Darwen Arkwright and the School of Shadows

by A. J. Hartley

  “Thanks,” Eileen replied. She looked down quickly, but not before Darwen saw a tear slide down her cheek. For a long moment she did not look up, but then she fished in her pocket and added, “You’ll want this.” She produced a round compact Darwen had seen her use many times. She flipped it open and showed Darwen the mirror inside. “There are two buttons on the side. Press this one”—she did a demonstration with her finger—“and you’ll get me.”

  Her duffel bag chimed, and from it she plucked an identical compact, which she flipped open and held up to her face. When she spoke again, her voice came from the compact in Darwen’s hand. He glanced into it and saw her face looking back at him. She managed a strained smile.

  “A Silbrican phone,” said Alex. “Cool.”

  “Who do I get with the other button?” asked Darwen.

  “You used to get Mr. Peregrine,” said Eileen briskly, stifling any further show of feeling. “But not anymore.” She took a deep breath. “Try it.”

  Darwen did so and waited. A moment later a sleek snout and bright inquisitive eyes watching from a dark, furry mask appeared in the mirror.

  “I was wondering when I’d hear from you,” said Weazen in a matter-of-fact voice. “About time.”

  In spite of himself, Darwen smiled, then got right to business. “We have to get to Conwy castle tonight,” he said. “How do we do it without attracting the attention of Greyling’s hit man—the guy in the gas mask?”

  “Conwy in Wales?” said Weazen, rubbing a paw across his face. “Figures.”

  “Yeah,” said Darwen. “Why? What happened?”

  Weazen scowled. “There used to be a portal in the castle, right? But it’s been off the Guardians’ grid for donkeys’ years. Yesterday, somehow, someone used it again.”

  “That was us,” said Alex proudly, peering into the mirror and beaming.

  “Yeah, well,” said Weazen, “right after that there was an explosion. Now the portals don’t work.”

  “Maybe we can force our way through anyway,” said Rich. “They weren’t supposed to be active last time, but we got them operational.”

  “When I said they don’t work,” said Weazen, “that’s what you might call an understatement. They’re gone. Totally destroyed along with half the building.”

  “Greyling’s assassin,” said Alex. “The man in the gas mask. He must have done it right after we left to stop us from coming back.”

  “So Conwy’s a dead end,” said Darwen, shutting his eyes and trying not to scream in frustration. “We had one chance and we blew it.”

  “I had to get us out of there,” said Alex firmly. “We had a fifty-fifty chance of picking the right one. We were unlucky. It happens.”

  “I know,” said Darwen. “I don’t blame you. I couldn’t decide and we needed to leave. But now I don’t know what to do. We’re stuck.”

  There was a long silence and Darwen watched Weazen blinking back at him through the compact.

  “We know Conwy was right,” said Rich. “That it was part of the chain leading to Mr. Peregrine, or else they wouldn’t have bothered destroying the portal. But that can’t be the only way in, can it? We saw people in the watchtower mirrors, and scrobblers. They aren’t mirroculists, so they can’t go back and forth through the portals. There must be another way. An ordinary way.”

  “An ordinary way between worlds?” Alex mused doubtfully. “Like they hop on the scrobbler express from Gnasherville and shunt straight into Wales for a holiday by the sea?”

  “The train! That’s it!” said Rich. He began fumbling in his pocket. “Darwen, you have that ticket you found by the scrobblers that were killed by That Which Eats?”

  Darwen plucked it out and showed it to Rich. It looked the same as the one Rich was holding up, the one he had found at Conwy castle. Rich’s portion read “Blaenau–Ffe . . .”

  Darwen held his next to it. It wasn’t the other half of the same ticket, but it could well be the torn portion of a different ticket to the same place, which meant that iniog might be the end of the word.

  “Blaenau-Ffe . . . something . . . iniog,” said Darwen, hardly daring to believe they might be on to something. “Could it be a place name?”

  “Best lead we have so far,” said Rich.

  “So we need a train that goes from Silbrica into our world?” asked Alex.

