The Plentiful Darkness

by Heather Kassner

  Rooney retreated another few steps. “I won’t be far.”

  Sorka tipped back her head, and when she sent her first spike of blue light skyward, it looked beautiful, guided not in anger or sorrow this time but with the skill of an apprentice magician. The magic zagged through the air, splashing light on the trees—and on Trick, Devin, Bridget, and the Monty as they approached.

  Behind them, the children held tight to one another’s hands, and at a distance, they stopped, eyes following the fractures of light snapping at the darkness.

  And shrinking it further still.

  A chill shook down Rooney’s spine, equal parts excitement and fear. For as the light trickled in when Sorka pierced it, the darkness churned.

  Her hair swept around her, a mirror image of her mother. And though the magician had said Sorka had learned nothing of the darkness, Rooney knew that wasn’t true. Sorka understood it as no one else did.

  The ground trembled. The seam split another fraction.

  And a sliver of Warybone’s sky glimmered above.

  “Gather the stars,” Rooney whispered, and she and Trick, Devin and Bridget reached their hands into their pockets and then thrust their arms skyward.

  They tilted their mirrors in exactly the manner they’d practiced—aligned like a four-pointed star. Rooney did not mind the closeness right then. The bump of Trick’s shoulder. The swish and tickle of Devin’s braid. The knock of Bridget’s elbow as she scooted the smallest bit away from the Monty. It felt just as it should, all of them bunched together.

  Frail light floated down, but as it did so, the air shuddered; it squeezed.

  Like a fist tightening around a beating heart, the darkness spasmed.

  THE MAGICIAN—THE QUIET OF NIGHT

  Crumpled at her desk, the magician startled awake, her absent heart racing. Magic twitched through her. The darkness called.

  Her eyes flashed to her lovely black scarf, fallen to the floor beside the window. It looked more smoke than silk.

  “Oh no, oh no.” She lifted the scarf. She flew toward the door.

  Fog trailed through her fingers as she spiraled down the tower’s staircase and burst into the quiet of night.

  35

  A STELLAR MIRROR

  The darkness thrashed; it constricted. Rooney fell against Trick. They held each other up, still reaching for the light, as did Bridget and Devin.

  Rooney’s arm shook. At her feet, the Monty squealed. Roots snaked underground as the earth rumbled, breaking apart the group’s little formation.

  But it didn’t matter. Just as before, neither moonlight nor starlight had found them.

  “It’s not working!” Bridget cried. Rooney never thought she’d see it—Bridget’s arm trembled too.

  “But it has to work,” Devin whimpered.

  Rooney clenched the lovely lunar mirror in her hand. Empty. Useless.

  The sky was somehow still too far out of reach, and the darkness around them reeled …

  … as the magician crashed into it.

  She descended on a twisted moonbeam. Down, down, down she came. The silken black swirled all around her. Her cloak flapped like wings. The air hissed as her body sliced through it.

  “Sorka, my devil,” called the magician. “Sorka, my dear.”

  Rooney wondered how she had not heard it before, such longing in the magician’s voice for her imprisoned daughter. But why long for Sorka when she could simply release her from this quiet cage?

  The moonbeam stretched and stretched, until Selene reached the unsteady ground. Without seeming to notice Rooney and the others, the magician cast her eyes around the undulating darkness, taking in its strange shape, all folded-in corners and too-near trees. “What have you done?”

  Sorka clutched her locket behind her back, then sneaked it into her pocket. “I’m finding my way home.”

  Such a stricken look crossed the magician’s face. “You’ll only find your way to your grave!”

  A plume of fog escaped from between her lips. It spread around her, stretching the darkness, even as Sorka tried to interfere, grasping for her mother’s hands. Begging her to stop.

  “Look,” Trick said, his words sounding very far away, though he stood just beside Rooney. “Our plan is working!”

  She glanced up. Somewhere inside her a dash of hope still lingered. It reflected in Trick’s dark eyes, a spark shining in their very centers.

  A thin thread of light wafted down toward Trick’s mirror—and no one else’s.

