13 Curses, Page 2

  As her tears dispersed, she became aware of a movement in the footwell. Looking down, she watched as a small opening appeared in her backpack and two tiny, pale paws appeared through the gap, closely followed by a rodentlike head. The creature looked up at her disapprovingly before crawling out of the bag and scurrying up her leg. She winced as it bit her, twice. It was displeased with her for having the fairy images on the postcards, she knew. But not half as displeased as her parents would be if they knew she hadn’t paid for all of them. She had not been brave enough to steal the book accompanying the exhibition, but the postcards had been small and easy. In fact, the entire thing had been easy—except the part where she’d been found out.

  Rowan had gotten up, eaten breakfast, and brushed her teeth, then showered and dressed into her school uniform. She’d taken her lunch box from the kitchen counter, then kissed James’s fair head as he sat in his high chair, his face grubby with mashed-up baby food. After calling good-bye to her mother, she’d walked out the front door, and out of her ordinary little street.

  Only, today, instead of turning left to go to school, she’d turned right at the end of the road, heading for the train station. Before buying her ticket she’d changed quickly in the toilets there, stuffing her school uniform into her bag and pulling on the jeans and top she’d stashed away the night before. A quick once-over in the mirror confirmed that out of uniform she looked older than twelve: fourteen at least.

  It took just over half an hour to get to Fenchurch Street, then an extra twenty or so minutes on the tube to get to central London. She hadn’t enjoyed the tube journey at all. It was rush hour and she’d been crammed into the packed carriage with her nose wedged into a stranger’s armpit. After leaving the train she hurried through the station, ducking her head and avoiding the gaze of all around her: the commuters, the Underground staff, and the beggars reaching toward everyone who passed.

  Once out in the air, walking across Trafalgar Square, Rowan had started to feel better. Dodging the pigeons, she walked past the great stone lions and up the steps to the National Gallery. Inside, the gallery was bustling with visitors. Among hordes of tourists and schoolchildren on day trips, it was easy to mingle anonymously. She picked up an exhibition guide and set off, ignoring the more famous attractions—the Botticellis and the van Goghs—instead making her way to the farthest galleries, the ones that held the exhibition of interest. There the rooms were quieter, with fewer visitors.

  Rowan cast her eyes hungrily over the walls, questioning and absorbing what each image had to offer. The majority of paintings she disregarded; these were saccharine notions of beautiful creatures nesting in flowers or perched benignly on toadstools. One quick glance was all it took for her to dismiss them for the fanciful dreams that they were. It was the others she was interested in. The darker images of masked beings camouflaged in woodland; the images of humans being made unwilling dancers to a bewitched tune; a child being coaxed toward a stream with one hand, while the other held another child beneath the icy water. These were the images Rowan was seeking. The images that held truth, as seen by those like her. Those with the second sight.

  Rowan broke from her thoughts and came back to the present. The car was silent now except for a small whimper from James every now and then, but she knew that once they arrived home and James was out of earshot, she was in big trouble. Her only consolation was that she’d at least done what she’d set out to do without getting caught. That part had come later, just after she’d left the gallery and was walking across the square. When the hand clamped down on her shoulder, the last face she’d expected to see when she turned around was her father’s, his expression of relief quickly becoming one of anger. Into her face he thrust a National Gallery leaflet detailing the exhibition—and which had train times printed on it in Rowan’s writing. In dismay she realized that he must have fished it out of the trash after receiving the phone call from the school about her absence.

  She still couldn’t believe he had found her.

  The creature that only she could see had made its way over to James, and was now nestling with him in his car seat, crooning a strange little sound, something like a lullaby. Rowan wondered if he could hear it. He couldn’t see it, of that she was sure, but he did seem to be settling back into his slumber. She watched as the creature reached out with its paw and brushed a lock of golden hair away from her baby brother’s eyes. As it did so, its whiskers skimmed his cheek, and for a moment his mouth curved into the faintest of smiles. And that was the moment Rowan’s life changed forever. The moment the truck came crashing through the central barrier with a deafening screech of metal upon metal and plowed into the car.

  Afterward, Rowan would always remember those few seconds in horrifying detail. The shattering of glass that was followed by icy wind and rain. The scraping and creaking of the car as it buckled against the crushing weight of the truck. James’s helpless, confused cries mingling with her own as the car flipped onto its roof, spinning like a sycamore seed. Torn postcards fluttered around her head like broken fairy wings.

  She would remember her wish to protect her little brother from this terrible harm… and how the ugly, nameless little fey creature had suddenly ballooned in size and thrown itself upon him, wrapping him in a furry, protective cocoon.

  She would remember the flashing lights, and the side of the car being cut away; how she’d screamed when they pulled her out, breaking her arm in order to do so. But the thing that Rowan would never forget, and which haunted her most, was the complete silence from the mangled front of the car.

  When Red pulled back into consciousness, the first thing she knew was that she had soil in her mouth. She spat in disgust and then clamped her hands to her aching head. Already she could feel a bruise forming at her temple. Thin rays from above lit her dim surroundings. She looked around with gritty eyes.

