The Plentiful Darkness

by Heather Kassner

  Seemingly unimpressed, Bridget crossed her arms. “And you, how horrid! Are those spiderwebs strung across your face?”

  Rooney rubbed her cheek. She didn’t think there was anything funny about the gray clinging to each and every one of them, but Trick snorted. Rooney elbowed him. With Bridget and him together, the plentiful darkness would not only be awful, soon it would be insufferable.

  Sorka sneered at Bridget. “You little rat.”

  Of all the things to call Bridget, Sorka couldn’t have chosen a better insult. Bridget flinched, and this time Rooney snorted and Trick elbowed her.

  A sharp glint sparked in Sorka’s eye, and the earth began to ripple.

  “What’s happening?” Bridget froze in place, looking at the ground so she did not see Sorka jump down from the platform.

  “I’m taking what’s mine.” Sorka reached into Bridget’s pocket and snatched up whatever lay within.

  Bridget threw a fist, but not in time. Sorka was already settling back on her throne and inspecting the silver object in her hand.

  “Her lunar mirror,” Rooney whispered, reminded of just how Bridget had commanded the roughhouse boys to take Rooney’s own.

  Only, Rooney felt no satisfaction. Not if it meant Sorka had claimed another one.

  Besides, Bridget hardly seemed to care about the mirror anyway. She asked for (shouted for) Trick in her next breath. “Where’s Trick? What’s become of him?”

  Trick stepped forward, at the ready to show himself and defend his friend from the still-rumbling ground, but Devin clung to his sleeve. “You’ll only make it worse. Just wait.”

  With a sweep of her arm, Sorka commanded the silken ground, knocking Bridget off her feet. Bridget rolled away from the throne before she managed to dig in her heels and regain her footing.

  A tendril of silk writhed up from the ground like a new tree sprouting. Bridget scrambled forward but not far. The silk looped around her ankle, twisting and tightening and holding her in place.

  She yelled again for Trick.

  Perhaps it was because Bridget seemed to care so little for the theft of her mirror that it lost its appeal for Sorka. With widening eyes, Rooney watched as Sorka tossed it onto a stack of trinkets, where it rested among a music box, a toy soldier, a teakettle, and other assorted objects. Then she called to the children, asking that they entertain her with a game of hide-and-seek. One by one, they ran into the woods.

  With Sorka properly occupied, Trick waited no more, hurrying over to Bridget’s side. Rooney (quite grumpily) and Devin (quite curiously) gathered next to him.

  “Bridget.” Trick bent down, tugging at the length of silk, though it refused to budge. “I never thought the magician could catch you.”

  “You are here. I knew it. I told those boys I’d find you, never mind the bruises and blood. And who says that witch caught me? I let her take me.” Her green eyes flicked over to Rooney. “Oh, you. Ratty de Barra.”

  “Her name’s Rooney,” Devin said, as if Bridget might have misspoken (she hadn’t). “And I’m Devin Hayes. Hello.”

  “Hello?” Bridget grouched. “I’ve just been rolled all about and witch-magicked to the ground, and you say hello like everything’s pleasant as can be? What sort of nonsense is that?”

  “Don’t speak to her that way,” Rooney said. “In fact, don’t bother to speak at all.” Bridget’s mouth snapped shut, and Rooney was feeling good and pleased with herself when she heard a little squeak. Even better. “Unless you want to say hello to Monty.”

  All eyes fell on the rat sitting by Rooney’s ankle. Bridget drew as far back as she could, clutching her rat-nibbled finger to her chest. She hissed.

  “Oh, Bridge, relax,” Trick said, giving up on the slippery knots he hadn’t managed to untangle. He cocked his head at Rooney. “Can you get the rat to help out?”

  “Don’t want to,” Rooney grumbled, but if she did nothing, Bridget would only begin shouting again. She looked at the Monty and sighed. “Go ahead. Chew her loose if you can.”

  It skittered over to Bridget, who shuddered in fright (much to Rooney’s delight), and in the same manner it had gnawed on the tree branch to release Trick, it chomped the silken binding until Bridget could squirm free.

