The Field Guide Read online

  LIST OF FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

  LETTER FROM HOLLY BLACK

  LETTER FROM THE GRACE KIDS

  MAP OF THE SPIDERWICK ESTATE

  CHAPTER ONE: IN WHICH

  THE GRACE CHILDREN GET ACQUAINTED WITH THEIR NEW HOME

  CHAPTER TWO: IN WHICH

  TWO WALLS ARE EXPLORED BY VASTLY DIFFERENT METHODS

  CHAPTER THREE: IN WHICH

  THERE ARE MANY RIDDLES

  CHAPTER FOUR: IN WHICH

  THERE ARE ANSWERS, ALTHOUGH NOT NECESSARILY TO THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

  CHAPTER FIVE: IN WHICH

  JARED READS A BOOK AND SETS A TRAP

  CHAPTER SIX: IN WHICH

  THEY FIND UNEXPECTED THINGS IN THE ICEBOX

  CHAPTER SEVEN: IN WHICH

  THE FATE OF THE MICE IS DISCOVERED

  ABOUT TONY DITERLIZZI AND HOLLY BLACK

  MAP OF THE SPIDERWICK ESTATE AND SURROUNDING AREA

  IT WAS MORE LIKE A DOZEN SHACKS.

  “MOM?”

  THE CREAK STARTLED HIM INTO JERKING UPRIGHT.

  “I’M GOING TO KNOCK OPEN THE WALL.”

  THE DUMBWAITER BEGAN TO MOVE.

  JARED WASN’T SURE WHERE HE WAS.

  JARED LOOKED AROUND THE ROOM.

  “WHAT ARE YOU?”

  “JUST CHOP IT.”

  UP AND UP AND UP AGAIN

  THE STRANGEST THING

  HE JUST WANTED TO KEEP READING.

  “LOOK AT THIS.”

  FROM THE FIELD GUIDE

  EVERYTHING WAS QUIET.

  THE KITCHEN WAS A MESS.

  “MOM, I DIDN’T DO IT.”

  THERE WERE OTHER STRANGE THINGS.

  “MALLORY, NO!”

  “IT’S SO COOL IN HERE.”

  ABOUT THE SIZE OF A PENCIL

  “THROW THE BOOK AWAY.”

  For my grandmother, Melvina, who said I should write a book just like this one and to whom I replied that I never would

  —H. B.

  For Arthur Rackham, may you continue to inspire others as you have me

  —T. D.

  Dear Reader,

  Over the years that Tony and I have been friends, we’ve shared the same childhood fascination with faeries. We did not realize the importance of that bond or how it might be tested.

  One day Tony and I—along with several other authors—were doing a signing at a large bookstore. When the signing was over, we lingered, helping to stack books and chatting, until a clerk approached us. He said that there had been a letter left for us. When I inquired which one of us, we were surprised by his answer.

  “Both of you,” he said.

  The letter was exactly as reproduced on the following page. Tony spent a long time just staring at the photocopy that came with it. Then, in a hushed voice, he wondered aloud about the remainder of the manuscript. We hurriedly wrote a note, tucked it back into the envelope, and asked the clerk to deliver it to the Grace children.

  Not long after, a package arrived on my doorstep, bound in red ribbon. A few days after that, three children rang the bell and told me this story.

  What has happened since is hard to describe. Tony and I have been plunged into a world we never quite believed in. We now see that faeries are far more than childhood stories. There is an invisible world around us and we hope that you, dear reader, will open your eyes to it.

  Holly Black

  Dear Mrs. Black and Mr. DiTerlizzi:

  I know that a lot of people don’t believe in faeries, but I do and I think that you do too. After I read your books, I told my brothers about you and we decided to write. We know about real faeries. In fact, we know a lot about them.

  The page attached* to this one is a photocopy from an old book we found in our attic. It isn’t a great copy because we had some trouble with the copier. The book tells people how to identify faeries and how to protect themselves. Can you please give this book to your publisher? If you can, please put a letter in this envelope and give it back to the store. We will find a way to send the book. The normal mail is too dangerous.

