Beastkeeper (6 page)

It was a single squat turret, like a jabbing finger or a lone tooth, made of mottled stone, dribbled and spattered with lichen in yellows and reds. Furry clumps of moss clung velvety and green at the base. Ivy grew wild, so thick in some places it distorted the shape of the tower, and sprays of leaves crowned with little blue-black berries rose over the low walls around the outskirts. Tumbled boulders marked the faint outlines of rooms that had long since fallen.

Tall slitted windows cut the tower sides. Someone had hacked the ivy back from the windows, and the broken stems stuck out in ragged spikes.

“Your grandparents' house,” her father said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and pushed open his car door.

Sarah sat frozen in place. There weren't even power lines or phone lines or anything. He was going to leave her here, out in the
middle of nowhere
in a ruin with people she'd never met. She clutched her seat belt, holding on to it desperately. Perhaps if she just never left the car, he'd be forced to drive back with her—

“Out,” he said. “They're expecting you.”

She swallowed, and made her fingers push the release button. There was no one waiting for them at all. Perhaps her father really had gone mad. She couldn't help but look at his hands, half expecting to see him holding an ax or something. No one would ever find her body out here.

Nothing. Of course nothing. She let herself breathe. The air tasted sweet and green, full of damp flavor. “A castle—really?” Sarah's voice sounded high and scared, though she was trying for a joke. “You never told me we were part of a royal family.”

“It never seemed important,” he answered. “And it's not much of a castle, either,” he added. “Come on. Your grandmother will be waiting. She's old, and she likes things to happen in a timely manner.”

Thoughts of a round and rosy-cheeked grandma with wispy-wool hair in a sensible bun went hurtling off into the distance. Sarah stepped out of the car and dragged her suitcase from the trunk.

It seemed heavier than ever, and Sarah wondered what would happen if she dropped her case and started crying and stamping her feet like a child, demanding they both go back to the modern and nonmagical house they'd left behind, with its empty spaces and dirty dishes. Arguing that this time they would both be better at dealing with life without Mom. She was pretty sure it would make no difference whatsoever.

Instead, with her suitcase in one hand and her day bag slung over her shoulder, Sarah turned to face her new home. On the ragged battlements a white shape hopped, sending a handful of tiny stones spattering down like hail. She squinted, shading her face with one hand, trying to get a better glimpse. It was a bird.

But not a bird
so big.
Sarah's heart gave an unexpected lurch, and the suitcase fell a few inches to slam one pointy corner into the top of her foot. She yelped and bit at her tongue, feeling her mouth spark with pain. A metal and salt taste spilled over her teeth.

“Are you all right?”

Sarah nodded. “Fine.” She swallowed the taste down. The pain in her mouth and foot had turned to throbbing aches. “What kind of bird is that?”

“A raven,” her father said.

“I thought they were black.”

“They are.”

The snowy raven stared down at her. It tilted its head, cawed once, then flew through one of the narrow windows and into the castle. It felt like an invitation.

“Do we just go in?” Sarah looked at her father uncertainly, but he was already loping past her, down a stone path. Mint and chamomile grew from the cracks in wild profusion, and her father's boots ground the flowers and leaves into perfume. Sarah took a deep breath and set off after him.

The doorway to the castle was arched, and the door itself was made of a wood so old and black and worn it looked like it had been made by giants and dwarves in some impossible faraway time. The two halves swung open as they approached, groaning on their ancient hinges.

A shadowy figure was waiting for them. A shaft of sun pierced the dark entranceway to illuminate the tall, regal woman standing in the interior gloom. For a moment, with her back to the castle mouth and her face caught in the last rays of the pollen-dusted afternoon sun, the woman looked golden, her hair streaming behind her in thick cloud, her face stern and handsome, like in sepia photographs from long ago.

Sarah drew closer and saw the deep lines that pulled at her beauty, twisting it. Her hair was silver, not gold, and her brow was cut with a thousand frowns. Sarah's heart, which was already hanging out around the bottom of her stomach, plummeted further. Surely this angry old witch couldn't be her grandmother?