  Without a thank-you to the rat, she popped up to her feet, grinning at Trick. “Now that I’ve found you, let’s hack our way out of this witch-scarf realm.” From her boot, she grabbed a little knife, and with a triumphant smile (and a defiant laugh as Rooney and Devin shouted no, no, no), she threw it, end over end, toward the ground.

  26

  SIDE BY SIDE

  Snatching the rat, Rooney shrank back, waiting for the knife to stab the earth. For the fog to hiss up from the wounded silk. For the darkness to rush forth and envelop them again, just as the black hole almost had.

  But Trick lunged forward, right in the knife’s path. It angled toward his thigh. Devin shrieked.

  Just in time, he swept his coat out like the wing of a bat, swatting the knife. It struck the burr-roughened fabric and then fell harmlessly and soundlessly to the ground.

  Rooney eyed the blade. “It might have hit you—”

  “What did you go and do that for?” Bridget grumbled. (For once Rooney was grateful for the interruption so Trick would not have the silly notion that she cared about him.)

  “We already tried to slice through the darkness.” Trick scrubbed the spot of gray above his eyebrow. “With lousy results.”

  “It marked us for death,” Devin whispered, pointing out the patches on their faces and neck.

  “Hmpf.” Bridget retrieved her knife, slashing it angrily through the air before shoving it back in her boot. “We’re not dead yet.”

  Trick might have been willing to put his trust in Bridget, but Rooney wasn’t impressed. “Oh, she’ll know what to do, will she?” Rooney muttered to the Monty.

  Despite her hushed tone, Trick must have heard her mocking his words. “She’s gotten me out of a scrape a time or two. She’s got my back.” He said it as if he knew that Rooney had not; did not.

  “I’ll do the same this time too,” Bridget said smugly. “And all the times to come.”

  For once, it wasn’t Bridget’s self-assured words or her slick little smile that bothered Rooney. It was the realization that underneath all Bridget’s tough exterior, there were steadfast layers of loyalty and love. She had sought out the darkness. She must truly have cared about Trick.

  In a way that no one cared about Rooney.

  The anger and loneliness and fear that had been building inside her exploded at Trick. “You’re the one who got us into this scrape!”

  “You got yourself into it,” he said. “Stop blaming everyone else.”

  Rooney angled away from Trick. She didn’t want to bother with him just then or hear anything he hoped to say to her. Bridget stood before her now, and Rooney couldn’t hold back any longer. “All you do is cause trouble. If you hadn’t told the boys to steal my mirror, we might never have crossed paths with the magician. We wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t be miserable.”

  Although, that last point wasn’t exactly true. Rooney had been rather miserable before, but she wasn’t about to admit it.

  Devin, who had been opening and closing, opening and closing her mouth as they bickered, finally broke in. “Stop arguing. Stop fighting.” She stumbled over her words when everyone stood there awkwardly and crossly, looking anywhere but at one another. “And maybe I shouldn’t think so or say so, but I’m glad you’re all here. That you’re my friends. If you hadn’t come, I’d be stuck here … with them.”

  They all turned toward the woods where Sorka and the other children crouched and sneaked and hid. Resigned to their dire situation, even as the darkness closed around them.

  Rooney’s heart clenched—Devin thought her a friend—but it broke a little too. “Be cautious of who you trust.” Rooney glared at Trick, then looked back to Devin. “They aren’t our friends, not really.”

  She
meant to stop there. That was all Devin needed to know. But the secrets she’d only shared with the Monty came tumbling out now that there was someone else listening. “They turned me away from joining the roughhouse boys. Bridget chose Trick when he caught the most moonlight.”

  Just thinking of that warm, clear night brought an ache to Rooney’s chest. How she’d done her very best, chasing the moonlight and filling her lunar mirror. How it hadn’t been good enough. Trick with just that tiny smidgen more, never mind the slivered crack in his mirror, and Bridget clapping him on the back. Rooney had run off. She hadn’t looked back.

  She shook the memory from her head. “Now they’re always set on besting me, not befriending me.”

  Her words hung in the air. She could not take them back, and the thought that Trick and Bridget would use this admission against her too—to tease her and taunt her—twisted her stomach into knots.

