Sophie was a Bone Snatcher, a feeder of monsters.
Her home was in a cave far beneath the house on Catacomb Hill. The house itself was only the tip of the island; the rest plunged far beneath the water like the roots of an old tooth. Tunnels folded back against themselves like intestines, nightmare dark and endless, crammed together in a space that shouldn’t be able to contain all that distance.
Sophie’s room was carved straight into the rock. Her bed was a slab worn smooth by hundreds of sleepers. She lay there for what remained of the first night, staring at the ceiling as waves lapped against the other side of the wall.
She wouldn’t be in this creepy place if Sea Fever hadn’t struck. Before then, people had tolerated the sea creatures; now everyone was so mad with terror they wouldn’t even turn the taps on.
By now her parents would be boarding one of the last ships to the New Continent, clutching the tickets they’d sold her off for. Her mum and dad flickered behind her eyelids like holograms, pulling their trunks behind them as they entered Portsmouth. In a few hours the land would have disappeared from view. They would sail on while terror squeezed their hearts dry, until the great, monster-free shores of the New Continent rose from the sea.
The thought of her parents’ ship in the endless, gray sea made her hands cold and her eyes blurry.
At some point she must have fallen asleep, because when she next opened her eyes there was light creeping in from upstairs. Sophie sat up quickly, banging her head on the rock and yelping.
Scree, hidden behind the doorway, banged his fishing claw against the floor.
“Uh?” she said, trying desperately to remember where she was.
“You’re late,” he said grumpily. “I’ve got to train you.”
“Train me for what?” she said.
“Do you pay attention to anything?” He shook his head and came hobbling over. “You don’t just chuck rubbish in the water. You’ve got to know what the sea creatures want that day. On calm days they like nice long bones and bobbing skulls. When the storms come they want armor and sharp things. You treat ’em well, show ’em respect, and they’ll do the same for you, s’long as you don’t push your luck. And you’ve gotta know when feeding time is near. Five minutes after the bell rings, that’s all the time you’ve got, or they’ll get annoyed and start looking for chunks of the house to munch on instead.”
“What do they have as stomachs? Cement mixers?”
“Could well be,” he said humorlessly. “They eat anything. They’ve taken three pairs of false teeth from me. I saw an octopus wearing ’em the other day, smirking like a cat in a sardine factory.”
With that he disappeared, and Sophie fell out of bed while trying to untangle herself from her old, damp clothes. There was a crate in the corner overflowing with bits of tattered material. She pulled them out: dozens of old outfits belonging to people of every shape and size, a litany of the things left behind by other visitors to Catacomb Hill. There were no trousers that fit her, so she tore the lace off a yellowing, salt-crusted dress and put it on with a camel hair coat. The only shoes she could find pinched and had a hole in the toe.
She followed Scree’s wet footprints out of the catacombs and emerged in the house, where he was waiting with a bowl of porridge so thick the spoon was standing upright. Her stomach growled, but when she reached out for it he lifted it over his head.
“There’s three rules in this house,” he said. “One: Don’t go knocking on closed doors.”
“Right,” she said, knowing that she wasn’t going to follow any of his rules.
“Two: Don’t talk to anyone. Not the twins, ’cause they’ll play you like a fiddle, and not the Battleship, ’cause she’ll pull your head off and use it as a doorstop. Got it?”
“Uh-huh,” she said.
“Are you actually listening?”
“Yes!”
“Three: Don’t be late for the Bone Snatching. I’ll feed the monsters breakfast today, but you can help me with their lunch, and after that you’re on your own. I’ll be waitin’ on the oyster beach for you. As soon as the bell rings, leg it down here. Understand?”
Sophie nodded, and he grudgingly gave her the gray porridge. It looked like there were a couple of fish bones in it. Her stomach screwed itself up, and she had to turn her head so she couldn’t smell it. Maybe she could go a bit longer without food.
“What happens if I’m late?” she said.
“I’ll unscrew your ears and use ’em as fish bait,” he said. “Any questions?”
“Yes. When I’m not feeding the monsters, what am I supposed to do?”
“None of my business,” Scree said. “All I do is fish ’n’ make the dinner. You just sit in a corner somewhere until you’re needed.”
“A corner,” Sophie said. “Brilliant.”
“You don’t want to go pokin’ around. You’ll regret it. This place is full of deep ’n’ terrible secrets.”
“Mister Scree, that’s enough to make anyone want to go poking around.”
“Ain’t none of my business,” he repeated, and stalked away with an unreadable scowl.
* * *
There was a courtyard in the middle of the house, shaded and dank with trapped rainwater. Sophie ended up there like a marble rolling toward the center of a bowl. No matter where she turned she was facing the courtyard again, looking at the paved square through a hundred different windows. It was like the house was always shrugging, tipping her where it wanted her to go. Again she thought it: alive, and the people inside were doing its bidding.
The fifth time she circled back to the courtyard she heard a great clanging and crashing and peered out the window to see the twins at play. They were fencing with stage swords, one of which had a red stain up to the hilt.
“I’ll skewer you through the eye socket!” roared Ralf, lunging at his brother. Gail fumbled with his sword and nearly dropped it.
“Never, you . . . you . . . stinking haddock!”
“You know that’s not the line,” Ralf snapped.
“Well, if you won’t let me read the script—”
Ralf lurched at Gail, who turned tail and ran. Ralf chased him around the courtyard with the sword.
Sophie turned away, disgusted, and tried to find her way back to the grand entrance hall. Instead she found herself at a dead end crowded with dismantled machinery and whistles from fairground rides. A mechanical horse glared at her, and when she reached out to touch it, its jaw dropped open, revealing nutcracker teeth.
As she turned she heard huge, wracking sobs that bubbled out of the walls like ghosts. Disturbed, she looked around. It was coming from somewhere above her, drifting through layers of plaster and thickened to a muffled bleat.
Sophie drifted toward the crying, losing and picking the sound up again like a thread. The house was riddled with unused rooms. Some were crawling with slugs and snails, and others hid birds’ nests and families of mice. The air was strung with the constant clamor of seagulls and the breaking of waves, and the occasional unearthly moan from the water below. Sometimes it felt like she was bypassing whole floors, the stairs not matching the number of windows visible from the outside. The house was an unmapped world, and she felt like the first human to land there.
Apart from the sobbing, which had stopped again, Sophie had no idea what she was looking for. She scanned every inch of the walls as she climbed, trying to grab the weird sensation of familiarity she’d felt when she saw the stair banisters last night.
At the very end of the last hallway was a door with a polished handle. The carpet outside it was red, the algae trodden away by ceaseless pacing. The handle turned easily, and Sophie stepped inside.
She walked into a treasure trove—a cave of tapestries and clothes and jewelry, of bronze lamps and heavy furniture. The ceiling dripped with expensive scarves and moth-eaten furs. The smell of perfume was so heavy it made Sophie’s nose ache. She glanced around, then buried her face in a polar bear coat.
It was clear that someone lived here. It felt like the room was waiting for them to come back. She went to the dressing table, which was covered in bottles and unraveling doilies. She hesitatingly touched the mirror, leaving deep, dusty fingerprints.
On the dressing table was a stack of paper, held down by a lump of rock. Each piece seemed to have been torn from the front of a book, or was part of a ripped-up flour bag or ancient newspaper. She slid a handful out and began to read.
“I am running away. I am going to London to make my fortune. I hope you rot here.”
She frowned and flipped to the next one which said, in a different hand:
“Good-bye. By the time you read this, I will be gone. I have left to start a better life.”
Another: “I’m leaving now. Say good-bye to the twins for me. Worst wishes.”
And the next. And the next. All of them short, written in a cramped hand, scribbled fast.
Sophie reasoned they must be from the other servants the twins mentioned. She felt a quick burst of hope. There were people here before her, and they got away! Or they tried to, a nasty voice said in the back of her head. There’s nothing to say they actually made it.
She pushed her doubt away and looked around the room. A hanging scarf brushed the top of her head like a hand and made her shudder.
With the notes still in her grasp she slid open the drawers under the dresser. But the back of her neck tingled. She felt like someone was breathing behind her.
Sophie turned around in time to see a mound of white detach itself from the wall. It sailed across the room with a huge, terrifying face, and roared so loudly the papers went flying. Sophie dodged away from the creature and saw a mountain of red hair, eyes puffed up from weeping, and a dress so voluminous it must have had scaffolding beneath to support it. This thing—this woman—had tiny, slippered feet which despite her apparent weight were noiseless. Sophie’s memory connected with the thing in front of her. The Battleship.
She tried to gather the papers that had fled across the carpet, but the woman’s doughy hand grabbed the back of her neck and hauled her up.
“Who are you? Are you spying on me?”
Sophie shook her head, hanging two inches above the floor. The Battleship’s face filled her vision.
“Can’t breathe . . .” she said.
“Well?”
“I’m . . . the new . . . girl.”
“Another one? They keep sending me servants with no manners. What were you going to take?”
“Nothing,” she gasped. “I got lost.” The woman dropped her.
“And you thought looking at my things would help you.” The Battleship glanced at the papers, then ground one under her foot. “You’re an abysmal thief. They’re not worth anything.”
Sophie winced, waiting for the slippered foot to jab her in the ribs. But nothing happened. “Who wrote them?”
“The twittering girls and boys that come to help the General,” the Battleship said. “They get everything they need, food and a bed, and what do they do? They run away in the night and leave their stupid little notes—‘I’m going to be famous.’” Her voice wavered in mockery. “I blame it on Cartwright. It always seems to happen after his visits.”
The woman turned to her dresser and unscrewed a tube of mauve lipstick.
“I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Battl—your ladyship,” Sophie said.
“You’re not sorry,” the woman said, not looking away. “What do you want, if you’re not going to steal anything?”
“I was looking for . . . I don’t know. Nothing.”
“Then go away.”
Sophie opened the door to slip out, but before she did curiosity got the better of her.
“Why were you crying?” she asked.
The Battleship only stared at her, lipstick hovering halfway to her face, like Sophie had spoken in a different language. Perhaps nobody had asked her that before.
“Why is your hair white?” she asked back.
“I was left in the snow when I was a baby,” said Sophie, then closed the door and fled.