Darkwood (3 page)

Firelight colored the room a vivid orange. Deep shadows gathered in the corners where the light didn't reach.

Annie stood with one hand on the ladder. She could still climb back up, climb back into bed and curl up with the cats and wait for daylight to make sense of things. But daylight wouldn't bring sense, only the Drop. She thought of her old friend Gregor. Annie had been on her way to his house with a gift for his ninth birthday: a rock impressed with a bird's footprint; some kind of gull, she thought, though Gregor would know for certain. A wagon had passed her going the opposite way, and she remembered thinking it odd that they had put up the rain cover in clear weather. When she reached his house she found his mother standing alone in the yard, weeping. Later, over dinner, Aunt Prim told her, “I have bad news for you. The kinderstalk have eaten that friend of yours. Last night. They ate his shoes, everything. Now, no crying. It's a fact of life we must all accept.”

“But I saw …,” Annie began, but Page caught her eye and shook her head.

Later, Annie lay with her head in Page's lap. “Did the kinderstalk really eat Gregor?”

“Monsters got him, I can tell you that much. But not you. I won't let them get you.”

Annie still had the gull rock, pocketed in the hem of her dress. It kept the skirt from blowing around in strong winds.

She would need to be ready before her morning chores. And because she had never, in all her life, managed to wake up earlier than Aunt Prim, that meant she needed to be ready tonight. The only food she could find was a handful of dusty rinkle nuts that her aunt had been threatening to cook for a month. Now: money, rifle, and then the last, the most important, thing.

Of course the trunk was locked, but Annie hadn't lived twelve years in this house without learning a thing or two. Aunt Prim kept the key in
The Book of Household Virtues
, tucked between page 786, “Vinegar in the Use of Removing Blood Stains,” and page 787, “Vinegar in the Use of Curing Barn-foot.” When Page was alive, Aunt Prim used to make them sit after dinner and listen to recipes, medical cures, or worst of all, favorite sayings:

Hard work and no complaints turns chaff into wheat
.

Quiet mouse gets the apple; noisy mouse chews the pip
.

If a cow wanders into the yard, be quick to shut the gate
.

Always, before she closed the book, Aunt Prim turned to the page in the back where she wrote down the names of
children eaten by kinderstalk: Phoebe Tamburlaine was the first, followed by Cowley Crawford, Meg Winters, Walter Rout, and on and on until the last, Gregor Pepin. Annie couldn't resist looking at the page now. To her surprise, there were more than a dozen new names added after Gregor's. Beside each name Aunt Prim had printed the date of death and another number. Gregor's number was nine, the same as most of the children listed before him. But the numbers beside the children listed after him got smaller and smaller, and the dates of their disappearances closer and closer together. The last name was Minnie Wythe, taken a month past, age three.

The trunk was nailed to the floor at the foot of her aunt and uncle's four-poster. Aunt Prim slept in the narrow slice of bed between Uncle Jock and the wall. Uncle Jock's huge feet, kicked free from the blankets, gave off a smell of wet wool. Annie knelt in front of the trunk and eased the lid open. Linen. But underneath the linen was hidden a smaller chest, tightly buckled with leather straps. She had seen it once before.

Aunt Prim had stepped out to the privy; Uncle Jock was off cutting.

“Annie, quick, I want to show you something.” Page was kneeling over the trunk, her face flushed.

“What is it?”

“Proof.”

The ringstone was beautiful, most of it a soft brilliant
pink, with some stones reflecting mauve and green tones. Colored stone was less valuable than white, but Annie thought it much nicer to look at.

“Proof of what?” Annie whispered.

“That Uncle Jock is as bad as we think. There's Aunt P. Hurry!”

Annie opened the chest.
I'll only take what I need. Only a few, and only the darkest
. But there was nothing inside. Not one stone. She looked around the spare cottage in disbelief. Had he spent it all? There had been enough stone in that chest to buy a farm like Uncle Jock's twice over.

There was nothing else of value in the cottage. Nothing, unless—did she dare?

Every night before bed Uncle Jock dropped his clothes on the floor and put on his long underwear, and every night Aunt Prim picked up his clothes and put them away in the dresser.

After the man left, Uncle Jock had poured himself another drink and patted his knee.

“Come here, Prim, and have a look at this.” He held the white ringstone up to the light. “I've never seen anything like it.”

Aunt Prim put aside her sewing, but she sat on the bench, not his lap.

