Ash & Bramble Read online

  CHAPTER

  6

  THE GUARDS ARE STILL COMING. SHOE TEARS HIMSELF away from Pin’s burning warmth, and with shaking hands he pulls up the rope and jerks the hook out of the fortress side of the wall. Then he turns and jams it onto the outside of the wall, low enough so that it won’t be seen from the courtyard. The rain has turned to ice. He is soaked to the skin and numb with cold.

  “C-c-c-” he stutters, his lips too cold to form the words. Come on, Pin. We’re not safe yet. He points at the rope hanging down, and Pin swipes the rat tails of wet hair out of her eyes, grips the rope with bloodstained hands, and swings herself over the edge of the wall. The thorns got her, he realizes with a prickle of worry. Hand over hand, bracing her feet against the wall, she climbs down the rope, fast, and he follows. There are no brambles on this side of the wall, just ice-slick stones. Shards of ice flake from the rope as it stretches under his weight. He gets halfway down and checks over his shoulder to see Pin waiting on the ground, her face a pale oval in the darkness. Then his foot slips on a patch of icy wall, and his numb hands stop gripping, and he slithers down the rest of the rope, landing in a heap at her feet.

  She crouches beside him, her gray eyes wide and shadowed. “Are you all right?” she asks.

  The ground, saturated with rain, is soft. He’ll have a bruise or two, but nothing broken. Nodding, he climbs to his feet, flexing his frozen fingers to drive out the cold. “Th-thorns?” he manages to get out, and takes Pin’s hands in his. A nasty gash crosses the inside of her wrist, dark red against bone-white skin; it drips blood.

  “It’s all right,” she says, and closes her other hand over the wound to stop the bleeding.

  Shoe turns to see what kind of land lies outside the Godmother’s fortress. The wall, gray stone with darker patches of ice and water, stands at their back. Before them is a dense forest of pine trees, dark and menacing under the swollen black clouds, crowded with ferns drooping under a crust of ice. The damp, pine-needle-covered forest floor is studded here and there with mossy rocks.

  Holding her wrist, Pin is looking up the wall. Her short hair is plastered to her head from the rain. Her lips are blue with cold. “It’s a sh-shame to leave the rope and the hook,” she says, shivering. “I wonder if my thimble could bring it down.”

  Shoe finds his voice, speaking through chattering teeth. “Leave it, Pin. We don’t have time. They’ll be coming.”

  “There’s no gate in the wall,” Pin answers, “so they can’t come after us unless they come over, and that’ll take them a while to work out.” She gives her sudden wicked grin. “That’s irony for you.”

  “What’s i-irony?” Shoe asks. He shivers convulsively and wraps his arms around his chest.

  “It’s when something is supposed to work a certain way, but it turns out just the opposite,” Pin explains. “The wall is meant to keep us in, but now it’s keeping the Godmother inside instead.”

  “If the Godmother wants a gate,” Shoe says darkly, “there will be a g-gate. That’s reality for you.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” Pin faces the forest. “Let’s go.”

  MY SODDEN DRESS hangs heavily on me, and the knapsack feels heavier with every step. Drops of blood leak from the throbbing gash on my wrist. I feel frozen through. We’re out of the fortress, but we’re not yet free of it. Still, hope burns through me, for I have the thimble, and I know that I’m only just beginning to discover the extent of its power. I push through knee-high, ice-encrusted ferns and into the pine forest. Almost at once the wall disappears behind us. The trees’ trunks are wet, and the pine-needle-covered ground is damp, but the branches grow so thickly that they protect us from the worst of the rain. It is gloomy here, but not frightening. The forest feels wild, unmanageable, like something outside of the Godmother’s control.

  I lead Shoe onward, winding between the tree trunks, ducking low branches. We walk for a long time, leaving the fortress behind. The forest seems to gather us in and lead us on as the pine trees are joined by slender trees with white-barked trunks slashed with black, and golden leaves that shiver in the chilly wind. The land grows steeper, and we meet a tumbling stream and follow it up a hill. My feet are dry in my perfect boots, and the walking warms me; the thimble in my pocket warms me too. My wound is still oozing blood, but I feel as if I can keep going forever.

  Shoe, evidently, does not feel the same pull toward whatever lies beyond the forest. I can hear him behind me, stumbling and muttering to himself. I stop, and he runs into me, and we both stagger a few steps. I turn and put my hands on his shoulders to steady him.

  “Only if the thorns . . . ,” he says, his voice ragged. “And—and you think the Before is there, Pin, but it’s not, or it’s not what you think it is, anyway, and—”

  He’s not making any sense. I lay my chilled fingers on his lips and he stops talking. He stares at me with shadowed eyes, with drops of rain beading his eyelashes, and I can see that he’s too tired and too cold. I want to wrap my arms around him and share with him the warmth from my thimble. And, I have to admit, I want to feel his arms come around me, too; I want to feel his lips warm against mine. It’s something I’ve never felt before, and I’m curious. “Just a little farther,” I promise.

  He jerks out a nod, and I lead him on beside the rushing stream, looking for a place to rest. The icy rain has stopped, and night is gathering under the eaves of the trees. The moss-covered tree trunks are shadows in the darkness. We stumble on. Now and then I pause to dig under a particularly thick clump of ferns or fallen branches, pulling out moss that has stayed dry, or a bundle of twigs, carrying it all in my apron. Shoe keeps his hand on my shoulder, stopping when I stop, trudging on when I continue.

  At last, looming out of the darkness, blocking our path, is the huge trunk of a pine tree that has fallen in a storm. I follow it to its end. In falling, its wide roots have pulled up with them a canopy of moss and dirt that form a low, snug hollow edged by snaky roots hanging down. “In here,” I say to Shoe, and push him ahead of me into the dark cave.

  He collapses with his back against the rooty, dirty wall, and puts his head down on his knees, shivering uncontrollably. Unslinging the knapsack, which is dark with rain, I crawl into the cave after him, dumping my load of dry moss and wood in a heap by Shoe’s feet. I pull the knapsack in after me. Crouching, my head brushes the rooty ceiling; the opening is a low arch that shows only gathering night. The air in our cave is heavy and damp. I sweep the lumpy ground with my hand until I’ve made a flat place by the low opening and, working mostly by touch in the darkening cave, I make a pile of the moss and bark and the smaller twigs. With chilled, dirty fingers, I reach into my apron pocket and pull out the thimble.

  “If ever you’ve helped me,” I whisper to it, “help me now.” I hold the thimble to the tinder. “Burn,” I tell it.

  For a moment, the cave stays dark. Then a faint spark falls from the thimble into the dry moss. The tiny feathers of moss glow orange and curl, and a wisp of smoke drifts up. Quickly I add a few peels of bark to the moss, and the coals lick up into flames, and then I add sticks, and in a moment a warm fire is burning merrily.

  “Thank you,” I whisper to the thimble. In the flickering light, I take a moment to inspect it. Reflected in its smooth, silver base is my face, tiny, wreathed by etched brambles. “You came from somewhere,” I murmur. “And I’m going to find out where.”

  Opening the knapsack, I find that even though it’s wet on the outside, the things within are dry. Clever Jacks—it’s waterproof. First I pull out a candle and light it at the fire, and stick it in the dirt by Shoe’s foot. Now for my wrist. The skin is purple around the gash, which is about as long as my pinkie finger. As I squint at it, another drop of blood oozes from it and falls to the dirt. My apron is filthy, covered with dirt and flakes of moss and bark, but it’s the best I’ve got. I tear a strip from the bottom of it and use it to bind up the wound. There, all right and tight. Then I start pulling things out of the knapsa
ck to see what we’ve got: the bag of money, which is no use to us at the moment, a few more candles, a paper-wrapped package of gingerbread, and a row of pins stuck in paper that I stole from the sewing room. That should be everything, but the knapsack isn’t empty. I pull out a rough woolen blanket and two packets that smell like food of some kind and a stoppered bottle of water.

  The Jack. He must have had the bag already packed when we came for the hook. I know how much the Jacks fear the post: I hope our Jack hasn’t gotten a flogging for what he’s done. I close my eyes and clench my fists. “If I make it out,” I whisper, a promise to the Jack far away, who might already be dead, “I’ll figure out a way to come back for you.” And for the other Jacks and the Seamstresses who passed me scraps of silk under the table, the Spinsters who snuck me a bag of gold coins, and the Candlemakers who spared a few extra candles. All of them. It’s a big promise, and one I probably can’t keep, but I am the first to escape, and so I must try. Shoe will help me, I know.

