The Plentiful Darkness

by Heather Kassner

  Everything was perfectly quiet and so very calm.

  Then the river pulsed, struck from above by the magical storm.

  Rooney’s bones rattled. A bubble of air popped from her mouth. Waves rocked the river, tossing everyone all about, and a deep cold set in.

  She held her breath as long as she could, and only when she thought she might burst did she carefully kick her way to the surface. She spun a circle. Trick popped up beside her, the Monty nosed its way from the depths, and one after the other, so did the rest of them.

  A thin fog skimmed the water. It obscured much of the shore, but through it Rooney could see a looming wall of rippling darkness.

  She only hoped it came no closer.

  “You saved us from the void.” Devin paddled to Rooney, cracking a thin lace of ice that had formed. “But how?”

  “The water is magical.” Rooney gathered her breath. “I just hoped it would dry up the fog the way it so quickly dries our skin and our hair.”

  “You didn’t know?” Devin squealed as she swam.

  “But it worked,” Trick said around a splash of water. He had trusted Rooney when it mattered most.

  They all had.

  When they waded to shore—hair, skin, and clothes drying as their feet touched land—Rooney could more clearly see all the damage left in the wake of the magic. Frost-touched trees, a crust of silver ice-flowers, and that wall of impenetrable darkness where this sliver of the woods once reigned.

  “The darkness feels different,” one of the children said uncertainly, peering up at the crimped not-sky.

  Sorka stood apart from them, so her voice came softly when she said, “Yes, little devil, that’s because summer is gone forever now too.”

  33

  ONE AND THE SAME

  That night, they slept in the overlap of winter and autumn, amid the darkness that had devoured summer—and the lighthouse and sea along with it.

  Or at least, Rooney tried to sleep, tucked tight between Trick and Devin, with the Monty behind her knees. But in the deep quiet, one of the children cried out.

  Rooney slipped from her silken bedroll, for this whimper seemed worse than most. She tiptoed around those still sleeping, toward the small glow of moonlight that suddenly sputtered to life.

  Sorka bent over a boy in his bed, and when Rooney knelt beside them, she realized it was none other than the little ragamuffin who’d snitched the grimace fruit from the Monty. All they had left from summer.

  He lay on his back, eyes squeezed tight. A low moan rolled in his throat.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” Sorka whispered, placing one hand to his forehead.

  Rooney leaned closer. His eyes flashed open, glassy and dark. Across his cheeks, crackling up and down his scrawny arms, those stains of gray-dark spread. He opened his mouth, and Rooney rocked back on her heels.

  His tongue had most horribly blackened.

  “I don’t feel so well.” He tucked onto his side while Rooney and Sorka looked at each other grimly. “Just want to sleep.”

  “I’ll stay,” Sorka told him.

  Rooney nodded, knowing he’d rather have Sorka there than her. But when Rooney crawled back into her bedroll, when the moonlit candle snuffed out, darkness swarmed. It consumed the night, and she realized, next it would consume that boy. They’d thought those splotches of gray were markers of death, and this rascally boy, it seemed, would be the first to fall to them.

  Rooney couldn’t—she wouldn’t—let that happen.

  It wasn’t a matter of when—they needed a plan for escape now!

  Oh, her thoughts raced. They roared so loudly.

  It is not the same. Being here and being there. These words of Sorka’s circled in Rooney’s head. A reminder.

  Summer wasn’t gone, not really. Neither were the moon and stars.

  They waited in the world above.

  And the world above waited for Rooney.

  But how, how were she and her friends to reach it before it was too late?

  And then a terrible, frightening, brilliant idea struck Rooney, like the blue beam from the lighthouse swinging round and shining upon her. Its glow chased her into dark, dark dreams.

  * * *

  Rooney, not for the first time, was the last to rise, nuzzled awake by the Monty. She bolted upright just in time to see Sorka marching away from the boy who’d fallen so ill, then stride into the woods that remained. Trick, Devin, and Bridget sat in the torch glow, watching her go.

