by Rena Barron
Eli peeled back the husk on the corn, and light pulsed around the kernels. “We don’t have glowing black corn.”
“Fascinating!” Frankie leaned in to get a closer look. “I wonder if—”
“Wonder later,” I said, pulling out my compass. We couldn’t let ourselves be so easily distracted; we had to find my father. “I’ve been thinking about this epicenter thing again. Especially the part about where it all started for me . . . I think the Lord of Shadows means when I first saw the world turn gray at . . .”
“At school?” Eli frowned.
I nodded—even if I knew it didn’t make sense. “In Ms. Vanderbilt’s class.”
Eli stuffed the prods into his backpack. “I thought your father was supposed to be here.”
“I’m not following, Maya,” added Frankie.
I flipped open the compass, wincing at the pain in my shoulder. “I think the Lord of Shadows took my father to the location where Jackson Middle would be in the Dark.” That was the best clue I had, and now that I said it out loud, it didn’t sound that convincing. “The geographical location, I mean.”
“If I understood the cranky twins’ explanation of how the veil works, there’s only one earth.” Frankie’s eyebrows pinched together. “The tectonic shifts that made seven continents in our world should’ve happened in the Dark too. So the landmass should be the same.”
“We need to head southeast where Chicago would be,” I said, studying the compass.
Eli pointed at my shoulder. “That looks bad.”
Frankie pulled off her backpack. “I have a first-aid kit . . . Let’s get that patched up first.”
The cuts hurt, and I could feel blood gushing out of the wound, but that was the least of my concerns. Three darkbringers stood on the edge of the cornfield staring in our direction. The first-aid kit would have to wait. In all our running around from the impundulu, we’d made a ruckus. Now with our injuries, we were in no shape for another fight.
The darkbringers were twenty feet away—close enough that I could see that they were no taller than us. From their small horns and the small barbs on their tails, they could have been children too. The one in the middle looked no older than Eli’s baby sister, Jayla. They didn’t move—probably shocked to see humans in the Dark, or maybe they thought we were aliens from outer space.
“Later,” I whispered as Frankie unzipped her backpack.
These darkbringers didn’t change their shape, and they didn’t attack. I had a bad feeling about this. That feeling only grew worse when the one in the middle stepped forward and screamed. It was a petulant little kid’s scream, but it finally got Frankie’s attention. Her head snapped up from digging around in her backpack for the first-aid kit. All of a sudden, vines covered in thorns shot up from the ground and whipped around Frankie’s feet. She cried out as she hit the dirt.
More vines were sprouting up everywhere, thrashing and wriggling toward us. Eli sprang to action. He used his shirttail to cover his hands as he clawed at the vines around Frankie’s ankles.
“Stop hurting my friends!” I slammed the staff into the ground, giving it the order to burn the vines.
A spark leaped from the staff. At first, I thought the magic had failed, but then fire flared to life on top of a vine writhing toward me.
Hope lit inside me too as the fire spread to vine after vine. It consumed the ones latched on to Frankie’s legs, but the flames skipped across her skin. It understood that she was my friend and wouldn’t hurt her.
Eli helped Frankie to her feet as we watched the fire grow bigger and spread. Sweat beaded on my forehead, and I swiped it away. My friends were sweating too. The longer the fire burned, the more speed it picked up. I shifted on my heels, my heart racing against my chest. Before long, the fire had grown into a full raging inferno that burned across the cornfield. To my horror, it headed straight for the darkbringers and the little one in the middle, who started to cry.
Seventeen
There’s nowhere to hide in the Dark
I was helpless as the fire burned through the cornfield. I had only meant to free my friend, and now I’d lost control of the staff. “Please stop,” I said under my breath. “Please.” But no amount of begging worked, and if anything, the flames burned brighter. The smoke filling the air burned my eyes as the two impundulu we’d knocked unconscious woke with a start. Soon they flapped their wings and flew away. It was bad enough that we’d destroyed their nest and tricked the other two into running into each other. I never wanted to cause so much death and destruction. I only wanted to find Papa and go home.
