“Travelling alone …” He furrowed his brow. “Even stranger. You’re quite certain that’s what it was?”
Rye nodded. “Trust me. I’ve seen more than my fair share.”
Mr Nettle pulled a curly lock of beard between his teeth with his tongue and began to chew. “Well, if he’s foolish enough to linger, he may never make it back to whatever dank moor he crawled from. Worse beasts than Bog Noblins prowl these woods …”
“Is my mother back?” Rye interrupted, glancing up at the tree house high above them.
“Yes, she returned not long—”
Rye didn’t wait for Mr Nettle to finish. She raced past him, stomping up the spiral steps so fast she nearly made herself dizzy.
Abby O’Chanter raised her thin, dark eyebrows as she listened to Rye’s story, looking up from her scavenged cook pot as she scraped the night’s meagre meal into wooden bowls. She placed one of them on the round stump of a sawn-off bough that served as their table, in front of Rye’s little sister, Lottie. The youngest O’Chanter had donned Mr Nettle’s skullcap and now looked like she had grown horns from her ears.
“The letter H was fresh, couldn’t have been more than a few days old,” Rye emphasised after completing the tale. “And the way the huntsman described the traveller – it had to be Harmless.”
Rye watched her mother carefully and waited for her reaction. Surely Abby would be as excited as she was. After nearly five months in the forest, the most they had heard of Harmless were vague rumours from wayward travellers. But now he had left them a message. Based on what the huntsman had said, he was not only alive, but nearby – not more than a day or two away.
“And the other men in search of your father?” Abby asked. “Did the huntsman have more to say about them? We haven’t come across anyone in weeks.”
“Just that they weren’t very friendly,” Rye said, recalling his words. “They don’t sound like the type of travellers we’d care to run across.”
Abby fell silent. Mr Nettle watched quietly from his stump next to the sawn-off bough, the only sound the crunch of Lottie’s small jaws. She chewed. And chewed some more. Supper consisted of tough meat and bland, boiled roots. Food of any sort was difficult to come by Beyond the Shale, where small game was elusive and the edible plants bitter.
“Tomorrow we can all set out together to search for Harmless,” Rye added, grabbing her mother’s elbow enthusiastically. “With luck, we’ll find him before anyone else does.”
She noticed a brightening in her mother’s face, but one that was offset by some unknown weight too. Rye could see the bones of Abby’s jaw rising and falling as she plucked a root from the pot and chewed it between her teeth.
“Your discovery is promising,” her mother said softly. “But we can’t go tomorrow.”
“But this is the first sign of Harmless we’ve seen! If we miss him now we might never have another chance.”
Abby seemed to weigh her words carefully before speaking, and her tone was regretful when she finally did.
“I don’t disagree, Riley. But we are running out of time. We’ve heard no news from Drowning in months. Any explorers will be winding up their travels and returning south with the coming of the cold.”
Rye glanced at the gaps in the wooden floorboards. She could see all the way down to the mossy earth below them. The walls of the tree house were built round the boughs of the oak, vines crawling through the seams of its timbers. A draught fluttered the cobwebs in its corners. Their latest shelter was not a place well suited to handle the chill of autumn, never mind the deep freeze that would inevitably follow. It would only take one storm to leave them snowbound for the season.
“We too must return to Drowning before the first flakes of winter,” Abby continued, her voice drifting off for a moment. “With … or without … your father.”
Rye clenched her fists in frustration. They couldn’t give up now! Abby raised her hand in response to Rye’s inevitable protest.
“That’s why I’m going to leave tonight to search for him,” she said.
Rye swallowed back her objection. It was now replaced by another, quieter one. “But the forest – at night …”
Mr Nettle shifted uncomfortably on his stump.
“I’ll wait to leave until after our neighbours have made their evening rounds,” Abby said, casting a glance towards the looming trees outside the shutterless windows. She flashed a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, Riley, it’s not the first time I’ve ventured out alone after dark.”
“We should go together,” Rye muttered. “It would be safer.”
“I’ll return before dusk tomorrow,” Abby said. “And I’ll stay on the Wend. If your father is heading south that’s the path he’ll take. But if he’s lingered nearby he may find his way to this Hollow. It’s better that you remain here to meet him.”
Rye frowned, unconvinced.
“Lottie, you’ll be in charge while I’m gone,” Abby said with a playful wink. “Keep an eye on these two until I return.”
Lottie gave Rye and Mr Nettle a watchful glare. “I’ll try,” she said solemnly. “Them’s a lot of work.”
“Indeed,” Abby agreed with a smirk.
“Rye, is that you who be stinky?” Lottie chimed, already relishing her new role. “Leave your boots outside when you step in bear plop.”
“Mind your own beeswax,” Rye said.
“Me no beeswacker,” Lottie objected. She leaned down and crinkled her nose towards Rye’s feet, as if smelling something foul under her heels. Rye shifted away so that Lottie’s horns wouldn’t poke her in the arm.
Rye didn’t protest against her mother any further.
“Now eat,” Abby said, placing a bowl on the table for her. She gestured for Rye to sit. “None of us can afford to skip any more meals.”
But Rye’s stomach was already a twisted stew of excitement and anxiety. She looked to Lottie and Mr Nettle, who huddled over their own well-cleaned bowls. Lottie’s dirt-streaked cheeks were less full than they once had been and her soon-to-be four-year-old body had begun to stretch like an eager seedling.
“Lottie, you and Mr Nettle can finish mine.”
Lottie and Mr Nettle brightened, but they gasped in surprise as the bowl was snatched from the table.
A furry creature the size of a raccoon scurried high up the stretch of the tree trunk growing through the wall. The thief was fawn-coloured, with a long, ringed tail and saucer-like eyes that blinked down at them nervously.
“How do they keep getting past the Rill?” Abby said in frustration.
“The brindlebacks are crafty little pests,” Mr Nettle groused with a tug at his beard. “A branch high up in the forest canopy must have grown over the Rill and intertwined with the oak’s own limbs. I’ll have a look tomorrow and cull it back.”
“Bingle-blacks!” Lottie huffed, and clenched her fists.
“Maybe he won’t eat it,” Rye said, looking up hopefully. “They don’t like roots, do they?”
The brindleback held the bowl with his long black fingers, sniffed its contents with a wet, pointy snout, then cocked his head. Rye opened her hands in case the little bandit dropped it. Instead, he attacked it savagely with tiny teeth. Lottie and Mr Nettle groaned in disappointment.
When he was finished, the brindleback dropped the bowl down on to the floor with a clatter and disappeared into