  “There’s only one railway line in Silbrica,” said Weazen. “Not really my territory, so I don’t know how to get there.”

  “I do,” said Darwen, smiling again. “I’ve been on it before. So has Alex.”

  She gaped at him. “The night we went to the Jenkins house,” she said. “My first visit to Silbrica.”

  “Exactly,” said Darwen.

  “How will we get out again?” asked Rich. “Assuming we can find Mr. P, I mean?”

  “There will be another portal close to wherever they are holding him,” said Weazen, “though I don’t expect it will be hooked up to the Guardians’ grid anymore. If you can find it, you might be able to force it open from that side.”

  “I can,” said Darwen. “I will.”

  Alex shot him a curious look, but he pressed on so he wouldn’t have to talk about it. “Eileen, can you get us home? We need to use the Great Apparatus, and I’d rather get there from my closet than risk going through the shadow school.”

  “Seconded,” said Alex, eyeing the shrouded window above the clock tower platform warily.

  “I’m parked out front,” said Eileen. “I’ll drop you at your place, then come back here.”

  Darwen felt a surge of energy. They finally knew what they were doing. He grinned at Rich, but his friend looked somber, even anxious.

  “What?” said Darwen. “This is good.”

  “I know,” said Rich. “But it just feels like . . . I don’t know.”

  “What?” asked Darwen.

  “Like we’re going to war,” said Rich.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Back to the Jungle

  “This is the one,” said Darwen, checking the portal number once they reached the Great Apparatus.

  “Once we go through there,” said Alex, “once we reach Mr. Peregrine, things are going to happen fast, aren’t they? I mean, assuming he’s okay and all, we’re going to want to leap into action with regard to Greyling and the Great Talent Show Fiasco.”

  “So?” said Darwen.

  “So we won’t have time to gather any more allies,” Alex reminded him.

  “Not been too chuffin’ successful on that front so far, have we?” Darwen returned darkly.

  “You had something in mind, Alex?” asked Rich.

  “As a matter of fact,” said Alex, flipping open the notebook to a page scrawled with tangled vines and overlarge flowers behind which catlike eyes watched, “I do.”

  Darwen peered at the image. It was a jungle locus. “Pouncels?” he exclaimed. “You want to recruit pouncels? They’ll probably eat us on the spot!”

  “They’ve helped us before,” said Alex, “and no, they won’t eat us. Not so long as you’re with me.”

  “They do seem to be intelligent,” said Rich, “for tree-dwelling half-cat, half-monkey pack hunters, I mean.”

  Darwen frowned and checked his watch. “I hate to delay going after Mr. Peregrine,” he said.

  “One trip,” said Alex. “In and out. If we can’t find them or don’t make any progress, we come right back and go straight to the train.”

  Rich gave Darwen an expectant look, and after a moment, Darwen nodded.

  “Okay,” he said. “But let’s make it fast.”

  Alex led them to the portal numbered 92 and they stepped through. Though Darwen had never been there before, the heavy, moist air on the other side felt familiar. It was like being inside a greenhouse: hot and damp and fragrant with the aroma of earth. Though the
y were in Silbrica, not Costa Rica, this was clearly jungle air. They could see nothing except a narrow, leaf-strewn path around which great trees grew, twined with heavy vines and surrounded by mounds of glossy, emerald green shrubs. Similar braids of vines formed the portal through which they had come, and they realized now that this was one of eight unmarked doorways arranged in a circle like some whimsical living gazebo. In the thick vegetation ahead, pendulous red flowers—as large and luxuriant as only Silbrica could grow—hung from branches, and fat, orange insects hopped delicately from blossom to blossom.

  “Let’s be fast,” he said, not bothering to hide the unease he felt as the rainforest heat sent the sweat running down his neck. The last time he’d been in a jungle locus, he’d had to be constantly on the lookout for poisonous snakes.

  “How are you going to find the pouncels?” asked Rich, pulling at his shirt collar. “You can’t call them like they’re dogs.”

