Darkwood (21 page)

And then she stopped falling, and began to bounce. Her hair flew up around her face, then fell back, then up again, then back. Annie found herself hanging upside down, her hands and feet hooked in a death grip around the stem. The vine bounced lightly a few more times, then stilled. The bottom part of the stem, the oldest, thickest part, had stuck fast to the wall. Annie twisted her head to the side, forcing herself to look down. Then she began to laugh, and cry. Not two feet from her face was the neatly trimmed, frost-tipped grass of the palace lawn.

It was easy enough to slip past the guard. It was easy to do anything in the dark, people were so afraid. A handful of gravel on the flagstones of the courtyard, his quick turn and shout, her dash through the gates. She wondered how Page had managed it. Sharta? But the guard would have sounded an alarm by now. She watched him pat his breast pocket, then a moment later pat it again. Apparently the king's servants were easy to bribe.

At the bottom of the hill Isadore turned west, back along the Royal Way. When they reached the inn where she had stayed with Serena, Annie hesitated. Why would Page come here? But Izzy led her determinedly to the stable. She almost laughed when she saw him sitting beside a ladder lying lengthways on the ground, just beneath a square window near the roof.

But there was no trick here. The ladder led her right to the hayloft, and from there it was an easy climb down to the stable.

She followed Izzy past the drowsing horses to the last empty stall. Inside each stall was a water trough and a slatted wooden rack filled with hay. Izzy flicked his tail once, then squeezed between the slats of the hayrack. Prudence followed, reemerging seconds later with a piece of hay stuck in her whiskers. The rack was small and didn't look especially sturdy. And what if a horse was stalled here and began to eat? It was hard, sometimes, to trust a pair of cats.

Annie climbed into the rack and lay down, plucking fistfuls of hay to spread over herself. Her knees nearly touched
her chin. She needed to sneeze. Her hands hurt where she'd scraped them on the vine. But the hay was new, and fragrant, and soft beneath her. No worse than her bed in the giant oak. Better by far than her bed at the palace.

Again? We looked here already. I'm glad for the money, don't get me wrong, but it's insulting, looking for a girl.”

Annie opened her eyes, instantly awake. Men. Big men in heavy boots and creaking leather gear. One of them was dragging the butt of something—a spear?—along the wall of the stable as he walked.
Thhhrrrd, thhhrrrd
. The noise stopped and she heard their voices again, very close by.

“Not just any girl. His betrothed.”

The other man snorted. “If this was anything real he'd have the Royal Guard on it, not us.”

“You didn't hear? Royal Guard's all gone. Sent them west late yesterday.”

“For what?”

“‘Liberate an orphanage.' Doesn't make sense to me either, but that's what the captain said.”

So he's done it after all
, Annie thought. She wondered if Page knew. “Ah, there's nothing here,” the first man said. “Out all
night in the dark? With a kinderstalk? She's dead. We all know it.
He
knows it. Let's get something to drink.”

The cats were waiting for her near the entrance to the barn.

“Let's go,” Annie whispered.

Neither of them moved.

“What's the matter with you two?” And then she knew. Footsteps crossed the yard, the same as before—heavy and slow, accompanied by the clank of metal and the creak of leather. The air darkened as the men came into the barn, filling the doorway. There was no time to hide. They had seen her.

“Annie?”

Serena was wearing big boots, leading the horse into the barn by his halter. And behind her, tiny feet making no noise at all, came Beatrice.

The twins made a seat for her in the back of the wagon with some grain sacks and an old horse blanket. Beatrice alternated between patting her arm and scolding her.

“Serena came home in such a lather when she found you gone! We've been back and forth across three counties. Don't tell me you've been in that stable all this time! But you look rather well. She looks rather well, doesn't she, Serena?”

“She looks our same Annie, which is to say somewhat mysterious and quite a dear. Now tell us, where are we going, and what are we about?”

Annie didn't know what to say. Then, looking at the two of them, an identical worry line drawn between their eyebrows, she did.

