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A giant crash, followed by another, echoed around the night. The dogs started to bark from their kennels near the front door. I scrambled to the edge and watched in horror as the dogs strained on their chains as they barked at the giant chunk of turret on the front lawn. Then a light flashed on, illuminating the front of the house. Grandmother’s room.
I swallowed, hard. Oh shit. If she caught me up here, my hiding spot - my only truly solitary area - would be busted. I had to get back to my room.
I threw my diary into the tent, zipped it up, and dashed back across the roof. Eking down the old metal pipes, I slid through the window to the upstairs hallway. As quietly as the creaky old floorboards would allow, I hurried to my room. The door was shut so as not to alert anyone, and halfway down the hall, in the middle of the house. My own tiny window was but a slit in the wall, too small for me to squeeze through, which made sneaking out to the hallway necessary every night.
I quickened my pace as my heart hammered faster and faster with each step. I was so close. But the second I was outside my door, the door at the end of the hall swung open, and my grandmother stood there in her dressing gown with a face like thunder.
Chapter Two
“What are you doing out of bed?” Grandmother snapped. “And why are you covered in blood?”
Blood?
I looked down at myself. In all the excitement, I hadn’t noticed the gash on my palm and the blood it had inked all over my pyjamas. My handprints were pressed all over my dressing gown and trousers, all in crimson. I must have cut my hand on something as the turret collapsed.
“I was just getting a snack, and I cut myself with a knife,” I said.
She would yell at me for it. I wasn’t allowed to get things out of the kitchen myself, only eat what I was given at mealtimes. But her thinking I was sneaking food was way better than her finding out I had a hideout on top of the tower. It was my only sanctuary; the only place I could exist without criticism except my own, and that was bad enough. And the last thing I wanted her to do was find my diary.
“Incompetent girl.” Grandmother swept out of her room and down the corridor. “You know you aren’t allowed to get your own food.”
She snatched up my hand and brought it up to inspect. “It isn’t deep. You will have to heal that yourself to teach you a lesson. No magic.”
“Yes, grandmother.”
She dropped my hand. “Go back to bed this instant. If I catch you out of bed again, you’ll be spending the night in the cellar.”
I dashed into my room without another word. Not the cellar. I had spent more than one night down there among the sacks of potatoes and firewood on a pile of straw without a single blanket. Everyone had spent a night down there at some point in their lives. I was just the only person left to suffer the punishment. It was dark and cold, and there were mice on good days and rats on bad. No matter how many times grandmother set the dogs off down there.
The moment I shut my door, the lock clicked as grandmother locked it from the other side. I kept my groan to myself in case she could hear it. Having my door unlocked was one of the few privileges I ever got, and having it locked meant I wasn’t even getting out until lunchtime.
Heart heavy, I went to my bathroom and washed my hand under the sink. I winced as it stung, cleaned it, and wrapped it up with gauze. I flexed my fingers as I got into a fresh new set of pyjamas and went to my tiny window and stared out at the night.
The stars didn’t look nearly so beautiful from here, only with the odd dot visible. So it wasn’t tonight, but one day I would get out of here.
Quite aside from my expectations, I was allowed out of my room for breakfast the next morning. I ate porridge at the kitchen table alone, as usual, the lingering smell of eggs and bacon still in the air from when my grandmother, aunt, and uncle had had their breakfast an hour before. I didn’t remember ever having tasted bacon before. I was curious if it tasted as good as it smelled.
But the reason for my early release became apparent when my grandmother came into the kitchen and ordered me to go down to town to pick up her order for potion ingredients from the apothecary. My heart lightened at the thought.
I had no money and wasn’t allowed a job, but running my grandmother’s errands allowed me to visit the one place I could go in town without money: the library. There weren’t many books to read in the house, and certainly no novels. I hadn’t long finished the last novel I had picked up at the library and needed to return it anyway. Of course, if my grandmother had known, she probably would have yanked those privileges too. Every secret I kept from her was laden with guilt, but it was the only way I could maintain a sliver of sanity.
I knew I was selfish, but maybe even I was allowed a tiny bit of grace?
I walked down to town, from our house on the hill. The day was sunny, and there were few clouds. The town was old, with no new buildings having been built for over a century. The community had collectively decided that renovating the existing buildings was the only acceptable thing, and as such, there was a small tourist season in which people flooded to see the town that time forgot.
Once I picked up her order, I headed down the cobbled streets and arrived at the library, which had once been an auditorium. It was a big, circular thing with a glass domed roof and windows running all around the outside of the ground floor. Despite the age of the building, the insides were up to date with modern shelves, self check out systems, and computers which I occasionally used to see what the internet was all about.
As soon as I stepped through the sliding doors, I made a beeline for the action and adventure section. There was one genre that had had me in its grasp for years: pirate adventures. Having researched the history of pirates, I knew that most of the fiction I read was a romanticised, glorified version of how things had really been, but they were too fun to ruin with realism.
I walked up and down the shelves, looking for one I hadn’t read yet. There were only a few and after that, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. A librarian had suggested I get some e-books from online but I hadn’t the heart to tell her I had no money to purchase them. Still, I could re-read my favourites for a time, and hopefully by then, my powers would have emerged.
I grabbed one I hadn’t read before off the shelf and found myself a booth to read in beneath an open window. I was tempted to read outside, but I didn’t want anyone I knew seeing me. My aunt had an annoying habit of wanting to take things from me that she knew I enjoyed. It was almost as if seeing me happy in any way made her uncomfortable. And I couldn’t have anyone taking away my novels.
I kept an eye on the clock above the librarian’s desk as I got lost in a world of Anne Bonnie, who had a far more lucky life in this book than in real life. But then I flinched as something moved outside the window. A large cat, or at least I thought it was a cat, rushed across the road and pattered to a stop right outside my window. Its fur was a smoky blue, and its pointy ears had white wisps coming out of them.
Its eyes were an odd colour, silver, and they focused on me with an intensity I could feel under my skin. It leapt up to the open window and dropped down in front of me. With a little mewl, it pressed a paw to my hand. With a gasp, its feelings flooded through me. Fear, insecurity, and it was asking me...would I help it?
“You’re not a regular cat,” I breathed. “You’re a Grimalkin.”
