Free Nettle Blackthorn and the Three Wicked Sisters by Winter Woodlark Page B

features into a more pleasant expression. She turned
her attention back to the cardboard box. “What is it? What’s in
there?”
    He
shifted the box over to her. Like him, she was kneeling. She gave
him a perplexed glance before peering into the depths of the box.
For a moment she thought it was empty until she spied something
very small at the bottom, possibly made from wood.
    She leaned
into the box, her head and shoulders disappearing inside to
retrieve a small wooden box that fitted nicely into the palm of her
hand. There was a name carved into the wooden surface with a
decorative motif of flowers and thorns.
    “ Looks like it belongs to you,” said Bram, with an
expression just as bewildered as her own. The letters of Nettle’s
name were carved in an elaborate script. Nettle turned the box over
in her fingers. It felt light and when she shook it, she heard
something small bouncing around inside. The wood was smoothly
varnished but she could see no line separating the lid from the
box. “Strange,” she mused, “there doesn’t seem to be any way into
it.” She spent a little longer inspecting the box and feeling it
with the soft tips of her fingers. She could find nothing that
indicated a way to open it. Bram also tried, to no avail. The
thrill of a mystery sent a prickling ripple down her spine. “I’ll
see if Dad knows anything about it.”
    Slipping the
mysterious box into her pocket, she left Bram tinkering away with
his makeshift trap.
     
    Fred was sitting in his old leather chair in the small library,
leafing through a large dusty book. His glasses had slipped to the
tip of his nose and his fingers were stained with black ink from
his pen. Fred flicked a page over and compared it to something in
another old tome cradled in his lap, before hurriedly scribbling in
a small notebook he had on the armrest. There was a stack of books
in a wobbly pile beside the chair he’d evidently been copying
information from, as well.
    “Dad,” Nettle called softly as she approached. Fred was too
engrossed to hear her, lost in the words and illustrations of the book
before him.
    T he
sun filtered through the stained glass window, casting a gloomy
bluish tinge over Fred. All of a sudden, he seemed to her so small
and lost, almost like a child, holding onto the slightest thread of
hope. He’d dragged them all over the country searching for their
mother. It was depressing. To Nettle it was plainly obvious, Briar
didn’t want to be found.
    “Hey
Dad,” she said again, startling him out of his research. He snapped
shut the books and slid them down the side of the armchair. He
wasn’t as quick with the journal, and she was able to gain a
glimpse of a scribble of text and some rough sketch of something
with wings, before it too disappeared.
    “What is it , Nettle?” Fred pushed his glasses back to the bridge of
his nose. His voice sounded a little strangled, as if he was
unnerved to be caught out by her. What was he up to , she wondered, he clearly doesn’t want me to
know what he was reading.
    “ We were up in the attic-”
    He said
a little too sharply, interrupting her. “What were you doing up
there?”
    She
shrugged. “Bram was curious to look through some of our old stuff.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth either. She
wasn’t sure how he’d react if he found out Bram was going to try
catching the talking rats. She didn’t know why she felt hesitant to
tell him, but she had that feeling, the one that felt like the
beating wings of moths caught in a paper lantern, in the pit of her
stomach. That feeling had kept her out of harm’s way many an
occasion. Instead, she asked, “Is there some reason we can’t be up
there?”
    “Well…
no…” he answered. “It’s just with all this unpleasantness going on
with Jazz, I don’t know, maybe whoever it was got into the house
through the roof.”
    Nettle’s eyebrows rose up, but she didn’t say anything
aloud. The attic was in the