Thornghost by Tone Almhjell Page B

carved.
    Sebastifer.

C HAPTER T HIRTE EN

    U ncle Anders was gone.
    Niklas searched everywhere. The loft, the barn, the netherfield, and Dokka’s enclosure by the morello garden. He even went down to the graveyard, where Rag’s still unmarked grave made a brown scar outside the fence.
    He stalked the forest edge above the screaming stone, too, but Secret hadn’t come. Maybe she slept the day away somewhere in the shade.
    Finally he settled under the yard tree. As elm seeds rustled across the sunbaked dirt and the Summerchild sang in the east, he studied the scribbled notes of the lullaby, the photo of his mother, and the dog figurine. Just like Uncle Anders had said, Sebastifer looked like a true mutt with his floppy ears and curled-up tail. But he was so thin, like he was sick.
    It was late in the afternoon when his uncle camewalking up the path from the hallowfield. Where had he been hiding? The shrubs around the graveyard were thorny and near impossible to pass through without getting cut. Niklas must have been too quick to look properly.
    Uncle Anders stopped in the middle of the yard, gazing up at the strip of clear sky between the snowy mountaintops. Niklas put his things back in the satchel and got up to join him, but someone beat him to it.
    Tobis came sauntering out from behind Morello House, making his way toward Uncle Anders like a cat king inspecting his lands. Uncle Anders stooped down to stroke him, and Tobis rolled over to show his big belly, smirking and wiggling.
    â€œSo that’s your game today?” said his uncle. “Trying to trick me into rubbing your belly so you can bite my hand? You won’t fool me, old friend.” He scratched Tobis’s head instead until the cat waddled off to the barn to stalk a mouse hole. Uncle Anders chuckled as he watched him go.
    His grin looked so different from the sobbing mask he had worn in the bird room yesterday that Niklas leaned back against the elm tree. He couldn’t talk to his uncle about this now, not when he was having a good day. There was someone else he should be confronting anyway, and he had wasted a whole afternoon putting it off.
    It wouldn’t do to be a coward.
    He left Uncle Anders in the yard and hurried up the front steps.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    H e found her in the cupboard, a tiny room that used to be a pantry at the back of the kitchen, but which now served as Grandma Alma’s bedchamber since she felt too poorly to climb the stairs anymore.
    Under the window, Uncle Anders had fitted a bed. It would be too short for most grown-ups, but for Grandma Alma, it was just right. She lay propped up by thick pillows, papery lids closed over restless eyes.
    At the creak of the door, they opened. “There you are. I was just waiting for someone young and able to come wake me.”
    â€œAt your service.” Niklas eased her forward, searching her face as he slipped another pillow behind her back. Grandma Alma never slept during the day. “Are you ill?”
    She swatted the words away with weak hands. “No, no. Can’t an old queen have a nap?”
    â€œOf course,” Niklas said quickly. “Queens can do whatever they like.”
    He looked away from her swollen knuckles. Above her head hung a yellowed snapshot of his mother balancing Niklas on her lap. He had always hated that photo because he squirmed to get away, like he didn’t care that she would be gone in less than a year. But his mother didn’t seem to mind. Her calm expression was miles away from the wild stare in the bird castle photo.
    Maybe there would never really be a good time for this. He took the photo out of his satchel and held the evidencein the light from the window, watching his grandmother’s face turn from tired to sad.
    â€œWhere did you find this picture?”
    â€œIn Anne’s office.”
    A smile brushed past Grandma Alma’s face. “Well, that woman never could leave the past alone,