  If only the beam had not been so very weak—such a pale, wispy gold. As lovely as it was, it looked strange too.

  Moonlight would have been blue, not gold.

  Gold!

  Rooney’s arm dropped to her side. Everything within her tingled.

  “Stardust,” she breathed.

  Devin, Trick, and Bridget stared at the light falling through the magician’s encroaching fog. Maybe their speculations had been more than just fancy. One mirror alone could catch the light of the moon, and perhaps their grouping of mirrors had teased out the distant light of a star field, enough for Trick to pull down the smallest glimmer.

  Yet it wasn’t enough.

  With only five mirrors, one of them near-shattered and snug in Sorka’s pocket, they’d never gather as much as they needed.

  Unless …

  Rooney’s heart thumped as her gaze locked on the crack in Trick’s mirror.

  Unless she’d been wrong.

  She’d assumed the cracks in Sorka’s locket meant it was broken like all the other things Sorka had discarded. But what if the cracks in the glass were not a flaw but a function? Many facets to catch the many stars. Rooney’s heart raced faster.

  Trick had always seemed to gather the most moonlight, but maybe all that time—maybe tonight—he was catching a smidgen of starlight as well.

  Rooney sucked in a breath. She had an idea, but oh, it was another terrible, frightening, brilliant one. Just thinking of it made her head feel woozy and light.

  Or maybe that was the fog.

  It drifted around their ankles. The poor Monty lay on its side, eyes closed. Its skinny ribs pushed in and out, but slowly. She had to hurry, before they all lost their breaths—smothered at last.

  Rooney cringed but didn’t hesitate. She dropped her precious mirror on the ground despite Devin’s and Bridget’s waving arms and silent protests—and she stomped on it with her foot.

  Glass broke.

  The magician’s head whipped to the side, as if she’d heard even this small sound. Fog streamed from her mouth. It coiled toward Rooney, seeking her out in the darkness. A cold, cold tendril that might snake down her throat and choke all the air from her lungs.

  Over the distance, Rooney met the magician’s eyes. They looked impossibly dark. Entirely unreadable.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing.” In a whirl of movement, Selene Thistle swept into the sky, letting the moonbeam pull her up and away.

  “Mother!” Sorka shouted, her voice shredded raw.

  Rooney knew the magician would cut off their only chance to escape in a matter of moments.

  Quick as could be, Rooney lifted the mirror from the ground at the same time she grabbed the sleepy rat. She laid the Monty gently in her pocket.

  “Oh, Rooney, what have you done?” Devin whispered, eyes locked on the mirror.

  Rooney was afraid to look.

  Trick reached forward. He pried back her fingers when she could not bring herself to do it. “She’s making a stellar mirror.” A grin split his face. He must have suspected how special his cracked mirror was too.

  Bridget wedged in closer, and the four of them glanced down. Lines and crackles like lightning ribboned the glass, but it remained securely in the silver case. With a shaky arm, Rooney thrust the mirror above her head and tipped it toward the sky.

  Once, she might have wished upon the stars, but tonight she placed her faith in herself and in her friends. It lit not a moonlit fire, but a starlit fire i
nside her.

  Devin gasped. Bridget and Trick staggered backward.

  And Rooney beamed as bright as the gold-touched sky.

  Unlike moonlight, the starlight refracted into a thousand fragments when it kissed the glass. The very air sparkled, as if the sky had dropped to its knees. Rooney dashed forward, out of the trees and toward Sorka.

  “Break the glass!” she cried over her shoulder.

  One, two, three thumps of boots against metal, and the sharp crack of glass filled the night. Trick, Devin, and Bridget joined Rooney and Sorka.

  Together (not at all untogether), they raised their arms. Sorka too with her little locket mirror. They gathered stardust! It was a sturdier substance, bright and beautiful as it streamed down.

  Its sparkling reminded Rooney so much of those long-gone days when she’d gazed through her telescope, her parents beside her pointing out all the constellations. Now, as then, she felt she existed among the stars, not simply beneath them.

  We gathered the stars for you, Rooney.

  And now, catching starlight felt like her last gift to them.

  “Come out, my friends!” Sorka called to the children, and they tumbled away from the trees and their long shadows.

  The magician hovered above them, a smear against the starlight. She’d stopped her advance, whispering and murmuring spells that seemed unable to do what she hoped—for the darkness only sneaked closer.

  The children stumbled, legs buckling as the ground shuddered and shifted beneath them. Rooney and Devin fell just after. Smooshed once again, the rat awakened and scurried from Rooney’s pocket.

  Around them, the darkness was reconfiguring, the rippling walls pressing in.

  There was no time to spare. The whole realm might collapse around them. Rooney lifted her mirror, rejoining Trick and Bridget, who had recovered from their falls more quickly and stood with their feet firmly planted, commanding the starlight. Devin completed their small circle as Sorka faced off with the magician.

  “First things first,” Rooney said, looking in turn at each of her friends’ fierce faces. “We must protect the children.”

  She reached toward the starlight. It glinted at her touch, a solid thing unlike anything she’d known before. It tickled, warm and sparkling against her skin.

  Rooney grasped the golden beam. Trusting in its magic, she wrapped it three times around the closest child’s wrist, and like snapping a fishing line, she sent the child reeling through the darkness, straight past the magician and into the world above. A scream of fright and delight echoed around them.

  “Not Sorka, not Sorka!” The magician commanded the silken trees, the branches of which reached out like long, spiky claws. They grabbed at the children, grasping for their ankles and wrists. Some children were yanked up into the air, screaming as they dangled upside down. Others fled toward Rooney’s group, where, one by one, Bridget (quickly) and Devin (carefully) twined starlight three times around their wrists and sent them soaring skyward.

  Rooney and Trick stood side by side, pulling the starlight toward their mirrors, brightening the whole of the darkness.

  “Monty!” Rooney cried. “We need you!”

  The smudgy rat poked its nose from between the crook of two branches. With her free hand, Rooney pointed to the children swaying from the treetops, caught there by the magician. The Monty dashed toward them, its sharp teeth flashing. Bridget and Devin ran after, climbing into the trees and reaching for ribbons of starlight.

  “I can’t let you devils undo the darkness.” The magician exhaled another thick cloud of black fog that Sorka was unable to keep back no matter how she bent the darkness to her will.

  “I can barely see,” Rooney said, swiping her hand over her mirror in an attempt to chase away the fog. She looked up at Bridget and Devin, who’d secured more of the children with threads of starlight, but they hesitated, unable to determine the way out amid the fog.

  Those sparks gleamed in Trick’s blackberry eyes. “Can you manage the starlight alone?”

  Rooney held her arm steady and strong. “Yes, yes,” she said.

  And with that, Trick swung himself into the nearest tree. He rose all the way up to the tip-top branches and leaped for another one angled almost horizontally above him. Higher and higher he went, past Devin and Bridget, until the darkness swallowed him.

  All the while, the magician cast spells, and the fog swirled. Sorka dropped to her knees, no match for her mother’s magic.

  From the darkness came a soft tinkling, like rain—no—like music. Somewhere in the gloom, Trick must have reached the starlight above the fog, and now he strummed the cords like a harp. With each cascading note, the starlight brightened, showing them all the way out.

  Bridget aimed. She sent the rest of the children soaring on beams of starlight, heading that-a-way toward Warybone. The magician swept closer, angling right for Bridget. Devin snatched her mirror from her pocket and aimed it just so, catching the scattered golden light and shining it into the magician’s eyes. The magician swerved away.

  “Go!” Rooney shouted, urging her friends on.

  Devin found her own strand of starlight and let it carry her toward Trick’s delicate notes, and Bridget seemed ready to follow her when she halted quite suddenly. The rat circled her ankles.

  For a moment, Rooney worried Bridget would kick the Monty from its perch. But with a grimace and a shriek, Bridget snatched the rat up by its tail and brought it with her through the sky.

  Still holding the mirror aloft, Rooney raced toward Sorka. The magician began to descend at the same time, slowly, wearily.

  “Sorka,” the magician wept.