“It's so beautiful!” She smiled, and almost looked beautiful herself. “It's how I imagine a star might look. A fallen star.”
She reached for the ringstone but Uncle Jock raised it over his head.

“Tut, tut, Primmy. This is my special burden.”

Aunt Prim scowled. “Is it from the Drop?”

“Could be. Awfully fine for the Drop, though. Awfully fine.”

“What did he mean about whetting your appetite, Jock? This was to be the end of it.”

“We'll be free, my wild Primrose. We'll be free.” Then he kissed not his wife but the stone, and tucked it into his front shirt pocket.

It would be easy enough for Annie to get his shirt from the dresser and the white ringstone from the pocket of his shirt, except for one thing. Uncle Jock had made the dresser, and Uncle Jock was as lazy about carpentry as everything else. The drawers squeaked.

He's had five cups of whisky at least. Five cups! That should keep him snoring
. Still, Annie's heart beat faster as she eased open the first drawer. Socks and underpants. She tried the second. There it was, neatly folded but still smelling sourly of her uncle.

Aunt Prim was right. The white ringstone was as beautiful as a star, so clear and brilliant she almost expected it to give off heat.

The stone in her pocket made her feel bold and she shut the drawer too fast. The drawer jammed, the dresser shuddered, and
The Book of Household Virtues
toppled to its side with a bang.

Uncle Jock was on his feet in an instant. “Kinderstalk!” he roared, aiming his rifle at the dresser. When he saw Annie standing there he dropped the muzzle.

“You?”

Annie looked at her uncle and then at the book. Her mind said,
What if you miss
? But her hand knew what to do. The book struck him full in the face. He yowled and doubled over. Annie darted past him to the bed and thrust her hand between the mattress and the frame. Her eyes found Aunt Prim's stricken face, then she was across the room and up the ladder to the garret.

Annie half kicked, half dragged the heavy old mattress over the hatch, then stood on it for good measure. But what now? Already Uncle Jock was pounding on the door, lifting the mattress higher with each blow. One hand appeared through the hole. He heaved a shoulder through, then reached around and groped for Annie's ankle. She cried out and leapt clear of him, but soon his head and torso were visible. Annie looked desperately from her uncle to the window and back again.

“Don't you do it, girl!” Uncle Jock shouted. The nose of his rifle emerged through the trapdoor. She had no pistol, no knife, nothing.

Her uncle must have had the same thought, because he began to laugh. Blood trickled from a cut over his eye.

“You're caught now, kitten.”

Annie snatched up her cloak and lantern, stuffed her feet into her boots, and threw open the window. Outside, though she couldn't see it, was the steeply slanting roof of the
passageway that led to the privy. Prudence streaked out and Annie wriggled after her. Isadore stayed back. Annie's front end came through all right but her hips stuck in the window frame. Uncle Jock had one knee through the trapdoor now. Desperately, Annie pushed against the window frame with her free hand and kicked with her legs like a swimmer. Still she didn't budge. A hand closed around her ankle. She kicked frantically with the other foot and caught him in the throat. He gasped and coughed and then, with a shout of pain, let go of her leg. Her hips slid through. Before the darkness swallowed her she got a glimpse of orange fur flying and her uncle's fingers pressed to his cheek.

She was outside, after dark. She was
outside
. The roof's sharp peak pressed into her belly. For a long moment she just hung on, too terrified to move. Then a pair of familiar green eyes glinted ahead of her, reflecting the faint light from the garret window. Prudence.

Annie inched along in the direction of the cat. Now she could smell the privy, and feel the flat boards of the privy roof under her hands. Prudence disappeared and Annie stopped, groping forward with one hand. There was the edge of the roof, and the empty air beyond it. Starting at her waist, she walked her fingers carefully up her side until she found them: twenty-two pilfered matches, nestled in a pocket against her rib cage.

The lantern light penetrated no more than a few feet in
any direction, not enough to see the ground below—How far was it? Six feet? Ten?—but enough to see Izzy's orange forehead and white chin as he came up beside her. She felt the slight disturbance of air as he leapt from the roof. Then she held her breath and jumped after him into the darkness.

Annie landed hard on her feet, then staggered forward onto her knees. The lantern sputtered but did not go out. Then she was up and running, the tip of Isadore's tail just visible ahead of her within the halo of lantern light. Prudence was waiting for them at the yard gate. Annie balked.
Leave the yard
? But the cats ran on.

“Prue, Izzy!” Annie ran and ran, stumbling over rocks and tree stumps, until she felt the sting of pine needles lashing her face.

“Izzy, wait!”