Beastkeeper (7 page)

It didn't help. The tears she'd been fighting against ever since her father had told her to pack her things finally came flooding out. Sarah unzipped her suitcase, half breathless with tears, and pulled out Steg and Hedge. She didn't care if it made her seem like a frightened little kid right now. All she wanted was something familiar and cushiony to hold. With her arms wrapped tightly around the stuffed animals, crushing them against her chest, Sarah collapsed onto the small bed and sobbed until her face stung and her eyes ached and her throat felt like it had been scraped out with a fork.

When she lifted her head, the shadows were swirling all about her, and the last few red-gold gleams of the sun were just outlining her windowsill. The raven was there, cloaked in fire.

Sarah sniffed and sat up, the toys falling to the rough blanket. The raven shifted. Its claws ticked against the stone, and the sunlight slipped away, leaving the bird looking like a smear of bluish gray against the darker indigo of the sky.

“You should clean your face,” the raven said in its incongruous womanly voice. “There's water in the bowl, and towels in the second drawer.”

“How long were you watching me?” Sarah rubbed at her eyes and cheeks with her knuckles, then pulled one sleeve over her hand and used that to wipe her face again. “Ugh, gross.” There was gunk sitting in her nose and throat.

“A few minutes only,” the raven said. It sounded a little sad. “Your grandmother sent me to call you down.”

“And you're her messenger or something?”

“Her eyes and ears and voice, if I need to be. I am bound to her.”

“Creepy,” Sarah said. She slipped from the bed and padded to the table. There were the towels, neatly folded in the second drawer as the raven had said. Ice crinkled the edges of the water in the bowl, but after the shock of the cold against her cheeks, Sarah found that wiping away the heat and shame of her tears was almost exhilarating. She glanced across at the raven, which was still watching her patiently from the windowsill. “So you're basically a spy.”

The raven made no move. “Light the lamps,” it said. “Unless you want to return to darkness.” It spread its wings, then paused as if it was debating with itself. “By the laws of my curse, I am bound to tell her all the things I see, hear, and say within the castle,” it said. “If she asks.” With a crackle of feathers, it launched itself into the night.

Sarah looked at the empty place where the raven had stood and touched one thumb to her lower lip. The bird was warning her. It was a spy, true, but it sounded like it was also a slave.

It was cursed. Like everything else around her, it seemed. And as Sarah knew from her books, curses could be broken. Curses were
designed
to be broken. All it took was passing tests, she knew that. Tests of courage, of love, of wit, of faith. She frowned. How was she supposed to know what to do if she had no idea how any of this worked in the first place? There were mysteries here in this castle, in the forest, and secrets that no one was going to tell her willingly.

The thing with secrets was that they didn't want to stay secrets, Sarah mused. Someone always knew more than they should. It took the right leverage, the right pressure, and people told their hidden truths. And if that didn't work, then there was always snooping, which seemed to be the logical route in all the adventure books she loved.

Kids in stories are always going where they shouldn't and discovering hidden treasure and evil plots and unmasking villains. And so what if that isn't real life?
Sarah looked down from the castle window to the darkling forest, its whispering shadowy treetops.
Nothing about this feels like real life
.

Whatever secrets were waiting to be dug up, they had something to do with Nanna. Weirdness was gathered around her—the raven, the ruined castle all alone in the strange forest.

A new feeling crept up Sarah's back, ticking along her spine and spreading out through her shoulders. Determination. It made her feel more solid. She was going to get to the bottom of the mystery of her family. Of the curse, and what had happened to her parents.

And why.

*   *   *

Sarah did not get lost going down the stairs. The path she was meant to walk had been lit for her with the stubs of fat yellow-white candles in dim glass cases. The rest of the castle was dark and smelled of mouse droppings and dripping water and moldy straw, so she had no desire to stray from the lit way. Maybe tomorrow she'd have a better look in the daylight; perhaps it wouldn't seem so creepy.

She rushed down the last set of stairs, and the slap of her sneakers against the stone echoed through the hallways. Sarah's last meal had been the ham sandwich her father made for her, and a bag of chips and a soda from a gas station. She was hungry enough that she could have put up with a great deal just to fill her stomach. And the smells coming from the hall that the lights led her to were making her mouth water. Whatever Nanna might be, she could cook—that much seemed certain. Witches could cook, Sarah thought. Well, they could brew potions, which seemed more or less the same thing.

The large hall was as gloomy as the rest of the neglected castle, but at least here the flagstones had been swept clean. Mice rustled in the cracks in the walls. At least, Sarah hoped it was nothing more unusual than mice. A few striped and ragged cats prowled the edges of the hall, their eyes stabs of pale green fire. Every now and then, one would hunch, tail whipping, then pounce on some flutter in the shadowy edges of the room.

Yes—mice. Sarah shuddered and picked her way to the large round table, where two places were set out. There were several chairs, all of them mismatched. Steaming bowls had been set before one grand chair of polished black, with threadbare red velvet cushioning, and another, smaller one, with a seat of striped blue and gold. The material was worn, and the stuffing was sighing out of the rips. Sarah supposed this smaller one was hers.

There was no sign of her grandmother, but the raven was on the table, pacing between the dishes. “Sit,” it said, and Sarah slipped into her seat.

The cushion had a tacky, squishy feel to it that made her wish she could hover above it rather than sit. “Where is she?” she whispered to the raven.

“Behind you,” said Nanna. “There are no servants, or have you forgotten?”

Sarah twisted round. Her grandmother had left off her cloak of ragged fur, and she seemed somehow smaller, daintier. Perhaps more like the way she had been as a young woman. She was carrying another covered tray, which she set down near their bowls. There was certainly a lot of food for only two people, though Sarah didn't feel inclined to point this out. Not on her very first night. She thought of her father's bloodstained teeth as he'd eaten his meat raw. Perhaps this was it—perhaps her family were secretly all monstrous carnivores and she was going to be fed platters of raw meat, lumps of cold flesh sitting in pools of sticky blood. She swallowed miserably.

Nanna took her seat and nodded at the bowl of soup in front of Sarah. “You may begin,” she said.

At least soup was normal-person food.
Well, normalish
. Sarah lifted her round spoon, and gently prodded a floating piece of gristly meat. It bobbed twice, then sank. Sarah's stomach sank with it. Gingerly, she ladled herself a spoonful and sipped. It wasn't as bad as she had expected, and she plodded her way through the rest, leaving only an unidentifiable mash of small bones and soggy fat at the bottom of her bowl. There was nothing in the world that would convince her to eat that, she thought.

“Hmm,” said Nanna, eyeing the remains. “Picky, are you?”

“I'm just full,” Sarah lied.

“Too bad.” Nanna leaned forward to open the covered dishes for the next course. There were all different kinds of meats simmering in thick juices, and a profusion of aromas curled across the table so that Sarah had to close her eyes and breathe in deeply. Meat, for sure, but cooked meat. “There's boar and hare and fawn and grouse and goose and lamb and dove.” Her grandmother narrowed her eyes. “And not a bone for you, it seems. Full as you are.”

The raven cawed in laughter and tipped Sarah's bowl so that the remnants spread in a gooey puddle over the pitted wood. It lunged forward, pecking out the choice pieces.

Sarah folded her hands in her lap and kept her head lowered so her grandmother would not see her face go blotchy.

Nanna ate for a long time, the only sounds the wet sucking of her lips and the brittle clack of bones returned to the plate. Finally, it seemed Nanna had consumed all she could. She pushed her plate a little away from herself and leaned back in her chair.

Sarah looked up to see her scrape all the leftovers into the largest pot and cover it up. “Come along,” Nanna said as she stood. She lifted the full pot and cradled it with both arms. “I think it's time you met your grandfather, after all.”

Sarah's heart lurched. What was she to expect—an old, bedridden man? An ax-wielding maniac locked up for his own good? The soup sloshed about inside her, making her feel queasy, and Sarah pressed her thumbs hard against her legs, focusing on that until the feeling passed. She wished she were out of this place. Anywhere, it didn't matter. As long as it was a million miles away from here and now.