Now the fire raced toward the three darkbringers at the edge of the field. Toward the kids. With the light from the flames, I could see for sure that the two darkbringers on the ends were around our age. The one in the middle was even younger. I could make out a little gray barn and, farther away, a house behind them.
All three had ram horns that curved across their dark hair. Although they stared at the fire with wide eyes, none moved a muscle, except for the little girl in the middle. She buried her face against the boy’s leg. He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her closer. The same way Eli had protected Jayla when the darkbringers attacked our neighborhood. We were the invaders now, and it made me question everything I knew about the Dark and the darkbringers. Which, admittedly, wasn’t very much.
“Why aren’t you running away?” I screamed. “Go!”
Eli stiffened at my side, and I wondered if the little darkbringer girl reminded him of his sister too. “Stop the fire, Maya,” he pleaded. “You’ve made your point.”
I clutched the staff, again begging it to put the flames out. I begged for rain. When my commands failed, I told the staff to spare the darkbringer children. It didn’t listen. The fire would reach them any minute now.
Sweat trickled down my back. “I can’t control it.”
“You have to control it!” Eli yelled. “Those are kids.”
I hadn’t come to the Dark to fight anyone. I just wanted to free my father. I hadn’t thought through the consequences of our actions either. Sure, I knew that our parents would ground us for sneaking out. But that was minor compared to the real consequences. That I might have to hurt many people to get Papa back. My pulse rang in my ears, and my hands trembled. This was different from fighting the darkbringers who tried to kill us at Comic-Con. These darkbringers just stood there like they had a death wish.
I’d always known that we wouldn’t walk into the Dark and find Papa without a fight. But at the same time, I never doubted that I could get him back. Oshun, the orisha of beauty, had warned me about my vanity. She’d said, You don’t know enough to know what you don’t know. And she was right. I didn’t even know how to control Papa’s staff. Not fully. How could I be the future guardian of the veil when I couldn’t get this right?
“Run!” I shouted again, waving my arms at the dark-bringers. “Get out of the way!”
Eli and Frankie did the same. The two older kids looked at each other and said something too low for us to hear, but they didn’t move.
A thousand thoughts raced through my mind. How could I stop the fire from reaching the other kids? How could we save my father without fighting every single time we met a darkbringer?
When the wall of fire almost reached them, the boy’s eyes began to glow white. The fire stopped cold. It didn’t go out; it simply froze like he had put a barrier around it.
“I don’t know if we should be relieved or worried,” Eli said under his breath.
The older girl picked up a rock and threw it at us. The rock spun through the air, and as it did, more rocks lifted from the ground and joined it. At first only a dozen, then more and more. The rocks started to multiply themselves the closer they got. One rock we could dodge, but a hundred, no way. Not in an open field with no place to hide.
“I’m going with . . . worried,” Frankie chimed in.
We ran, but the rocks kept coming and picking up speed. They corrected their co
urses to keep pace with us. I spotted a point where the field sloped downhill out of sight of the darkbringers—and got an idea.
“Down there!” I said, taking a sharp turn toward the slope.
We ran full speed ahead, using our last energy to barrel downhill. Unfortunately, we miscalculated our velocity. Eli bumped into me, and I bumped into Frankie. We didn’t so much as run down the hill as, um, roll. We landed at the bottom with a hard thud in a bed of soft moss that broke our fall. The rocks soared over our heads, then fell all at once. I suspected the girl controlling them had given up now that we were out of her sight.
I climbed to my feet, half out of breath, and scooped up the staff. “That was a close call.”
Eli brushed dirt off his jeans. “Running for your life totally sucks.”
I scanned our surroundings, looking for a place we could hide so we could rest. It was going to be a long night. My eyes landed on a cluster of towering lights in the distance, and my heart leaped in my chest. I pulled out the compass to check the direction. The city was due southeast, where Chicago would be. At least that wasn’t different in the Dark, but the city’s skyline was wrong. It was most definitely not our Chicago.