  “It was all for fun,” Trick said. “You’re the one who shut us out. Like the moonlight belonged only to you, and you couldn’t stand that I matched you.”

  “Always acting like you’re too good for us,” Bridget said.

  “Like you have to do everything yourself.”

  “And always so gloomy.”

  Their back-and-forth words struck Rooney harder and harder. “What?” she sputtered, unable to wholly deny their accusations even though she wanted nothing more. She was rather gloomy. Maybe she sometimes did think she knew best. Being all alone, there had never been anyone to object.

  “I’m sorry we’re in this mess, but that’s why I took your mirror.” Trick’s jaw sharpened as he admitted, “I knew you’d come looking for it. And for some rotten reason, I wanted you to.”

  Rooney had no words, only a swirl of confusion in her head. The Monty slipped up to her shoulder, bumping its nose to her cheek.

  Trick locked his blackberry eyes onto Rooney’s. Oh, they were still sour as could be, but they were also wide and clear and completely unmasked. “I wanted you to be one of us.” As if he’d gotten too soft, he added rather gruffly, “If you weren’t so stubborn, you would have been ages ago.”

  Bridget didn’t agree with him, but she didn’t disagree with him either. She scratched her ear.

  Rooney blinked, looking at the toes of her boots. Could it be true?

  They’d been down here all these days, side by side. And yes, they’d fought, but not horribly. And not always. They’d faced off against Sorka. They’d plotted ways to escape. They hadn’t really behaved as foes might be expected to.

  Devin slipped her hand into Rooney’s. Trick did not, but she remembered the feel of his fingers tucked around her own, and she felt no less warmed by his words (no matter how prickly they’d been spoken). She raised her chin. She found an unexpected grin on her face. “You should have just said so. You should have told me.”

  “Well, I said it now.” Trick’s lip hitched. “Because I’m always nice.”

  Bridget rolled her eyes beneath her long bangs. Devin squeezed Rooney’s hand.

  For the first time, standing together with this group under the black not-sky and within the dark woods, Rooney no longer felt untogether. Trick and Devin (and the Monty, of course) were next to her—they were with her when she needed them most. And she realized she was with them, for friendship must go both ways for it to be true.

  And though she still wasn’t so sure about Bridget, maybe that could come in time.

  If, if, if they found their way back home to Warybone.

  27

  THE SNEAKIEST

  The moonlit glow flickered in Rooney’s chest once more—warmer, steadier, fuller than it had been in so long. It shifted inside her, from the embers of hope to something much less familiar—the sturdiness of trust. The magician could have swept down right then, and Rooney wouldn’t have felt the cold. She wouldn’t have trembled either, for she would have her newly found friends standing shoulder to shoulder beside her.

  All the more reason she had to be ready for the magician’s return. She wanted so fiercely to protect them.

  “Trick,” Rooney said, wondering at how different his name sounded on her tongue when she was not thinking of slugging him. And then she made an even bigger gesture (though it was a very small thing indeed) to test the sound of Bridget’s name in an attempt to smooth some of the bad feelings between them. “Tell Bridget all that’s happened.”

  They gathered close as he began, with Devin or Rooney filling in bits and pieces here or there that he might have otherwise glossed over—about the encroaching darkness, about Sorka and the magician, about their plotting.

  After the story had been laid before her, Bridget tucked her hair crisply behind her ears. “It’s the mirrors we need. They’ll be our way out of here.”

  Rooney had thought that Bridget might attempt to take charge of things, the way she bossed Colin and Sim. But in agreeing with Rooney’s plan, Bridget seemed to be trying to get along.

  “We can’t find their mirrors,” Devin reminded her.

  “But we can find mine,” Bridget said.

  Rooney had almost forgotten about Bridget’s mirror, tossed so casually away by Sorka. It rested somewhere in that pile beside the throne, which the sullen queen had returned to.

  She cut her eyes at them.

  Devin grabbed the sleeve of Trick’s coat. “Oh, she knows we’re up to something.”