  “We’re stuck,” Bridget said. “That’s it. That’s all. We’re stuck in this witch-darkened place.”

  “Until it smothers us,” Devin whispered, her voice low so the children wouldn’t hear.

  “Yes.” Rooney’s lips twisted, more smile than frown.

  Startled, three pairs of eyes swung to her.

  “Why do you sound happy about being smothered?” Oh, Trick must have known something was up. His gaze bored into her.

  And so Rooney told them her terrible, frightening, brilliant idea, which, in truth, sounded even worse than she imagined when spoken aloud.

  “Last night, we failed to escape because the distance from the ground to the sky was simply too great. Like the light from the lighthouse at its farthest rotation. Too distant to see. We need to bring Warybone within reach in order to grasp the moonlight.” She paused before spilling the best and worst part. “We must continue to shrink the darkness.”

  Devin twisted her braid. “That only sounds like a way to smother us sooner.”

  Trick clenched his hands in that curious way of his, wrestling, it seemed, with the need to be bold and the need to be cautious.

  But Bridget grinned, stretching the lovely little fish-hooked scar on her lip. “It just might work.”

  Oh, Rooney had something in common with Bridget after all—the two of them were made of guts and grit. Rooney could have hugged her (but she didn’t). “It will.”

  “Might,” Bridget said again. “Moonlight is fickle and fleeting.”

  “But stardust isn’t.” Trick must have been thinking of his mother’s wedding ring, created, so said his father, by the light of a star.

  Devin’s hands dropped to her lap. “If only its power was more than a story.”

  “What if it is more than a story?” Rooney fumbled in her pocket, withdrawing the locket, which Sorka had lost a second time.

  All their eyes brightened, tracking the back-and-forth swing of the charm that Sorka claimed once held stardust.

  “Then we’ve got to figure out how to catch it for ourselves.” Bridget grinned.

  Rooney inspected the locket every which way, saddened that the glass was cracked so terribly. She imagined there must have been something special about the mirror at one time, but she couldn’t figure out what it might have been.

  “There is only one moon, but there are so many stars in the sky,” Trick said thoughtfully. “Maybe a mirror can’t focus on them all at once.”

  “And moonlight is not the same thing as stardust, so perhaps there is another way to catch it,” Devin suggested.

  “Yes, yes.” A burst of excitement tingled through Rooney. Trick and Devin were onto something. “Think how the stars twinkle and glow and tease—too many of them for one mirror to capture.”

  Just as Rooney, alone on the streets of Warybone, had felt when she encountered the roughhouse boys. Terribly outnumbered.

  But she was no longer.

  “Come on.” Rooney climbed to her feet, then strode forward with her friends.

  Scrambling along beside them, the Monty chittered, as if to encourage their feet faster. They followed the path between the trees where Sorka had gone, but not far, and soon stumbled upon the silken river.

  And the rippling wall of darkness that had swallowed so much of the woods.

  Sorka paced before it, eyes on the ground. She poked at the ice-flowers with a branch.

  “Looking for this?” Rooney held up the locket.

  “You found
it!” Her smile was so wide it looked like her face might crack.

  “Yes, I know how important it is to you.” How important its secrets might be to all of them. “How did it ever hold starlight?”

  “I don’t know exactly. My mother was the one who best understood the night sky. Not me.” Eyes on the locket, Sorka held out her hand.

  Reluctantly, Rooney returned it. There was nothing more she could learn from it anyway. The silver chain glinted as Sorka wrapped it three times around her fingers.

  Rooney froze.

  She thought of how the magician descended into the darkness on a moonbeam coiled thrice around her wrist. How the magician would have to know all about the stars and moon to be able to do so—just as Sorka’s mother best understood the night sky.

  Could they be one and the same?

  Everything aligned in Rooney’s mind at once. That inkling she’d had about a deeper connection between Sorka and the magician. The wistfulness in Sorka’s voice when they spoke. How the magician breached the darkness because Sorka asked her to, and all the many toys and trinkets and games left as gifts to please her. Even the matching ribbons they wore and their long, dark hair spoke of their secret bond.

