He was colder from the start, this time. And Barshin was much harder to spot—a limp bundle of fur and bones huddled in a corner.
Danny felt a stab of dark hatred as he took hold of the hare’s hind leg and lifted it up. The surge was strong enough to stop his breath and make his chest hurt.
He saw it again, in a flash of cruel brightness.
Tom’s death.
A blaze of flame, climbing up toward the sky, and Tom falling down the wind into the fire, being eaten up by the flames.
Barshin the hare had betrayed them all, and Tom’s soul had fallen into Sammael’s hands, and Sammael had killed him.
Danny gripped the hare’s leg, dangling the creature in the air. Barshin hung helpless before him.
He could decide whether the hare lived or died.
His hand went limp, as though preparing to drop the hare onto the beaten earth floor. He could just go outside, carry Cath away, and say that he hadn’t been able to find Barshin, that the hare must already have shriveled to nothing under the shadows.
Danny clenched his fingers around the hare’s leg, feeling fury rise up inside him. He used the sudden flush of heat to turn and run from the house, and this time he pulled the door shut behind him, and as he stepped into the daylight, he threw Barshin down on the path and vowed that he was not going back inside the shadows again, not now, not ever.
“What happened?” Danny asked. “When did you get shadowed?”
Cath was sitting up on the grass, looking around her. She wasn’t quite human-colored yet, but she wasn’t entirely gray anymore. Cradling Barshin in her arms, she was trying to bring warmth back into his gray fur by pressing as much of herself as she could to his long body. For a second, Danny thought she was about to bury her face in the hare’s stomach.
Instead, she looked up at him. Her eyes were as dark as he’d always known them, shining strongly with scorn.
“Why did you come?” she asked quietly.
“I had to come and get you,” said Danny. “The shadows came over—I thought they were Sammael, but before that, I nearly drowned, and I saw Tom—”
He waited for her face to register blankness, for her to ask him who Tom was. But she was Cath, and she knew everything. Of course she knew about Tom.
“You’ve remembered him?” she asked. “How?”
“I saw him under the sea. But everyone else has forgotten him. How did you remember?”
“Barshin,” she said simply. “Barshin kept telling me the story of what we did, how I ended up where I was. I didn’t remember it, but he told me it was true, so I still knew it.”
Barshin stirred in Cath’s arms. His fur was losing its grayness, returning to a mid–sandy brown. Danny looked at Cath, her eyes haunted and sunken, her hair wild. She had her back turned to the cottage, and she wasn’t trying to see what had happened to it.
“Well,” he said, trying to be brisk and sound brave, “I think Tom’s bringing the shadows over. We’ve got to find him again and stop him.”
Barshin stopped struggling, and Cath set him down onto the ground. The hare crouched in the tufted grass, flicking his ears. “Somebody has the book,” he muttered.
Danny ignored him. The hare might be Cath’s friend, but Danny had nothing to say to Barshin, and he was sure that the hare had nothing to say that he wanted to hear. He explained his idea about Tom being caught in the ether, cast into hopeless torment, and how it fitted very well with the shadows.
Cath thought, then shrugged. “I guess it could be like that.”
“It is,” said Danny. “I’m sure of it.”
Cath stared at him and opened her mouth, and for a second he knew she was about to contradict him, to tell him that he’d gotten it wrong. But the moment passed, and suddenly she didn’t seem to have the energy to argue.
“So we should try and get to the ether, then? But there’s no Zadoc anymore. We can’t even get into Chromos.”
“We can get to Chromos,” said Danny. He explained about Shimny. “She can’t go higher up in there, though. She has to stay on the floor. Would you know how to imagine another way in?”
“Well, yeah, we got to the ether through the moonlight on the sea, once, didn’t we?” said Cath. “I guess we could try to see that on the floor of Chromos, if we want to.”
“Of course!” Danny scrambled to his feet. Why hadn’t he thought of that himself? It was so simple.
