The Whatnot Read Online Free PDF Page B

skill. He moved his long limbs with grace, whirling and slashing, liquid in the moonlight. The blade spun, streaking down over and over again toward the other faery, who barely managed to get out of its path.
    â€œNo!” it screamed, in English. “You fool and traitor, what are you—?”
    The knife grazed it. Bits of gray skin flew away on the wind. Hettie saw that underneath there was only black, like new coal.
    She turned her face into the tree, squeezing her eyes shut. She heard a shriek, a dull thud. Then a whispering sound and a long, long breath fading away. After that, there was nothing.
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    It was a long time before Hettie dared peek around the trunk. She listened to the faery butler, pacing in the snow and panting. She wondered if she should say something to him, but she didn’t dare do that either. He seemed suddenly frightening and dangerous. After a while she heard him lean against the tree, and after another while, his slow, whistling breaths. Only then did she inch from her hiding place.
    The faery butler was still again, his green eye dark. The snow between the roots was trampled. At the faery’s feet lay what looked like a heap of ashes and old clothes. Already they sparkled with frost.
    She edged over to the heap. It didn’t look like a faery anymore. It didn’t look like anything, really. Nothing to be afraid of. She nudged the pile with her toe. It rustled and gave way, the jerkin and boots collapsing over a delicate shell of cinders.
    She wondered what sort of creature it had been. She didn’t know if it had been a woman-faery or a man-faery. She had never seen a faery like it in Bath, falling to ashes.
    The moon was out like every night, and it shone through the branches, glinting on something in the clothes. Hettie knelt and shuffled about in the pile. Her fingers touched warmth. She jerked back, wiping her hand violently on her sleeve. Blood? Was it blood? But it couldn’t be. If there was frost, the blood would have gone cold by now. She leaned in again, brushing away the rest of the ashes with the hem of her nightgown. Her hand closed around the warmth. She brought it up to her eye, examining it . . . and found herself looking into another eye—a wet, brown eye with a black pupil.
    Hettie let out a muffled shriek. She almost dropped it. But it was only a necklace. The eye was some sort of stone, set into a pendant, a pockmarked disk on a frail chain. The pendant lay heavily in her palm, the warmth seeping into her fingers.
    She stared at it. She hadn’t felt anything warm in so long. She ran her thumb over the stone. It looked precisely like a human eye. There was even a spark in it, a knowing little light like the sort in a real person’s eye. She couldn’t tell what its expression was, because there were no eyebrows or face to go with it, but she thought it looked sad somehow. Lonely.
    She peered even closer.
    Behind her the faery butler shifted, white hands scraping over the snow. Somewhere in the woods, branches skittered.
    Hettie tucked the pendant into the neck of her dress and darted back around the tree. She went to sleep then, and the eye kept her warm the whole night long.
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    The next morning, when she woke, the forest seemed to have lightened several shades, fading, like the pictures on coffee tins when they were left too long in the sun. The clouds no longer hung so low in the sky. The trees didn’t look so close together. The cottage was still a hundred strides away, but when Hettie and the faery butler took their first step toward it, it was quite distinctly only ninety-nine. A short while later they were halfway there.
    No light burned in the window anymore. The door hung open on its hinges, showing blackness. The house appeared even emptier and more desolate than before.
    When they were only a few steps away, Hettie glanced back over her shoulder. What she saw made her whirl all the way around and stare.
    Their