Rye’s question seemed to pull Harmless from his thoughts. He looked up, his eyes returning from somewhere far away.
“Yes, yes, indeed. Fabulous news, Folly. You’ll be an expert in screaming infants and soiled linens in no time I’m sure,” he said with a smile.
Rye frowned. That wasn’t exactly the type of encouragement she’d had in mind.
“I need to tend to a few things before morning,” Harmless said, pushing himself up from the table. “Folly, make yourself at home. Riley, be sure to pack whatever you wish to take from this place. We won’t be returning any time soon.”
Rye’s night proved to be a restless one. She was still staring at the timbers above her bed when Folly nudged her. The creaks and groans of Grabstone took some getting used to and must have woken Folly too.
“Rye,” Folly whispered, and nudged her again, harder. “Are you awake?”
“Ouch, Miss Bony Elbow. Yes, I am.”
“Do you hear that? Someone’s outside.”
Rye heard the familiar shuffling in the hallway. A shadow broke the dim crack of light under the bedchamber’s door.
“It’s just the ghost from the Bellwether,” Rye said.
“What?” Folly asked sitting up. “I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts any more.”
“Oh, right,” Rye said. “In that case it’s just a big rat. Try to get some sleep.”
“With ghosts and giant rats outside the door?”
“I’ll take care of it.” Rye said, slipping from under the covers and lighting a candle.
“Where are you going?”
“Shhh,” Rye said. “Just watch.”
She tiptoed towards the door silently. She reached for the latch without making a sound. But as her fingertips touched it, the shadow disappeared from under the door and there was a creak on the stairs, followed by silence.
Rye opened the door quickly. The stairway was empty.
She looked at Folly over her shoulder. “See?”
Rye carefully climbed the stairs to the Bellwether. Her small candle barely penetrated the shadows, but it was enough to illuminate the landing at the top. The door was shut tight, but the bread she’d left earlier had disappeared, just like the other offerings she’d set out each of the past several nights.
Whatever lurked in the Bellwether, real or imagined, it seemed to be restless too.
Harmless took notice of it and raised an eyebrow. “Where did you come across that?” he asked.
“In one of the bedchambers. Do you like it?”
“Hmm,” Harmless said. Then, after a moment, “Yes, it does seem to suit you.”
The light of dawn grazed the dunes as they arrived at the edge of a tall bluff. Rye squinted against the wind as she watched the whitecaps roll into shore, but even though they had just hiked from Grabstone, she couldn’t see the shrouded mansion through the morning’s mist.
Harmless was busy examining a simple farmer’s cart. It was empty and horseless.
“Folly,” Harmless inquired, “how did you manage to get out here?”
Folly’s shoulders slumped. “There was a horse hitched to that cart yesterday. I guess it got tired of waiting.” She sighed and shook her head. “My father’s not going to let me leave the inn again for a month.”
“I guess we need to find another ride then,” Harmless said. “Come on, girls. This way.”
They followed Harmless along a narrow sand path that traced the edge of the bluff. Before long they came to a wind-beaten fisherman’s shanty that looked to have weathered one too many storms. Behind it was a small, sheltered stable.
“Ah, there we are,” Harmless said, and quickly made for the paddock.
“Will we ask the fisherman if we can borrow a horse?” Rye asked, hurrying to keep up.
“I’d hate to trouble him at this hour,” Harmless said, a glint in his eye. “But stay here and keep a lookout for him, would you, Folly? Just in case he happens to wake up.”
In the stable they found nothing more than a few bales of rotting hay and a sad, grey nag with ribs Rye could count.
Harmless frowned. “Not much of a selection. I guess this old girl will have to do. Riley, set her reins, would you?”
As Rye got to work, Harmless searched the stable and found a farrier’s bag. He took a nail and a small hammer, removed a swatch of fabric from his pocket, and nailed it to a post.
“Just in case someone misses her,” he said with a wink.
The fabric was cut into the shape of a ragged four-leaf clover – its colour black as night.
Rye had seen one like this before. In fact, she had it in her very own pocket at that moment.
It meant a Luck Ugly had promised you a favour. Hers had been given to her by someone other than Harmless and, at her mother’s request, she still hadn’t told him about it.
They rode for most of the morning, staying on the hard-packed sand so that the wagon’s wheels wouldn’t become stuck. Folly snacked on some strips of dried meat as Harmless tended the reins. Rye fidgeted, as she was prone to do when forced into long bouts of inactivity. Harmless seemed to sense it.
“We’re taking the back way, but it won’t be much longer now,” he encouraged. “See, there are the twin culverts.”
Rye and Folly looked ahead. From the bluff, fortified on all sides by enormous boulders that looked like they could only have been assembled by giants, were the mouths of two gaping tunnels. Each was wide enough to fit not only their mare and wagon, but an entire fleet of draft horses. Dark but shallow currents flowed and gurgled from the culverts, etching a lattice of scars into the packed beach as they meandered to the sea.
“The twins are restful today,” Harmless noted. “When the Great Eel Pond rises too high, this stretch of beach can be impassable.”
He must have seen Rye’s quizzical look.
“The culverts drain the surrounding waters under, rather than over, the village. Without them, Drowning’s name would become quite literal.”
As their horse splashed through the run-off, the pungent smell of sewage and salt rot permeated Rye’s nose. She tried to peer into the blackness behind the culverts. Rye saw nothing in the darkness, but there, on a rock by the edge of one tunnel, stooped a small, hunch-shouldered man in a heavy cloak. He dangled a hand in the icy run-off. Next to him was a covered pail.
Harmless took note of him too.
“A sniggler,” he said, with a hint of curiosity. “Let’s