  After feeding the fire another knot of wood, I take my treasures and settle next to Shoe. He has his eyes closed; he is still shuddering with cold.

  “Here,” I say, and carefully ease the sodden coat from his shoulders, replacing it with the Jack’s woolen blanket. I spread his coat next to the fire to dry and join him under the blanket. The fire blazes away. The pine wood is full of sap, and it pops and hisses; sparks leap up, and the comforting smell of woodsmoke fills the cave, but most of the smoke is pulled out of the opening. Every now and then Shoe gives a convulsive shiver as if he’s throwing off the last of the cold. Then, finally, he is still.

  I watch the flames, safe in our cocoon of warmth and light.

  “I know it’s wretched,” I say to him, “and that I shouldn’t have dragged you into this. But I don’t wish you back at the fortress.”

  “No,” he agrees, “I don’t wish either of us there,” and I see that his eyes are open now, reflecting the warmth of the fire. He shifts, and his arm comes around me. I lean into him.

  My stomach rumbles. Back at the fortress, the Godmother’s workers are eating tasteless lentils. It’s the only food I can remember.

  “Here,” Shoe says. He takes the warmth of his arm away and opens the packet of gingerbread. He breaks off a piece, catching every precious crumb in his hand, and holds it to my lips.

  The ginger-spice smell fills my nose, and my mouth starts to water. I take a bite. Its sweetness is so overwhelming, it’s almost painful. It fills me with another kind of warmth as I chew and swallow.

  More, my stomach demands.

  Shoe is eating the crumbs off his hand and gazing at me with an almost-smiling look in his forest-green eyes. Even though he is exhausted and dirt-smudged, with twigs snarled in his ragged hair, looking at him feels to me like a bite of gingerbread—sweet, and a little painful. Because I’ve never seen Shoe smile. His face is beautiful to me, but it is too pale, too bleak. A smile will be my new goal, I decide, even if an actual smile from him might be more sweetness than I can bear.

  My stomach gives a loud growl. “It wants more,” I say.

  “Try giving it a bit of this.” Shoe hands me a piece of cheese that he’s taken from one of the Jack’s packages.

  I close my eyes as I savor it, then eat the cracker Shoe gives me, and drink some water, and then I’m full and warm and leaning into Shoe as he settles against the cave wall again.

  “All right?” he mumbles. I can hear the exhaustion in his voice.

  “Mmm. You?” Suddenly the escape and the thorns and icy rain and long walk through the forest catch up to me, and I feel the heavy weight of sleep pressing down on my body. My eyes fall shut.

  I feel the vibrations in Shoe’s chest as he answers, talking more than he has before, as if being outside the Godmother’s fortress has finally made him feel more like himself—but my ears can’t sort out what he is saying.

  I resist the pull of sleep for a moment, afraid of the darkness that is a little like the Nothing. Then its peace and warmth surround me, and with a sigh I let it pull me down into its soft and velvety depths.

  SHOE WAKES UP with the solid wall of their tree-cave at his back, curled around Pin, who is sound asleep. The coals of their fire smolder. For a moment he watches the last tendrils of smoke drift up, and he feels safe and warm. It is as if they are two rabbits in a snug burrow. The opening of their cave is a low arch in the darkness framing a forest that glows emerald green and gold.

  He pushes up onto his elbow and looks down at Pin. She looks different in sleep. Sweet, somehow. When awake she is so sharp, her gray eyes keen under her level brows, her mouth ready to quirk into a teasing smile. Truth to tell, she has dragged him into this, and they aren’t clear yet, but he is glad to be filthy and afraid and still aching with weariness—and warm next to her in their tree-cave. Better here with her than making endless pairs of shoes in the Godmother’s fortress.

  He frowns. She has her hand curled under her chin, and he can see the dark stain of blood soaking the bandage she’s wrapped around her wrist. Surely it should have stopped bleeding by now. He’ll have to talk to her about it when she wakes up.

  Quietly, trying not to disturb her, he eases out from under the woolen blanket and tucks it around her, rummages in the knapsack, then crawls out the opening of their cave.

