Darkwood (4 page)

In front of her was the forest, behind her the cleared ground of her uncle's land. Annie took a step forward and stopped. Impossibly, the air here seemed denser, blacker than the air where she had just been standing. She could hear her own breathing, the
who-whoo
ing of an owl, the wind sifting the pines. Then, behind her, came a
thud, thud
, pause,
thud thud
, the sound of a big man running, stopping for a moment, then running on. A light bobbed in the distance, moving steadily closer.

Annie looked frantically toward the forest, then back at the approaching light, then toward the forest again. The forest belonged to the kinderstalk. Whatever the people of Dour County took by way of lumber, the kinderstalk took back: in livestock, in human life.

The thudding grew louder, until she could hear the crunch of stones under her uncle's boots. She looked down at the cats. They were sitting just within the ring of light from her lantern, staring up at her calmly.
Oh, not this. Anything but this
.

She opened the little glass door in the lantern and blew out the light.

The darkness roared over her, a landslide, an avalanche. The black air, heavy as earth, filled her throat and banked in her lungs. Her eyelids, too, felt heavy, as though caked with darkness. With effort, she closed her eyes and opened them, but there was no difference between the two.

Uncle Jock's footsteps paused a moment in confusion, then started up again more quickly than before. Annie dropped to her hands and knees and began to crawl through the dark. The cats pressed close. When her knuckles scraped bark, she grabbed the trunk and inched her way around until she felt she must be on the opposite side from where she had started. The light from Uncle Jock's lantern paused at the edge of the forest. She could see him now, or the parts of him the lantern illuminated, pacing back and forth: now his greasy hair, now his patched pants, now the glint of the long rifle he carried over his shoulder. Once she saw his face. He looked terrified.

So he fears that man more than this, more than the dark, more than the
…

Uncle Jock turned suddenly and plunged toward her through the trees. Annie ducked behind the trunk and wrapped her arms around her knees, making herself as small as she could.

He raised the lantern and glared into the darkness.

“
Girl!
”

Uncle Jock put his rifle to his shoulder and fired. He jammed another bullet down the barrel and fired again. One heavy boot crunched down on Annie's hair. She clenched her teeth and kept silent. For long minutes, Uncle Jock went on firing shot after shot into the darkness, pausing only to reload and take new aim at whatever it was he hoped to kill.

Then, as if in answer to the shots, the kinderstalk began to howl. First one, a long, single note, then another and another, until they grew into a chorus. There was no telling how many there were, or how far away. Annie imagined one for every tree in the forest, thousands upon thousands, all moving toward this one place, all moving toward her.

Quiet, quiet, quiet
, she thought, to keep her fear inside.

The lantern shook in Uncle Jock's hand, spilling light among the pines. Slowly he lowered his rifle. He took a step back. One voice separated itself from the rest, high and thin, very close by.
A female
, Annie thought, and wondered at the thought. What did it matter?

With a muffled cry, Uncle Jock spun on his heel and began to run back toward the cottage. The howling stopped, but now Annie heard a different sound. It began as a sort of hiss, then grew to a murmur, the sound of water over rocks. The first body brushed past her. A second followed, so close she could
smell its mingled scent of blood and pine sap. Five passed, now six, without seeming to notice her. But kinderstalk could see in the dark. Surely they had spotted her? Smelled her? A seventh passed, then stopped. Shaking, biting her lip, Annie waited for the attack. Something blunt and soft touched her shoulder, and she heard not a snarl but a whine. Then silence. The thing was gone.

Annie's fingers trembled so badly she had to try three times before she was able to light the lantern. Part of her strained toward the cottage—had they reached him? Was Aunt Prim safe? But another, stronger part urged her away, while she still had a chance. The lantern shone on Prudence and Isadore sitting among the roots of the tree, looking at her as calmly as before.

“What now?” Annie whispered. Izzy turned and trotted deeper into the wood.

They walked for what felt like miles, crossing streams, zigzagging through thickets. She tried to concentrate on where they were going, to remember her way back, but the dark made a fool of memory. She cowered at every scuffle in the undergrowth, every birdcall, but the kinderstalk did not show themselves again.
Because of Uncle Jock. They're still … don't think it!

At last Isadore stopped at the base of an old oak tree. The trunk was so thick that five people holding hands could not have reached all the way around it. Hundreds of branches, some thicker than her entire body, some as slender as her
smallest finger, stretched up into an infinity of black sky. Prudence sat between Annie's feet and together they watched Isadore scramble up the trunk like a squirrel. Annie looked down at Prue, who twitched her tail. She tried to smile but the flesh of her face felt cold and heavy.

