Darwen Arkwright and the School of Shadows

by A. J. Hartley

  “Not really,” said Darwen. “But . . . well, yes.”

  “Please,” said Lightborne, watching one of the birds wheeling effortlessly overhead. “What is on your mind?”

  “It’s just this business about growing out of being a mirroculist,” Darwen said, the words tumbling out before he could think them through. “I don’t get it. Why does it have to be like that? And how do you know when it’s starting? Finishing, I mean.”

  Lightborne smiled a distant and knowing smile. “Nothing lasts forever, Darwen,” he said. “And that is not necessarily a bad thing. In time you would get used to your gift, bored of it even—”

  “Never,” Darwen inserted. “Sorry. I mean, I don’t think . . .”

  “I know,” said Lightborne. “But being a mirroculist is to have a great deal of power, Darwen. No one should wield that for too long. It’s not good for them.”

  “Why?” said Darwen, trying not to sound like a kid who was having a toy taken away. “I’m not going to do anything bad with my ability, am I?”

  “People never think so,” said Lightborne.

  “But they do?” said Darwen. “Mirroculists go wrong somehow, bad?”

  “Sometimes,” said Lightborne. “Often enough for it to be a good thing that the gift is comparatively short lived.”

  “How?” asked Darwen, fascinated and horrified. “If they misuse their power, I mean. What do they do?”

  “They stop caring about the needs of Silbrica in their rush to please themselves,” said Lightborne. “They start to believe that they are better than everyone else and that abuse of their gift is therefore justified.”

  “What?” exclaimed Darwen. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Can you think of no mirroculist who came to think he knew better than everyone else?” said Lightborne, fixing Darwen with a hard stare. “No one who put his own will for power over the needs of Silbrica and all who lived there?”

  “No,” said Darwen, feeling both righteous and baffled. “Anyone who could see Silbrica would want to preserve it. No one would try to . . .”

  He stopped. Lightborne was still looking at him levelly, but the old man’s expression had changed. He looked surprised now, and cautious, and Darwen was sure that the council leader had referenced something he had assumed Darwen knew.

  “What?” asked Darwen. “There’s something Mr. Peregrine didn’t tell me, isn’t there?”

  “I’m sure he had his reasons,” said Lightborne. “I should say no more.”

  Darwen thought furiously, determined not to miss the opportunity to learn something of his predicament, but sure that Lightborne would offer nothing unprompted.

  “Tell me,” he said. “I have a right to know.”

  “When you find Mr. Peregrine,” said Lightborne, “you can ask him.”

  “No,” said Darwen. “Wait. Are you saying . . . ?”

  “Let us leave the matter,” said Lightborne.

  “Greyling,” said Darwen at last, his voice hushed. “Greyling was a mirroculist.” Only moments before the idea would have been inconceivable, but now it seemed obvious. “That’s it, isn’t it? He went bad, and no one wanted to tell me because they thought I’d freak out. Mr. Peregrine probably thought I’d panic, that I’d worry about turning into Greyling, or something like him.”

  “And will you?”

  “Will I turn into him, or will I worry about it?” asked Darwen.

  “Either.”

  “No,” said Darwen. He said it firmly, like it was obvious. “Never.” He needed it to be true.

  He turned quickly and stepped through the portal, before the head of the Guardian Council had a chance to read the doubt and anxiety in his face.

  Chapter Twenty

  That Which Eats

  It was night in the Silbrican desert. The still air was unexpectedly cool, and the pale sand glowed beneath their feet like silver. Distant ripples of blue-green streaked across the darkened sky in a constant but never repeated pattern that reminded Darwen of the northern lights. These, however, were slower, more wavelike, undulating in the sky like liquid in a glass that was being gently rocked back and forth.

  Darwen, Rich, and Alex had been at school all day, a typical day for Darwen in that he had spent most of it trying not to be noticed—particularly by Mr. Sumners in math class—but a day in which he had also been avoiding his friends. There were things about tonight’s mission he had not dared to tell them.

  “What are we looking for?” asked Alex, who had grown tired of his evasion hours ago.

  “Two things,” said Darwen, trying to sound casual. “There’s a portal here that will take us to the human world close to where I think Mr. Peregrine might be.”

  “And the other thing?” asked Rich, watching Darwen closely. “What else are we looking for?”

  “A friend,” said Darwen carefully. “Kind of.”

  “Which means what?” asked Alex, giving him a level look so that Darwen glanced away.

  “An ally,” he said.

  “And does it know it’s an ally, this kind-of friend of ours,” Alex pressed, “or is it the kind of pal who might stab us to death if he doesn’t like the color of our sneakers?”

  “It’s not so much a he as an it,” said Darwen, gazing at the odd lights in the sky as if they were absolutely fascinating.

  “Fantastic,” said Alex dryly. “Does this it have a name?”

  “Not one you’d find helpful,” said Darwen.

  “Try me.”

  “Some call it simply That Which Eats,” said Darwen.

  “What?” said Rich.

  “Or the Death Dreamer,” said Darwen, leading them along the crest of a long, pale dune. “Or the Consumer of All Things. See,” he added. “I told you the names weren’t helpful.”

  “They helped me make up my mind that I’d like to leave now, please,” said Alex. She stopped walking by a patch of thin, dry grass that rose up from the sand like reeds.

  “If we can get this thing on our side,” Darwen insisted, “it could be a powerful ally against Greyling.”

  “And if we can’t?” asked Rich.

  “Well,” Darwen hedged, “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “You notice people always use that phrase,” Alex said, “when they know the bridge is going to fall apart as soon as you put your foot on it?”

  “So this Thing That Shall Not Be Named,” said Rich. “What does it look like?”

  “Okay,” said Darwen, turning to him, “now you’ve not to freak out on me, all right?”

  “Oh, this just gets better and better,” said Alex.

  “I mean, it’s fine,” said Darwen, “but Rich might not like it very much.”

  “Why me?” asked Rich. “Why will I like it less than Alex?”

  He caught himself and stared at Darwen. “It’s a snake, isn’t it?” he said.

  Rich’s fear of snakes had been well established in Costa Rica.

  “Kind of, yeah,” said Darwen. “Just bigger than usual.”

  “How much bigger?” asked Alex, who was starting to pick up some of Rich’s anxiety.

  “Oh, you know,” said Darwen, “a bit. Hundred feet or so. Nothing we can’t handle.”

  “Nothing we can’t handle?” Alex shot back. Even in the low light, Rich was looking very green. “A hundred-foot snake?”

  “I told you,” said Darwen. “It’s an ally. Or at least it will be. And besides, it doesn’t eat people. Not usually. It eats antelope. And scrobblers,” he added grudgingly. “Sometimes rhinos.”

  “Oh, you have got to be kidding,” said Alex.

  Rich was looking wildly around, muttering to himself: “Shouldn’t be too hard to spot: hundred-foot snake . . .”

  “Well,” said Darwen, “it kind of moves through the sand. It
has low-level telepathic ability that it uses to home in on its prey.”

  “Wait a sec. It can hear us thinking?” said Alex. “Then it just pops out of the sand right in front of us and swallows us whole for a snack to tide it over till the next rhino comes by? I don’t think so. Darwen Arkwright, we’re going home.”

  “It can’t hear us thinking,” said Darwen. “It sort of senses us a bit, and it sends out its own thoughts.”

  “I thought it was just a snake,” said Rich. “It thinks?”

  “It just looks like a snake,” said Darwen. “It’s very old and yeah, it thinks more like a person than an animal, I suppose.”

  “So,” said Alex, “about our going home?”

  “Not yet,” said Darwen.

  “Not till we’ve been eaten, you mean?” Alex shot back.

  “Look over there,” said Darwen, pointing.

  “Is that it?” asked Alex, looking around for cover and seeing none.

  “Of course not,” said Darwen. “Look. Antelope.”

  “Those are antelope?” said Rich. “They are huge.”

