The creature was sitting on the branch right underneath her, watching her greedily. Its eyes were as flat as black buttons, set in a smooth brown skull with no nose. It was at least her size, with gangly arms and legs and two long, flat wings folded against its back. It froze with a claw stretched toward her, as though it had been caught doing something wrong.
Kestrel recognized it from her notebook: It was a treecreeper. Treecreepers liked to sneak up on their prey. They made their victims jump so they fell out of trees, then they picked at the body for dinner.
Kestrel thought quickly.
“I know what you’ve been up to,” she said imperiously. She secretly felt unnerved by its unblinking stare. “You’ve been creeping around the village and scaring people. Big mistake.”
The treecreeper hissed and tilted its head to get a better look at her. It opened its mouth, revealing three rows of tiny peg teeth on its upper and lower jaws.
Kestrel clamped a hand over her nose. The treecreeper stank of rotting potatoes.
“Kessstrelll,” it rasped. Kestrel’s blood turned to icy slush. She hadn’t expected it to know her name. She scrolled through her mental list of creatures that had something against her.
“Hunnnterrr,” it belched. The noise escaped from its throat with no input from its tongue or teeth, as though the word had come right from its stomach.
Kestrel’s eyes flicked over its body, looking for a weak spot. She decided to aim her slingshot right between the treecreeper’s eyes. She calculated the distance and the force she’d need. She imagined the stone smacking the treecreeper right in the forehead.
The treecreeper twitched, raising a hand to its head. Kestrel caught her breath.
Gotcha, she thought.
She pointed her stare at the treecreeper and thought very hard of the snail cake recipe, imagining the crunchy sponge and the slimy icing in as much stomach-churning detail as possible. She visualized picking a slice up with her fingers, the frosting oozing between her fingers as she raised it to her mouth.
The treecreeper shuddered, turning a bit green.
“Did you enjoy that?” she said, feeling triumphant. “That’s right, I know what your trick is. You’re just a stupid mind reader.”
“Twelllve,” the treecreeper rasped, desperately trying to claw the situation back.
“I’m not impressed,” Kestrel replied. She began to inch along the branch until she was right above its head. “Just ’cause you can read minds doesn’t mean you’re dangerous. You haven’t even tried to eat me yet.”
The treecreeper paused with its mouth open, as though nobody had ever challenged it before. Kestrel noticed that there was a gaping darkness behind its teeth. She stared down its throat and tried to remember what else her grandma had told her about treecreepers.
“You’re not even moving your mouth in the right way,” she said. She was thinking out loud now. “I don’t think you’re any more dangerous than a squirrel. In fact . . .” an idea squeezed through. “I don’t think you’re much bigger than one, either.”
She grinned and flexed her fingers, getting ready to jump. If her grandma was watching now, Kestrel knew she’d be pleased.
“Granmossss?” the treecreeper said, and a smile cracked across its face, like it knew the next thing it said would strike her to the core. “Murderrrrrr.”
Kestrel threw a punch, hissing like a cat. The treecreeper jerked out of the way just in time.
“It’s rude to go in people’s heads,” Kestrel said dangerously. “Didn’t you ever get taught that?”
They stared at each other. Waiting. Then the treecreeper twitched, and Kestrel leaped.
They both screamed as Kestrel hit the treecreeper spread-eagle. It was horribly light and fragile, with paper-thin skin. They tumbled to the ground, slamming against the branches of the tree as they fell. They crashed into the dead leaves a few feet from each other, Kestrel’s slingshot flying from her pocket and landing in a deep puddle.
The treecreeper groaned. It was huge, but it didn’t look any more terrifying than a crumpled kite now that it was on the ground. Kestrel plunged her hand into the puddle, ignoring the small horrors that might be lurking there, and grabbed her slingshot. She aimed an acorn at the treecreeper, which looked at her pitifully with its big, watery eyes.
“Mercyyyyy,” it croaked. It was a pathetic monster, really, with fragile bones and dry, thin skin that looked about as tough as moths’ wings. Kestrel pressed her lips together, but her hand was beginning to drop.
Then the treecreeper leaped at her. Kestrel was faster, and the stone punched the treecreeper in the side of the head, making a big hole through which she could see the moon. The treecreeper gurgled in surprise, reaching out for her with its big, hooked claws, but it was already deflating as though it had been filled with nothing but air. Kestrel stepped back as it slumped at her feet. Then it lay still.
She bent down and prodded it with her finger. She’d stayed up all night for this?
“Yeah, take that!” she said anyway, shaking a fist. “And tell all your creepy friends I’ll turn ’em into stew if they mess with me!”
With that she plunked herself down in the leaves and folded her arms, waiting for the onslaught. The forest breathed out again. Cold air began to seep through Kestrel’s holey shirt and under her skin.
“I guess you’re all afraid of me,” she said after a minute. She didn’t want to admit that she was secretly relieved.
After a minute, she pulled the notebook out again to add some notes about the treecreeper. With half an eye still on the forest, she flicked through the pages.
Kestrel was used to feeling disappointed by the notebook. Every time she looked at the maps, she hoped that she’d notice something she’d never seen before. A big red arrow that said this is the way out, maybe.
Kestrel’s grandma had been born outside the forest. Kestrel remembered her describing it when she was little, when Kestrel still sat on her lap, cocooned in Granmos’s huge coat made of rags. Outside, there were huge, churning expanses of water filled with shells, which were like leaves made of stone. There were enormous open fields, and sometimes not a tree in sight. There were even other villages. Her grandma had run away into the forest when she was young, and the forest had—Kestrel never forgot this description—closed behind her like a purse. Granmos knew that the forest was more than just a big bunch of trees; it was a huge, clever animal that swallowed the unwary and wouldn’t let them out.
Granmos became the most fearsome hunter in the forest’s history, and eventually got married and had her dad. Kestrel was determined to leave the forest and find the place her grandma had come from. Together she and Finn were exploring every single place Granmos had described in the notebook, following each scrawled and twisting map. Kestrel wanted to see the bright fields of water. She wanted to collect piles of shells and roll through long, tickly grass. It would be nothing like the scrubby, spiky patches of grass in the forest that sometimes tried to eat you.
She was sure that one day they’d find the path Granmos had wandered down, and they’d be able to leave.
Well, if her mother ever let her. But that was a different story.
Kestrel traced her finger over a drawing of a shell, smooth and shiny from the path her finger had taken again and again. She dragged her eyes away, flipped the page, and paused. There was nothing left in the middle but a jagged line of paper hanging from the spine. The page had been ripped out by a set of claws. On it, half torn away, was one huge word written in thick black ink: