Poison (7 page)

She crept up the stairs, taking giant steps. At the top, she listened again, but once more there was nothing. A faded brass handle was set into the door at the height of her eyes; she heaved it down and the door popped ajar, opening inward. She peered out through the gap.

The hallway beyond was massive, with its dirty walls of rough stone cast in a smeared light from outside. Skulls were set in sconces high up, with half-melted candles waiting unlit within their jaws. Their eye sockets and teeth were blackened by smoke, making them look strangely daemonic. Poison stared. She was not particularly scared; it was just that there was something odd about them, and it took her a few moments to work out what it was. Of course: the skulls were normal size, and in this house that made them look unnaturally small.

The angle of the sun through the window at the end of the corridor seemed lower than Poison expected; perhaps she had spent longer in the coal shaft than she had imagined.

Fear making her cautious, she stopped and listened again, but the house was eerily silent. A chill wind seemed to breathe through it, blowing gently one way and sucking back the next into the grimy lungs of the building.

She was about to step out when she heard a heavy thump from the wooden ceiling.

She shied back, ready to close the cellar door if anything should appear; but nothing did. Instead, she heard the loping of something massive overhead, the languid stride of a dog. Having never lived in a house with more than one storey, she was unaccustomed to deciphering the sounds of movement on the floor above, and it took her a long moment to realize that the thump had been the dog jumping down from whatever perch it had been lying on. She listened hard, her heart fluttering from the fright, but the dog seemed to have stopped moving.

At least that's one of them accounted for
, she thought to herself, eking what positive thoughts she could out of her predicament. She determined to herself that she would stay downstairs for the moment.

Finally mustering her courage, she slipped out of the relative safety of the cellar and into the corridor. She felt terribly exposed here, like a mouse scuttling along the skirting-board; but scuttle she did, as silently as her boots would allow.

The corridor ended in a great, stone room, in which a vast black cauldron was bubbling over a fire and an iron stove sat against one wall. It was spacious in proportion to the dimensions of the house, so it seemed unnaturally huge to her, and the cauldron was far taller than she was. Above the stove was a shelf, on which an assortment of clay pots stood. Poison presumed they were spices or some kind of witch's ingredients, but there were no labels on them.

Of course there aren't
, she thought to herself.
She's blind, isn't she?

There were no windows here, and the only light came from the blaze beneath the cauldron, making the room stiflingly hot and painting everything in shades of sullen red. A set of stairs ran up to her right to a balcony which overlooked the room, and a door beyond that led on to the second storey of the house. The balcony's railings were made of smoke-blackened bones, as was the chandelier that hung from the centre of the ceiling. It was this that snared her attention: a great cartwheel of human femurs, with skulls at each spoke, and in each skull an unlit candle. So entranced was she by this macabre sight that it took her a while before the most obvious thought occurred to her.

Who's tending the fire?

She felt a sudden alarm. The fire had certainly not been burning since last night; it would have been embers by now. That meant somebody had been feeding it coal. And it wasn't the dogs.

Was there somebody else here, someone Lamprey hadn't warned her about?

She cursed under her breath. She should not have been so naïve, to trust a bitter and dangerous thing like Lamprey. If half of what he told her about this place was true, then that was more than enough to deal with. What if he had been lying to her about the house being a passing-place? What if he had meant to send her to her death?

A soft mewl from above made her jump out of her skin. She was halfway to running back out of the room before she processed the sound in her mind and determined that it was a cat. She looked up, and saw it on the edge of the balcony, a black tom watching her with eyes that glinted green in the firelight. Furthermore, it was of
normal
size, which meant . . . which meant . . . well, she didn't know what it meant. It was gazing at her with an unsettling singularity of interest, and as she held its gaze, she felt curiously like it was sizing her up. After a moment, it wandered away and began gently scratching at the door on the balcony, wanting to be let through.

“Sorry, cat,” Poison said under her breath. “I'm not going up
there
for anything.” She wouldn't give much for the cat's chances, either, if it came across the dog that she had heard earlier. Better that it stayed on this side of the door.

There was nothing more she could see in this room, and she didn't dare to linger for long. She turned to head back down the corridor and go the other way. The second dog was still unaccounted for, and she had to find a good place to hide before . . .

night . . .

fell. . .

Her blood ran cold. The window at the end of the corridor was dark. The sun had set. She could have sworn she had not been in the house more than a quarter of an hour, yet in that time the day had worn from evening to dusk and beyond.

The cellar! She had to get back to the cellar!

But it was too late. From the far end of the corridor, where it turned the corner, she heard the heavy creak of stairs, and a thin, cracked voice floated through the house.

“
I can smell you, my dear! I'll have your bones!
”

The Bone Witch was awake.

 

Poison was frozen to the spot, terrified. A wild plan hatched in her head: could she make it to the cellar door before the Bone Witch got there? Could she clamber up the coal chute and get out before it was too late? She was caught between her fear of going further into the house and her fear of the thing creaking down the stairs, somewhere out of sight. She heard the dogs thumping about above, excited by their mistress's voice. Trapped by indecision, she wasted precious seconds in the doorway of the room with the cauldron.

“
Don't hide away, little one. I'll make dice from your knuckles! I'll suck your marrow dry!
”

The cat mewed, scratching at the door.

Poison made her choice. Rather anything than come face-to-face with the owner of that horrible voice. She clambered up the stairs, climbing each step with a giant stride that hitched her dress up to her thighs. When she got to the balcony, she looked down into the cauldron below and saw what was in it. Boiling bones. She should have known.

The cat backed away as she neared, alarmed. She ignored it, heaving on the handle and pulling the door ajar. The cat darted around her legs and through the gap like a flash. She took just enough of a look down the corridor beyond to see that it was empty, and then she went through and pulled the door shut behind her.

She fled, the hideous promises of the Bone Witch receding behind her. Somewhere ahead, she heard a deep barking, and it was taken up elsewhere by another canine throat. It was almost too dark to see; skulls lined the walls as they had downstairs, but their candles had not been lit for a long while. What did the blind care for light?

The cat had stopped up ahead by a side door and was looking back at her expectantly. The nearby barking was a frenzy now, and she heard the sound of another door at the end of the corridor rattling in its frame as one of the dogs launched itself at it with a snarl. She yelped in fright. Only a few inches of wood stood between her and the slavering creature on the other side.

“
I'll hunt you down, my pretty dear! I'll sniff you out!
” came Maeb's voice from below.

Reasoning that the cat would only go where the dogs weren't, she opened the side door for the cat and went through herself. It led on to a short, narrow set of stairs that went steeply up to a second door at the top. She had almost reached it when it was opened for her, and there, holding a candle in a metal tallowcatcher, stood a girl of about her age in a nightgown.

“Come inside! Hurry!” she urged, and her eyes were wide and fearful. Poison did not hesitate more than a moment. She scurried into the room and let the girl shut the outsize door behind her.

The room was tiny by the standards of the house, and the furniture inside it was of usual, human size. A bed stood just beneath one curtained window; a chest of carved drawers rested against one wall, scattered with combs and bone hairgrips and with a mirror standing on it. There was a wardrobe, and a little wicker basket for the cat, and a fireplace in which coal and branches were waiting for the flame to light them. It was an entirely normal girl's bedroom, though exceedingly dark, for the only light came from the candle that its owner now put next to the mirror.

The girl herself was a frail-looking, pretty thing, with golden hair in ringlets and wide, watery blue eyes. Poison had barely come into the room before the girl had snatched up a perfume bulb and was spraying her head to foot in it. She flinched automatically, but did not protest. The perfume was foul, an overwhelming and sickly violet reek; it was obvious that it was meant to cloak her from the Bone Witch's sensitive nostrils.

“Get under the bed!” the girl said, casting frantic glances at the door. “Go on, get under the bed!” she repeated, when Poison did not immediately react.

This time, she did as she was told. The girl sprayed herself liberally with the perfume as well, and then covered the room with it. Poison scrunched herself under the bed, and found the cat already occupying the space. It gave her a grudging glance and moved over so that she could slide in.

“
Come out, come out, my dear,
”
the Bone Witch cooed from below, and she heard the sound of her footsteps coming up the stairs, just outside the door. “
You can't run for ever!
”

Poison watched as the girl composed herself breathlessly in front of the door, straightening her nightgown and folding her hands before her as if waiting to receive royalty. Then the door creaked open, and Maeb loomed in.

Poison's heart shrank. The Bone Witch filled the room, her hunched back almost touching the ceiling. She was enormous, eleven feet high even with a stoop. She wore a moth-eaten black dress and a grimy apron, and a filthy headscarf was tied at her chin. The skin of her hands was wrinkled and disgustingly warty; her fingers were long and thin and tipped with broken nails. But it was her face that was worst of all. She seemed to have been
twisted
somehow, pulled out of proportion so that she resembled a child's drawing of a witch rather than any natural thing. Her eyes were merely blanks, skin grown over the sockets, and grey hair straggled out from beneath her headscarf and over them. Her nose was enormous and pointed, more like a beak, with massive elliptical nostrils that twitched as she sniffed the air. She had no chin to speak of, and her mouth was a wrinkled slash; but when she opened it Poison saw it was full of dozens of overlapping triangular teeth, like the shark she had seen in Lamprey's house.

Maeb's gargantuan nose wrinkled in disgust and she recoiled slightly.

“
Oh! Oh, you foul thing!
” she screeched. “
You've been wearing your perfume again! Didn't I tell you never to wear it? Didn't I?
”

The girl stamped twice on the floor.

“
No? Well, never again, do you hear?
”

One stamp.

The Bone Witch reached down and ran her hands over the girl's head and body. The girl's face tightened in disgust, but she remained still.

“
You're hiding someone, aren't you?
” the witch crowed.

Two stamps. Maeb leaned closer, until her nose was almost touching the girl's.

“
Don't lie to me, little one. I smelled her all the way here.
”

The girl stamped twice again.

Maeb sniffed the air again, questing this way and that. “
You're such a disobedient child. Always lying. If I find her, you'll be for the pot. The pot, I say!
”

The girl glanced down at where Poison hid under the bed.

“Stay still,” she whispered. “She can feel it if you move. Through the floor.”

Poison felt a shock of alarm, thinking for an instant that the girl had given her away. But Maeb was deaf, of course, and she heard nothing.

“
Come out, dear,
” the Bone Witch crooned, coming further into the room. “
Maeb needs her fresh bones, and you smell young and strong.
” She began to pat around with her warty hands, knocking brushes off the chest of drawers. The girl made a snatch to save both the candle and the mirror. Maeb did not notice, beginning to pat along the floor instead, shuffling closer to the bed. She was blocking the door with her bulk. Poison unconsciously tried to huddle herself smaller. In the flickering light of the single candle, she saw those long fingers brushing closer and closer, feeling along the floor, up the bedposts, on to the mattress. She cringed as she felt hands patting along above her, the Bone Witch cooing and moaning softly to herself.

“
Not here, then? Perhaps she's under the bed, eh?
”

Poison went still as stone.

Maeb's hands spidered blindly around to the underside of the mattress. Poison drew back, not daring to breathe, the Bone Witch's cracked nails passing within an inch of her cheek.

“
Yes, under here. . .
”

In the candlelight, Maeb's face suddenly came into view, as she stooped all the way down to sniff under the bed. Poison barely managed to suppress a cry of horror as the leathery, veined beak of a nose poked into her hiding place, twitching.

“
I can smell you. . .
”
she singsonged.

The cat burst out with a feline yowl, scratching the Bone Witch's sensitive nose and darting through her legs with a thunder of paws. She howled in surprise, flailing at the air, retreating back to the doorway with one hand clutching her nose protectively.

“
Oh! Oh, that vicious little thing! My nose! My nose! I'll catch it, so I will! That cat's for the pot!
”

But the cat was already gone, down the stairs and away. The Bone Witch moaned in anguish and stumbled out of the room.

“
I'll be back, you spiteful little child!
”
she promised as she stamped down the stairs. “
I'll have you for the pot, too! You and your cursed cat!
”

Then the door slammed, and she was gone.

Poison was still trembling when the girl came over to the bed and crouched down next to it, peering underneath with her candle.

“Don't worry,” she said. “She's got a terrible memory. By the morning, she won't even remember what she said.”

Poison crawled out from under the bed and allowed herself to be helped up.

“I'm Peppercorn,” she said timidly.

“Poison,” came the reply, as she sat down on the bed.

“That's your name?” Peppercorn said uncertainly. “How nice.”

“I chose it myself.”

Peppercorn brightened. “So did I! Mine, I mean. Maeb never calls me anything.” She put the candle down on the floor and sat down next to Poison. “You have lovely hair. I wish mine was straight.”

Poison didn't quite know what to say to that, so she changed tack. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” Peppercorn said proudly. “This is my room!” She got up and began picking up some of the things that the Bone Witch had scattered. “It's a bit of a mess, though,” she said apologetically.

Poison watched her in amazement. The girl seemed to have forgotten that Poison had come within inches of the Bone Witch's grasp. She carried on chattering as she tidied up.

“I've always been here, I think. I can't remember anything before, anyway. I clean up and keep the fires going, things like that. You have to cook bones all day before they're soft enough for Maeb to eat nowadays. And she likes the soup you get from boiling the marrow out into the water.”

“You look after the house?” Poison asked numbly.

“She'd eat me if I didn't,” Peppercorn replied, as if that was the most obvious thing in the world. Again Poison could not think of what to say in response.

“Is that cat going to be all right?” Poison asked at length, listening for further sounds of the Bone Witch. She was lumbering about downstairs and shrieking faintly, with her dogs bellowing and barking.

“Andersen? He'll be fine,” Peppercorn replied confidently. “So why are
you
here?”

“I'm trying to get to the Realm of Phaerie. I have to rescue my sister.”

“Really? How exciting!”

Poison gave her a look that was meant to convey the seriousness of her task, but Peppercorn merely smiled sweetly, uncomprehending. A moment later, the black tomcat slunk back into the room and wound itself around Peppercorn's legs.

“Andersen!” she cried, squatting down and making a fuss of him. The cat threw a reproachful glance at Poison before surrendering himself to pleasure, as if to say:
there, I saved your neck, the things I have to do for some people. . .

Poison allowed herself to calm down for a few minutes, making small chat while she got over the shock of her brush with the Bone Witch and the bizarre meeting with this happy young girl and her cat in the midst of a house of horrors.

“Can I hide here?” she asked at length.

“Ooh, better not,” said Peppercorn, straightening. Andersen, disappointed at no longer being stroked, slid up on to the chest of drawers and began to lick his forepaw, with an occasional glance up to see if anyone was paying attention to him.

“Why not?”

“She'll come back eventually. She's very sly. If she thinks you're in here, a bit of perfume won't keep her away for long. And she'll bring the dogs. They can't smell a thing, but they can see and hear.”

Poison cursed under her breath. “Is there somewhere else I can hide?”

“Oh, the house is full of hidey-holes,” Peppercorn said brightly. “But once she's on your trail, you'd better be a good hider! Most of the people who get out of here are the ones Maeb doesn't know about. She's after you now.”

“She caught me out after dark,” Poison replied.

Peppercorn nodded in sympathy. “The days go very fast here, but the nights are very slow. That's why I only burn one candle at a time. Can't waste candles, you see.”