  They were. On a rocky ridge overlooking the dunes stood three antelope the size of horses, each with a single spear-length horn like a narwhal’s spiraling from its forehead.

  “The snake thing eats those?” asked Alex in a hushed voice. “Those horns could skewer an elephant.”

  “Yes,” said Darwen, “but the fact that they are here and calm means that it isn’t around, right? In fact, Weazen said there hasn’t been a sighting of That Which Eats for weeks.”

  “So it might be dead,” said Rich, clearly relieved.

  “Or it might have joined Greyling,” said Alex.

  “Weazen says that’s unlikely,” said Darwen.

  “Why isn’t Weazen here himself?” said Alex. “It’s not because he’s scared of it, right? Because Weazen isn’t scared of anything in Silbrica. He’s the Peace Hunter. Nothing frightens him, does it?”

  “Let’s just see what we can find,” said Darwen, avoiding her gaze.

  Alex just stared at him.

  “This way,” said Darwen.

  “How do you know?” asked Rich.

  “Those lights in the sky,” said Darwen. “They aren’t supposed to be here. They first appeared about three weeks ago. They might be connected to our mission.”

  “I hate it when he talks about missions,” Alex muttered darkly. “He gets all Commander-in-Chiefy and you just know Terrible Things are going to happen.”

  They walked for ten minutes across the sand and saw nothing save two more of the antelope, grazing on dry grass at the foot of a rocky escarpment. One of them looked up and watched them and then, suddenly spooked by something only it could see, leapt forty feet in a single bound.

  “Ohhh-kay,” said Alex. “So long as they keep jumping away from us, I’m good. Not keen on those horns.”

  “I wish Eileen were here,” said Rich.

  Since she had been fired, Darwen felt that any contact with her at all would prompt too many awkward questions. But Rich was right. After all they had been through together, it felt odd to be venturing into Silbrican peril without her.

  “We’re getting close,” said Darwen. “Look! The lights aren’t coming from the sky at all. They are coming from the ground, somewhere over that rise. They are just reflecting off clouds.”

  “Great,” said Alex. “Can we go home now?”

  Darwen just kept going. Walking on sand was working different muscles than usual, and he could feel an ache spreading through the backs of his legs. He hoped he didn’t have to do any serious running anytime soon. He was still thinking this when he crested the ridge and saw the source of the lights laid out on the desert floor before him.

  It was, he supposed, a sort of cage, but vast—the size of a soccer field—and its bars were made up of coursing pulses of energy that lit the whole area and bounced off the clouds above. The light was dazzling, so that he had to look away and was not able to see if there was indeed something trapped inside.

  He sensed it, though, a silent but ceaseless moan of pain and hunger and misery. “Can you feel that?” he asked the others.

  He needn’t have; their faces told him that they could. Alex’s fearful anxiety was gone, replaced by anguish, while Rich looked horrified—not scared of the beast in the cage—but appalled by what had been done to it.

  Darwen wasn’t sure if it was the creature’s telepathic energy, but he was suddenly certain of something else. Greyling had ordered this. It wasn’t just a tactic to keep a powerful creature from disrupting his plans. It smacked of cruelty, even of pleasure. There was a mad, vengeful impulse behind the act, and Darwen found himself wondering what could make anyone do such a thing. “Why didn’t they just kill it?” he hissed through clenched teeth.

  “Maybe they couldn’t,” said Alex, shading her eyes so she could study the electric cage. “Or maybe they hope to use it somehow, like they did the Bleck.”

  “How do we turn that thing off?” asked Rich.

  Alex turned to him, and some of her nervousness was back.

  “You think we should just let it out?” she asked. “I don’t know, man. I mean, I hate what they’re doing to it, but anything that needs that kind of cage has got to be pretty horrendous. You really want to just turn it loose?”

  “Yes,” said Rich. “We can’t keep it in there. It’s barbaric.”

  “We didn’t put it in there,” said Alex. “It’s not our fault.”

  “It’s our fault if we leave it now,” said Rich. “And besides, Darwen wants to talk to it, don’t you, Darwen?”