  We just want people to know about this. The stuff that has happened to us could happen to anyone.

  Sincerely,

  Mallory, Jared, and Simon Grace

  * Not included.

  It was more like a dozen shacks.

  Chapter One

  IN WHICH the Grace Children Get Acquainted with Their New Home

  If someone had asked Jared Grace what jobs his brother and sister would have when they grew up, he would have had no trouble replying. He would have said that his brother, Simon, would be either a veterinarian or a lion tamer. He would have said that his sister, Mallory, would either be an Olympic fencer or in jail for stabbing someone with a sword. But he couldn’t say what job he would grow up to have. Not that anyone asked him. Not that anyone asked his opinion on anything at all.

  The new house, for instance. Jared Grace looked up at it and squinted. Maybe it would look better blurry.

  “It’s a shack,” Mallory said, getting out of the station wagon.

  It wasn’t really, though. It was more like a dozen shacks had been piled on top of one another. There were several chimneys, and the whole thing was topped off by a strip of iron fence sitting on the roof like a particularly garish hat.

  “It’s not so bad,” their mother said, with a smile that looked only slightly forced. “It’s Victorian.”

  Simon, Jared’s identical twin, didn’t look upset. He was probably thinking of all the animals he could have now. Actually, considering what he’d packed into their tiny bedroom in New York, Jared figured it would take a lot of rabbits and hedgehogs and whatever else was out here to satisfy Simon.

  “Come on, Jared,” Simon called. Jared realized that they had all crossed to the front steps and he was alone on the lawn, staring at the house.

  The doors were a faded gray, worn with age. The only traces of paint were an indeterminate cream, stuck deep in crevices and around the hinges. A rusted ram’s-head door knocker hung from a single, heavy nail at its center.

  Their mother fit a jagged key into the lock, turned it, and shoved hard with her shoulder. The door opened into a dim hallway. The only window was halfway up the stairs, and its stained glass panes gave the walls an eerie, reddish glow.

  “It’s just like I remember,” she said, smiling.

  “Only crappier,” said Mallory.

  Their mother sighed but didn’t otherwise respond.

  The hallway led into a dining room. A long table with faded water spots was the only piece of furniture. The plaster ceiling was cracked in places and a chandelier hung from frayed wires.

  “Why don’t you three start bringing things in from the car?” their mother said.

  “Into here?” Jared asked.

  “Yes, into here.” Their mother put down her suitcase on the table, ignoring the eruption of dust. “If your great-aunt Lucinda hadn’t let us stay, I don’t know where we would have gone. We should be grateful.”

  None of them said anything. Try as he might, Jared didn’t feel anything close to grateful. Ever since their dad moved out, everything had gone bad. He’d messed up at school, and the fading bruise over his left eye wouldn’t let him forget it. But this place—this place was the worst yet.

  “Jared,” his mother said as he turned to follow Simon out to unload the car.

  “What?”

  His mother waited until the other two were down the hall before she spoke. “This is a chance to start over . . . for all of us. Okay?”

  Jared nodded grudgingly. He didn’t need her to say the rest of it—that the only reason he hadn’t gotten kicked out of school was because they were moving anyway. Another reason he was supposed to be grateful. Only he wasn’t.

&nbs
p; Outside, Mallory had stacked two suitcases on top of a steamer trunk. “I heard she’s starving herself to death.”

  “Aunt Lucinda? She’s just old,” said Simon. “Old and crazy.”

  But Mallory shook her head. “I heard Mom on the phone. She was telling Uncle Terrence that Aunt Lucy thinks little men bring her food.”

  “What do you expect? She’s in a nuthouse,” Jared said.

  Mallory went on like she hadn’t heard him. “She told the doctors the food she got was better than anything they’d ever taste.”

  “You’re making that up.” Simon crawled into the backseat and opened one of the suitcases.

  Mallory shrugged. “If she dies, this place is going to get inherited by someone, and we’re going to have to move again.”

  “Maybe we can go back to the city,” Jared said.

