The Twistrose Key Read online

  Shivering, Lin retreated into the hallway to examine the parcel. The rough paper was the color of a broken mountainside, and bound in sodden string. She turned it over, and a chill hand caught her heart.

  Niklas could not have sent her this parcel. No one could.

  On the front, there was no stamp and no address. Only a single word, written not by pen or pencil, but scratched into the wet paper with the sharp tip of a knife.

  “Twistrose.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The grandfather clocks struck the half hour, one by one and out of rhythm. The third-floor bedroom one first, the upstairs bathroom one second, and the hallway one last as always, after a grudging effort of whispers and clicks.

  Lin’s hands trembled as she held the parcel under the brown silk lampshade. She had thought the letters would shift in the light, that her eyes would adjust and the mistake would be corrected. Yet no matter how hard she stared at the scratched word, it did not change.

  The parcel felt heavier than it looked. When she shook it, something jangly slid from side to side within. She paused to listen. In the kitchen, the violins had resumed their yammering, and from the second floor came the faint din of a TV audience that meant her father had stopped writing to call out the answers to a quiz show.

  She ripped the paper and emptied the parcel into her hand.

  Out tumbled two keys. One was grimy and had an orange plastic tag that said CELLAR. The other was large, as large as the length of her hand, and blackened, as if it had grown from ashes and dirt. Its head was fashioned as a petal, and the stem was that of a rose, with three curved, sharp thorns. Engraved across the petal, there it was again: TWISTROSE.

  • • •

  In the troll hunt, they always used code names. For years Niklas had been Summerknight and Lin had been Nettle, because of her special nettle brew. But for the Oldtown hunt, she had taken a new one, inspired by the rosebush over Rufus’s grave.

  One day, she had noticed how it hooked its thorns into the paint of the facade, stretching its branches toward the sky. It reminded her of the junipers that clung to the Trollheim Mountains with their twisted roots; they never let go no matter how cruel the wind blew. And that’s when she had thought of it—the perfect code name for a troll hunter who was exiled for the moment, but not forever: Twistrose.

  Lin had wanted to wait till their next game to share it with Niklas, so she hadn’t said a thing about it. Not to Niklas, not to anyone.

  “So, Miss Rosenquist, what have you got there?”

  Lin whipped around, shoving both the folded paper and the keys in her pockets. How very like her father to know about the squeaky steps. He had his quizzy face on, the lifted-chin one he wore when his curiosity had set in, and she knew she wouldn’t get away with lying. “A parcel,” she said. “But it’s for me.”

  He tilted his head. “From a friend?”

  Which was of course an excellent question. With the troll-hunter signal, whoever had delivered the parcel had made sure Lin would be the one to find it. And the name Twistrose could only mean that it was for her, and her alone. But for what purpose? Shrugging as casually as she could, Lin said, “I don’t know yet.”

  The quizzy face softened. “A little mystery. I see. Miss Rosenquist, you may carry on.” He patted the arm of her still-dripping coat before he started back up the stairs. “But if your mystery takes you out into the storm, I know I can trust you to dress for the part.”

  Only when she heard him shout “What is the Arctic Circle!” from the living room, dared Lin bring the keys out from hiding. Moving deeper into the hallway, she ignored her coat, because she had no intention of going outside of the house. She was going under it.

  The cellar door at the end of the hallway had remained locked since they moved in, despite her father’s attempts at wringing the key out of Mrs. Ichalar. All sorts of trouble could be brewing down there, he had argued, fires and floods and rodent invasions. Mrs. Ichalar had claimed that she couldn’t find the key, and that she needed the storage space for her little hobby, now that she lived in a retirement home. “What sort of hobby?” her father had asked, but for once, his questions got him nowhere. Lin smiled. If Harald Rosenquist knew that his daughter’s “little mystery” involved the cellar key, there would be no stopping him. But he didn’t know.

  She turned the cellar key in its lock and opened the door slowly. Dank air oozed up from below, thick with rot and chemicals. All she could make out was a dented flashlight on the wall, and three tapering steps dissolving into black. She picked the flashlight off its peg, turned it on, and closed the door behind her, muffling the violins.