  She had fallen into a hole of some kind, that much was clear. Underneath her, broken branches and roots sprawled like dismembered limbs. She ached as though she’d been kicked by them. Reaching out, she felt the walls of earth around her and gave a dry swallow. The damp earth clung to her fingers. She could feel roots protruding from it, some tiny, some large. Bracing herself, she stood up and raised her eyes, prepared to face her growing fear that she had been swallowed by one of the Hangman’s Catacombs: one of the seven infamous deneholes in this area of forestland. The cavernous holes were known as the Hangman’s Catacombs, due to the numerous people who had disappeared in the woods over the years before the railings had been constructed. It was known that the holes tunneled for miles below the earth into a twisting labyrinth of caves. Did the deneholes exist in the fairy realm as they did in the mortal world? The question hung in Red’s mind, only to vanish when she saw that the branches loosely covering the hole were no more than about six feet above her.

  Daylight poured in through the gap where she had fallen through. No, this wasn’t a denehole, she realized. This was something worse. As her head was starting to clear, her mind worked logically. Running her hands around the earthy walls again, she registered what she had missed the first time: the walls were not a natural formation. Apart from the roots, they were smooth. The hole had been dug for a purpose.

  The hole was a trap.

  She sat down calmly, ignoring the rush of adrenaline to her limbs. She had been in worse situations and she had learned that the most damaging thing she could do was panic. Quickly, she worked out the dimensions of the trap. Its diameter was about five feet; its height, about eleven. With practical thinking and the right tools, she might be able to climb out. She drew out her knife and, with a hard thrust, plunged it into the side of the hole. It slid in easily and sat there. Red tested its resistance by leaning a little on the handle. The blade held firmly, promising to take her weight. She withdrew the blade with some effort, then stood up and set about hunting for her first foothold.

  On the other side, something shifted in the darkness. Red stopped moving immediately. Stupidly,
she had not even considered that she might not be alone in the trap. Warily, she took another step, straining to hear. There it was again: shuffling in the dry matter beneath her feet, accompanied by a small sound. Whimpering. Slowly, she knelt and took a long, thin branch that had fallen from above. With it she began to turn over the leaves, lifting and sifting. Upon the third sweep of the stick, Red found herself staring at the pitifully thin form of a young fox, its ribs protruding from its coat.

  It stared back at her with the dull, hopeless eyes of something that has given up and is waiting for death. It did not look like it would have to wait long. Briefly, she thought of the water in her flask. Then, steeling her heart, she looked away, turning back to the task in hand. She had to think of her own survival. If the fox was dying of thirst then it must have been in the trap for a few days. There was every chance she could be resigned to the same fate.

  Soon she found what she was looking for, a chunky root growing out from the side of the hole, a couple of feet from the bottom. She tested it with her weight, and it held firm. Stepping up on it she felt around above, searching for something, anything else to grab on to. Her grasping fingers came into contact with something cold and rough: a piece of rock held tightly by the earth. Encouraged, she stepped back down. Now she needed something to place between the root and the rock, which could then serve as another foothold. She dropped to her hands and knees and began hunting. A piece of wood would be ideal—a strong branch that she could carve into a point with her knife and then drive into the walls of the hole.

  It was then she made a second discovery. Her hand came into contact with it as she rooted around beneath a pile of dead leaves. Somehow, even before she saw it she knew what it was. Her skin crawling, she held the object under the shaft of light. It was a little yellow shoe. A child’s shoe… with tiny flowers stitched into it. It must have belonged to a little girl, she realized. A little girl, no more than three or four years old, trapped down this hole, alone in the dark. What had happened to her? Suddenly Red was afraid. Using her fingers, she shook out the dirt that was caked inside and for a moment just sat there, simply holding the shoe and staring at it. It looked like it had been down there for a long time. In places the leather had rotted away but the label inside confirmed it was from the human world. She shuddered and dropped it. It had belonged to somebody—a child, with a name and a family. Somebody’s daughter. Somebody’s sister, maybe. A child just like James.

  She tried to tell herself that whoever—or whatever—had dug the pit would surely only use it for the purposes of food—for catching wild animals. The child must have fallen into the hole by accident—but then, if she had been rescued, why had her shoe been left behind?

  Unnerved, she glanced at the fox. It watched her with its empty amber eyes. Whoever had left the trap wouldn’t have any use for the pathetic creature; it was nothing but skin and bone. It would barely make a meal for the crows. Despite her resolve not to get involved, she knew then that she could not just let it die. Slowly, she edged over and knelt at its side. It looked up at her and tried to shuffle away. Her ears caught the merest hint of a weak growl in its throat. This was promising, at least. It still had some spark of fighting spirit left. She reached into her bag, withdrawing her flask and a small tin camping dish she used for food—when she had food, that was. She poured a little water into it, careful not to overfill it in case the poor creature gulped it down too quickly. Then she dipped her fingers into the water and let a couple of cool drops fall onto the fox’s hot, dry nose, before placing the bowl as close as she could to its mouth and then backing away into the corner. She had done what she could. Now it was up to the fox.

  Rooting around, she found a sturdy wooden branch. She snapped it using the heel of her boot, then began to sharpen one end with her knife. Out of the corner of her eye she stole a glance at the fox. Its tongue had curled out of its mouth as it sought the droplets on its nose.

  “Poor thing,” Red murmured. The fox’s ears twitched slightly at her voice. To her amazement it then raised its head and leaned forward to the bowl of water.

  “Go on,” she whispered, willing the animal to drink.

  The fox lowered its muzzle to the water and began to lap at it slowly. It eyed her warily as it drank—and it drank for only a few seconds before lowering its head to rest, but Red was encouraged.

  In the minutes that followed, she continued to work steadily, sharpening her branch into a point, then beginning another. After a few minutes, the fox lifted its head to drink a little more before resting again. Already there seemed to be a spark of life in its eyes. She carried on with her task. And, at intervals, the fox continued to drink. When the bowl was empty she filled it once again, listening as the fox lapped noisily. She wondered whether the water would be enough to save it—for surely the maker of the trap would take pity on the skinny creature and release it—or whether, by helping keep it alive, she was simply prolonging its suffering. She pushed the latter thought from her mind. She was ready to put her plan into action.

  She took off one of her boots and, using the heel, began to knock one of the sticks into the wall of the earth at about waist height—halfway between the roots and the rock she had discovered earlier. With each whack of her boot, she felt her underarms prickling with perspiration. By the time she’d finished, the branch was a sturdy peg in the wall of the trap, with a good few inches left for a foothold. Still holding her boot in her hand, she stepped up onto the root nearest the bottom of the pit, then, with her free hand holding the thicker root above her head, moved up again onto the foothold she had just made. Then came the tricky part. While balancing on the foothold, she now had to repeat the process of knocking another branch into the earth. Only this time, she was balancing precariously on her foothold and pressed against the side of the hole while trying to drive the wood in with her boot heel. And this was where her plan began to fail.

  As she attempted to hammer in the wooden peg, the earth above her crumbled and disintegrated, showering her in dirt as it broke and fell down on her. Some of it fell in clumps; other parts crumbled to a dust that flew into her eyes. She held her breath, determined not to inhale it, and persevered with the wooden peg for a few more moments, but to no avail. The earth nearer the entrance was brittle and dry and would not allow her to knock the peg in. Dismal, she clambered down, shaking dirt from her hair and clothes. Her idea was not going to work.

  She wiped the sweat from her brow and took a sip of water. It would need to be rationed now, for there was no way of telling how long she would be in the hole. She looked over at the fox and saw that it seemed to have perked up a little, although it was still weak.

  “Looks like you and I have more than just a name in common,” she told it. “We’re stuck down here together.”

  She had not long finished the sentence when she heard a sound from above. Something was moving through the woods. Immediately she was alert, pressing herself against the side of the earthy wall, beneath the shade of the branches above. The hole was plunged into darkness as the light was momentarily cut off; something was obscuring the gap in the branches through which she’d fallen. Then, one by one, the branches that had been placed across the entrance to the trap were being lifted off. She knew then that this was no animal, nor a passerby. This was the setter of the trap. As the light filled the trap once more, Red knew there was no point in trying to stay hidden. In seconds there would be nowhere for her to hide.

  Boldly, she stepped forward out of the shadows and turned her face up to the light. “Hello?” she called. Sunshine dazzled her eyes. Silhouetted against the light was a ragged, hooded figure with long, grizzled hair.

  Red recognized her immediately. The old woman!

  An odd mixture of feelings went through her then. A small glimmer of relief at being found was tainted by uncertainty. If the old woman had set the trap, how had she managed to dig the hole? She looked too frail for such a task. But then another thought occurred: perhaps the trap was old, dug
by another, and the old woman had just found it and claimed it as her own.

  Wordlessly, the old woman threw something into the hole. Red’s concerns melted away as she saw it to be a strong-looking knotted rope. The woman was helping her to get out. Grateful, Red held the rope and tested it with a firm tug. The rope held true. Quickly, she grabbed her tin camping bowl from in front of the fox and shoved it in her bag. The fox was sitting up now, peering into the light above with fear in its eyes. Red shot it one last look, hoping she would be able to persuade the old woman to let it go—for surely it would be worthless to her. Then she began to climb.

  At first, she was able to use the footholds she had found earlier, but halfway up, when her sore hands were taking the brunt of her weight, the pain brought tears to her eyes. By the time she reached the opening, her body was shaking with exhaustion. Soon, one arm was flung over the side of the hole, closely followed by the other. The old woman was standing before her silently, her face obscured by her heavy hood as it had been before. She reached forward and offered her hand to Red. This time, Red had no other option than to accept it.

  As the gnarled fingers took her own, the old woman released a small breath that could have been from the burden of Red’s weight. But as Red was tugged closer to her, she was overcome by the awful, cloying scent of that one small exhalation, and as she played the sound back in her mind it became more like a sigh. It smelled like things that were rotten and decaying. She collapsed on her knees at the woman’s feet, managing a single glimpse of the face that was concealed beneath the hood. The thin, red mouth was twisted into a hideous grin.