Darkshine

by R. D. Vallier

  "There's the entrance," Orin said.

  Two rectangular stones dominated a clearing fifty feet away, the space between them large enough for two men to pass through, shoulder to shoulder. They stood half the size of the surrounding pine trees and loomed above the clearing like grave-markers for twin giants.

  "So that's what I've been striving to reach, huh?" I said. "I expected something grander. Some banners and lights, or at least guards to protect the infallible holy land."

  "Guards patrol past the gateway," Orin said. "Border sentries, like me, remember?"

  "Oh no," I sneered. "You are a grand and noble retriever now. And I'm a miner." My anger died then, as fast and brutal as a neck being snapped. It sank into the inner tar inside me—the pit of repressed sorrow and hatred—and left me feeling numb and distant. I haven't felt like this since I left Sam, I realized, and wondered if the mines would drown me in my inner misery, leaving me with nothing but darkness.

  "Tell me," I said, hoarsely. "Does the Realm's eternal sunshine reach inside the mines?"

  "Some," Orin said, behind my shoulder. "Just enough to..."

  "To what?"

  He stared at the standing stones for several heartbeats. "To prevent harnessing dark magic," he said, then clutched my arm. I took this as a signal and stepped toward the opening. I held my breath, as if readying to plunge into deep and murky waters.

  Orin yanked me backwards, pinned me to his chest. I cried out: "Ori-ack!" His forearm hooked my throat; the oak-leaf buckle ground against my sacrum. I writhed, blood pounding in my ears. His grip tightened. Dread sunk into my gut. I'm such an idiot. Raina had never intended to let me into the Realm intact; even in the pits I'd still have a mouth. This was Orin's final test, his chance to show the Realm the depths of his devotion. What had Raina whispered in his ear? To torture me into silence? Slice out my tongue? Beat me into a coma?

  I tried to wheel on Orin. His elbow thrust into my chin, clicking my teeth. He squeezed me against him; I winced as my tattoo pressed against his chest. Orin's free hand slid my hair behind my shoulders. His hot whisper tickled my ear: "Run away, Miriam." I tried to face him. He clenched the roots of my hair and forced my face forward. His throat clicked as the wire slipped off my wrists, wet and sticky with blood. "You don't belong here. Run away. Run away and never look back."

  Orin released me. I hesitated for hardly a moment and he shoved me forward. I stumbled, then sprinted into the woods. Needled branches slapped my face. My heart galloped with me. I didn't know where the nearest town was and doubted I could survive a winter night in a thin, skimpy dress. But I knew I needed to run until I found civilization or my muscles exhausted or my lungs exploded or I died of exposure. I needed to run until I met my fate. Any fate, except for the one behind me.

  Twilight shadows reached across the ground, like fingers clawing their way out of an early grave. I gasped huge gulps of sterile air. The compound's wall loomed ahead. Behind me branches crashed and a hound's bark carried on a breeze. A thin creek approached. I made to jump, then stopped short, my hair standing on end when I heard Orin screaming.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  I wheeled toward Orin's scream and pushed through the brush, twigs and pine cones cracking beneath my feet, then stopped with a jolt. Orin had risked his life for mine, had told me to flee and never look back. I was too weak to fight a sniffer or his greyhound. And even if we somehow escaped these woods alive, the Realm would hunt us down until the end of days. Returning for Orin was suicide.

  Orin's screams filled the forest and I sprinted back toward the standing stones.

  I crept along the lengthening shadows encompassing the clearing, cupping my hand over my mouth to silence my panting. The clearing seemed wider from this angle, like an overgrown gladiator stadium, a place for games and death. The sniffer pinned Orin's throat to a standing stone; I winced, imagining the grit grating Orin's raw tattoo. The greyhound crouched beside his master, its white hair bristled and teeth gnashing. Orin's left pant-leg was shredded. Blood dripped down his shin like chocolate syrup in the twilight.

  My fingers wrapped around a fallen branch.

  "There's been a mistake," Orin said. "Miriam isn't a—"

  The sniffer tightened his grip. "Changelings pit faeries against the Realm."

  "How?" Orin croaked. "I don't understand."

  The sniffer's eyes narrowed. "You question the Realm." He slipped the whip off his belt and slapped the coiled leather against his calf. "Retrievers must be devoted. Doubt collapses the whole."

  Orin's eyes widened. "I am devoted! I swear! I love the Realm! I serve the Realm!" The sniffer spun Orin around and rammed his chest against the stone. He stepped back and brought the whip behind his head. "No! Stop! Please!" Orin pleaded. "I love the Realm! I love—!"

  The sniffer thrashed the whip across Orin's back; his wings exploded in a burst of flesh. Orin collapsed onto his side, wailing. I recoiled, muffling a cry with my hand. The greyhound's eyes flashed in the dying light. Its ears pricked as its stare turned to where I hid.

  "Get up," the sniffer shouted. Orin heaved himself to all fours, his arms trembling. Blood dripped off his sides, dirt and pine needles clinging to the gaping skin. "Get up!" The sniffer rammed his boot into Orin's rear, plunging him face-first into the ground. The whip cracked twice and Orin screamed as his blood flew into the air.

  "Get up!" The sniffer brought the whip behind his head. Orin rolled onto his side and threw back a shimmering hand. His magic slammed the sniffer's chest, hurling him spine-first into a tree at the edge of the clearing. The whip tumbled to the fallen needles. The greyhound lunged. It sunk its teeth into Orin's shoe and dragged him across the ground, screaming. I leapt from the tree-line and swung the branch, bashing the greyhound's head like a grand slam in a summer game. The greyhound reeled sideways, yowling. I pounded the back of its skull with the butt of the branch until it collapsed into a pile of pinecones, its paws and eyelids twitching.

  I rushed to Orin's side. He shoved me away with the heel of his palm. "I told you to go," he snapped. "I can't protect you. I—"

  Heat slammed our backs like a tsunami of fire. Orin struck the dirt and rolled; I crashed onto my butt twenty feet away. The sniffer flew in from the shadows in a shimmering aura. Orin struck out with his magic. The sniffer dodged, and whammed his boot across Orin's chin, flinging him to his stomach.

  "Attacking a sniffer is treason." The sniffer ground his boot into Orin's gashes, as if stubbing out a cigarette. Orin wailed and retched from pain. The sniffer whipped the knife from his belt and yanked Orin's hair to expose his throat.

  "Stop!" I screamed. Night's whispers filled me like a wind, the strength of glaciers on its gusts. Twilight's glow drained into me, lending its light to illuminate the threats of the world. My night-vision intensified—the trees, the stones, the sniffer lowering his blade—and everything became as distinct as a photograph in blues and grays. I stood up, my heartbeat slowing despite my nerves. Shadows dripped off my fingertips like smoke.

  The sniffer wheeled on me, wide-eyed. His body-heat flew into me like a fever. The whispers inside me ravaged it, froze it, energized me like a battery. My muscles flexed; my veins bulged as if flooded with ice water. Orin shivered as snowflakes began to fall.

  The sniffer sneered. "Darkling," he said, then blasted me with magic.

  Darkness exploded out of me in a silent burst of shadow. The sniffer's magic struck mine, then drained into me. The frigidness inside me gobbled up his warm energy, like a blood sacrifice to some chilling Creator. Shadows curled around my ankles, but it wasn't like dry ice as I had thought with Delano. Darkness was an entity, a living, breathing being, forced to obey me. Protect Orin, I commanded. The sniffer yelped as shadows raced up his legs and encased him like a body-bag. His teeth started to chatter as his warmth flowed into me, energized me, froze. His faerie-fever was supercharging, making the Realm's hallucinogen seem weak and trivial. My eyes rolled. Never had I felt so high.

  I twi
sted my fingers, and the darkness slammed the sniffer to the ground. Orin's tortured screams still hung in my ears, but Delano hung in my heart. I flushed with shame at the thought of the darkling. I had strung him along, made him believe he had found a shard of goodness in his dark, lonely world. Then I had stabbed him in the back, abandoned him, told him to go to hell. The magic Delano wielded coursed through my body and I knew he could crush me, Orin, and any sniffer who stood in his way. Delano didn't spare the faeries at the lodge out of inability. He spared them out of mercy, despite the atrocities the Realm inflicted on his kind. Yet the Realm—the tin predators—abused their authority on a population of duped faeries who believed they did good. My temper boiled; the sniffer wailed as my shadows tightened. The Realm had manipulated their people's kindness into a covert hatred, a weapon to be pointed at whomever they deemed with no more justification than a convenient lie.