  Below, she could hear the river mumbling by, gusting chilly air up the stairwell. The draft was so cold that Lin’s breath made frost clouds. With a shudder she followed the dust-speckled beam down the stairs. At the landing, the light fell on an animal skull on the banister. It had cracked teeth and large, tilted eye sockets. Lin hesitated for a moment. What sort of old lady would nail skulls to her banisters? But she pressed on, and when she reached the final step and learned the truth about their landlady’s “little hobby,” it all made sense.

  She was watched by a hundred eyes.

  Among the usual clutter of boxes and crates, there were animals everywhere. Cats curled up on barrels, ferrets peeking out between mildewed coats, and falcons strung up under the crossbeams of the ceiling. They were all positioned to glower at Lin with their glass bead eyes, and they were all dead.

  Mrs. Ichalar was a taxidermist.

  The old woman’s workbench stood right next to the stairs, cluttered with hooks and scoops and bone cutters, and several bottles of a clear liquid that might explain the chemical smell. Lin took a deep, icy breath, annoyed at how hard she was shivering. A troll hunter did not back away at a little creepiness! Taxidermied animals looked grisly, but they couldn’t hurt her. “Calm down,” she whispered to herself. “And bring your brain to the party!” That’s what her father always said if she got impatient with a riddle, and he was right. She would not solve the mystery if she didn’t keep her head clear.

  With both hands on the flashlight, she looked again, more carefully, letting the beam rove around the room. There had to be a reason why the two keys had arrived together. One to unlock the cellar door, and the other . . .

  The flashlight beam found the back of the cellar. It was overgrown with pale, wet, ghostly roots. They had broken through near the ceiling and crawled down the wall in a tangled mass, crumbling the mortar and splitting the bricks. In the center of the wall, the roots shied away to make an open circle, and in that naked patch, two fissures met and formed an oddly shaped crack. Lin could swear it resembled a keyhole.

  She had of course expected to find the keyhole in a door, or a cupboard, or a painted chest. But gold didn’t always mean gold. At least the strange crack deserved a closer look. She crossed the rough floorboards, where the river showed through between the gaps. All the boxes that had been stacked in the back lay toppled on the floor, pushed away by the roots. Lin shoved them aside so she could see the entire shrub.

  The roots were not pale and wet after all, they were coated in rime. Lin frowned up at the holes, to where the roots had broken through the bricks. If her mapping skills did not deceive her, this wall lay directly beneath the front door—and the rosebush outside. For the first time that evening, it occurred to Lin to wonder why Mrs. Ichalar’s flower bed was covered with frost.

  The cold seemed to radiate from the bare, circular patch. Lin leaned forward to study it. Yes. Her first impression had been right: The oddly shaped crack definitely looked like a large, ragged keyhole. One point to Miss Rosenquist! She lifted the Twistrose key for measure.

  The roots stirred.

  Lin gave a cry and lurched backward, stumbling over a crate, pricking her finger on the thorns of the key. A single bead of blood pushed out. She sucked at it, staring ha
rd at the wall. Roots couldn’t stir, could they? It may have seemed like they had reached for her, but there had to be some other explanation. Maybe the storm? Maybe it rattled the rosebush hard enough for the tremors to reach all the way belowground? She got to her feet and raised the key again, waving it back and forth in front of the shrub from a safe distance. Nothing.

  She cast a look behind her, toward the mounted animals and the banister with its sad skull. If she wanted, she could walk back up the stairs. She could tell her father about the cellar key and Mrs. Ichalar’s hobby and the curious rose infestation. But then the key would be confiscated and the mystery—the whole adventure—would be over.

  A faint snatch of music murmured in her ear. It must have come from the kitchen above, except it wasn’t the usual hoarse violins, but a sweet, soft humming that made her think of Summerhill, and deep woods, and secret maps. Lin’s throat clenched. She did not want the adventure to end, not yet. Before she had time to reconsider, she pressed her lips together, stepped forward, and thrust the Twistrose key into the wall.

