The Whatnot Read Online Free PDF Page A

it. Something not right. The light in the window did nothing to dispel the hollow, deserted look of the place. And the way the trees seemed to curl away from it . . . She closed her eyes, listening to her heartbeat and the whispering wind. She imagined walking forward under the trees, hurrying and spinning, gathering speed. Her back was to the cottage. Then she was facing it, and for an instant she was sure it was not a house at all, but a rusting, toothy mousetrap with a candle burning in it, winking, like a lure.
    â€œCome on. ” The faery butler was at her side, dragging her along. “We haven’t got all of forever. Come on, I say!”
    She stumbled after him. The cottage was normal again, silent and forbidding in its clearing.
    â€œI can walk by myself,” Hettie snapped, jerking away her arm. But she was careful not to stray too far from his side. They really didn’t have all of forever. In fact, Hettie wondered how much longer they could go on like this. They had nothing to eat but the powdery gray mushrooms that grew in the hollows of the trees, and even those were becoming scarcer as they went. There were no streams in this wood, so all they had to drink was the snow. They melted it in their hands and licked the icy water as it ran over their wrists. It tasted of earth and made Hettie’s teeth chatter, but it was better than no water at all.
    Hettie crossed another snarl of black roots, stomped over another stretch of crusty snow. She was so hungry. She was used to that from Bath, but there it was different. Her mother was in Bath, washing and scrubbing and making cabbage tea, and Hettie had always known that she’d never let her and Bartholomew starve. Hettie doubted the faery butler would care much if she starved to death. He didn’t give her anything. He hadn’t told her to eat the mushrooms or melt the snow. She had watched him and had stuck her nose up at him, and then she had gotten so hungry she’d had to copy him. But what would happen when there were no mushrooms left? What would happen when the snow all melted?
    When she felt she couldn’t walk another step, she stopped.
    â€œI’m tired,” she said in the sharp, nettled voice that back home would have gotten her a pat on the head from Mother and a silly face from Barthy. “Let’s stop. Let’s stay here for tonight. We’re not getting any closer to that dumpy old house and I want to sleep.”
    The faery kept walking. He didn’t even glance back.
    She bounded after him. “You know, what if someone lives in that cottage? Have you thought about that? And what if they don’t like us? What’ll happen then?”
    The faery kept his eyes locked straight ahead. “I suspect we’ll die. Of boredom. I’ve heard tell there’s a little girl in these woods, and she follows folk about and jabbers at them until their ears shrivel up and they go deaf.”
    Hettie slowed, frowning at the faery’s back. She hoped he would drown in a bog.
    She thought about that for a while. If he did—drown in a bog—it would be frightening. He would lie under the water, and his long white face and white hands would be all that showed out of the murk. And perhaps his green eye, too, glowing even a thousand years after he was dead. She wouldn’t want to see it, but she didn’t suppose she would object much if it happened. This was his fault, after all.
    Finally, when even the faery butler was breathless and dragging his feet, they stopped. Hettie collapsed in a heap in the snow. The faery butler sat against a tree. The woods were dead-dark now. On her first night in the Old Country, Hettie had slept against a tree, too, thinking that the roots might be warmer than the ground, trees being alive and all. She soon learned better. The trees here weren’t like English trees. They weren’t rough and mossy like the oak in Scattercopper Lane. They were cold and