  And of course, the magic flowing in their veins.

  Take me home with you, Sorka had said.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell us,” Rooney exclaimed. “You are more than the magician’s apprentice—you are the magician’s daughter!”

  All eyes fell on Sorka. Behind her, the ice crackled at the edges of the river. In her hair, the ends of the black ribbons waved. Perhaps Rooney should have spoken more gently, but it was too late now. The darkness churned like Sorka’s temper. A deepening cold bloomed in the air.

  “That’s the truth of it.” Sorka bit off each word, a stubborn set to her gray-splotched jaw. “Now you know why I am so very rotten.”

  “Selene,” Rooney whispered, remembering the name Sorka had used to call the magician down from her tower—the Tower of Thistle. “Selene and Sorka Thistle.”

  Devin ignored Rooney’s mumbling and spoke softly to the magician’s daughter. “You aren’t rotten. Don’t say that.”

  “Maybe she is.” Bridget crossed her arms against the chill. “She lied to us. And anyway, she couldn’t have been up to much good if she was tossed here by her own mother.” She narrowed her eyes, which gleamed with curiosity. “What were you up to?”

  Sorka scratched at the gray spread across her collarbone. “Getting into loads of trouble.”

  “That makes you no different from us,” Trick said, as if he could see the inner workings of someone’s heart, all the shiny bits and the scuffed-up pieces—a patchwork of goodness and mischief.

  But Rooney knew Trick’s words didn’t quite tell the whole of it. Sorka was different—in the very best way.

  Sorka had magic.

  “The magician is powerful, but so are you.” Rooney looked intently at Sorka. “You can bring down the sky—and the magician with it.”

  Sorka trembled. The darkness pinched, and the spindly tips of the treetops bowed.

  “How?” Sorka asked, and Rooney told her the terrible, frightening, brilliant plan.

  34

  AN UN-TENDING

  They schemed for hours, imagining the ways they might bring down the darkness and split open the seam. And the ways it might squish, squeeze, and smother them.

  But for all their plotting and preparing (for all Bridget’s pointed questions and Devin’s kindly pleas), Sorka refused to explain why the magician had gifted her own daughter (and the rest of them) to the darkness.

  “I won’t say, so stop asking,” Sorka said with finality.

  Rooney frowned at Trick, suspicions swirling, but he was too busy plotting the best formation for gathering starlight (the cluster of them standing together with their mirrors, he thought).

  For the next few nights, Sorka called to her magic—in front of them for the first time, not hidden in the woods. Just a bit. Just to practice. They did not want her to bring the darkness down all at once and smoosh them. She needed to control it, as best she could, at least.

  So in the clearing, she tugged at a corner here, a treetop there, snips and snaps of blue light rippling from the magic-infused mirror in her locket. And her emotions. She let the darkness cinch around them—an un-tending of what was supposed to be tended.

  The gaps between the trees narrowed as their roots slithered over and around one another. Even the river changed course. Drawn closer, it trickled right past the throne.

  The children sat quiet and obedient, eyes wary as the space around them grew smaller.

  And smaller.

  And smaller.

  It was most unsettling, Rooney thought, to see the shrinking. To stand perfectly still and watch the black ribbon of the river slip inch by inch nearer to the tips of her boots. To glimpse the treetops hunching overhead, less room for their branches to stretch.

  Rooney pushed her fear to the back of her mind (though it tickled there for all the days that followed), and at torchset on the seventh evening, Sorka declared, “I’ve made a mess of the darkness.” That’s just what they’d intended, but she seemed a little surprised that she’d managed it.

  “A perfect mess,” Devin said. “Are you ready for what comes next?”

  “Are you?” Sorka asked.

  Bridget stuck her hands on her hips. “So long as you don’t witch-wallop us into the void.”

  “No guarantees.” Sorka grinned.

  They turned to the woods where that wall of darkness waited—and thrashing behind it, the black hole.

  “Whatever happens, we’re in this together. The best”—Trick elbowed Rooney as he finished—“and the worst of us.”