  It fit perfectly in the crack. As she turned it, there was no click, but she felt something slide into place in there. No. Dislocate was a better word, like something had been pried apart that was never meant to be separated. Freezing air poured against her fingers, along with a flicker of blue, shimmering light.

  Whatever lay on the other side of this wall, it was not the riverbank.

  Fear came crashing into her body with painful thumps. She wanted to turn and run, but all of a sudden, the spindly roots shot out and grasped her, winding hard around her arms, wresting the flashlight from her hand. The bricks split apart with a tremendous crack. A torrent of icy air rushed out to meet her. The roots tightened, pulling her toward the opening, but Lin was too astounded by the sight beyond the wall to put up much of a fight.

  There was no cellar, and no riverbank, either. Instead she looked out on a desolate, frozen mountain valley, where winter twilight painted the snow blue, and stern peaks rose into the sky. A creature crouched in the snow before her, facing away, but so close that she could smell it: a musky scent. Now it turned toward her. Lin watched helplessly as an elongated face came into view. Two needlelike teeth glinted in its mouth, and a pair of liquid, black eyes stared back at her.

  Then the creature darted forward. With a fast, clawed grip it pulled Lin free of the roots and into its pungent embrace.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The wind died down, and a creaking cold took its place. Lin’s face was buried in thick, silky fur. She couldn’t move, for the creature was strong, and it squeezed her so tight that her slippers dangled in the air. Nevertheless, Lin felt the panic that had gripped her flowing out of her limbs, breath by breath. It was the smell, so strange, and yet so very familiar. Now that she was wrapped in it, she found that the musk was laced with other scents: nutmeg and sweet hay and woodsmoke. But she flinched again when the creature suddenly spoke.

  “You’re here,” it breathed into her cardigan, sounding half-choked. “I was beginning to fear you weren’t coming!”

  The embrace unraveled and Lin was dropped into knee-deep snow. She tried to step back, but the creature grabbed her shoulders. It was a rodent, five feet tall, with whiskers that brushed against her cheeks. The creature studied her so intently, it felt like she was about to plunge into its inky eyes. They sat high up on a tapering face that ended in a brown snout.

  It was a face she had seen a thousand times.

  Rufus.

  Apart from the size and the long, green scarf around his neck, it looked exactly like him: the rusty stripe along the back and the soft, gray flanks; the round ears, so thin and delicate the twilight shone through them. A gigantic redback vole.

  With trembling hands Lin reached up and touched the scruff under his chin. It was dense and glossy, the coat of a young, healthy animal. She buried her fingers deep, and he leaned gently against her hand.

  “Little one?” she whispered.

  “Hardly,” he replied, drawing his cleft upper lip outward so it revealed the long front teeth in a smile. “I’m as tall as you now. Taller, if you count this!” He swished his tail forward in a dashing arch and held it up for Lin to see. It was as thick as her wrist.

  “You should be glad I still have this,” Rufus continued. “I’ve been waiting for hours. Do you have any idea how long that is here? I could have frozen my tail . . .”

  Lin interrupted him with another hug. She felt so light-headed her thoughts were all jumbled. “Rufus! How? I mean, you’re so . . . You’re so . . .”

  “Handsome?” He grinned. “Eloquent? Alive?”

  “Yes!” Lin laughed. “All of those! And where . . . ?” She turned in a circle. There was nothing left of the wind but a wavy ridge in the snow. Rufus’s footprints led to the entrance of a small burrow, where the last embers of a campfire were winking out next to a little backpack. Lin’s own footprints appeared out of nowhere, and the wall and the grasping roots were gone. “Where’s Mrs. Ichalar’s cellar?”

  “Gone, and good riddance. I went down there once, you know. A cellar full of skinned and mounted animals! No wonder the place smells cruel!” Quickly, Rufus got down on all fours and kicked a flurry of snow over the sputtering campfire. Then he grabbed his backpack and rose up on his hind legs. “Come on. I cannot wait to show you this.”

  He guided her up a short slope, appearing perfectly comfortable to be walking on two legs. Lin trudged through the snow as best she could, struggling to keep her slippers on. She nearly lost her footing altogether when the crest of the slope fell away before their feet.

