Nettle Blackthorn and the Three Wicked Sisters (11 page)

“Pssst…
” came again, and this time she realized it came from
inside Jazz’s bedroom. The door was open just a crack.

Nettle quietly approached and pushed at the heavy wooden
door. It made a horrible creaking noise as it swung inward. Inside,
Jazz, a mess of tumbling red curls amongst rumpled blankets,
slumbered, noisily snoring. Her slack mouth was cast wide open and
drool had run down one side of her chin, to wet the collar of her
pyjamas. Nettle pulled a face at the horrendous racket her cousin
was making.
A lawn mower would be quieter.
Even asleep, Jazz was annoying.
Thankfully, at least she wasn’t forced to share a bedroom with her
anymore. She hadn’t had a good night’s sleep sharing her small
bedroom with her cousin in Bessie.

Nettle
cast a curious glance around the bedroom, wondering just where Bram
was. It looked as if Jazz hadn’t tidied up at all after yesterday’s
debacle, simply dumping everything she owned into a massive pile
near the foot of her bed. Nettle’s nose wrinkled with displeasure.
Amongst the heady perfume, there was a nasty odour of stinky cheese
permeating the room. She pressed a hand against her nose attempting
to block the horrid smell.

“
Bram, where are you?” Nettle whispered, not wanting to wake
her cousin. No doubt they’d be blamed for something else if Jazz
woke up and discovered them.

“
I’m in here,” came a whisper. “Don’t look,” Bram quickly
added.

Nettle
startled at the abrupt sound of his voice. He was close. “Where?”
she asked in a hushed tone.

“
In here,” replied Bram, his voice coming from behind the pile
of Jazz’s belongings.

Nettle soon
realized Bram wasn’t actually hiding behind all of Jazz’s stuff. In
fact, the mountainous pile of fabric was a hide, constructed from
Jazz’s clothes hanging over a pair of chairs, where Bram hid
within.

“
I’m starving,” he wailed softly. “I didn’t think to bring
food.”

Nettle rolled
her eyes, she might have guessed - Bram was a little like their
father, an absentminded professor. Whilst immersed in a project,
feeding themselves was a secondary consideration. “How long have
you been in there?” she whispered, purposely looking ahead as if
she were addressing Jazz.

“
All night.”

Nettle noticed a thin length of string going from the hide
to the wooden bird cage they’d found in the attic. Bram had
positioned it beside Jazz’s bed. He’d jimmied the door open with a
slender stick which the string was tied to, and propped up several
of Jazz’s sneakers to disguise the homemade trap, finally placing a
huge hunk of cheese inside to entice the talking rats. The cheese
had hardened and gone crusty with a slight sweaty sheen to it. She
had no idea how he’d managed to stay in this putrid smelling room
all night. Let alone not go deaf from the blaring chainsaw that was
Jazz.
“OK,
I’ll go get you something to eat.”

“
Thanks,” he whispered gratefully. “Oh, Nettle,” he said, just
as she was slipping out the door. “Could you please bring back some
peanut butter? Maybe the rats might go for that
instead.”

Nettle
grinned. “Sure thing.” If anything, trying to trap talking rats
would keep Bram happily occupied. She suspected finding her Dad a
new wife might take all day.

Yesterday, the siblings had cleaned the entire ground
level. They cut back the rambling rose in the living room, boarded
up the broken window, re-adjusted paintings, righted fallen
furniture and tidied the mess on the floor, throwing anything away
which had been broken beyond repair. Nettle had tried to scrub the
wall clean where the scorch marks had burnt a silvery sheen and
melted paint, but nothing she used would remove the marks, nor even
encourage them to fade.

Bram asked
dozens of questions about the things they unearthed. While she
could understand his inquisitiveness, it had irked her having to
endlessly explain their history, often fielding several questions
more. The memories brought back with each little story had darkened
her mood even further, for most of them belonged to Briar. Jazz
didn’t have to say a single word. She simply smirked, thoroughly
enjoying her cousin’s irritation every time Nettle grudgingly
explained to her little brother about where this photograph was
taken; why this book was their mother’s favourite story to read
them; or why their father carved this particular cat, because Briar
requested it.