Because Cath was the one who thought about what might be possible before she told herself it was impossible, that was why.
Danny held his hand out to Cath. “Come on, let’s do it.”
“Sure.” She took his hand and got up, still clutching her bundle of colored rags, and they went back down the path to Shimny, with Ori and Barshin bounding ahead.
Shimny was standing in the same spot, head lowered. When they reached the horse, Cath put a hand out to touch her.
“How long can she stay in Chromos?” Cath asked.
Danny shrugged. “Dunno. Forever, I guess. Until I find her a home.”
Cath’s lips tightened thoughtfully, then she said, “If I say I’ll find her a home, can I have her? After we’ve found Tom, I mean.”
“Why?” Danny frowned. “You’ve got all this. The house and everything. It’ll be fine again once the shadows go.”
Cath shook her head. “It was,” she said. “Ida—the old woman who lived here—she sold her soul to Sammael so she could live in the wild and never have to see no one she didn’t want to see, and I thought that’s what I wanted too. Ida didn’t mind me staying; she knew I was like her, and I was happy for a bit. But then all the nightmares came, about Dad and the flat and Johnny White—you know, that guy he done away with—and when I woke up every morning, the walls were closer and closer, and I’d run outside and look at the mountains, and they’d get closer and closer, and all I could think about was running up them and over them and never stopping again.”
Danny looked into her tough face, hating the despair on it. Cath was always confident. The gray inside her was making her betray herself.
“But … that’s just the shadows,” he said. “This house was the best dream you ever had. When the shadows have gone, you’ll want it again.”
Cath shook her head. “It ain’t the shadows—it happened way before they came. It’s me. I don’t want a home. I don’t need one. I just need to keep on looking for one. I need to be in Chromos, where I can always imagine up new places to go. As long as I can always go there, I’ll be happy. Maybe not even happy. Just … alive.”
“But you can’t live in Chromos. Chromos isn’t…”
Chromos wasn’t what? He had been about to say, Chromos isn’t real, but he knew that Cath would tell him he was talking rubbish. She believed it was a complete new world. “Okay, then,” he said instead. “When we’ve done, I’ll let Shimny go with you. But you’ll have to find her a home in the end. I promised her.”
He scrambled up onto Shimny. The sea had taken on a steely gray sheen, and the white crests of waves were dancing a little more wickedly in the picked-up breeze.
“It’ll storm,” said Cath. “It always does when it starts looking like that.”
“Will you go back into Chromos?” Danny asked Shimny. “We need to get back there.”
“But it’s not my home, is it?” said Shimny, without hope in her voice. “You won’t help me find my home. I’ll always be wandering about, friendless and alone.…”
Danny found that he wanted to snap at her that home really wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, especially when the people who were supposed to look after you there decided to leave or a galloping shadow ate it up and turned it into a gray pit, but he’d been mean enough already to Shimny.
If only everyone could just be happy again.
So he said, “After we’ve sorted things out, Cath will help you find your home. She promises she will. And she never breaks a promise.”
Shimny raised her head and said, “Really?”
“
Really,” Danny assured her.
“I’ll go, then!” said Shimny, her mane rippling in the breeze. “I like the look of that girl—she’s got a wild heart! I’ll go now! Chromos, is it? I’ll go!”
It was a tight scramble, but they all made it, somehow, with Cath behind Danny, Ori in front of him, and Barshin nestled in the rags in Cath’s arms. It was a good thing Shimny’s back was so dipped—at least it anchored them in.
“To Chromos!” Danny said, and Shimny launched herself forward.
The world began to dissolve, as before. Danny waited for the colors to grow strong and the great plain to open up before them. He expanded his heart to it, held the best of his dreams in his mind. One day he’d write an entire graphic novel full of weird and wonderful beasts that explained the world in legends and stories, and he would pour every bit of Chromos that he’d ever seen into it, so that everyone who read it would be touched by color.
But the world began to go gray.
At first Danny didn’t believe it. Okay, it had been shadowed before, but that had been when he’d let grief about Tom shadow his heart, and he wasn’t thinking with sadness about Tom now, because he was going to get Tom back; he was going to solve everything.
But Chromos was a thick, gray shadow, and nothing else.
Danny’s shoulders froze, then his chest, then his legs, until the only warmth came from the stick in his pocket, a single tiny line of heat pressing against his thigh.
He began to shiver.
It was Cath’s fault. And Barshin’s. They were infected with the shadows.
“Get off!” he screamed at Cath. “You brought the shadows! You’re making it gray!”
“No!” shouted Cath, as the world rocked and buffeted them about. “It’s not me, it’s you! You see what’s in your head here!”
Danny began to choke: his lungs couldn’t draw in enough air. He couldn’t see, either—Chromos was a shuttered room, where the thin light that seeped in through the cracks served only to cast more shadows. Ahead of them, the shadows thickened. They couldn’t push through, or break out.
They had to go back to Earth.
“Go back to the beach!” he yelled at Shimny, clutching Ori’s golden fur to his chest. “We’re dying!”
“But you said you had to come here,” squealed Shimny. “I’ve got to go through here to help you, and then the girl will find my home.”
“Go back!” Danny screamed. “You’ll kill us all!”
He fought her with all that he could—the will to fall from Chromos, to land back on the wide, white beach, to sail over the choppy waves. He pulled at everything he could see in his mind: the sea grasses, the sand, the twisted trees—until at last they were tumbling back down onto the earth.
CHAPTER 10
THE BOOK OF SHADOWS
They landed in a mess of clinging arms and flailing legs, Shimny nose-down in the sand. Danny, Cath, dog, and hare slid off, tangling together on the beach.
“You spoiled it!” Danny sat up, spitting out sand. “You took the shadows with you! Into Chromos!”
Cath pushed him back down again as she sat up. “Idiot!” she said scornfully. “You see what you see in there. Have you forgotten even that? If it’s gray for you up there, then that’s because you’ve let the gray inside you. I told you so.”
It hit him around the face like a sudden gust full of sea spray, and although he’d said, once, she doesn’t know anything, she’s not the old Cath, he saw that she was right. While he’d been saving Barshin, he’d remembered too vividly what had happened to Tom. He couldn’t stop watching the flames, over and over, in his own head. He had cast a shadow over his own heart, and Chromos was closed to him.
He looked out to sea angrily and chucked handfuls of sand down the beach.
“Don’t despair,” said Ori, shuffling closer to him. “There’s always a way. You’re brave and strong and persistent. You’ll find it.”
Danny shook his head and narrowed his eyes as Barshin hopped a couple of paces down the beach, coming into Danny’s line of sight. For a second, Danny almost saw the shape of the stag Isbjin al-Orr galloping up the beach toward them. Stag and hare—there had been something about the two of them that cast an air of enchantment on that journey they had all made, as though it might one day slip into legend and be told to the children of stags and the children of hares for all time.
There’s nothing legendary about this journey, thought Danny, grinding a savage fist into the sand. It isn’t going anywhere.
Barshin turned and looked at Danny, and said, “Are you ready to hear what I’ve got to say yet?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” snapped Danny. “Given that it’s probably a pack of lies, like last time.”
“You still think I have links with Sammael, then?”
“Don’t you? He owns your soul, doesn’t he?”
Barshin looked out to sea. “That’s true. I can’t deny it. But I have carried out his task for him. I don’t work for him anymore.”
“And you reckon I’ll believe that?” said Danny. “Think again.”
“Listen,” said Barshin, his ears twitching in the nagging breeze. “The shadows have affected us all. We can’t free ourselves from them. They sit inside us, feeding and growing. I was out hunting, and when I came back, I did not know what the gray was, and I ran straight into it. But Cath and the old lady, they were already gone.”
“What happened to the old lady?”
“When the shadows came, she wandered outside the house and fell in the garden. She hit her head on a stone and died. I think it was a merciful way to die. Cath was just lying and waiting for life to disappear.”
Danny winced. Barshin’s tone was level and calm, but a little too matter-of-fact.
The hare continued. “So we all lay down to die, one way or another. Cath was right—it was not our fault you could not travel in Chromos and then easily find Tom. But nor could I, and nor could she. The truth is that now we are all shadowed.”
“Then I’ll never get into the ether, will I? Unless we try waiting for a full moon and going in through the real sea, down here.”
“We have no time to wait for the full moon,” said Barshin. “No—I spoke to you of something, and you did not want to hear. But I should tell you of it now.”
“Yeah? What’s that? Another place I really ought to go to save Tom?” Danny laughed bitterly. “I think I’ve heard that one before—correct me if I’m wrong.”
“Not a place,” replied Barshin calmly. “There is a book.”
“Of course,” said Danny. “A book I need to find. That sounds quite familiar too, now that you mention it.”
“Not to find,” said Barshin. “You need to make it. I thought at first that the shadows must come from a creature who had discovered how to make this book. But now you say that you think the shadows are coming from Tom’s trapped soul. If indeed that is the case, then I doubt Tom’s soul has made this book. He would surely be doing much worse things with it if he had. It is a very powerful book.”
“What could be worse than this?”
“Ah, I forgot how little imagination you have,” said Barshin, though his tone was practical and without judgment.
“Oh, shut up,” said Danny. “Just tell me about this book. What’s it called?”
“Well, you know the answer to that,” said Barshin. “It’s in your mind already. Turn it over and read the cover.”
“Don’t be dumb,” snapped Danny. “Just tell me.”
Barshin looked back toward the little house and sniffed at the vein of nothingness that the wind carried past his nostrils.
“The Book of Shadows,” he said. “Not hard to guess, was it?”
“It’s witch stuff,” said Cath. “Just a load of spooky old witch stuff. Ida was always banging on about it.”
“She knew of a Book of Shadows, to be sure,” said Barshin. “There are many people who use the term to describe some book or other that they think has special powers. But I am not
talking about your silly human affairs. The Book of Shadows is the book at the heart of all worlds.”
“Go on,” said Danny, despite himself.
Barshin nodded and settled into a seated position on the sand.
“It is the first and earliest of the Dark Legends. These are not the stories we tell our young leverets—they would only serve to frighten. But at times, in places, as we grow older, we come to learn of them. Many hares know this story, though they rarely talk about it amongst themselves.
“We hares are not like you humans: always fighting to tell the big story, to prove that their own way is best. We bother only with stories that we know to be roughly correct. This may have been passed down through thousands of generations, but it is the true story of the real Book of Shadows. So put all others from your mind.
“In the beginning, there were two worlds. Each was owned by a hare—or, if that doesn’t fit with your idea of who is important, you may make them people. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that two worlds were made, almost identical, and the two creatures who made them, Mab and Xur—”
“Xur was an ox,” said Danny. “I’ve heard about him.”
“Make them oxen, if you like,” said Barshin, without hesitating. “Just pay attention. The two creatures, Mab and Xur, were both very proud of the worlds they’d made, and very displeased when they saw that they had competition. But while Mab was content to shrug her oxen shoulders and say that she was sure they’d find room in the universe for both their earths, Xur was not so easily satisfied.
“For Xur saw that Mab had made a better world than he. To most creatures, as I said, these worlds seemed identical. But Xur’s world had rules. It had boundaries. Structure. Limits. Some things were possible, and some were not. However, in Mab’s world, any creature could do anything. Nothing was impossible. They had only to imagine it, and it would happen. If both worlds were to go on existing side by side, then very soon, Xur knew, they would look quite different. He was sure—almost entirely sure—that he had done a much better job, and that his world would be more stable, calmer, and more sweetly beautiful. But he rather suspected that Mab’s world would be full of tempests and glory and free imagination.
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