Quite Contrary (36 page)

“Anything that’s not booze.” I picked up a fork and jabbed it into the mashed potatoes. They were so thick I pried up a lump as big as a real potato. Oh, that looked good.

“Who would let a girl your age drink?” she asked, only it wasn’t really a question, or even just something to say. She looked and sounded disgusted by the whole idea.

She poured milk into my glass, and that was fine by me. I dumped butter onto the mashed potatoes as she did, so it would all go well together. Then, I skewered a strip of chicken and grabbed the pepper grinder. A real old-fashioned pepper grinder. I had to grin as I twisted the handle, loudly scraping flakes of pepper out onto my food. Eventually, when I could barely see my mashed potatoes, I put the grinder away. Then, I dug in.

When I lifted my fork to grab another lump of mashed potatoes and realized I couldn’t possibly swallow it, I let myself stop. Laying down the silverware, I leaned back in the chair and sighed.

Come on, Mary, do it. Come on, you gotta
. “Thanks, Mrs. Bathory. That was delicious.”

“You’re on the run. Bag full of sausages and bread, right?” she asked sourly. She wasn’t eating, but it’s not like she hadn’t eaten. I’d just eaten three times as much.

“Doesn’t need cooking, I guess,” I said.

She grunted. It was a distasteful subject. I had to agree. I also had to get out of here.

I started to push myself up, but Mrs. Bathory raised a hand. “Sit. In fact, take the guest room. I’ve got to set up your wolf trap, and that’s magic work you can’t help me with.”

“I need all the head start I can get,” I argued as my feet hit the floor. I stretched again. Running, walking, and now sitting for a whole afternoon. My back felt seriously stiff.

“And what, sleep on the ground? You’ll still have to sleep. I insist, and I can’t have you running around while I put up the trap, or you’ll get caught in it.” She looked over at the loom, let out a heavy sigh. “I’ll be all night. This monstrosity will slow him down. It might get him so lost he ends up on the moon.”

I opened my mouth, but she repeated, “I insist.” She sounded emphatic, and her expression of kindly concern edged into tragic. I knew all too well when someone wouldn’t back down.

Picking up my satchel, I groused, “Fine, fine. Show me the comfortable bed you’re forcing me to use.”

With a chuckle, she pushed herself away from the table and bustled down the hall. The house had a lot of closed doors, which was no surprise for a witch’s home. Unlocking one with an old-fashioned key, she pushed it open and I tromped in reluctantly.

There wasn’t much to say about it. Kind of old-fashionedy frontier. Quilts on the bed, wooden furniture, a teddy bear coming apart at the seams up on top of a wardrobe. I glanced at a faded photograph, so black and white it was almost sepia, framed on the dresser. “Is that you?” I asked. The beautiful woman in the old-fashioned fancy gown did have much the same features, and exactly the same hard expression.

“Once upon a time.” She said it like a confession. “Now you rest up. I’ll deal with the spell.”

She closed the door behind her, and I sat down on the bed to think about what to do next.

I woke up to the pinpricks of claws on my collarbones, the heavy smell of rodent, and Rat’s hand pressed tightly against my lips.

“Don’t say anything, or she’ll hear you. The bathing room is right next to this one. We have to get you out of here now!” he whispered into my ear. Even that low, the flutter of fear and disgust in his voice was perfectly clear.

Geez, I hated being right sometimes. Most of the time.

Scarecrow leaned up on her tiptoes to peek at me, and I saw how I was getting out. She’d opened the window by the bed. I was already dressed. I had my satchel and everything. Still, “Can you open it a little wider?” I whispered.

“I could, but that would break a web, and I thought that was bad,” she whispered back. Forced to be quiet, she bobbed her head up and down like a pigeon on speed, instead. I stopped that by placing my hand on her face and pushing her head back through the window’s gap.

“Breaking a web is bad. I’ll make do,” I said. I had just barely room to get my head through, and my shoulders scraped the sides, but they did get through. I slid my body around sideways, pulled a leg out, twisted my hips past the gap, and dropped onto the midnight grass.

We were out on the lawn. Rat pulled the shoulder strap of the satchel out, and scurried up my arm as I slung the satchel into place. Should I close the window? Forget it. What would it hide?

I bit down on my desire to just pick a direction and run. I was sick of playing by the witch’s rules, but I wanted to use them against her, and especially against my Wolf.

“Lead us out, Scarecrow. You’re the only one who can see the maze,” I whispered. Crap, I should have told her to be quiet about it.

I didn’t have to. She ducked down and crawled under the next window. This was what I’d wanted her to do, so I did the same. Rat clung more tightly to my shoulder until we were past. The view in there must have been unpleasant. After that, we turned the corner of the house, and Scarecrow straightened up and walked in uncharacteristic silence to the gap in the fence. I stayed right behind her. We reached the stone lined path, and Scarecrow headed us straight into the woods. The third tree we passed on the left was especially fat, and after we circled around it, I couldn’t see the house anymore. We were in the maze.

Just to be sure, I kept my mouth shut until we turned two more invisible corners. Even then, it was Rat who broke the silence first.