  Darwen had caught some of Alex’s unease and was far from sure what he wanted. Rich’s faith in him gave him a kind of strength, however, and he nodded and said, “Sure,” in a voice he hoped sounded convincing.

  “So we just have to figure out how to shut the cage down,” said Rich to himself. “Disconnect it from the power source and we should be good.”

  “You think it knows we’re here?” asked Alex.

  “I don’t know,” said Darwen. “Seems like it’s in a lot of pain.”

  “Assuming we can trust the feelings it’s broadcasting,” said Alex. “Assuming it’s not just luring us into letting it out so it can start eating its way through the world, beginning with us.”

  Darwen couldn’t think of anything to say to that, but Rich was already walking the pulsing perimeter, casting long hard shadows on the green and blue sand. “There’s a receiver of some sort here,” he said. “That’s where the power is coming from. Disable that and—”

  He stopped suddenly, staring at something on the ground.

  “What?” called Darwen and Alex at once.

  “I think the thing in the cage put up a fight,” said Rich, a little less sure of himself. “We’ve got two dead scrobblers down here. Judging by the state of the bodies, I’d say they’ve been here awhile.”

  Darwen approached cautiously, but he felt oddly relieved to have something else to think about before they had to commit to shutting the cage off and dealing with whatever was inside. Rich was right about the bodies. They had been parched by the desert sun over some time, and beyond the brass helmet and the shredded and bleached fabric of their boiler suits, little but bones remained.

  Darwen considered one of the skeletal faces by the strobing light of the cage. “Huh,” he said.

  “What?” asked Alex, her face screwed up in an expression of disgust.

  “Aren’t the tusks usually bigger?” Darwen said. “The skull more ridged? I mean, it’s obviously not a man, but it’s less scrobblerish than usual, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Darwen!” exclaimed Alex. “Look at its pocket!”

  Sticking out of the skeleton’s jacket pocket was a pair of gold, half-moon spectacles, one lens missing. Darwen stooped and drew them caref
ully from the pocket. A fold of cardboard came with them and fluttered to the desert sand.

  “You think they belong to—” Alex began.

  “Mr. Peregrine?” said Darwen. “Yes, I think so.” He picked up the piece of cardboard and frowned. “Railway ticket,” he said, reading the torn fragment of lettering. “. . . iniog. Weird.”

  “You guys ready?” asked Rich. “I’ve found which wire to pull.”

  Alex said nothing but braced herself. Darwen took a breath and nodded.

  Rich got a tight hold of a cable and pulled on it with all his strength. For a moment, nothing happened, then the lights flickered, and Rich fell backward to the sandy ground, the plug torn from its socket. The wall of brilliant light died without a sound, and the darkness was so complete that Darwen could see nothing at all.

  It took several seconds for his vision to return, and in the meantime he felt the change in the creature that had been caged. Its sadness was gone, its pain suppressed, but its hunger burned bright as lightning. Darwen looked to where Rich lay, and that was when he finally saw it.

  It was at least as big as Weazen had said, vast and crimson and shining, its body drawn up, its massive snake head suspended above them, gazing down at Rich’s prone body. Its black, unblinking eyes were hard and fixed as glass.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Space

  “Good colossal snake,” cooed Alex in an unsteady voice. “Nice terrifying monster. Hungry? Why not get yourself a burger. Hmmm,” she said, smacking her lips. “Or a massive unicorn-antelope-thing! Yum, right?”

  “Quiet,” said Darwen gently. “It’s thinking.”

  Rich was lying faceup, staring motionless at the giant serpent looming over him. Its jaws opened, like the hatchback of some terrible car, and Darwen saw not the massive, folding fangs he had expected, but rows of serrated teeth like the edge of a saw: teeth designed for holding prey.

  “It’s a constrictor,” Rich whispered.

  Even in the terror of the moment—perhaps because of it—Darwen was impressed by Rich’s ability to analyze the creature that might be about to kill him.

  The snake hissed, and as it flicked its forked tongue blackly into the night, Darwen felt it again, that sense that the creature was thinking, considering even. And then he felt its question: