Beastkeeper (3 page)

“I'm walking home.” Sarah straightened. “And I could ask you the same thing.”

Alan blinked. He had heavy eyelids; they made him look sly and sulky but—and here was the stupid part, Sarah thought—in a good way. “Could you really? Go on, then.”

For a moment, she really wanted to ask him just that, why he was in her Not-a-Forest, what he was doing there in a place that was
hers.
“You're impossible.”

That made him laugh. It was just the smallest little slip of good humor, and he caught it quickly. “Hardly. I'm just improbable.” He stood again and looked to the sky. “And lost. This isn't the right part of the forest at all.”

“It's not even a forest.”

“Just so.” He frowned. “I could have sworn her trail led here. Still.” He tapped two fingers to his forehead. “It-was-a-pleasure-to-make-your-acquaintance.” Then he smiled, and his face changed, the sly look brushed away with the glint of his teeth. He looked awkward, out of place.

“Um, same. I think.” But Sarah said the last to an empty space. Alan had disappeared.

Sarah stared at the stand of eucalyptus saplings. After a moment, she reached out to push the branches aside, wanting to catch a glimpse of wherever he'd gone to hide himself. There was nothing—no one. He'd simply vanished.

The birds began calling to each other, high and loud, and a fat bumblebee the size of her thumb droned past.

“It's Sarah,” she said to the trees. “My name is Sarah.”
What a strange boy
. She wondered briefly whom he could have been following. Then she turned and hurried the rest of the way home, and didn't even care too much when she found the house empty as expected.

 

3

THE NOT-A-FOREST

FOR WEEKS AFTER
that encounter, Sarah stayed on the lookout for Alan in her Not-a-Forest. Although she saw all the usual signs of people there, she didn't spot the russet-haired boy again. Every weekday she cut through the tangle of undergrowth and saplings, hoping for a glimpse of his muddy green clothes or a flash of tanned skin, but as the month dragged on, she began to think that she'd never catch sight of him again.

That perhaps, after all, he'd merely been some kind of waking dream.

On weekends she'd escape to the wilderness with her stack of library books. Even though Saturdays brought out the strangers and the rambling children and left the Not-a-Forest feeling more like a little scrap of land where people dumped their rubbish and less like something magical, she'd still make her way to the clump of trees where they'd met, settle herself down on an old camping blanket she'd taken out of storage, and read her books. She'd pack herself lunch, and always make an extra sandwich just in case.

The end of every long afternoon brought with it the same strange disappointment, doubled by the heavy realization that once again she was going to return to a house that stood empty, waiting for her with its unwashed sheets and its sink full of dirty crockery. Once again, it hadn't even been worth it. Sarah tried to make herself not think about the odd boy. The odd
vanishing
boy.

*   *   *

You're as pathetic as them
, Sarah told herself, thinking of her giggling classmates, the ones who were sneaking off to flea-market jewelry stands so they could get their ears pierced.
And even worse, you're going insane. You had an imaginary conversation with an imaginary person. Like you're five.

It was the end of another boring school day, and she'd promised herself that this time she wouldn't go wandering off to the abandoned plot of land. Sarah let herself into the house with the key that her father had tied onto a length of string and slipped around her neck so that it wouldn't get lost, cleared a cleanish place on the kitchen counter, and made herself something to eat.

Every afternoon she had a sandwich, which always had the same thing on it—peanut butter—because her father still hadn't mastered the concept of grocery shopping. After that she would rush through whatever homework she had and make an attempt to clean some of the large collection of gunked-up plates and cups. That afternoon was no exception.

“Where do you even come from?” she accused the dishes as she scrubbed them. “It's not like we use this many plates.” Her father was at least eating again, and had taken to preparing supper almost every night, but so far he seemed to be stuck on eggs and fries, alternating with takeout.

Sarah gathered a scattered collection of greasy boxes and shoved them into the overflowing trash.

It would be hours before her father came home from work, so she changed out of her school uniform and did a load of laundry. After all, she needed to do
something
to stop herself from just grabbing a library book and heading out to the Not-a-Forest. Or worse, sitting at the window and watching and waiting and
hoping.

Sarah curled up on one of the pin-striped couches in the front room, reading over her class notes and half listening to the whir of the machine. It was only when she got up to make herself a cup of tea that she realized things had gone badly wrong. She swung her feet down, and they landed in soggy carpet with a splash.

She froze. Cold water soaked into her socks. With a small “oh no,” she looked down and stared at her feet. The white socks were now gray. The machine had flooded, and sudsy dirty water was slipping down the passage, drenching the carpets. “Oh. No.”

Sarah lurched off the couch, abandoning it and her notes, and slipped to the kitchen to turn off the water and the washing machine. It was too late, however. The kitchen was a shallow lake.

This was what being productive and helpful led to, Sarah thought as she splashed her way down the passage to fetch an armload of towels from the linen closet. She had to deplete the entire store, even the ones that were packed right at the back with little ornate soaps between them for freshness, before the worst of the flood was soaked up. The rest of the water she swept out the kitchen door.

“This is an epic disaster.” Talking aloud was keeping Sarah from crying, but it wasn't doing a very good job. It seemed to her that there was no way to fix anything before her father came home. It wasn't like she could somehow vacuum all the water out of the sodden carpet. She toed the wettest part of the carpet, and the wool squelched at her.

It might, she thought, be worthwhile to take a very long walk, one that led her far away from the remaining mess. When she came back—no,
if
she came back—she would discover that none of it had actually happened, and the house wasn't a swamp of dirty water. She sighed.
As if.
Still, she thought it might be nice to pretend that could actually happen. Or perhaps that her dad would come home and clean the mess himself, after being racked with guilt over how Sarah was doing all the housework and he was doing nothing at all.

Now we're talking.
Sarah hopped over the worst of the wet patches and the sudden new landscape of towel hills and woolly swamps, and went to grab dry socks and sneakers. A small pang of guilt squeezed at her as she locked the house behind her, but mostly she felt vast relief. And more than a smidgen of righteous fury—after all, why was this all falling to her? It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that her mother had left them, it wasn't fair that her father was falling apart, and it wasn't fair that the only person she wanted to talk to didn't even exist.

Or probably didn't.

A few weeks ago Sarah had come up with the idea of leaving Alan a message. She hadn't really known what to write, and in the end had settled on a short note that read
What are you hunting?
and tucked the folded scrap of exam paper into a forked branch. It had stayed lodged there for several days, until it had finally disappeared. Sarah supposed that the wind had ripped it away, sent it tumbling over the shrubs and bushes.

If he was real, if he'd seen the note, then why had he never responded? Sarah cut through the overgrown little back alleyway that led out to the Not-a-Forest. The farther she got from the house, the more annoyed she felt. She refused to let herself worry about what was going to happen.

Let Dad clean up the house for a change. Let him shave, let him do the groceries, wash the dishes, and act like a human being, instead of this useless waste he's become.
Sarah dashed a few hard, angry tears from her eyes and felt her throat close up tight from fury.
It's not fair.

The season was hinting at change. Bracken was growing up around the thin, dark stems of the trees, and bare branches were just beginning to shimmer greenly. Even the sun seemed closer. Sarah squinted at the black trees. It was warm out here—the sun had baked the ground, had curled the edges of the arum lilies' broad leafy hearts.

Sarah went back to the section of pathway near the eucalyptus saplings and sat down in a patch of shade. She swallowed until the tight feeling in her chest began to soften and her shoulders dropped. A hazy contentment drifted over her as she leaned back against the biggest of the trees and watched the wind blow the new leaves of the tangled weeds with their pale purple trumpets. When she heard the softest crackle of dried leaves behind her, Sarah spun around, already in a crouch, ready to push herself up and away into a run.

A sun-browned face stared down at her, and Sarah wasn't sure whether to greet him like a lost friend or be angry at him for disappearing in the first place.

“Ah, the cat-girl.” Alan squatted down so that his nose was level with hers, eyes wide. “Are you leaving me notes in the bushes?”

“Maybe.” Sarah relaxed, but not completely. It felt like someone had just emptied a bowl full of goldfish straight into her stomach. They fluttered inside her, making her feel eager and ill at the same time.

“Why would you do that?”

She felt her face go red. “I was curious.”

“And you know what happens to curious cats,” said Alan. He drew his finger slowly across his throat and made an exaggerated
ghhh
noise.

“My dad says satisfaction brought it back,” Sarah countered. She wasn't scared. Despite the kinda-sorta-almost death threat. It was hard to be scared around Alan. Whatever he said about being a hunter, he reminded her more of some cautious deer, with too-knobby legs and an awkward curiosity.

“Now, see, that's a lie. Dead beasts stay dead. There's no witchery that brings them back. Ailing beasts, on the other hand…” Alan half-shrugged. “As to your question, I'm hunting a bird, a little wren.” He held his thumb and forefinger a few inches apart. “About so big.”

“Is it rare?”

“Not very.” Alan settled down on the ground, cross-legged. His bare feet were flecked with broken leaves and grains of rich dark earth like crumbs of chocolate cake. “It's finding the right one, you see.”

“What happens when you catch it?” Sarah wasn't sure if she actually wanted to know. “You don't eat it or anything, do you?”

Alan frowned, and stared at her sidelong. “That's a funny sort of mind you have, cat-girl. I'm no beast. No.” He sighed. “She's sickly, doesn't know what she's doing now, the little feather-brain. I need to find her so I can take her home and back to where she'll be safe. She flew away, and there's a woman pining for her. Pining so hard her heart is broken.”

“Over a bird?” Sarah couldn't keep the amused disbelief out of her voice.

“Why not?” He looked away from her, toward the bushes, as if he might spot the flown-away bird eavesdropping on their conversation. “People find all sorts of things to love.”

“Is that what you do—find missing pets?”

“Most times.” Alan was still frowning. “I don't always find them in time, mind. Sick ones I can help, but if it's too late…” He drew a spiral in the soil with his index finger. There was black dirt ground under his nail. Tiny bright leaves like bracelet charms had caught in his hair, and Sarah wanted to comb them out, watch them fall. “There are times when it's better to put a beast out of its misery. I don't like it much, but there it is. Some truths are hard ones. Your father is bellowing for you.”

“Huh?” Sarah looked around, though she could hear nothing more than the soft sound of the wind rustling through the branches, stippled over with bird calls.

“Listen,” Alan said, and then Sarah could hear it, faint under the sighing wind. Her father
was
calling for her. She shouldn't have been able to hear him from so far away.

He was probably furious. Sarah went cold, then hot, then cold again.

“No need to be so scared. He's opened all the windows and the water is drying up. It'll be like old bones by morning.” Alan was scrutinizing his fingers now, and cleaning under his nails with a splinter of white wood.

“Are you a wizard?” It sounded ridiculous the moment the words left her mouth, though not that ridiculous, she thought, considering. Alan was rather strange and fey, and if anyone was going to be magic, it would be this barefoot teenager with silver leaves caught in his hair. A boy who was hunting for a sick bird.

Alan shook his head. “Not a wizard, not as such, but I understand magic. And there's magic in forests. Even in yours,” he said. “It's just a little piece of forest, but it remembers being part of the great old forest, and when you're in it, you remember too.”

“Remember?” She couldn't understand a word of what he was saying; it was like he was having a conversation with her, but she was saying the wrong things, all out of time. “Alan? Remember what?” But again Alan had slipped away like a shadow behind the sun. Her father's voice drifted over the roofs of the nearby buildings, and Sarah got to her feet, dusting the rich earth from her jeans. He was home earlier than she'd expected, and Alan seemed sure he wasn't angry about the washing machine disaster. Maybe that meant good news. She didn't let herself hope too hard.