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pushed toward the corner of the house where the entrance to the cel ar was sunk into the ground.
    Ash struggled in her stepmother’s grip, trying to twist away from her. “Let me go!” she shouted.
    “Be quiet!” her stepmother said angrily. She pushed Ash down the stone steps and followed close on her heels. She drew out a large black key from the pocket of her skirt and unlocked the cel ar door, a massive block of thick oak. It creaked on its hinges as she threw it open. “Get in there,” she commanded, and pushed Ash into the dark. “And think about what trouble you’ve caused. I feed you and house you and you repay me by running off without a thought for your duties.”
    Her stepmother paused for a moment in the dark doorway, and Ash thought she could make out a faint smile on the woman’s face. “You are a shame to your father,” she said.
    And then she stepped back out of the cel ar and slammed the door shut, leaving Ash in the dark. The great iron key 69

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    turned in the lock, and Ash heard her stepmother’s footsteps receding until there was nothing but the muffled hum of the dark, and the cold, damp press of the cel ar air against her skin.

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    MALINDA LO

Chapter VII

    sh could hear her breath in the dark: quick, frightened, like a rabbit fleeing from hunting hounds. She put her hands A out in front of herself and felt only cold air. She took a tentative step toward the door, shuffling forward until the tips of her fingers bumped against the wood. It was slightly wet.
    She flattened her palms against the door and then pressed her body to the oak. When she closed her eyes the quality of the dark did not change, and for a moment she stopped breathing, afraid that she could not tel if her eyes were open or shut. She touched her face, her eyelids, and the trembling movement of her eyes somehow reassured her: She was stil real. Then she slid down to the ground, her face pressed against the door, her boots dragging roughly across the dirt floor. She gathered her knees to her chest to make herself as smal as possible, and tried to ignore the weight of the darkness on her.
    She must have fal en asleep, her cheek leaning against the 71

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    door, because she thought she saw someone sitting next to her, and she thought it was her mother. The woman put her arm around Ash, and Ash dropped her head onto her mother’s shoulder and felt the pressure of her mother’s chin on her forehead. Her mother stroked her hair and said, “Don’t worry, Ash, I’m here.”
    Ash felt the soft collar of her mother’s blouse beneath her cheek. She slipped her arms around her mother’s waist and pressed up close to her, feeling the solid warmth of her body.
    “Don’t go away again, Mother,” she whispered. “I’ve missed you.”
    “Shh,” her mother said. “I know. You should rest now.
    You’ve been out al day and you’re hungry.”
    Ash could smel the scent of her mother’s skin now, and it was the fragrance of the Wood, oak and moss and wildflower.
    She felt the dul thump of her mother’s heartbeat, the lightness of her mother’s breath on her hair, the gentle touch of her mother’s hands stroking down the length of her back. The rhythm was echoed in the sound of her mother’s fingers on the fabric of her dress, a subtle swoosh in the dark, up and down, up and down, the friction like a rope binding them together. Her mother pressed a kiss to her forehead, and her lips were warm.

    When Ash opened her eyes, she could see. The cel ar door was outlined with daylight, and it illuminated, dimly, bushels of 72

    MALINDA LO
    potatoes and apples, sacks of flour and grain. Three trunks were stacked against the far wal ; there was an old wheelbar-row, garden tools, a coil of rope. She wrapped her arms around herself and felt the chil of the early morning.
    She did not know how long she sat there before she heard footsteps above her. She realized she must be sitting beneath the kitchen floor. The footsteps moved