Dark Company

by Natale Ghent

  “That will be enough,” the being finally said when it became apparent no weapon was willing to be hers. It held its hand up to silence the troops. “Please step aside and allow the others to complete the ceremony,” it told her.

  Skylark moved to one side. The Warriors retreated, keeping their distance. She tried not to let it bother her, but she couldn’t control her thoughts.

  “They’re afraid,” the mouse said. “They sense the confusion of the pewter one.”

  “Is it confused?” she asked.

  “Very.”

  “So am I. What does it mean?”

  “It means that this is not for you.”

  When each recruit had a weapon, the pewter being called for order again. “Everything until now has been relatively easy,” it said. “From this point forward, you will face some very difficult challenges. We will test your mettle to the fullest. We will train you to be swift and bold so you can fight the Dark in all its forms. The Dark is your enemy. The Dark hates the Light. You are of the Light, therefore the Dark hates you and everything you stand for. It will not hesitate to cut you down so you must not hesitate to strike first. Your initial challenge is sparring. Fall into pairs.”

  The Warriors quickly chose partners to avoid sparring with Skylark. She stood self-consciously to one side of the field, wishing she had blown up like the Nightshades during the initiation ceremony. The pewter being gave the signal and a riot of clanging swords and roaring lions ensued. By instinct, everyone knew what to do. Skylark watched with envy. What was her purpose if not to fight alongside the Warriors? Where did she belong? And what was the point of pretending to be a Warrior if she really wasn’t one? She let her thoughts stray to the boy. If only she could go back and be with him. The mouse pulled her hair the second she thought this.

  “Ow!”

  “Stay focused on the task at hand,” he scolded.

  Skylark folded her arms and begrudgingly watched the recruits, trying to keep her mind from wandering. But whenever she got bored and let herself drift, the mouse would tug on her hair, until she wanted to knock him from her shoulder.

  At last the pewter being gave the signal to cease fighting.

  “Very good!” it said. “You have transitioned well. Your skills will improve greatly with training and experience, but for now you understand the principals of combat.” It glided along the ranks. “The next challenge is flight training. We call it jumping. It’s a form of teleportation from one location to the next—without gliding. You will make ten lines and jump together in groups.”

  Skylark loitered near the back as the Warriors formed ranks. Once the lines were established, she slipped into a space on the end.

  “Being able to move quickly and undetected is a Warrior’s greatest asset,” the pewter being explained. “The Dark is fast and ruthless. We must therefore be faster and braver still. Your first jump will be a short one—to the other side of the field. Once you have mastered that, we will increase the distance. And don’t forget to include your totem in your flight equation. Expand your energy appropriately.”

  The trumpet sounded and the first ten recruits jumped. They vanished for a second, only to reappear across the field.

  “Well done,” the pewter being praised.

  The next line of recruits performed equally well, as did the next and the next. A few unfortunates got misdirected, reappearing in the canopies of trees, or nearly landing on top of other recruits, but most were able to perform the task admirably.

  When it came time for Skylark to jump, every eye was on her. She fought the urge to run, focusing all her intention on the point across the field.

  “You can do it,” the mouse said. “Clear your thoughts.”

  Her mind was in turmoil. To fail at such a simple task in front of thousands of her peers, especially after her disgrace during the Weapons Ceremony, would be humiliating.

  “I’m a leaf on the water,” she told herself, repeating the silver being’s words. “A leaf on the water …” The roaring filled her ears. The stream of stars in her head accelerated. There was a cannon blast, creating a light so bright the recruits cowered, covering their eyes. The light collapsed, and Skylark found herself standing on a city street in another dimension and time completely. A group of people gathered soberly around an old car. To one side of the scene stood a beautiful man, dressed in an expensive grey suit, a slight smile pasted on his porcelain face. Skylark’s scarred arm flared with pain.

  “Where are we, Sebastian?”

  The mouse shook his head and looked around. “This isn’t right. We shouldn’t be here.”

  Skylark glided cautiously into the street. It was an accident scene. Someone was crushed beneath the wheels of a car. There was a mass of bloodied hair. A bare foot stuck out from under the vehicle. And there was a shoe. A blue sneaker. Lying in the middle of the road. The pain in her arm was bone-splitting.

  “I know this,” she moaned. “For some reason, I know this.”

  The man in the suit turned, the sound of tinkling glass accompanying him as his frozen eyes met hers, shattering a hole in her consciousness.

  Skylark staggered back, her mind spinning with images—the car, the lifeless girl beneath its wheels, the perfect man in his perfect suit—those horrible eyes! She’d seen them before, during her transformation. What torments had they witnessed? Who was this man and what did he want from her?

  “We must go,” the mouse insisted. “Put it out of your mind and hold your thoughts on the practice field.”

  Sebastian tightened his grip on her hair as Skylark forced her mind back to the training field and the hordes of recruits standing there. The roaring grew louder and the stars began to run. At the last moment, her mind tripped, and they hurtled wildly through the ether, landing with an undignified thud in the middle of a field. They looked around, dazed. Something was wrong again. The Warriors and their lions were nowhere in sight. Bullets and cannonballs flew through the air. Bodies of the dead and wounded lay everywhere. Men in uniforms—some beige, some blue—were strewn over the ground. Soldiers ran past, shouting and firing. The sky was black with discharged gunpowder. Among the men, Carriers glided through the chaos, doves on their shoulders.

  The mouse blinked against the musket fire. “This isn’t the right field,” he said. “This isn’t even the right dimension. We’re on the earth plane—in the Civil War. How did we end up here?”

  Skylark floated over the trampled ground, the pain and terror of the men cutting through her. A wounded soldier lifted his hand to touch her robe. His gun lay next to him like an amputated limb. Blood dribbled from his mouth. “Please …”

  Skylark knelt beside him. He was so young. Just a boy, really. No older than the boy she loved. His eyes settled on hers. “He can see me …”

  “The dying can,” the mouse said. “It’s their soul’s quickening pace, vibrating in frequency with your own in preparation for the Crossing. You will come to understand this and control your response to it.”

  Skylark could see the man’s spirit flickering at the edge of his physical form.

  “My darling,” he murmured.

  A shiver ran through her body. It thrilled and saddened her to hear such words from this dying man’s lips. Hadn’t she lost something similar? Hadn’t she once been held and loved? She groped for something to say, something to express the feelings she had for him in his pain. All she could say was, “I’m here.”

  The man coughed and clutched his chest. Skylark opened his coat. The lapels flapped back, revealing a tattered, bloody wound, blossoming like a red flower across his shirt. He convulsed, once, and death stole the light from his eyes.

  “No … please, don’t go.” Skylark cradled his head in her arms, grief and loneliness pouring over her. It was too much. Too much to bear.

  Someone squeezed her shoulder. Skylark looked up and saw a yellow being standing over her.

  “I am this man’s Carrier,” it said, placing the dove in the man’s hand. His spi
rit rose in a swirl of mist, entering the bird. The dove took to the air with its Carrier, its wings a blur of expanding light.

  “We can’t stay any longer,” the mouse said.

  Skylark clenched her fists, anger mounting. How could she reconcile such pain and loss?

  “It is but a shadow,” the mouse explained. “A fragment of another time. You must let it go.”

  “No!” she cried. “It isn’t fair!” She rocketed into the sky, a wall of light shooting from her hands. It hit the advancing armies, blowing men to the ground like leaves. The soldiers dropped their weapons, their faces lit with dread as they looked upon the terrifying face of divine retribution. Skylark soared higher and higher, corkscrewing through the air, the mouse clinging to her hair.

  “Stop!” it shouted. “It is not your place to interfere. These scenes are already written!”

  A group of Carriers swept in, forcing Skylark back with beams of light. She dropped to the ground, scrambled to her feet and jumped. Burning through the ether, she landed in the centre of the practice field, and just in time to dodge the crushing blow of another recruit’s sword. She was in the right place but at the wrong time—back in the sparring exercise. Swords rained down around her. Lions roared. Grabbing the arm of another recruit, Skylark wielded its shield to avoid several vicious blows then jumped from the fray and landed clumsily at the feet of another recruit. This one halted mid-strike.

  “You have no weapon.”

  Skylark stood and brushed herself off. The recruit looked at her scarred arm.

  “Beings are talking,” it said. “The Council doesn’t know what to do with you. Some of the recruits think you’re a demon.”

  She frowned. “And what do you think?”

  The recruit looked at her dispassionately. “I think you’ve lost your totem.”

  Skylark’s hand flew to her shoulder. It was true! In her rage, she must have lost the mouse on the battlefield! She had to go back. But how? And when?

  The pewter being glided over, visibly perturbed. Skylark turned her back on it, hoping it wouldn’t notice that her totem was AWOL.

  “Recruits without weapons cannot participate in the sparring exercise.” It pointed to a neutral zone outside the melee, indicating that she should go there. Then it raised its hand in the air, stopping the battle and silencing the Warriors.

  She knew what was coming next: the jumping exercise. This time she would get it right. No reckless rides through time and space. Just a simple trip across the field with the rest of the recruits …

  The Warriors filed to one side of the field in orderly ranks, creating ten lines. When it came time for Skylark to jump, she eased her mind and compressed her thoughts. She wouldn’t think of the mouse, trapped on some battlefield in another time. She wouldn’t think of the dead soldier, or the boy she once knew, or the man with the frozen eyes. No. She imagined herself a leaf on the water … a leaf on the water … and she jumped, neatly, cleanly, appearing on the opposite side of the field without incident.

  It was clear she wouldn’t be able to go back for the mouse just yet. The pewter being was watching her with a hawk’s eyes after her impromptu and weaponless battle with the recruit on the sparring field. Whatever leniency it had shown the troops earlier had dried up completely, despite their success in the jumping exercise. They were forced to glide in formation, around and around the field, the lions moving in perfect step alongside their Warriors. Back and forth, high and low, swords raised, swords lowered, again and again, until it seemed like the drill would never end.

  When at last the being was satisfied that the recruits had had enough, it dismissed them to their quarters. By this time, Skylark was nearly delirious with worry about the mouse. If the pewter being had noticed Sebastian’s absence, it didn’t indicate as much. And she wasn’t going to wait until it did. She hurried along, past Advisors with their wolves, past Messengers with their owls, past the glistening river where the willow trees trailed trembling fingers in the water. She didn’t stop to look at anything. She had to get to the Hall of Records to discover exactly where and when in time she’d left the mouse behind.

  THE DREAMERS

  Caddy stared hatefully at the Russian girl sitting in front of her. “How could my father have been one of you?”

  The girl adjusted her dark sunglasses, choosing her words carefully. “We are a collective of like-minded people. We’ve been gathering for generations, dreaming together to shape the new world.”

  More vagaries, Caddy thought. If the girl had information about her father she’d better get to the point. “What does that even mean?”

  The girl was unruffled by Caddy’s anger. “We work together to keep the Light strong and hold the Dark at bay,” she said. “We do this by changing the energy on the planet. Everything that exists—every rock and tree and animal—your very thoughts—has its own unique vibration or frequency. The Light reflects all frequencies. The Dark absorbs all frequencies. The Dark is the absence of Light. When we gather, when we work together, we focus on the frequency of light energy and amplify it with our intention to push back the Dark. We call this Dreaming. Our ultimate goal is to vanquish the Dark altogether, to create a world where evil does not exist. Your father joined us as a young man. He possessed … an unusual talent for the work.”

  The idea of her father doing anything but drinking was ridiculous. “My father is an alcoholic. His only talent is hitting the bottle, which he does—a lot.”

  “It wasn’t always that way. He came to us with many ideas. He was so hopeful.”

  “How could you possibly know anything about my father as a young man?” Caddy said. “You’re not much older than me.”

  The girl dismissed the question with another. “Do you know how your mother died?”

  This was too much. How dare this girl mention her mother? She may as well have slapped Caddy in the face. Caddy’s voice was a knife. “Of course. A car accident.”

  The girl seemed amused. “Are you sure?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “The truth,” the girl said. “Your mother was murdered.”

  Now Caddy had her. “No, she wasn’t. It was an accident. I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “That’s what they want you to believe. It was a clever ruse.”

  “My father believed it was an accident too.”

  “He was protecting you from the truth.” The girl reclined in her chair. “Your mother was killed by Company men—”

  She sounded even crazier than before. “And now you’re going to try to convince me that my mother was a Dreamer too. That’s an absolute lie.”

  “The Company men didn’t kill her because she was a Dreamer. They knew that she wasn’t. They did it to …”—the girl searched for the right words—“… upset your father, to create a rift in the dream. And it did. That’s when he started drinking. Without him, our progress has been slow. And the Dreamers were suitably frightened.”

  “That’s a great story,” Caddy said. “And then the Company men killed him too. So, where’s the body? How did they do it?” The girl stared back at her. Caddy wanted to laugh. “You don’t even know.”

  The girl’s mouth twitched, and Caddy thought she had her. She quickly regained her composure. “There’s a small possibility that he’s hiding. Though we are almost certain he’s dead.”

  Her words cut Caddy to the bone, but she refused to believe her. “Why?”

  “Because he hasn’t contacted us.”

  And you were hoping he’d contacted me, Caddy thought. “What makes you so sure the Company men killed him?”

  “They were there when you arrived at the address you found. Why do you think that is?”

  “And now you think they’re after me?”

  The girl didn’t answer. Was she weighing the value of telling the truth? Caddy wondered. Or simply formulating another lie?

  “We believe they wanted to eliminate the possibility of substitution,” she finally said.


  “Substitution? What’s that?”

  “Dreams have a unique signature, like a fingerprint. For years the collective worked together, weaving the dreams of many people into a whole, into a stronger frequency, as the colours of the spectrum entwine to create white light. This is not easy. It’s difficult to work the individual strands of the dream into a unified vision. Each Dreamer carries one thread. If we lose a Dreamer, it sets us back. The thread is broken and the dream cannot hold. It cannot manifest. Working someone else into the fabric takes time. The Company men know this and have been systematically cutting the threads. At first, we simply replaced them. We can no longer afford the luxury. We’re too close to the brink. The Company men are more organized than ever, more aggressive. But we’ve discovered that the sons and daughters of Dreamers have the ability to … step in for their parents. They bring a similar thread, a similar signature. It’s much faster and efficient to work this way, although some are better at it than others.”

  “Are you someone’s daughter?” Caddy asked.

  The girl rested her elbows on her knees. “Yes. And you are someone’s daughter.”

  At last Caddy understood. They were recruiting her—whether she liked it or not. “No! I can’t do this! I don’t want to.”

  “You are the child of a Dreamer,” the girl said. “A most important one. We know you’ve had visions before—just like your father. This is a very rare skill. A gift. You simply need to learn how to control your ability. We can teach you how.”

  Caddy buried her face in her hands. How could any of this be happening? “No.”

  “You are frightened. I understand. It’s not easy to hear these things—to comprehend the magnitude—but hear it you must. We can no longer afford to be polite. We cannot wait for people to come searching for us the way we used to. The Dark is baying at our heels. I cannot emphasize enough that we’ve almost run out of time.”