“I'm trying to find my sister. Will you help me?”

If the twins thought there was anything unusual about the way Annie rode in the wagon—hunkered down almost flat, with a blanket over her head—they didn't say so. They chatted quietly together, only asking her from time to time if they were still headed the right way. Annie wasn't sure what the right way was, but her instincts told her to keep close to the forest.

“Go north,” she said, and Serena drove north.

When they stopped to rest the horse, Annie watched Prue and Izzy chase some prey under the hedge at the side of the road. Winter was ending. A layer of dirty snow still covered the countryside, but the frost that had gripped the earth for months had begun to melt, making the road soft. Annie couldn't help smiling at the neat little trail of paw prints the cats left behind them.

The next instant she was down from the wagon and on her knees in the roadway. Clearly delineated in the mud were the heel and toe of a small boot and, a few inches ahead, the shallower impression of a foot that had touched the ground lightly. To the right of the footprints was a deeper print, round and perfectly symmetrical—the print of a cane.

“Serena, Bea, look! My sister came this way.”

“That's wonderful, dear, just wonderful!” Bea called from the wagon. “Serena, did you hear what Annie said?”

Serena had climbed down from the wagon and stood frowning at the ground a few yards off. “A kinderstalk has been here. A large one, by the look of it.”

The fat, splayed pads of an animal's foot were visible in the mud. A smaller indentation above each pad showed where the nails had dug into the earth.

“It crossed the road here, and then … oh my. Oh my goodness. Annie, don't—”

But Annie had already come up breathless beside her. “What? What is it?”

“Your sister's tracks and the kinderstalk's—I'm afraid they meet here. And it looks like … it looks as though only a single pair continues on.”

Annie bowed her head. She was grateful her hair shielded her face, because she was smiling. Sharta had made those tracks. She knew it. It was almost as if she could smell him, his particular, shaggy scent, blood and pine.

“Oh, the poor dear!” Serena swept Annie into her arms and began to rock back and forth. Bea hovered around them like a hummingbird, darting in to touch Annie's back or stroke her hair.

“There, there, don't cry. We don't know for certain what's happened.”

But Annie knew exactly what had happened. Page had gotten tired of walking and climbed on Sharta's back. Page was riding a kinderstalk! No, that wasn't right. Kinderstalk wasn't right.
It's time you knew their proper name
. Sharta was a wolf, a black wolf. And a wolf had carried Page to the palace. What had she said before she left?
Perhaps not Sharta alone
.

Annie wiggled free of Serena. “You're right, we don't know for certain what's happened. Let's keep going, can we?”

The sisters exchanged a look. Then Bea smiled with such kindness that Annie felt ashamed. “Of course we'll keep going. Of course we will.”

Night was approaching. They could all feel it, the way the blue air seemed to thicken. Beatrice wanted to find an inn, but for miles now they had seen nothing on either side of the road but lichen-covered boulders and bracka bushes. The straight black trees of the forest loomed in the distance.

The twins held a whispered conference in the front seat.

“Turn back to Millerville?”

“No time. Worse to be on the road.”

“But the danger!”

“No sightings these six weeks.”

“Well, I don't like it.”

“I don't like it either. I don't like it one bit.”

Serena turned to Annie with a forced smile. “We'll have to camp. But don't you worry. These days I travel prepared for every emergency.”

They jolted off the road a few yards and parked in a field of boulders.

“Annie, would you see to the horse?” Serena said. “But don't tether him. If they—I want him to have a chance.”

While Beatrice laid out the bedrolls in the back of the wagon, Serena walked swiftly among the stones, sprinkling something from a can at the base of each boulder. She returned
to the wagon a bit winded, and sprinkled the rest of the liquid on the ground around the wagon wheels. Annie buried her nose in the sleeve of her cloak.

“Skunk musk,” Serena said. “The kinderstalk hate it even more than we do.” She wiped her hands on her dress and nodded approvingly at her sister. “That's nicely done, Bea.”