There were seven doors in total. Each of them was locked. She could hear no sound from the others, except for the penultimate door—a scrabbling sound, from within, as of a small animal digging.
She turned, unsure. Heavy footfalls were approaching up the stairs.
It was the large man, Edward Albany. He was carrying a wooden crate in his scoured fingers and something in the crate was clinking. Ribs watched him kneel, set it down on the floor with an unexpected gentleness, and then lift out a bowl of some kind of slop and a greasy drinking cup. Then he unlocked the first door and went in.
Swiftly, her heart in her throat, she padded back down the dim hall. A strong reek of unwashed flesh reached her. At the doorway she paused, trying to make sense of what she was looking at.
A small room. The interior was dark, the far window boarded over. Slats of daylight came in between the boards and fell across the floor in stripes. Ribs saw the small bed. The clothes chest. The ragged figure in one corner, hunched and turned away, shuddering, weeping softly. And she saw how Edward Albany placed the dish and the cup down just within the door and went in and loomed over the child.
Except it wasn’t a child. She saw that now. It was soft and deformed and lifted a crooked arm up as Edward Albany crouched beside it. What looked like roots or branches had sprouted all along its back, and its gown had been cut away to accommodate them. Albany took it into his arms and held it and rocked it and crooned to it and slowly, slowly the thing stopped its weeping. The strange rootlike protrusions entwined all up Edward Albany’s wrists and arms, but gently. It seemed the creature could not walk but only drag itself and after a time Albany lifted it effortlessly and carried it to the little bed and laid it down. There was a shelf with books on it, Ribs saw now, and he opened one and began to read. And it was then the creature lifted its face, and moved its tongue as if trying to speak, and Ribs saw in horror just who it was.
His features had shifted, melted almost. His nose stood crooked and the eyes were strangely sunken in their sockets, yes, but it was him, she knew his face, had seen it for the past six years in the halls, in the dining room, out in the fields.
It was the missing boy, the one they called Brendan. The one who’d been building the model of Cairndale out of matchsticks.
Edward Albany was reading gently to Brendan, one big scarred hand tousling the boy’s hair. That hair was white and growing strangely from the side of his scalp. Ribs glanced down at the crate and saw six more bowls and six more cups and she peered back along the corridor at the six other doors and then she understood.
* * *
Below, in the cellar, Komako was rubbing her wrists, shifting closer to Oskar, watching through the gloom as Mrs. Ficke continued at her work on the long table. The old woman had gone mercurial, sly. She seemed like she wanted to say more but had stopped herself.
The air smelled scorched, strange.
“Go on,” said Komako, frustrated. “Why help Cairndale, if you were sent away? Why work for Dr. Berghast at all, if you don’t like him?”
“Like?” A flicker of a smile crossed the old woman’s face. “What has liking a person to do with it?”
“You could just leave. Go to London, America, anywhere. You don’t have to stay here, making … tinctures.”
Mrs. Ficke sniffed. “Everything seems so simple, at your age. I remember it. But nothing is, not really, not when you bring time and betrayal and forgiveness into it. Truth is, I owe Henry a … debt. A debt I’ll not repay in full, no matter how I try.” She inclined her head a moment, then looked up. The gears of her iron hook whirred down. “My brother, Edward. Henry showed him a kindness that did save his life. It is the right thing to honor one’s debts, even if they must be paid in blood.”
“In—in—in blood—？” stammered Oskar.
Komako felt the heat rise to her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “What happened?”
Mrs. Ficke shrugged.
“You are right to be suspicious, pets.” Mrs. Ficke’s pale tongue poked out, as if testing the air. “I’d of been the same way, once. Now let’s be frank with each other. You are here on account of the missing children. Do not lie to me.”
Oskar opened his mouth, started to speak, closed it.
Komako shook her braid out of her face. “Where are they?”
“There’s more at work here than you can imagine,” Mrs. Ficke murmured. “You think you’re hunting a lion. But it’s the jungle what’s hunting you both.”