“So you've come,” the woman said, looking past Sarah and at her father instead. “This is the girl?” But she still didn't look at Sarah.

Her father placed his warm hand on Sarah's back and pushed her a little closer to the woman who was supposed to be her grandmother. “This is Sarah,” he said. “I said I'd bring her, and I did. Where's Father?”

“He's not well,” the woman snapped.

Sarah's father didn't seem to care terribly much, but he asked, “What kind of not well?”

“You know what kind.”

“Is he worse?”

Her grandmother didn't answer, just pressed her lips thinly together as if she was trying to stop a secret from inching its way out like a tiny worm.

Sarah shifted back a little, closer to her father. She didn't like this woman or the conversation. It reminded her too much of her mother's words before she left. All twisted and tangled and full of half things. Perhaps her grandmother had poisoned her grandfather. She looked like the kind of woman who would put arsenic in the soup and tenderly nurse someone to death, spoonful by spoonful. A prickling started up in the corners of Sarah's eyes. She wanted to scream at her father not to leave her here, but her words were all caught up in her throat and her tongue felt swollen to twice its size.

“I asked if he was worse,” her father said, and there was a strange new deepness to his voice, like an echo under the words, like his throat was thickening all the sounds, roughening the edges. He was starting to sound like a stranger.

Sarah pushed a little sob deep down into her chest. Maybe she could escape. After her father left, she could slip away from the ruined castle and walk until she found a farm or something. People who would understand. Maybe call the police.

And then what? Where would she go? Would the authorities put her in a home filled with other children no one wanted?

Her grandmother squinted, finally peering down to get a good look at Sarah's face.

Sarah could feel her grandmother's breath against her forehead, and she realized that the old woman could hardly see. Her eyes were milky with cataracts. Maybe she
could
run away after all, if this woman was half blind.

“Hmph.” Her grandmother drew back, as if Sarah was something vaguely distasteful. “She looks normal enough.”

“She is,” said her father. “She's normal. She's not cursed.” But his voice trembled on the last word.

 

6

THE KEY OF IVORY

THE RUST-COVERED
Toyota belched thick smoke into the forest clearing. The engine spat, coughed, and then with a roar, the car lurched away. Sarah's father didn't even look back at her. He raised one hand in good-bye, and that was that. He dropped it back to the steering wheel almost as soon as he'd lifted it.

Sarah and her grandmother stood silently, watching the woods darken, until the sound of the car was a distant throb. “Wastrel,” said her grandmother. “Blackguard.” She sniffed. “Hard to believe sometimes that he's my own true-born son.”

Sarah swallowed away the snot-thick feeling of her unshed tears. “I'm Sarah,” she said in a small voice.

“I know your name, girl.” said her grandmother. “You will call me Nanna. That is, after all, the kind of thing grandchildren call their beloved grandmothers.”

She was nothing like a beloved grandmother. Instead Sarah was reminded of the ink drawings in her mother's battered old book of myths. Stern-faced goddesses and Fates. Terrible and strange.

Nanna drew herself straighter and held out one arm to the air. Down from the darkening skies, like a falling comet, came the white raven. It lit on her grandmother's arm and bowed, raising its beak. “And?” Nanna said.

The raven answered her in human speech. Its voice was high and sweet. “The little king is past the borderlands now.” It sounded like a woman on the verge of laughing or crying.

“Hmph. Good riddance, then.” Nanna twitched her arm. “The girl,” she said to the raven. “He called it Sarah.”

Sarah had her mouth half open, staring at the bird, trying to put together the idea that it was making words. Like a parrot. Only, no. It was talking; it was having a conversation. And it was staring at her with one ice-blue eye, head twisted to get a better look. The tiny black pupil contracted as it stared at her.

“Well met, princess,” said the raven. It clacked its pickax beak. “You have your mother's look to you.”

“My mother?” Sarah's heart bounced up, hope catching her by surprise. “You know her?”
I'm talking to a bird.