The white raven launched itself up to perch on Nanna's shoulder and rubbed its beak against her earlobe. “Come along, along, a long way to come,” it chattered. Sarah was now convinced that it was insane. Just like Nanna. And herself, probably.

The raven and the old woman led the way out of the castle, into the circle of empty night that surrounded the stone building. Perhaps her grandmother was going to lead her off into the forest and just … leave her there, to be eaten by whatever monsters lurked.

Instead she walked a well-worn track that curved behind the main body of the turret. In the lee of the building was a rough shack, in the same state of disrepair as the rest of the castle, its rotted straw roof ragged and dripping black mold. The smell of loam and earthy decay was everywhere, but over it was another, stronger smell, rank and musky.

Sarah edged back, the smell assaulting her nostrils. There was something in it that reminded her of one of the houses they'd once moved into. There'd been a playhouse at the back of the garden, but Sarah's initial excitement had come crashing down when they'd found feral cats had been using it to live in. There was a sour ammonia smell of pee that no amount of scrubbing had been able to lift. That smell was here too. Only a thousand times worse, mixed with the sweet-gross smell of spoiled meat and decay.

Nanna bent to push open the door to the hovel with her elbow. “This way, girl,” she muttered as she looked back, catching Sarah with a wicked gleam of her eye. Reluctantly, Sarah followed her into the darkness. The floor of the shack was thick clay mud, and it sucked at Sarah's shoes, like hands unwilling to release a captive. The stink was stronger inside. As Sarah's eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could finally see where the stench was coming from. Most of the shack was taken up with a simple iron cage. The metal was black and wet-looking under the thin moonlight that slanted through the broken roof.

Inside the cage was a beast. At first Sarah thought it was a bear, with its head lowered between great hunched shoulders, but then it moved and it was clear that this was no creature she'd ever seen in any book, or on television or at the zoo. There was the essence of bear, yes, but also of wolf, of lion. It was a king beast, great and gray, with coarse fur like matted wires, teeth long as her fingers, eyes like lost planets.

The beast turned in its cage as Nanna set the pot down and fished out a small, ornate key on a slender chain around her neck. The key seemed a ridiculous thing, pale as fingernail parings, but as Nanna held it she whispered, and the key grew larger, sharper, wicked-looking.

Sarah rubbed at her eyes, and then firmly decided to put it down to a trick of the light.

Nanna bowed down to unlock the small door, shoved the pot in, then slammed the door shut as quickly as she could. All through the shack the sound crashed, making the walls shiver, and the wet timbers dropped flakes of gunky dirt down on their heads.

The beast raised one huge clawed paw—more like a hand—and batted at the pot, spilling the meat and bones into the mildewed straw that covered the floor of its cage.

From the cage came the most awful sounds. A crunching, splintering cacophony. A gnawing and grinding and sucking. Sarah hugged herself tightly and breathed out through her nose, too scared now to move.
It's not real. None of this is real. Wake up. Wake up.
She pinched her arm through the thick knit of her sweater, twisting hard enough to know that she'd be bruised in the morning, but nothing about the scene changed.

Nanna said nothing while the beast fed. When it was done, she hooked the pot out and locked the cage again. Another whisper, and the key shrank in her hands till it was no bigger than the first joint of Sarah's smallest finger. She tucked it into her dress again. “There,” she said to Sarah. “Now you've met him, the one who carries the curse and passed it on to my son. The man who has tied me to this place, and tied your father, and now you in your turn.”

Sarah's arms felt limp, the bones turned to custard. They fell to her side with all the strength sucked out of them. Her legs felt just as useless. She needed to get out of there. With an immense deep breath and a force of will she wasn't sure how she was able to muster, Sarah staggered backward, away from the thing in the cage. Away from the woman who kept him there.

Was this what her mother and father had meant when they'd whispered about curses? It had to be. It
couldn't
be. This was what her mother had run away from, and it was in Sarah's family, in their blood.
The curse.
The curse that hadn't touched her, or so her father had said.