worm, sobbing and snotty. Kestrel used all her strength to pull herself to her feet, but her mother caught her with her free hand and pushed her down again. Finn’s screams grew louder.