  “Fat chance,” said Simon. He took out a wad of tube socks. “Oh, no! Jeffrey and Lemondrop chewed their way loose!”

  “Mom told you not to bring the mice,” Mallory said. “She said you could have normal animals now.”

  “If I let them go, they’d get stuck in a glue trap or something,” said Simon, turning a sock inside out, one finger sticking out a hole. “Besides, you brought all your fencing junk!”

  “It’s not junk,” Mallory growled. “And it’s not alive.”

  “Shut up!” Jared took a step toward his sister.

  “Just because you’ve got one black eye doesn’t mean I can’t give you another one.” Mallory flipped her ponytail as she turned toward him. She shoved a heavy suitcase into his hands. “Go ahead and carry that if you’re so tough.”

  Even though Jared knew he might be bigger and stronger than her someday—when she wasn’t thirteen and he wasn’t nine—it was hard to picture.

  Jared managed to lug the suitcase inside the door before he dropped it. He figured he could drag it the rest of the way if he had to and no one would be the wiser. Alone in the hallway of the house, however, Jared no longer remembered how to get to the dining room. Two different hallways split off this one, winding deep into the middle of the house.

  “Mom?” Although he’d meant to call out loudly, his voice sounded very soft, even to himself.

  “Mom?”

  No answer. He took a tentative step and then another, until the creak of a board under his feet stopped him.

  Just as he paused, something inside the wall rustled. He could hear it scrabbling upward, until the sound disappeared past the ceiling. His heart beat hard against his chest.

  It’s probably just a squirrel, he told himself. After all, the house looked like it was falling apart. Anything could be living inside; they’d be lucky if there wasn’t a bear in the basement and birds in all the heating ducts. That was, if the place even had heat.

  “Mom?” he said again, even more faintly.

  Then the door behind him opened and Simon came in, carrying mason jars with two bug-eyed gray mice in them. Mallory was right behind him, scowling.

  “I heard something,” Jared said. “In the wall.”

  “What?” Simon asked.

  “I don’t know. . . . ” Jared didn’t want to admit that for a moment he’d thought it was a ghost. “Probably a squirrel.”

  Simon looked at the wall with interest. Brocaded gold wallpaper hung limply, peeling and pocking in places. “You think so? In the house? I always wanted a squirrel.”

  No one seemed to think that something in the walls was anything to worry about, so Jared didn’t say anything more about it. But as he carried the suitcase to the dining room, Jared couldn’t help thinking about their tiny apartment in New York and their family before the divorce. He wished this was some kind of gimmicky vacation and not real life.

  The creak startled him into jerking upright.

  Chapter Two

  IN WHICH Two Walls Are Explored by Vastly Different Methods

  The leaks in the roof had made all but three of the upstairs bedroom floors dangerously rotted. Their mother got one, Mallory got another, and Jared and Simon were left to share the third.

  By the time they were done unpacking, the dressers and nightstands of Simon’s side of the room were covered in glass tanks. A few were filled with fish. The rest were crammed with mice, lizards, and other animals that Simon had confined to mud-furnished cages. Their mother had told Simon he could bring everything but the mice. She thought they were disgusting because Simon had rescued them from a trap in Mrs. Levette’s downstairs apartment. She pretended not to notice he’d brought them anyway.

  Jared tossed and turned on the lumpy mattress, pressing the pillow down over his head like he was smothering himself, but he couldn’t sleep. He didn’t mind sharing a room with Simon, but sharing a room with cages of animals that rustled, squeaked, and scratched was eerier than sleeping alone would have been. It made him think of the thing in the walls. He’d shared a room with Simon and the critters in the city, but the animal noises had dimmed against the background of cars and sirens and people. Here, everything was unfamiliar.

  The creak of hinges startled him into jerking upright. There was a figure in the doorway, with a shapeless white gown and long, dark hair. Jared slid off the bed so fast he didn’t even remember doing it.

  “It’s just me,” the figure whispered. It was Mallory in a nightgown. “I think I heard your squirrel.”