  Sorka looked up at her mother, then turned at Rooney’s voice. “We have to hurry!”

  Rooney reached out for a starbeam. It tingled as she wrapped it thrice around her wrist.

  “I’m scared,” Sorka whispered, a wistful expression on her gray-splotched face.

  Rooney clasped Sorka’s hand, which was so very cold and light. “We will go together,” she promised.

  They snapped the beam of light, and it drew them through the sky. They rose more slowly than the other children, the darkness unwilling to let Sorka go. The higher they climbed, the brighter Sorka’s eyes sparkled, the lighter the touch of her hand.

  Rooney felt as if she were flying. They were so close to the seam.

  But closer still loomed the magician.

  THE MAGICIAN—EVER SO QUIET

  The magician looked down at the dark-haired girl with the holey tights—and at Sorka.

  Sorka, her devil.

  Sorka, her dear, dear, dear.

  The magician spread her arms wide, starting her cloak flapping, sending the fog whirling. She blocked the path. She refused to let them by.

  All the others who’d gone, she’d meant them to escape, had asked the trees to release them—though the darkness had intervened. Now, the magician only cared what became of Sorka—who belonged to, who could not leave, who had to, had to, had to remain in the darkness, no matter how small and tangled it had become.

  “I won’t let you go,” the magician whispered, her voice ever so quiet. Holding tight to her moonbeam, she swept lower in the sky.

  The dark-haired girl shook her starbeam, as if to make it carry them faster, all the while clinging to Sorka. “You can’t keep us here. Out of our way!”

  Sorka said nothing. She only spun at the end of the girl’s hand, feet dangling in the darkness, hair gusting away from her face. And those black ribbons, the very ones the magician had once tied prettily in her daughter’s hair, streamed wild from wind-blown braids.

  The magician cut through the fog and the stardust, a scattering of dark and light playing across her raw-boned face. The girl never flinched. She never slowed their ascent or let her grip on Sorka falter, not even when the magician drew close enough that the girl shivered with cold.

  In the middle of the sky, they collided. Stardust tangled with moonlight. The black trees stretched fo
r them. And peering down from above, a sour-eyed boy, a girl with a heart-shaped face, and a scar-lipped child reached through the darkness, never mind they were too far away to do anything at all.

  The starbeam around the dark-haired girl’s wrist unraveled by one turn, and she shrieked. A horrible sound.

  The magician recoiled, only to redouble her efforts a breath later, straining to tug Sorka away. The girl kicked out her boot, sending the magician spinning. Sorka lifted out of reach. She neared the seam.

  “Wait!” The magician raised her voice for the very first time. It cracked with disuse. “Please wait. Please don’t go.”

  They didn’t slow, not right away, but then, soft as silk, Sorka said, “Wait, Rooney.”

  The magician wasted not a moment. She commanded the moonbeam to lift her fast, fast, fast to Sorka’s side.

  “Please stay,” she said, reckless now with her words. “Please stay. Where it is quiet. Where it is safe. In this protected place I’ve made for you. Oh, Sorka. I cannot bear to think of a world without you in it.”

  “But I’m not part of your world anymore!” The words tore out of Sorka’s throat.

  Tears sprang from the magician’s eyes. They ran down the river of scars all her previous weeping had tracked into her cheeks. “I should have been there only for you. I should never have left your side when you grew so sick. I’m sorry. So sorry.” Her voice came raspy. “The townsfolk needed me too, but you needed me most.” She drew a breath. “Please forgive me.”

  Sorka shook her head. Her lip trembled. “Mother,” she whimpered.

  “I love you.” The magician’s absent heart swelled being so near to Sorka. It filled her chest. It ached. Oh, it ached. She’d held back these words for too long. “Do you know how much I love you?”

  “I know,” Sorka said. “For I love you just the same.”

  36

  TO WARYBONE

  Rooney clutched the starlight, fearful it would unwind from her wrist another turn, and then one more, spilling her and Sorka to the tree-spiked ground far below. But Rooney could not help but wonder if she would be the only one hurt in the fall.