Beastkeeper by Cat Hellisen

Father?”
    â€œHe’s not well,” the woman snapped.
    Sarah’s father didn’t seem to care terribly much, but he asked, “What kind of not well?”
    â€œYou know what kind.”
    â€œIs he worse?”
    Her grandmother didn’t answer, just pressed her lips thinly together as if she was trying to stop a secret from inching its way out like a tiny worm.
    Sarah shifted back a little, closer to her father. She didn’t like this woman or the conversation. It reminded her too much of her mother’s words before she left. All twisted and tangled and full of half things. Perhaps her grandmother had poisoned her grandfather. She looked like the kind of woman who would put arsenic in the soup and tenderly nurse someone to death, spoonful by spoonful. A prickling started up in the corners of Sarah’s eyes. She wanted to scream at her father not to leave her here, but her words were all caught up in her throat and her tongue felt swollen to twice its size.
    â€œI asked if he was worse,” her father said, and there was a strange new deepness to his voice, like an echo under the words, like his throat was thickening all the sounds, roughening the edges. He was starting to sound like a stranger.
    Sarah pushed a little sob deep down into her chest. Maybe she could escape. After her father left, she could slip away from the ruined castle and walk until she found a farm or something. People who would understand. Maybe call the police.
    And then what? Where would she go? Would the authorities put her in a home filled with other children no one wanted?
    Her grandmother squinted, finally peering down to get a good look at Sarah’s face.
    Sarah could feel her grandmother’s breath against her forehead, and she realized that the old woman could hardly see. Her eyes were milky with cataracts. Maybe she could run away after all, if this woman was half blind.
    â€œHmph.” Her grandmother drew back, as if Sarah was something vaguely distasteful. “She looks normal enough.”
    â€œShe is,” said her father. “She’s normal. She’s not cursed.” But his voice trembled on the last word.

 
    6
    THE KEY OF IVORY
    THE RUST-COVERED Toyota belched thick smoke into the forest clearing. The engine spat, coughed, and then with a roar, the car lurched away. Sarah’s father didn’t even look back at her. He raised one hand in good-bye, and that was that. He dropped it back to the steering wheel almost as soon as he’d lifted it.
    Sarah and her grandmother stood silently, watching the woods darken, until the sound of the car was a distant throb. “Wastrel,” said her grandmother. “Blackguard.” She sniffed. “Hard to believe sometimes that he’s my own true-born son.”
    Sarah swallowed away the snot-thick feeling of her unshed tears. “I’m Sarah,” she said in a small voice.
    â€œI know your name, girl.” said her grandmother. “You will call me Nanna. That is, after all, the kind of thing grandchildren call their beloved grandmothers.”
    She was nothing like a beloved grandmother. Instead Sarah was reminded of the ink drawings in her mother’s battered old book of myths. Stern-faced goddesses and Fates. Terrible and strange.
    Nanna drew herself straighter and held out one arm to the air. Down from the darkening skies, like a falling comet, came the white raven. It lit on her grandmother’s arm and bowed, raising its beak. “And?” Nanna said.
    The raven answered her in human speech. Its voice was high and sweet. “The little king is past the borderlands now.” It sounded like a woman on the verge of laughing or crying.
    â€œHmph. Good riddance, then.” Nanna twitched her arm. “The girl,” she said to the raven. “He called it Sarah.”
    Sarah had her mouth half open, staring at the bird, trying to put together the idea that it was making words. Like a