“The epicenter of where it all began,” Frankie said from behind me, her voice pained.
I nodded, knowing that the Lord of Shadows would not make this easy.
Eli adjusted his backpack. “I’m not one to complain much, but we need a break. We’re in no shape to walk that far. It’ll take hours.”
“I don’t think I can actually walk,” Frankie added.
Eli and I whirled around to see Frankie on the ground cradling her leg. “I think those vines were poisonous.”
I winced as I knelt beside her. Pushing back my own pain, I helped Frankie roll up her pants. Her leg was swollen and covered in black veins.
If I ever wished the cranky Johnston twins were around, it was now. Miss Lucille had healed our injuries after the darkbringers attacked at the park and we needed her help. The black veins were worse where the thorns had cut Frankie’s ankle. Some stretched up to her knee. This was my fault for bringing my friends here. I had to do something before the infection got worse.
“I can try to use the staff . . . see if it helps,” I suggested.
“You can’t even control that thing!” Eli yelled. “What if you make it worse?”
I ducked my head, feeling awful about everything.
“Try the staff,” Frankie said, ignoring Eli. “I trust you.”
“I trust her too!” Eli shrugged. “It’s the staff I don’t trust.”
Frankie glanced over her shoulder. “I’d feel better if we put some distance between us and them first.”
I spotted a line of trees in the opposite direction from where we needed to go. Away from Papa, not toward him. I bit my lip, rocking on my heels. “Let’s see if we can find a place to camp for the night over there.”
Eli and I took turns helping Frankie as we crossed the mossy hills. Of all the things we brought with us, no one had remembered to pack a flashlight. After a while, our eyes began to adjust to the dark. We saw white particles everywhere, in the air, covering the ground, and on us. They were so small and paper-thin that we couldn’t really feel them. They looked like a cross between ash and snow and seemed harmless enough. Frankie wanted to stop, but Eli convinced her that now was not the time. She could gather some of the particles to study later.
The darkbringer children had either lost our trail or hadn’t bothered to come after us. I hoped that it was the latter, and that they didn’t tell their parents, which wasn’t likely. Anyone with any sense would tell someone if they saw weird people wielding magic. In this case, we were the outsiders. We were the invaders, the aliens. I didn’t feel bad about that. They came to our world first and helped the Lord of Shadows kidnap my father. I didn’t feel good about it either.
When we reached the forest, I whispered to the staff, “Show us a safe place to rest.”
I bit my lip, wondering if it would go haywire again. By some stroke of luck, it didn’t. Instead, it pointed to a cave hidden behind two red trees. When I say red, I mean the trunk, bark, and leaves were all red, but we were too tired to gawk at them.
We set up our sleeping bags inside the cave. The ground was a little damp and cold, but it could’ve been worse. With the staff, I made two rocks glow to give us light to see but not enough to attract attention.
“I hope this works,” I said, leaning over Frankie. She had passed out on her sleeping bag the moment we got her into the cave. I inhaled a deep breath to calm my nerves, which helped a little. I tapped Frankie’s ankle and whispered to the staff again. The symbols lit up and rearranged themselves, then the light filled the entire cave. Sparks of light separated out into little fireflies that landed on Eli and me too. Then the light went away. Frankie still had her injury. I tried again, but the staff didn’t respond.
“Told you.” Eli sat with his knees tucked against his chest. “Can’t trust it.”
I let out a frustrated sigh and bit my tongue. I didn’t need him rubbing it in my face. “We’ll get Frankie back to the gateway first thing in the morning if she’s not better.”
“Let me put a ping on our location so we have a reference point back to the gateway. I should have thought of this before the killer birds showed up.” Eli pulled out his phone. He slid his finger across the screen and tapped, his face screwed up into a frown. “I don’t have any service.”
I sank into my sleeping bag and clutched it around my neck. We’d crossed into another world, and maybe cell towers and cellphones weren’t a thing here. With all the magic the darkbringers possessed, they didn’t need such toys. But I wasn’t in the mood to say any of this to Eli.