“I knew her once,” the white raven replied. “It has been long since last we looked upon each other. A thousand years have passed, and the forests have grown smaller. And outside the forests, your world has barely moved a decade. Or two—I can never keep track.”

“Er, okay.” And now it didn't seem strange to Sarah that she was having a conversation with a raven. Vaguely, she was aware that it should seem weird, but there was a dreamy quality to the dusk that made everything seem utterly reasonable, like her brain had given up trying to make sense of things and had instead just accepted defeat.
Okay, world, you win
. “I beg your pardon,” she said. “but I didn't catch your name—”

Nanna laughed. “And you won't. ‘Raven' will do.” She twitched her wrist and the bird took flight, an ungainly flapping of large wings beating against dragging air. The raven finally soared off, leaving only a fallen white feather on the ground to mark that it had been there.

“Now,” said Nanna, “I've no servants to carry your luggage about, so you'll have to do it yourself. This way.” She turned into the squat castle tower, and Sarah grabbed her bags and followed her in.

It was gloomy. The stones were frozen slabs, and Sarah couldn't help but shiver. Her grandmother wore a long, thick woolen dress, and over that a coat of thick fur, dusty and moth-eaten. Dirt and black decay lay over everything. The cold seeped up from the flagstones, chilling Sarah right through her feet, all the way up her legs, so that she was shaking hard enough to rattle her teeth together.

She trod along in dejected silence, pausing only when her grandmother stopped to light sputtering candles along the walls. The candles made the air smell greasy, and they flickered and guttered in an unwelcoming way, casting leaping shadows that played out a grotesque puppet show on the stained walls. Sarah was half certain she could see actual figures choking each other, raking with their claws, could hear their screams and dying moans. She caught up quickly with Nanna, just about walking on the old woman's heels so that she wouldn't be left behind. Sarah held her bags closer.

“This will be your bedroom,” Nanna said, throwing open the door of a room near the apex of the castle tower. They had taken what felt like a million stairs to get there, and Sarah was sure that her legs were going to collapse out from under her and her arms were going to fall off. She'd tried switching the suitcase from left to right, but now her arms were rubbery and limp as half-cooked spaghetti.

“It's very nice, thank you,” Sarah said without really looking. All she wanted to do was curl up and sleep for a week, and hope that when she woke she would discover that all of this was just some awful nightmare.

It had to be. She lifted her head. The room was one step up from a cell. There was a single plain bed covered with dull red blankets that looked like they'd been made out of rags, and a desk with a basin and a jug. Both were yellowed enamel, the edges rough with rust.

“Good. You can clean yourself up and rest some before dinner,” Nanna said. “There's an hour yet before I eat.”

I, singular.
Sarah cleared her throat. “Is—does my grandfather live here too?”

Nanna snorted. “In a manner of speaking.” She smiled then, revealing teeth that were white and even and perfect, and Sarah wondered what she had looked like when the rest of her had matched her teeth.

There is no such thing as a perfect beauty,
her mother would have told her.
Only magic.

“Will I see him?” Sarah asked.

Nanna stared past her, eyes narrowed.

Sarah resisted the urge to look behind herself to see what the old woman was looking at. The skin on her neck began to itch. She could well believe the half-fallen castle was as thick with ghosts as it was with dust and cobwebs. Even the air smelled like fog and fallen leaves and moss.

Then Nanna blinked and shook her head. “Perhaps,” she said, in a way that Sarah already knew meant no.

After her grandmother left, Sarah stood in the middle of her new bedroom and gazed numbly around her. The walls were grimed and spotted with continents of damp, and a carpet of ashy dirt covered the floor. A colony of spiders had softened the corners of the ceiling, knitted up the dust with thick skeins of silk. There was nothing caught in their webs.

Warm red light from the setting sun flowed through the narrow windows, and the lines of shadow were growing longer, creeping toward Sarah across the wooden floorboards like spilled ink. She stepped away from one particularly dark tendril and counted under her breath.