  Together, they spun around and away from Sorka, which was no less suspicious, but when Rooney stole a quick look over her shoulder some minutes later, she saw that Sorka had turned her cheek, disinterested. Two of the children—a shadow-haired girl who could most often be found gazing into the silken river when she’d been tasked with collecting water, and a scrawny boy who spent most of his time high in the trees picking flowers for Sorka’s silver crown—had climbed up on the throne’s little platform and set about braiding the sullen queen’s hair. She closed her eyes, much like a spoiled cat anticipating a good scratching behind its ears.

  “We better not wait. She’ll guess what we’re after and hide that mirror too,” Devin said.

  “Yes.” Rooney knew Sorka might have shut her eyes, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t keenly aware of them. “And we’ll have to send the sneakiest one of us.”

  “That’s me,” Trick said at the same time Bridget placed her hands on her hips and proclaimed, “I’m the sneakiest.”

  Rooney smiled. She had someone else in mind entirely. “You won’t like this, I’m afraid,” she said to Bridget.

  “Of course you think it should be you.” Bridget pressed her lips together, as if she’d been wrong to give Rooney a chance at setting things right between them.

  “No, not me.” Rooney tilted her head, indicating the Monty perched on her shoulder.

  Instead of recoiling as Rooney thought she might, Bridget leaned forward, her eyes sharp as she grinned. “Oh, if nothing else, little beasts make for good sneaks.”

  The Monty preened, running its paws across its smudgy nose. Perhaps the rat thought itself fierce for being called a beast.

  “Snatch the lunar mirror from the pile beside the throne,” Rooney told the Monty, setting it on the ground. “But don’t let the sullen queen catch whisker or tail of you.”

  The rat scampered off, and it was all Rooney could do not to watch it advance toward the throne, but that would surely draw Sorka’s attention.

  “Come on.” Perhaps Trick had the same thought, for he said, “Let’s keep ourselves busy.”

  He led them toward the edge of the woods where (after reassuring Bridget it would not kill her, no really, it wasn’t rotted and gross) they began gathering grimace fruit from the lowest of the trees’ branches.

  “I’d give anything for a potato pot pie,” Devin said mournfully. “My father’s pies are the very best.”

  Rooney’s mouth began to water. “Ack, don’t torture me. Don’t make me wish for something I can’t have.”

  “You can have it,” Devin said. “Because we will return
home, and I’ll have you all over for supper.”

  Rooney froze with her arm outstretched toward a grimace fruit. Trick glanced at his hands, and Bridget twisted her lips to the side with an unreadable expression on her face. The air hung all the heavier in their momentary silence, each of them caught on the word home.

  “Bone marrow stew. That’s what my ma made best, cooking while my pop played the piano.” As if to cover the yearning in his voice, Trick pulled a small wrinkly fruit from its branch, and, quite appropriately, he grimaced.

  “Bread for me. My parents were bakers, you know.” Bridget paused, and then said quickly, “Before the feather flu took them.”

  Rooney’s heart lurched. “I’m sorry.” And oh, she meant it sincerely and truly. She hadn’t known this tragedy had touched Bridget (and Trick too, most likely), but it seemed something she should have realized sooner. If she’d been thinking about anyone other than herself.

  “I miss the blackberries,” she whispered. But what she meant was, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I miss my parents too.

  “And all we’ve got is this witch-worked fruit.” Scrunching up her face, Bridget took her first bite of the grimace fruit. She chewed. She swallowed. “Though it isn’t half-bad.”

  “Told you,” Trick said.

  Bridget stuck out her tongue, which was stained purple with juice, but no sooner had she done so than she let out a little scream.

  As sneakily as promised, the Monty had found them at the edge of the woods. It bristled around Bridget’s ankles. She lifted her foot, its shadow falling atop the rat with the threat that her boot would follow.

  “Don’t you dare,” Rooney warned. She bent in a great hurry, dumping an armful of grimace fruits on the ground. Trick, Devin, and Bridget leaned over her shoulders as she held out her hands and accepted the rat’s offering.

  28

  THE WORLD ABOVE

  Rooney’s pulse leaped. Cupped in her palms, she held a round silver object. It was cool to the touch.