  They were standing on the lip of a deep valley of hillocks and forest-clad slopes. Snow lay draped on the hillsides like a glittering mantle. A naked, frozen river ran along the bottom like a steel ribbon, and at the end of the ribbon twinkled the lights of a town enclosed by snow-laden trees on three sides and a lake of blue ice on the fourth.

  The town was surrounded in a warm glow. Lin could make out a host of small spires, a soaring, slender tower in the middle of the town, and a white palace with a single dome. No snowy valley Lin had ever seen had boasted towers and domes like that.

  Yet it was the sky that truly confounded her. Its colors were that of winter dusk, soft blue with golden, bleeding edges that told of a sunset beyond the mountains. Above the towering peaks at the end of the vale hung a most extraordinary light, streaking across the sky like a comet or a suspended shooting star. A halo of curved blades churned around its head, and its tail danced like northern lights.

  Lin put her hand on Rufus’s arm, quite lost for words.

  “The Sylver Valley. Quite something, isn’t it?” Rufus flashed his cleft smile again. “I watched the star rise from my camp. It’s a rare phenomenon called the Wanderer, and there’s this grand feast to celebrate it tonight. The bells tolled the third hour right before you arrived, so we need to hurry, or . . .”

  In the distance sounded a long, shivering wail. Lin felt Rufus’s fur rise under her fingers, and she gripped it hard. She could only think of one creature that would howl like that. “Wolves!”

  “Not wolves.” There was a new note in Rufus’s voice, hushed and tense. “I’ve been hearing them ever since the Wanderer rose. They’re somewhere deep in the mountains, but they’re coming closer. And I can’t help but wonder if it’s got something to do with your coming here.” He scanned the peaks behind them, whiskers wide. Abruptly, he pulled his backpack on and turned sharply to the right. “We have to go.”

  He set off along the ridge at a brisk near-run, and Lin stumbled after him. Her slippers were starting to freeze around her toes, and her pajamas were weighed down by chunks of snow that clung to the fabric. She glanced back at the remains of the campsite. How was she supposed to go home? And what could be worse than wolves? “Rufus!” she called after him. “What do you mean, it has something to do with me?”

 
; Rufus didn’t slow down. Though he dragged his bad leg slightly, he moved fast enough for the air to sting in Lin’s lungs. “I’m not sure,” he said over his shoulder. “I don’t know any details, because they never let me in on secrets like that. But I’ve seen the statues and heard the stories, so I know it’s something big.” He leaped smoothly over a shallow depression in the snow. Dips like that looked innocent, but Lin knew from skiing trips with her father that they sometimes hid cracks in the mountainside. If you weren’t careful, you could break your leg, or worse. She slowed down to measure her jump. Rufus turned back to catch her. “Watch that. I almost fell in the last time. This is where I arrived, too. I never had a key or a fancy gate, though. One moment I was lying in the cage, listening to your breathing. The next I was standing here on this ridge.”

  Now Lin’s throat really hurt. “I’m so sorry . . .”

  Rufus gave a little shrug as he tugged her along, leading her toward a small, dark rumple in the landscape. “It wasn’t so frightening, really. I felt light afterward, like a strap had loosened around my chest, and lucid, like a fog had cleared in my head. I had awakened. I didn’t know what to call it then, but I had changed into a Petling.”

  “Pet . . . ling?” Lin panted. This fast wading through knee-deep snow wore her out quickly.

  “That’s right. Nearly everyone who lives here in Sylver was once the favorite pet of a human child, so we call ourselves Petlings. Except the Wilders. Their ways are a little different. You’ll see for yourself when we get into town.”

  Lin’s head spun with questions, but she was too winded to ask any more, so she just squeezed Rufus’s hand to let him know she had missed him, too. Rufus gave her a sideways look, and finally eased his pace a little. “I know that face,” he said. “I promise you’ll have more answers soon. But we really have to get back to Sylveros before darkness falls. It’s not just those howls. Teodor has been expecting us for hours, and he doesn’t like waiting. Which is why I brought you here.”