  I gnashed my teeth. Stop him, I commanded the darkness. Shadows crushed the sniffer against the ground. His screams gurgled, as if drowning in a pool of tar. His heat flowing into me weakened, but anger still blazed behind my eyes. Stop him. Stop him. Stop—

  "Stop!" Orin said. "You're killing him!"

  I recoiled with a jolt and the night magic slithered back into the shadows. The sniffer and his greyhound lay on the ground, snowflakes pattering their still bodies.

  Orin staggered to the sniffer, picked his pockets, stole his coat. "Hurry," he said, hissing as the coat slid across his mangled back. "We need to fly past the walls, now. They will kill us when they wake, if the Realm hasn't sent guards after us already."

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  I dumped a pharmacy bag to the floor and slammed the hotel door behind us. Orin snuffled, his teeth chattering. He leaned heavily on my shoulder, my knees aching from supporting his weight for the last several hours. He felt warm but clammy, as if a film of humidity had settled across his skin. His complexion was as pale as bleached bone.

  "Sit here and take off the coat," I said, easing Orin onto the bed. I cranked up the heat and inventoried our room—wood paneling, queen bed, coffee pot, ice bucket, hangers, towels, shampoo, soap, extra bedding in the closet. I slid my hand down my face and groaned. We needed the smells of rubbing alcohol and latex, not cedar and Pledge.

  Be grateful for what you have, Miriam. Be grateful for what you have.

  Even though the room wasn't the hospital we needed, it was far more than I had dared hoped. I had darted into the first hotel we spotted—a Swedish style lodge with a gigantic crackling hearth surrounded in antlers and bricks. I didn't expect to stay at a place this upscale with only three-hundred dollars in the sniffer's coat pocket and no identification. But I had strutted into the foyer and lied to the innkeeper with all the finesse of a seasoned actor. The innkeeper readily believed my story about a blown radiator and two teenage punks mugging us on the road. With a nonexistent ski season (thanks to Delano's abandonment of the area), the innkeeper folded our cash into her pocket and slid a key across the desk.

  I latched the door's deadbolt. Any moment a greyhound's teeth could tear into our flesh, or a sniffer's whip snap out of the shadows. I shuddered. I can't think about that now. I'll freeze up. Focus on Orin.

  Water gushed into the bathtub; I tossed a hand towel inside. I felt robotic, concentrating on every movement of my body to prevent myself from becoming frantic. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Don't run. Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay—

  I glimpsed myself in the mirror above the sink and gasped. My eyes were red. Not bloodshot or rubbed raw, but red. As if the irises had rusted. I pulled down my lower eyelid to expose the trick, but found only the whites. My eyes were not as ruddy as Delano's, but I knew they would be if I continued using night magic. How long until my irises also wax and wane? I swallowed, hard. How long until I disappear into the darkshine?

  Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay calm.

  The bathtub steamed. I rung out the hand towel and filled the room's ice bucket with hot water and shampoo, mixing it with my hand until it sudsed.

  Orin sat bare chested on the edge of the bed, staring at his palms as if wondering how something precious had slipped through his fingers. He hissed and winced as I eased the wet towel onto his back to soften the crusting gashes. "Sorry," I said, "but we can't afford an infection." I paused. "Faeries do get infections, right?" Orin nodded.

  I peeled back the towel and shuddered. Three slashes sliced across his back from his right shoulder to his left hip. His tattoo looked as if it had exploded. I dipped the washcloth into the soapy water and dabbed his wounds. Orin flinched, but otherwise stared silently at his fingers.

  When I finished, the water was as red as my irises; a film of pink soap bubbles floated on top. I started a pot of coffee and fetched the pharmacy bag I had picked up from the outskirts of town. Inside were two chocolate bars, a tube of generic antiseptic ointment, a roll of gauze. I sat cross-legged on the bed and smeared the ointment gingerly on Orin's back. The bedside lamp flickered and my heart sunk. Even used sparingly the ointment barely coated his gaping wounds. And none remained for the dog bites on his shin. My hands trembled as I wrapped Orin's torso with gauze, the effort seeming as ludicrous as attempting to conquer tyranny with only teardrops and hope.