With a jump she caught hold of the lowest branch, then planted her feet against the trunk and walked herself up until she could hook her knees around the branch and scoot on top of it. The next branch was easier to grab, and she climbed steadily upward through the dark. The lantern illuminated little more than her hands and the end of her braid, swinging in and out of the circle of light. Once she became so disoriented that she had to stop and spit to be sure which way was down.

Izzy was waiting for her on a branch that was perhaps six inches wide and what felt like a hundred feet above the earth.

Annie frowned at him.
You want me to sleep here
?

In answer, he leapt from the branch toward the trunk and disappeared. The lantern revealed an opening in the trunk, not much larger than the window to her garret room. The space inside was far too small for her to lie down, but at least she could sit upright without hitting her head. Years ago, fire had blackened the inside of the trunk and now the walls shone dark and shiny in the candlelight. Spiderwebs crisscrossed overhead and droplets of sap, as hard and bright as amber, decorated the walls. Yellow and brown leaves carpeted the floor. Was this where the cats lived before they came to her? The thought made her feel safe and a little sad. Prudence wriggled into the space between her bent knees and chest and started to purr.
Annie held up the lantern. Only a stub of candle remained. She would have to be quick.

The book's cover was made of faded black leather like the top part of someone's old boot. The title, printed in the center in gold letters, read,
The Trap of Vice
, by Chilton Smalle. Annie turned to the first page.

Beware, my fellow men, the trap of Vice! She with her talons will rend your sense, your sensibility, Nay! Your very sovereignty! Turn instead to Virtue, to gently guide you
.

Well, that was boring stuff. Annie flipped through the book until she came to the page with her sister's writing in the margins. The book stayed open easily here, as if Page, or perhaps Aunt Prim, had spent hours studying it. Chilton Smalle's words had been scrubbed away and the paper bleached dry, and then someone had written new words on top. The new text was written longhand, the writing blocky and precise like a child trying to show he had mastered his letters.

Annie couldn't read a word of it. The letters were decorated with dots and waves and strange fillips. Some of them more closely resembled pictures. Was that a tree? A raven? Page's notes filled the margins, but except for a few words Annie recognized—
slip, graft
—the notes didn't make any more sense than the rest. Page's handwriting had always infuriated Annie: so tiny, so perfect, even the ink splotches somehow charming. Annie's own handwriting looked like something scratched in the sand with a stick. But now—now she could hardly bear ever having resented Page for anything. Carefully she returned the book to her hip pocket.

There had been something else pressed between the book's worn covers: a lock of Page's hair, pale blond, almost white, long enough to wrap twice around her wrist. This Annie tucked into a pocket hidden between two buttons, right over her heart. Then she closed her eyes, to pretend it was only the regular dark of sleep coming, and blew out the light.

A bird's cry woke her during the night. Prue's striped face peeped up from her lap. Annie stroked a finger down the cat's nose.
Funny I can see your stripes
, she thought.
Funny dream
.

Thock! Thock! Thock!

Aunt Prim liked to wake Annie in the mornings by pounding on the trapdoor with her broom handle.

Thock! Thock! Thock!

Annie put her hands over her ears and tried to roll over. Her nose scraped something rough. The pounding continued, only it didn't sound so much like pounding as relentless tapping. And the pounding wasn't coming from beneath her, but from somewhere near her right ear. Annie opened her eyes. She could see bright blue sky and a fringe of gold leaves. She was not in her bed, and there was no Aunt Prim. Annie scooted forward and stuck her head outside the hole to look around. A woodpecker hammered away at the side of the tree, the feathers on his crest a red blur. He made her feel happy somehow. Just in time she spotted Isadore, pressed nearly flat on a branch above the bird.

“Izzy, no!”

The woodpecker flapped away. Isadore landed neatly in front of her and began to wash his paws as if nothing had happened. Annie glared at him but the light feeling around her heart remained. Then she looked down. They
were
a hundred feet in the air, maybe more. Prudence, standing on a branch about halfway down the tree, was no more than a dark dot.

The climb down turned out to be much easier than the climb up. It was almost fun, like walking through a giant jigsaw puzzle: a foot fitting here, a hand there, a shoulder pressed against the trunk for balance, a knee wedged into the crook of two branches. Annie did not feel afraid again until the very end, when both her feet were planted firmly on the ground. For there, at the base of the tree, deep vertical gashes had been made in the bark. Annie reached to touch the pale wood of the exposed trunk. The highest marks were more than twelve feet off the ground.