But some
things, some memories, were foggy – slippery, even. Didn’t their
Aunt visit them sometimes? Briar’s sister? She was sure Aunt
Thistle was always accompanied by friends, but what did she look
like and who were they?

I suppose I was only six when we left the cottage.
Not nearly old
enough to hold onto recollections of a life lived long ago. Some
things were better left alone, forgotten. She supposed she’d even
encouraged it.

While
Bram swept the wooden floor and mopped it clean, Jazz was in charge
of dusting – something that she performed rather poorly. Which,
Nettle assumed, was to be expected from someone who had absolutely
no experience with any form of chore. In the end, she’d followed
her spoilt cousin around, completing her tasks, as well as her own.
She stage-whispered to Bram, not caring if her cousin overheard her
or not, “That’s what happens when your family’s so rich, you hire
servants to do everything for you. You end up being
useless.”

After
that comment, Jazz made the siblings lives, mostly Nettle’s, a
misery. She scowled, tossing dirty looks Nettle’s way; bumped into
her with a vicious elbow; sneered, moaned, grumbled; and ran a
continuous monologue about how offensive it was, to basically be
relegated to PD next to a pair of delinquents.

Nettle glowered, quietly fuming at all of Jazz’s jeers and
nasty jibes, doing her utmost not to bite back.
I suppose I did instigate
it,
she
chided herself. So instead, she immersed herself with washing all
the crockery and cutlery, before rifling through the pantry and
getting rid of expired food, which, in the end, was pretty much
everything.

Nettle thought
it prudent to check on her father before departing for Olde Town.
She poked her head out the back door, hoping nothing was going to
creak or groan to give her away. To her relief, her father was fast
asleep on the porch swing. He’d slumped over some time during the
night, and an arm dangled limply over the seat to brush against the
porch floorboards. The surrounding woodland swayed with gusts of
swirling wind, carrying with it the scent of fresh pine and crisp
dead leaves. Nettle approached her father and tucked the blanket
over him. His dark hair ruffled in the breeze. She slipped his
glasses from him and carefully placed them on the footstool next to
the finished carving of the mouse. Curls of wood were scattered
across the porch.

Something shiny glinted as the morning’s first rays of
light struck its surface. It was leaning against the wall of the
house right behind her father.
A sword?
The burnished blade was slightly curved
and nicked and the pommel was simply bound with black
leather.

Did he even know how to use a sword?
She let out an involuntary
snort at the image of her lanky father waving the sword around,
jabbing it about at some masked intruder. What was he up to?
Surely he wasn’t
worried about intruders?
There wasn’t exactly a road from the highway to
indicate to anyone with malicious intent that there was even a
cottage in the forest. But then, why else would he have a sword?
And now, come to think of it, this was the third night he’d spent
on the porch. Granted, he was fast asleep not the kind of
professional security agent anyone would pay for - but the purpose
was there.

Fred stirred
slightly, his mouth parting to murmur something incoherent.
Nettle’s heart skipped a beat, fearful at being caught out. She
waited patiently until he quietened and eased back into sleep, and
then silently withdrew back into the kitchen, a sense of urgency
motivating her. She had to get moving.

She worked
quickly, making jam sandwiches for Bram before quickly wolfing down
a banana for breakfast and brushing her teeth. Taking the tray of
food and water and the jar of crunchy peanut butter back upstairs,
she slid it near Bram’s hide.

“
Thanks,” he whispered appreciatively, his hand snaking out to
drag the tray inside his hideout.

“Hey,”
she said. “If Dad asks, I’m off to Olde Town.”

“
Really?” His voice dripped with disappointment at having to
miss out on a trip to the mysterious village. She couldn’t blame
him; investigating new places was always something they did
together.

“Yeah,
we’re almost out of food.” A pang of guilt nipped at her conscience
as she slipped Bram the little white-lie about their food stocks.
“And you know Dad, he’s no good at that type of thing.” Which was a
well known fact and made her feel slightly better telling the fib.
“Good luck,” she whispered. “I’ll see you later.”