  The coffee pot clicked and hissed. I tied off the bandage on Orin's hip, then helped him slip into the sniffer's coat and buttoned the front. "We need to find a hospital," I said, kneeling before him. I dabbed the dog bites with the wet towel. His shin and calf were red, but the torn flesh was white and jagged. "We don't know if—"

  Orin snuffled; his whole body twitched, the veins on his neck bulging like ropes.

  I dropped the towel. "What's wrong?" I cried, fearing he was having a seizure.

  Orin covered his face with his hands, and wailed.

  My shoulders slumped with relief. Not a seizure. Fear. "Okay, we won't go to the hospital," I said, rubbing his knee. Orin sobbed. I bit my lip. "But we will make it through this. Understand me? We will."

  Orin peered up from his hands. His face crumpled and my heart broke. A light somewhere inside him had died. Tears dripped from his eyes like droplets in empty caves. He wasn't sobbing out of fear or pain or of not knowing what came next in his life. He had walked the length of the universe seeking God, and at the end found only a void.

  "I loved the Realm," he whispered, then dropped his head and bawled.

  I wanted to embrace him, hold his body against mine as he trembled from grief. But the gashes on his back—first from tattoo, then from whip—isolated him from comfort, compassion, the Realm, a future family, everything he wanted, everything he loved. My Peter Pan had grown up in the span of a whip-crack, and slammed the door on NeverNeverLand forever. I crawled onto the bed and pulled him toward me. He capitulated like a scared child, shaken awake by a terrible nightmare. We laid on our sides with our foreheads touching, our hands clasped between our chests, ankles entwined. I smelled the blood in his wounds, the inflamed open flesh, the lingering medicinal oil which wasn't quite eucalyptus, wasn't quite clove. Orin cried himself to exhaustion, and we fell asleep caressing each other's fingers, saltwater drying on our cheeks.

  And that was how the cops found us when they stormed the room, guns drawn and ready to shoot.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  "Police! Don't move!"

  For a split second I thought I dreamt of the sniffer, his whip lashing my shoulder to the bone. Then someone hurled me off the bed and slammed me into a wall. I shrieked as two burly men in musky, blue polyester corralled me in the corner. Four other police officers swarmed the bed, screaming incoherent commands. Two of them aimed their guns at Orin's head; the other two grabbed his arms and dragged him face-first onto the floor.

  "What's your name?" the officer demanded. His hand jabbed my clavicle, shoving my back against the wall.

  "Miriam Thatcher. But—"

  "Get the legs!"

  Orin writhed in agony as the officers wrenched his arms up over his s
pine. "Quit resisting!" Another officer struggled to trap Orin's flailing legs in a figure four. Orin's screams sounded too big for the room, as if they could burst through the walls and crush us all in the wreckage.

  "Stop it!" I lunged for Orin. The police officer shoved me back into the corner; another pointed a Taser at my torso. My fingernails dug into my palms; adrenaline shook my fists. "He's not resisting! He's injured!"

  Handcuffs clicked. The bedside lamp flickered. Orin wailed as hands grabbed at his back, his fresh tattoo, the lacerations which shredded his wings and life apart. The cops tugged his clothing—searching for weapons, drugs, needles—then wrenched him to his feet. Orin's knees buckled. The cops slammed him against the wall to keep him from falling, shouting in his ear to stop resisting. Orin wailed, his voice gurgling, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  "Please let him go," I pleaded. The officer yanked me away from the wall, squeezing my wrists behind my back; his other hand probed the hem of my dress. I shook with rage. The officer had a baby face and I resisted the urge to ask if he was out past his bedtime. "Orin didn't do anything wrong. I swear!"

  The officers forced Orin toward the door, his face twisted with pain. "There's been a mistake." Orin's voice cracked like breaking shells. He shuffled in a dipping gait, as if the floor was rotten ice beneath his feet. "It's just a mistake," Orin repeated. "It's just a mistake. It's just a mistake. It's just a mistake."

  "Miriam." The baby-faced officer had released my hands. He gazed into my eyes with an odd mixture of sympathy and pride. "You are safe now."

  "I was safe," I snapped, then clenched my jaw to keep from yelling. With the click of Orin's handcuffs the police had exposed us to the Realm more than ever before. I watched the door, my heart pounding, expecting a sniffer to charge past the threshold, whip cracking, and exploit our vulnerability.