  Jared stood up from a crouch, trying to decide if moving so fast meant he was a chicken or if he just had good reflexes. Simon was snoring gently in the other bed.

  Mallory put her hands on her hips. “Come on. It’s not going to wait around for us to catch it.”

  Jared shook his twin’s shoulder. “Simon. Wake up. New pet. New peeeeeeeeeet.”

  Simon twitched and groaned, trying to pull the covers over his head.

  Mallory laughed.

  “Simon.” Jared leaned in close, making his voice deliberately urgent. “Squirrel! Squirrel!”

  Simon opened his eyes and glared at them. “I was sleeping.”

  “Mom went out to the store for milk and cereal,” Mallory said, pulling the covers off him. “She said I was supposed to keep an eye on you. We don’t have much time before she gets back.”

  The three siblings crept along the dark hallways of their new house. Mallory was in the lead, walking a few paces and then stopping to listen. Every now and then there would be a scratch or a sound like small footsteps inside the walls.

  The scuttling grew louder as they neared the kitchen. In the kitchen sink, Jared could see a pan crusted with the remains of the macaroni and cheese they’d had for dinner.

  “I think it’s there. Listen,” Mallory whispered.

  The sound stopped completely.

  Mallory picked up a broom and held the wooden end like a baseball bat. “I’m going to knock open the wall,” she said.

  “Mom is going to see the hole when she gets back,” Jared said.

  “In this house? She’ll never notice.”

  “What if you hit the squirrel?” Simon asked. “You could hurt—”

  “Shhhh,” Mallory said. She padded across the floor in her bare feet and swung the broom handle at the wall. The blow broke through the plaster, scattering dust like flour. It settled in Mallory’s hair, making her look even more ghostly. She reached into the hole and broke off a chunk of the wall.

  Jared stepped closer. He could feel the hair on his arms stand up.

  Torn strips of cloth had been wadded up between the boards. As she snapped off more pieces, other things were revealed. The remains of curtains. Bits of tattered silk and lace. Straight pins poked into the wooden beams on either side, making a strange upward-snaking line. A doll’s head lolled in one corner. Dead cockroaches were strung up like garlands. Tiny lead soldiers with melted hands and feet were scattered across the planks like a fallen army. Jagged pieces of mirror glittered from where they had been glued with ancient gum.

  “I’m going to knock open the wall.”

  Mallory reached into the nes
t and took out a fencing medal. It was silver with a thick blue ribbon. “This is mine.”

  “The squirrel must have stolen it,” said Simon.

  “No—this is too weird,” Jared said.

  “Dianna Beckley had ferrets, and they used to steal her Barbie dolls,” Simon replied. “And lots of animals like shiny things.”

  “But look.” Jared pointed to the cockroaches. “What ferret makes his own gross knickknacks?”

  “Let’s pull this stuff out of here,” Mallory said. “Maybe if it doesn’t have a nest, it will be easier to keep out of the house.”

  Jared hesitated. He didn’t want to put his hands inside the wall and feel around. What if it was still in there and bit him? Maybe he didn’t know much, but he really didn’t think squirrels were normally this creepy. “I don’t think we should do that,” he said.

  Mallory wasn’t listening. She was busy dragging over a trash can. Simon started pulling out wads of the musty cloth.

  “There’s no droppings, either. That’s strange.” Simon dumped what he was holding and pulled out another handful. At the army men, he stopped. “These are cool, aren’t they, Jared?”

  Jared had to nod. “They’d be better with hands, though.”

  Simon put several in the pocket of his pajamas.

  “Simon?” Jared asked. “Have you ever heard of an animal like this? I mean, some of this stuff is really odd, you know? Like this squirrel must be as demented as Aunt Lucy.”

  “Yeah, it’s real nutty,” Simon said, and giggled.

  Mallory groaned, then suddenly went quiet. “I hear it again.”

  “What?” Jared asked.

  “The noise. Shhhh. It’s over there.” Mallory picked up the broom again.

  “Quiet,” Simon whispered.

  “We’re being quiet,” Mallory hissed back.