  “Hey!” she cried, reaching out to swat him. But he took off, Bridget and Devin on his heels.

  “We’ll round up the children,” he called over his shoulder, laughing.

  Rooney found herself laughing too, despite the fear, despite the shadows pressing in all around them. And she knew that’s just what he’d wanted.

  Sorka started off in the other direction, and Rooney swung back to her. “Wait, I’ll come with you.”

  “Because you still don’t trust me,” Sorka said.

  “Because no one should be alone.” The words rang in Rooney’s bones, spoken as much for herself as for Sorka. She’d been so long without her parents. She’d pretended she didn’t need anyone else.

  But she did.

  And so they entered the woods together, their lunar mirrors—almost empty—glowing blue between them. They had to go single file where the trees pinched close, and it was there, when all Rooney could see of Sorka was the back of her head and the sway of her hair, that Sorka whispered, “Did you mean it?”

  “Mean what?” Rooney asked.

  Sorka slipped between the trees. She pushed low-hanging branches out of her way, and flowers drifted to the ground, leaving a silver trail of ice-petals for Rooney to follow.

  “That no one should be alone.” Sorka’s words haunted the air, a cold breath left in her wake.

  “Yes, I meant it.” Passing through the cold, Rooney shivered. “How long were you down here by yourself?”

  Sorka made no reply.

  “It must have been lonesome.” Rooney remembered when she’d first fallen into the darkness. How terrible it would have been to wander and wander and find not a soul.

  Sorka walked faster through the trees, away from Rooney’s words. Rooney raised her arm, holding back a swinging branch that would have otherwise smacked her in the face. And that’s when it hit her (an idea, not a branch).

  “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” Rooney hurried along, catching up to Sorka and gently clasping hold of her arm. “So you wouldn’t be alone.”

  Sorka blinked and blinked her widened gray eyes. A storm of emotions tossed within them.

  It was true. The magician had plunged Rooney and the others into the darkness not simply to quiet t
hem, but to keep Sorka company!

  As if they each were another toy or trinket. A set of real live dolls for Sorka to play with.

  Sorka leaned forward so they stood almost nose to nose. She did not say yes or no or maybe. She only said, “It’s all my fault.” Her chest rose and fell with the release of her burden. “Please don’t tell the others.”

  Sorka spun away, but not before Rooney saw her face awash with guilt. Rooney wanted to tell her she shouldn’t have held this secret so close. Sorka wasn’t to blame for being lonesome. The magician’s dark magic, her dark heart, was to blame.

  But Rooney had no chance to tell her. The eerie void that seemed both real and dreamlike rose before them, masking the black hole beyond.

  They stared at the roiling darkness, its ripples like waves ready to sweep them under. Rooney took one step back, and Sorka took one step forward.

  “Careful,” Rooney warned.

  Ignoring her, Sorka snatched up a fallen branch and stabbed the pitch. It slid deeper and deeper into the darkness, and when she pulled back, nothing of the stick remained.

  A trickle of fog leaked forth. It grazed Sorka’s skin.

  And her fingers, oh her fingers—the very tips of them blackened.

  “Sorka!” Rooney yanked her friend back. “You’re as ill as that boy!”

  “I’m all right.” Sorka curled her hand. “And so is he. He ate a summer-grown grimace fruit that didn’t agree with him.”

  Had his tongue not been black, but the deepest purple?

  “But the darkness isn’t all right, and I’m about to hurt it much worse.”

  Rooney wondered if that was true. If, when they struck at the darkness, it lashed out, not to harm them but to close the holes they’d meant to gouge. To patch itself up. Rooney touched the gray on her cheek. And maybe sometimes, it happened to leave patches on them too.

  Not a marker of death.

  In its attempts to heal itself, the darkness, the magic, flowed wildly, latching onto whatever—whoever—was nearby.

  And now Sorka was going to scratch at all the scars. She lifted her arms, cradling her locket in her cupped palms. “I wouldn’t stand so close, if I were you.”