“I’m glad you knew something was up, Miss Mary. I thought she was just an old grandmother with a harmless story, the kind of witch people think is bad because they don’t know her. She fooled me completely.”

I grimaced. “She had the attitude down perfect, but the maze, the way she treated Scarecrow—I don’t know. I knew something was wrong, but I wasn’t sure until I noticed that for someone who wanted me to know she was a grandmother so badly, she didn’t have any photos of her kids.”

“She had photos. They were in the bath,” Rat whispered.

Whoah. There was a bleak tone.

“Is this a ‘murdered her own grandchildren’ story I’m about to hear? Spill, Rat,” I ordered.

Come to think of it, if we could talk, we could be a little less quiet and pick up the pace. I lengthened my stride, and as soon as I pulled ahead of her, Scarecrow leaped two steps ahead, then copied my walk exactly—except when she turned abruptly, and I knew to follow her.

Rat clung low to the off-the-shoulder sleeve of my dress, and stared at the ground. “No, not her own grandchildren, I guess. She couldn’t have. But the room next to yours was full of knives and magic and bones, and a bathtub stained with blood.”

My stomach rolled a little but, “This sounds like something besides gobbling up little children.”

“Not all children. Girls.” There was one expression a rat could do well–wrinkling his nose in disgust. “It’s an old story; a story that lurks in the background. She bathes in the blood of virgins to make herself young again. It’s not a story I ever expected to meet in person.”

I snickered. It could be funny, because I’d gotten away. “She was so concerned about why the Wolf wanted me, wasn’t she?” I asked sarcastically.

“She had to know your blood was good,” Rat sighed.

“Why?”

He paused, then answered, “Don’t tease me, Miss Mary. You’re too young for that not to be true.”

God, he couldn’t even say it. That was just a little bit too much. “You’re assuming I had any choice. You’re assuming a lot of things,” I snapped

“Mi—” he started to ask, but it was a question. His voice was full of doubt. I grabbed him in one hand, ripped him free of my sleeve, and stormed forward to shove him into Scarecrow’s hands so that I didn’t have to touch him. Then, I turned away and leaned my shoulder against a tree.

“Don’t worry, I’m still a virgin,” I said, “After Mom’s boyfriend made me take off my clothes, he was idiot enough to let me go to the bathroom. I crawled out the window and hid in the bushes until morning. Then, I just had to stay out of his sight until she broke up with him. That didn’t take long.”

“What did your mother say when you told her?” His voice had gone blank. I couldn’t see him from this angle, and didn’t want to.

“That if I hadn’t been such a difficult little bitch, he’d have left her alone when she was drunk and wanted to sleep,” I answered. My voice had evened out again. He’d believe me or he wouldn’t.

He didn’t answer. I straightened up again, and walked up to Scarecrow, who held Rat up in both hands. She didn’t have an expression, and aside from ears flat against his head, I couldn’t read his.

“You have to get over something, Rat.” I tried to keep my voice from rasping. “You must have had great parents, and you really want to believe that all parents love their children. Some of them don’t. You could go on believing your pretty little fairy tale like that, but it’s going to get me killed, and I’m a little too close to that already.” Now my voice did crack.
Don’t think about it, Mary.

That was not a good time for a light to go on in the distance, a glow visible through dying branches.

“Fuck!” I swore. Oh, crap, crap, crap. Apologize to Rat later.

“Scarecrow, we need to speed up!” I said, and we started walking again, fast. Not fast enough. I sped up, as fast as I could go without running, and I couldn’t run in this maze. Scarecrow stopped. “The maze just shut ahead of us.” She tilted her head quizzically. “Okay, we can go around this way!” She turned to the right, and with a loud creak and a lot of snapping, a rotten tree fell over in front of us.

Mrs. Bathory didn’t want us getting out.

In the distance, I heard a howl. Mrs. Bathory didn’t howl. A very deep voice shouted something I couldn’t make out.

“‘Little girl, little girl, let me come in’,” Rat repeated.

I didn’t want to—stop being difficult, Mary
. I had no time for that. I grabbed Rat out of Scarecrow’s hands and squeezed him in both of mine to my chest. “Is there a wall in the way, or just a tree?” I asked her.

“Just a tree. Uh, things are breaking,” Scarecrow said, twisting her head around to look in every direction.

I grabbed her hand and leaped up on a fallen branch, crushing some twigs and ignoring the others that scraped at my legs. I jumped up onto the tree trunk, then off the other side. Scarecrow landed on both feet beside me.

“But the maze is still here, right?” I asked. I was trying not to beg.

“Yeah, but it’s a mess.” She almost sounded discouraged.

“It gained us most of a day coming in, Miss Mary. We’ll be at least a few hours ahead coming out.” Rat sounded confident. He did.

“Is it okay if we run again?” Scarecrow asked.

“Yes!” I shoved her forward with one hand. The other tucked Rat into the hood behind my neck. We ran.

Way behind us, a light went out. My Wolf howled again.

t was really, really dark, and that made this worse. I had no idea where I was going, and tree trunks emerged from the blackness only when I got so close I almost hit them. I looked down, watching for roots that might trip me up, following Scarecrow’s running feet.