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When he looked back, Rye had removed her cudgel from the sling over her shoulder.
“R is for Rye,” she replied. “And H is for Harmless. That’s who I’m looking for. But make no mistake, he’s not harmless at all.” She tightened her grip. “And neither am I.”
The huntsman chuckled. “Put your twig away,” he scoffed.
Her twig was a High Isle cudgel, a dangerous weapon made from the hardest blackthorn in all the Shale. If the huntsman were as well travelled as he was road worn, he would have known it. Rye didn’t put it down.
“Have you come across anyone in these woods lately?” she asked, gesturing her cudgel towards the trees. “A man maybe? Travelling alone?”
“Travellers are rare in the forest, as are young girls. And yet, strangely enough, both have wandered into my camp in recent days.” The huntsman studied her carefully before speaking again. “There was a man. Appeared like a ghost – startled me while I fixed my supper. He was cordial enough but didn’t linger.”
That sounded like Harmless, Rye thought.
“Did you notice anything else about him?” she asked. “Was he wearing an unusual necklace? Like this?” With her thumb, Rye hooked the runestone choker she wore round her neck so that the huntsman could see it.
She saw a flash of recognition in his eyes, then they shifted, as if calculating something. “It’s possible, although I don’t have a keen eye for jewellery,” he said coolly. But his expression had already betrayed his real answer.
“When did he leave?” Rye demanded. “Do you remember which way he went?”
“I do,” he replied, his face expressionless. “He was heading south along the Wend. But the rest of the details have already been bought and paid for.”
Rye narrowed her eyes, unsure of what he meant.
“Several other travellers arrived the following day. They too had an interest in this man you call Harmless.”
“Who were they?” Rye asked sharply.
The huntsman shrugged. “They wore no crest or colours. They weren’t overly friendly – but at least they paid well for my answers to their questions. Well enough that I’ll be able to spend my winter in the warm bed of a roadhouse instead of shivering in a tent. Can you offer the same?”
Rye’s ears burned. “I have no coins.”
“But if you are looking for this Harmless, he must be of value to you.” He rubbed two grimy fingers through his beard. “Perhaps, you, in turn, are of value to him?” he asked, his voice darkening. “Or maybe … to those others who seek him?”
Rye took a step away.
“Now, now,” the huntsman said. “Why not have a seat and join me without a fuss? I spend my days tracking fleet-footed creatures through this forest. If you run, I’ll surely catch you. And then you’ll have to spend the night in a sack with the rest of the game. I’ve got one right over there that’s just about your size.”
But Rye wasn’t listening. She turned and ran, darting into the trees. She was no novice when it came to being chased and, if need be, she could bite much harder than some frightened hare. But just as she reached full stride, her legs kicked up and her body lurched skywards. The forest floor spun below and the blood rushed to her head. Rye craned her neck and peered up at the nearly invisible line strung over a limb. A snare had caught her round one boot and she now dangled upside down, several feet above the ground.
The huntsman shook his head as if to say I told you so and retrieved a thick burlap sack from his supplies.
Rye still grasped her cudgel and shook it threateningly in his direction. She doubted her effort was particularly menacing as she spun slowly and helplessly in a tiny circle at the end of the snare. She desperately wiggled her foot in her oversized boot, which only made her rotate even faster.
When the huntsman came back into view he was at the edge of the clearing, his axe raised in one hand, the burlap sack ready in the other.
A looming figure loped from the shadows opposite them, covering the space in two long-legged bounds. Rye sucked in her breath with such alarm that the huntsman paused to look behind him. A huge clawed hand sent him sprawling.
Rye thrashed her whole body, sending herself spinning furiously. She saw the blur of the massive beast. It regarded the huntsman’s motionless body with bulging eyes set on top of its misshapen head. From its elongated jaws hung a plaited, rust-orange beard tied at the end with a child’s bootlace. It snuffed at the air with a long, pig-like nose and, to Rye’s great relief, briefly turned its attention towards the stag. Rye’s own nose filled with the stench of the bogs.
She was no stranger to beasts of this kind. It was a Bog Noblin.