“See
you,” he replied hidden within the hide, adding eagerly, “hopefully
with a rat or two.”

A few minutes later
Nettle unhooked her bicycle from the back of
Bessie. Pulling the owl hat on her head, she pushed off, peddling
down the long rough driveway. She noticed with a backward glance,
and a quirk of her brows, there was a decidedly rough circle of
small shrubs now encircling the cottage. Growing in precisely the
spots where her father had rolled the rocks only two days ago, they
had sprouted a wrangling waist-high tangle of prickly black
stems.

CHAPTER TWELVE

A Rat
in a Trap

Bram took a
big bite out of a sandwich and his stomach’s grumblings subsided in
appreciation. Raspberry oozed down his chin, so he wiped it with a
hand, licking his fingers free of the sticky sweet jam with
satisfaction. He finished the first sandwich in three more
mouthfuls, stifling a yawn.

The hide was
small but pleasant. He’d created viewing holes which also acted as
a ventilation system by piling the clothes around empty toilet
rolls. A small battery-operated fan quietly whirred and kept the
inside of the hide cool. He had enough room to stretch out on a
pile of soft cushions gathered from around the cottage, and a
headlamp to read with. A few encyclopaedias, though an antiquated
system in today’s superhighway of information gathering, served for
research in this silent technological black-hole that was the
Forgotten Wilds. Bram considered it somewhat refreshing. In between
solving chess puzzles, he spent the night reading up about rats,
their intelligence, and significance to many cultures. Rats, packs
of rats, were known as a mischief, a term Bram felt could not be
more appropriate in this case.

Bram quickly
finished the remaining sandwiches and quenched his thirst with a
glass of water. With nothing happening all night, apart from Jazz’s
snoring driving him to the brink of madness, he decided he might as
well exchange the cheese for peanut butter and go to bed. Later
today, after a nap, he’d go hunting around the house. He might get
lucky and catch those rats he promised his sister.

As he pushed
aside a pair of jeans to crawl out of the hide, Bram froze.

Sheeeeeek…
sheek… shek shek…

He cocked his
head, his glasses tilting awkwardly on his nose, straining to hear
what he thought was a series of scratches coming from behind the
small wooden wardrobe. His heart hammered in his chest, and he
dared not breath.

The scratching
abruptly stopped and nothing else happened for what seemed a very
long time. Bram calmed down and he blew out a long lungful of tense
air.

Did I actually hear anything?
For a moment he doubted
himself.

Sheeeeeek…
sheek… shek shek…

Very slowly, and quietly, he retreated back into the hide,
his limbs quivering with excitement. Bram couldn’t prevent the
broad grin spreading across his face –
they’re here, the rats!
He was soon to have
absolute proof they existed, and he thought gleefully to himself,
Jazz was going to have to actually apologise.
No, grovel
, he upgraded, with slight
malevolent delight.

He peered
through a small viewing hole, frustrated to find he couldn’t see
the wardrobe from this vantage point, and all others proved futile.
All he could do was listen keenly.

It was silent for a while, until a sudden series of
pitter-pattering
and something heavy being dragged across the
wooden floor startled him.

Next came a deep
grunt
, right beside the hide as the rats scurried
past.

Bram scanned
the view of the bed before him, but the rats travelled low, and he
missed them scamper beneath the bed.

What are they up to?
A moment later, he adjusted his glasses, blinking
hurriedly, as he saw a large lump, the size of a small cat, travel
under the blankets directly toward Jazz’s feet. The lump, which had
to be the rats, crossed over her stomach, and moved swiftly
alongside her chest, and up over a shoulder to disappear beneath
her pillow. Bram’s mouth felt dry and he gave a violent shudder at
the imagined sensation of rats touching his flesh. His cousin
slumbered on, unaware of her fellow bed companions. Despite his own
revulsion, Bram began to grin.
Jazz is going to freak out when she
discovers she’s sleeping with a pack of rats.