The smart thing to do would’ve been to pack up our things and circle back around until we found the gateway to Comic-Con. Go back to the safety of the human world. The veil hadn’t failed yet, and I didn’t think the darkbringers would figure out how to use the ancient gateway so soon. But I wasn’t going to do the smart thing. I had no intention of running away. In the morning, I would see if Frankie and Eli wanted to go back, but I would stay and find Papa, even if I had to do it on my own.
Eighteen
Three against an army
I was dead tired when I balled up in my sleeping bag. Everything hurt: my back, my shoulder, my legs, and my feet. I couldn’t sleep while listening to Frankie’s choppy, uneven breathing. I could never forgive myself if she . . . No, I couldn’t even think it. She was going to be okay.
“Mommy’s gone?” she mumbled in her sleep.
I shivered at the pain in her voice. She’d once told me about her first mom—how one day she’d gone to the store for groceries and never returned. The police said that her mom had died in a car accident. Now that I thought about it, that didn’t add up, especially since she was an orisha. She was immortal—no accident could’ve killed her. I would never pry or ask more questions, but I wondered what really happened to her.
When I finally fell asleep, I dreamt that the Lord of Shadows crawled into the cave and stole Frankie away. His ribbons wrapped her up like a mummy, and as they did, her face and hair turned gray. When I ran after her, I caught up with them in Ms. Vanderbilt’s class. The Lord of Shadows was sitting at my math teacher’s desk, grading papers, his ribbons climbing up the walls. Frankie was at the chalkboard writing:
THE PLACE IT ALL BEGAN FOR YOU.
THE PLACE IT ALL BEGAN FOR YOU.
THE PLACE IT ALL BEGAN FOR YOU.
The dream startled me awake at daybreak, and the absurdity of it hit me at once. The only thing that made me feel better was that it had been an actual dream, not another visit from the Lord of Shadows. It was a reminder that I couldn’t stay here hiding in a cave. I needed to get to the place in the Dark where Jackson Middle should be, and deep down I knew that I was running out of time.
The morning was only a few shades lighter than the night. Everything looked bruised purple, l
ike the sky before a storm. Eli and I packed up our things and left Frankie sleeping for a while longer. She was finally resting without tossing and turning, and we didn’t want to disturb her. I left Papa’s staff against the cave wall and paced back and forth. The red forest was even more frightening during the day. Sap that looked and smelled like blood seeped from the bark. When the wind rustled the leaves, they made a weeping sound. With a bit more light, the ash particles we saw last night were flecks of dust out of the corner of our eyes. I couldn’t help but wonder if they were alive. The way they floated in the air seemed coordinated.
Eli frowned at me as he removed an apple and a bottle of water from his bag. “All my injuries are gone, but why isn’t Frankie better?”
I stopped in my tracks, feeling like a failure. “I don’t know . . . My injuries healed too.”
“What if she . . .” he said, but his voice cut off.
“I’m not going to die,” Frankie said from behind me. She stood in the mouth of the cave looking a little gray.
“You’re better!” I said. Her leg still looked awful, but some of the black veins had disappeared and it was less swollen.
She stumbled forward. “Almost as good as new.”
Eli rushed to help her and ducked his head when she thanked him.
We settled down to eat, and Frankie drank a whole bottle of water. “You two should go back,” I said. “What happened last night . . . it could’ve been worse.”
Frankie pinched her chapped lips. “We’re in this together.”
Eli bit into his apple and said, “We can’t go back to hide, and it won’t matter anyway if the veil fails.”
“I . . . I just . . .” I stuttered.
Frankie grimaced, and I didn’t finish my sentence.
I just don’t want anything to happen to you, I wanted to say. Instead I pulled out the compass. “We keep moving.” I stared down so I wouldn’t meet my friends’ eyes. I was glad they would stay with me but felt bad too. “I mapped the trip before we left. It should take about seven hours to get to where Jackson Middle School would be in Chicago.”