With one final tug, her foot slipped free from her boot with a cascade of damp straw stuffing. For once it had come in handy to wear her father’s old boots that were three sizes too large. She met the ground head first, the impact knocking the wind from her lungs.
The Bog Noblin looked up from its prize. First one bulging eye turned to meet her gaze, then the other. Hunched over the stag, its grey skin hung in folds from its broad, bony shoulders and ribs. Its floppy ears were pierced with an assortment of metal hooks, and round its neck dangled a crude necklace strung with the blackened remains of human feet. The Bog Noblin sniffed the air in her direction and stood to its full height.
Rye pushed herself up from the dirt. She only hesitated long enough to draw Fair Warning and cut her boot down from the snare.
Tucking it under her arm, she rushed deeper into the forest without looking back, her runestone choker cutting through the shadows with a pale blue glow.
(#ulink_c0bf0915-6700-5085-b7f0-381ee21ef030)
RYE SCURRIED UNDER, over and around razor-sharp branches. She squeezed through the narrowest gaps she could find in the thicket, forging a path impossible for anyone larger than a young girl to follow. She didn’t stop to catch her breath until she’d reached the edge of a narrow stream. The afternoon’s dying light disappeared behind her.
Rye put her hands on her knees, examining her flushed reflection in the clear water. Where her brown hair wasn’t stuck to the sweat on her forehead, it fell to her shoulders now, longer than she’d ever grown it before. Normally, by summer’s end, Rye’s face glowed like a creamy pecan after long days helping her mother in the garden. But life Beyond the Shale was one of perennial shade and her cheeks still maintained last winter’s pallor. At the moment, she was just relieved to see that her choker was no longer glowing either. Its runestones only stirred when Bog Noblins were near.
She stood up straight, water flickering silently at her feet. The stream was called the Rill. It flowed like a silver thread round a mossy glade and looped back into itself, hollowing it out from the rest of the dense forest. The Hollow was dominated by an enormous old oak tree, its thick roots engorged like veins bulging from the ground. A spiral staircase of knotted wood planks snaked around the oak’s massive trunk, leading to a series of landings and ramshackle buildings embraced in its boughs. Rope bridges slumped like clotheslines between the main house and several smaller, overgrown cottages nestled in the tree’s outstretched limbs.
A stocky, horned figure barely taller than Rye hurried forward, a handmade platform of intertwined rowan branches tucked under his arm.
“Miss Riley,” the barrel-shaped man called breathlessly. “Where in the Shale have you been? It’s practically nightfall!” He laid the makeshift bridge across the stream at her feet.
“It’s all right, Mr Nettle,” she said. “I made it back, didn’t I?”
Mr Nettle lifted the bridge as soon as Rye crossed, his ferret-like eyes glancing at the shadows on the other side.
“Without an eyelash to spare,” he replied, sniffing the air.
Mr Nettle’s curled horns were, in fact, part of the fur-lined mountain goat’s skull that he wore on his head like a hat. His cheeks were buried beneath a curly beard the colour of dried pine needles, and the hair on the backs of his hands and knuckles seemed as thick as the scruff on his neck. He wore a rather formal vest and coat that looked to have been quite regal at one time, but his trousers were made of raw, crimped wool that gave him the vague look of a woolly ram from the waist down. Despite his wild appearance, Mr Nettle wasn’t part animal or beast. He was a Feraling – a native forest dweller – the only one Rye had encountered in all of her months Beyond the Shale.
“I found a message from Harmless – at least, I think it was from him,” Rye explained breathlessly. “There was a huntsman who said he saw him too, or someone who sounded like Harmless anyway.”
“Perhaps that’s who I smell,” Mr Nettle said, his wary eyes still on the looming forest.
“I doubt it,” Rye said. Her eyes followed Mr Nettle’s gaze across the Rill. “There’s also a Bog Noblin out there and he stinks worse than most anything on two legs or four.”
Mr Nettle turned to her in alarm. “A Noblin this far from the bogs?” he asked. “Just one?”
“That’s all I saw.”
“Travelling alone …” He furrowed his brow. “Even stranger. You’re quite certain that’s what it was?”
Rye nodded. “Trust me. I’ve seen more than my fair share.”
Mr Nettle pulled a curly lock of beard between his teeth with his tongue and began to chew. “Well, if he’s foolish enough to linger, he may never make it back to whatever dank moor he crawled from. Worse beasts than Bog Noblins prowl these woods …”
“Is my mother back?” Rye interrupted, glancing up at the tree house high above them.
“Yes, she returned not long—”
Rye didn’t wait for Mr Nettle to finish. She raced past him, stomping up the spiral steps so fast she nearly made herself dizzy.
Abby O’Chanter raised her thin, dark eyebrows as she listened to Rye’s story, looking up from her scavenged cook pot as she scraped the night’s meagre meal into wooden bowls. She placed one of them on the round stump of a sawn-off bough that served as their table, in front of Rye’s little sister, Lottie. The youngest O’Chanter had donned Mr Nettle’s skullcap and now looked like she had grown horns from her ears.
“The letter H was fresh, couldn’t have been more than a few days old,” Rye emphasised after completing the tale. “And the way the huntsman described the traveller – it had to be Harmless.”
Rye watched her mother carefully and waited for her reaction. Surely Abby would be as excited as she was. After nearly five months in the forest, the most they had heard of Harmless were vague rumours from wayward travellers. But now he had left them a message. Based on what the huntsman had said, he was not only alive, but nearby – not more than a day or two away.
“And the other men in search of your father?” Abby asked. “Did the huntsman have more to say about them? We haven’t come across anyone in weeks.”
“Just that they weren’t very friendly,” Rye said, recalling his words. “They don’t sound like the type of travellers we’d care to run across.”
Abby fell silent. Mr Nettle watched quietly from his stump next to the sawn-off bough, the only sound the crunch of Lottie’s small jaws. She chewed. And chewed some more. Supper consisted of tough meat and bland, boiled roots. Food of any sort was difficult to come by Beyond the Shale, where small game was elusive and the edible plants bitter.
“Tomorrow we can all set out together to search for Harmless,” Rye added, grabbing her mother’s elbow enthusiastically. “With luck, we’ll find him before anyone else does.”
She noticed a brightening in her mother’s face, but one that was offset by some unknown weight too. Rye could see the bones of Abby’s jaw rising and falling as she plucked a root from the pot and chewed it between her teeth.
“Your discovery is promising,” her mother said softly. “But we can’t go tomorrow.”
“But this is the first sign of Harmless we’ve seen! If we miss him now we might never have another chance.”
Abby seemed to weigh her words carefully before speaking, and her tone was regretful when she finally did.
“I don’t disagree, Riley. But we are running out of time. We’ve heard no news from Drowning in months. Any explorers will be winding up their travels and returning south with the coming of the cold.”
Rye glanced at the gaps in the wooden floorboards. She could see all the way down to the mossy earth below them. The walls of the tree house were built round the boughs of the oak, vines crawling through the seams of its timbers. A draught fluttered the cobwebs in its corners. Their latest shelter was not a place well suited to handle the chill of autumn, never mind the deep freeze that would inevitably follow. It would only take one storm to leave them snowbound for the season.
“We too must return to Drowning before the first flakes of winter,” Abby continued, her voice drifting off for a moment. “With … or without … your father.”
Rye clenched her fists in frustration. They couldn’t give up now! Abby raised her hand in response to Rye’s inevitable protest.
“That’s why I’m going to leave tonight to search for him,” she said.
Rye swallowed back her objection. It was now replaced by another, quieter one. “But the forest – at night …”
Mr Nettle shifted uncomfortably on his stump.
“I’ll wait to leave until after our neighbours have made their evening rounds,” Abby said, casting a glance towards the looming trees outside the shutterless windows. She flashed a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, Riley, it’s not the first time I’ve ventured out alone after dark.”
“We should go together,” Rye muttered. “It would be safer.”
“I’ll return before dusk tomorrow,” Abby said. “And I’ll stay on the Wend. If your father is heading south that’s the path he’ll take. But if he’s lingered nearby he may find his way to this Hollow. It’s better that you remain here to meet him.”
Rye frowned, unconvinced.
“Lottie, you’ll be in charge while I’m gone,” Abby said with a playful wink. “Keep an eye on these two until I return.”
Lottie gave Rye and Mr Nettle a watchful glare. “I’ll try,” she said solemnly. “Them’s a lot of work.”
“Indeed,” Abby agreed with a smirk.
“Rye, is that you who be stinky?” Lottie chimed, already relishing her new role. “Leave your boots outside when you step in bear plop.”
“Mind your own beeswax,” Rye said.
“Me no beeswacker,” Lottie objected. She leaned down and crinkled her nose towards Rye’s feet, as if smelling something foul under her heels. Rye shifted away so that Lottie’s horns wouldn’t poke her in the arm.
Rye didn’t protest against her mother any further.
“Now eat,” Abby said, placing a bowl on the table for her. She gestured for Rye to sit. “None of us can afford to skip any more meals.”
But Rye’s stomach was already a twisted stew of excitement and anxiety. She looked to Lottie and Mr Nettle, who huddled over their own well-cleaned bowls. Lottie’s dirt-streaked cheeks were less full than they once had been and her soon-to-be four-year-old body had begun to stretch like an eager seedling.
“Lottie, you and Mr Nettle can finish mine.”
Lottie and Mr Nettle brightened, but they gasped in surprise as the bowl was snatched from the table.
A furry creature the size of a raccoon scurried high up the stretch of the tree trunk growing through the wall. The thief was fawn-coloured, with a long, ringed tail and saucer-like eyes that blinked down at them nervously.
“How do they keep getting past the Rill?” Abby said in frustration.
“The brindlebacks are crafty little pests,” Mr Nettle groused with a tug at his beard. “A branch high up in the forest canopy must have grown over the Rill and intertwined with the oak’s own limbs. I’ll have a look tomorrow and cull it back.”
“Bingle-blacks!” Lottie huffed, and clenched her fists.
“Maybe he won’t eat it,” Rye said, looking up hopefully. “They don’t like roots, do they?”
The brindleback held the bowl with his long black fingers, sniffed its contents with a wet, pointy snout, then cocked his head. Rye opened her hands in case the little bandit dropped it. Instead, he attacked it savagely with tiny teeth. Lottie and Mr Nettle groaned in disappointment.
When he was finished, the brindleback dropped the bowl down on to the floor with a clatter and disappeared into a hole in the wall.
Abby sighed and stared at the hole. “Well, that’s it for supper, I’m afraid. Let’s get you girls to sleep while the forest still allows it.”
The howls and cries came earlier and earlier each night – this time not long after the O’Chanter girls had huddled together in their blankets. Near and far, unseen voices of the woods seemed to call to one other as they surrounded the Hollow. Some spoke in wolfish growls, others in throaty warbles that sounded more like the clucking tongue of a hag than the beak of a raven or vulture. And yet the most unnerving sound wasn’t a voice at all but the plod and slither of something heavy dragging itself through the dried leaves and dead pine needles that carpeted the forest floor. With its arrival the rest of the nightmarish choir went silent, and the restless creeper circled the Rill over and over without crossing, dull teeth clacking as it went.
Abby sang softly in Lottie’s ear until, eventually, the slithering lurker abandoned its vigil, and its unnerving sound ebbed and faded into the distance. With the Hollow once again consumed by the silence of the massive trees, Lottie finally drifted off. Rye only feigned sleep, performing her best fake snore.
She listened as her mother gathered some supplies in the darkness, and when Abby headed for the tree house steps, Rye whispered loud enough for her to hear.
“You’ll be back tomorrow, Mama?”
Abby paused. “Of course, my love,” she said, and Rye heard her kiss her fingertips. Abby’s hand fluttered in the air as if releasing a butterfly. Rye pretended to catch it.
Abby’s silhouette disappeared and Rye pulled a blanket tight under her chin in an effort to sleep. She pinched her eyes tight, and tossed. Then turned. And tossed some more. But sleep proved elusive.
Before long, the glow of Rye’s lantern wound its way down the oak tree’s spiral steps. It passed over the mossy turf of the Hollow, then tumbled to the ground with a metallic clank.
“Pigshanks,” Rye whispered, regaining her footing after stumbling over a root. She peeked back at the tree house to see if she’d woken anyone.