  The sun is just coming up; the sky overhead, what he can see of it between the tall pine trees, is the pale blue of early morning. The air is cool and smells richly of dirt and green growing things. The rising sun shines through the trees, sending shafts of golden light to pierce the shadows. He sees moss-covered tree stumps, and pine branches dripping with another kind of moss, and green billows of ferns, and, among the pines, trees with yellowing leaves as big as his hand. The forest feels welcoming, a place where they will be safe.

  After the gray stones and cloudy skies of the Godmother’s fortress, it is too much all at once, and he closes his eyes as he creaks to his feet, then looks again. Off to his right, he hears the rustling of a stream. Leaving Pin to sleep, he finds the stream and follows it, climbing over moss-covered rocks, winding between pine trees as big around as he is tall, until the stream widens into a pond fed by a waterfall that tumbles from a notch in a high gray cliff. For a moment Shoe stands mesmerized by the falling water.

  Then his stomach growls. “Oh, sure,” he tells it. “Give you a bit of gingerbread and some half-moldy cheese for dinner, and you just want to eat again in the morning.”

  A kingfisher darts past, a brilliant flash of blue. Where there are fish hunters, he reasons, there must be fish, and where there are fish, is breakfast. He finds a big rock that juts into the pond, and there he unravels a thread from the bottom of his ragged shirt and ties it to one of the pins he found in the knapsack. He bends the pin and sticks on a crumb of cheese, then settles himself in a sunny spot and drops the baited hook into the water. The lightest spray from the waterfall wafts over him as the breeze shifts.

  He doesn’t remember fishing from the Before, but when the bait is taken, his body knows exactly what to do, jerking the flashing, silver fish from the water, holding it behind the gills while he takes out the hook, then stunning it against the rock. He baits the hook again and catches another fish. He and Pin will have a feast for breakfast.

  As he makes his way downstream, he comes to a sun-warmed clearing not far from their tree-cave. To his alarm, he sees Pin’s gray woolen dress spread on a rock to dry. And her apron, which is dripping wet from a washing. Pin’s clothes, but no Pin.

  She is right, he realizes. In the Godmother’s fortress they’d only had the monotony of work; they never talked, never touched, never felt anything but fear. Now he feels something else, a longing for Pin that sweeps over him, leaving him feeling a little breathless.

  After peeking into the cave, he goes to the stream. There he finds Pin, wearing only her shift, lying on a flat, moss-covered rock, eyes closed, basking in the sun. She’s washed her short hair, and it is curling as it dries. He cre
eps closer, wanting suddenly to kiss her, to feel her skin under his hands. It is a strange, unremembered feeling, but his body knows what to do with it.

  As his shadow falls across her, she opens her eyes. “You could use a wash too, Shoe,” she says, smiling. The sun reflecting off the water is dazzling, and she shades her eyes with her hand.

  He is about to smile and answer, when he freezes. The fizzing excitement of seeing her suddenly drains away. She has rebandaged her wrist with a clean strip torn from the bottom of her shift.

  The bandage is already stained with blood.

  One thing he’s learned from his time at the post is how long a wound like that should bleed. Setting down the fish, he goes to his knees on the rock beside her. She sits up, still smiling. He takes her hand, turns it over, inspects her wrist.

  “It’s still bleeding,” he says.

  She glances down at it, then back at him. “It’s all right.”

  “No, it isn’t all right. Does it hurt?”

  “No,” she answers, and tugs her hand out of his. “It just drips.”

  “It drips,” he repeats. With a stab of terror, he realizes what that means. As he speaks, his lips feel stiff. “It left a trail.”

  Her gray eyes widen. “The thorns.”

  He nods, knowing what she means. The thorns are the Godmother’s. They were meant to slash, to make a wound that will not heal, so that if anyone ever managed to get over the wall, they would be easy to track.

  Pin has gone pale. She climbs quickly to her feet. “We have to go farther into the forest,” she says. “She won’t be able to find us. Don’t worry, Shoe. We’ll be safe.” She hops from the rock to the shore, hurrying away to the clearing.

  Shoe follows, the fish forgotten. There is no help for them in the forest, he feels certain.

  But the Godmother is coming, and they have nowhere else to go.

  MY DRESS IS still clammy as I wrestle it on over my wet shift. As I pull on my boots and tie the laces, my hands shake.