  “Actually,” said Alex, with a superior look, “I can.” So saying, she cupped her hands around her mouth, took a deep breath, and emitted a raucous screech that made the hairs on Darwen’s arms prickle.

  Rich’s eyes had gone very wide. “Wow,” he said. “You sound like a mountain lion! How did you learn to do that?”

  “I had a lot of time with them in Costa Rica, remember?” said Alex. “It’s not a sound you forget.”

  She did it again, took a breath, and added a third, each one slightly different but all utterly animal. Darwen found that he was watching the jungle undergrowth around them with apprehension. He hadn’t really believed that they would spot a pouncel, but he was having second thoughts now. Though they had seen the creatures mainly in Costa Rica, that wasn’t their home. They came from Silbrica, from a place exactly like this.

  Rich was studying the ground for the telltale claw marks the creatures left when they came down from the trees. As he turned to face the forest behind the portal they had come through, he paused.

  “Guess Greyling has already visited,” he said.

  Darwen and Alex rotated to see what he was looking at.

  While the jungle at their backs was lush and dense as could be imagined, the portion behind the ring of portals was a wasteland of smashed tree trunks and churned-up mud, the ground crisscrossed by the massive treads of giant bulldozers.

  Alex was biting her lip, her hands still half cupped around her mouth, while Rich was glowering at the devastation, the color rising in his cheeks. And then there was movement in the corner of Darwen’s eye, and he turned just in time to see the shadow of something large and graceful spring from one tree to the next. It landed deftly and turned to stare at them from the cover of a veil of waxy leaves.

  Darwen immediately recognized the beast for what it was: a pouncel. Its piercing bright yellow eyes, unnerving though they were, were nothing compared to the knifelike teeth he knew came with them. “Now what?” he said, forcing himself to look away from the creature’s long, razor-sharp claws. Pouncels were pack hunters. This one would not be alone.

  Alex stepped forward cautiously, her eyes locked on the creature in the tree. She was making a different sound now, a low purring coo that was almost musical, into which from time to time she inserted a single word.

  “Muffin.”

  Rich gaped at her. “You named one of those murderous brutes Muffin?” he hissed.

  Alex merely glowered at him and continued to coax the pouncel in the tree. It didn’t move, but then there were others up in the canopy and—more alarmingly still—on the ground only yards away, creeping stealthily out into the open. One of them had a distinct limp.

  “Muffin!” exclaimed Alex happily. She took two hurried steps and then dropped to her knees on the jungle floor, arms outstretched.

  The pouncel didn’t move like a dog—it was altogether too stealthy and menacing for that—but it did come to her, circling, rubbing its head against her.

  Alex stroked the animal with delight as if it was nothing more than an unusually fluffy house cat. The fact that the pouncel was almost the size of a mountain lion and had the long, rangy limbs of an ape didn’t seem to bother her. Of less consequence to her still were the sounds made by its fellows still skulking in the underbrush.

  Darwen and Rich, meanwhile, stayed rooted to the spot, unmoving, watching this bizarre scene and listening as Alex started interspersing her animal noises with remarks about Greyling and what he was going to do to the pouncels’ jungle home. She said it all cheerily, in the singsong voice you might use to address a toddler, and Darwen and Rich risked skeptical glances between them. The idea that the creature could understand any of this suddenly seemed absurd.

  Darwen was still thinking this when he became aware that “Muffin” had grown very still. His tiger-striped fur was bristling and his ears were erect. He was listening, and not to Alex, who, sensing his tension, had fallen silent. The other pouncels all looked the same: taut with apprehension and watchfulness, ears straining.

  And then Darwen could hear it too: the dull rumble of machinery somewhere behind them, distant, but getting louder. He didn’t want to turn his back on the pouncels, but he had to see. Slowly he turned to gaze past the circle of vine-framed portals and across the devastated patch of jungle to where a smudge of brown, greasy smoke rose from the trees. He took a step toward it, then another, peering for signs of movement. Rich came too, and then Alex and the pouncels, all moving as if entranced into the blasted clearing beyond the portals, drawn by the sound of devastation. He was straining to localize the noise exactly when the source came plowing through the shrubs no more than a couple of hundred yards away. The thing emitting the sound was metal and massive, less a bulldozer than a clumsy, boxlike tank. To Darwen it looked like it had driven out of the pages of a book on the First World War. It was rusty and pocked with rivets, and on top was a pair of helmeted scrobblers with some kind of huge gun behind an armored shield. As soon as the vehicle burst through the trees, it started shooting.

  The energy weapon flashed once, emitting a bright green shaft of light like the beam of a laser. It speared the ground only yards to their right, which exploded in a shower of dirt and shredded leaves.

  As the tank veered around to face them, one set of tracks spinning, the other stationary as the awkward vehicle slewed around, the pouncels scattered in every direction. For Darwen, Rich, and Alex, there was only one way to go.

  “Back to the portal!” Darwen shouted.

  They ran, ducking awkwardly as another laser blast tore through the air above them and crashed into a stand of trees in the as yet undamaged part of the jungle, tearing a ten-foot hole in the ground and leaving a standing cloud of bitter smoke where the shrubs had been.

  “Which gate did we come through?” said Alex, who was the first to reach the portal ring. “They all look the same.”

  “That one,” said Rich, pointing.

  “You sure?” said Alex, considering the one next to it. “I thought it was that one. Darwen?”

  Darwen had no idea. But even as he started to speculate aloud, the shaft of green light lanced the ground only feet from him and it burst into a fountain of dirt and smoke and noise. The impact blew him back, but he stayed conscious and was on his feet and pointing at the portal Alex had indicated in no more than a second. “That one!” he bellowed. “Go!”

  Rich and Alex didn’t need any further invitation. They jumped through so hard and fast that they tumbled headlong into the snow on the other side.

  Snow? thought Darwen, his heart sinking.

  “Uh-oh,” said Alex. “I think I smell mammoth.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Tusks, Rails, and Leathery Wings

  “Guess we picked the wrong gate,” said Alex.

  “Understatement of the year,” said Darwen, considering the icy landscape that stretched out in all directions below them.

  “Yeah,” said Alex. “S
orry about that.”

  “Not your fault,” said Darwen. “I panicked.”

  “Understandable, in the circumstances,” Alex agreed wisely.

  “Okay,” said Darwen, rubbing his cheeks as the icy wind picked up. “Do we go back the way we came and try to get to the right portal before the scrobblers get us, or what?”

  “I’m tempted by the or what option,” said Alex, “but I’d like to know what it is.”

  “If only I’d picked the other gate,” Darwen muttered, rubbing his face still harder.

  They both gave Rich uncomfortable looks. Rich had identified the right portal. If they’d done what he said, they’d be back in the Great Apparatus and ready to get on with finding Mr. Peregrine. As it was, they were about to freeze to death unless the mammoth herders found them first and delivered on their murderous threats. Rich, however, did not seem angry. In fact, he was gazing fixedly off to their left.

  “Might not be as bad as we thought,” he said, stamping his feet in the snow. “I think I know where we are. I saw this bluff when we were here before. See that over there? That’s the portal we came through last time.” He was pointing down the rocky escarpment and across a plain covered in thick, blue-white snow.

  “That would take us back to the gardens, and from there we can go to the Great Apparatus and on to that railway line you were talking about.”

  “Looks a long way,” said Darwen.

  “Three-quarters of a mile, tops,” said Rich, his breath smoking. “If we’re quick, we can be out before the herders know we’re here.”

  Darwen hugged his meager clothes to his chest against the bitter wind, and—with a glance at Alex—nodded. Rich had made the right call last time and they had ignored him. This time they would do things his way.

  Moments later they were making the awkward climb down from the bluff, Rich leading, forcing a path through the snow, which in places had drifted thigh deep. It was hard going, but the exertion kept them warm. By the time they reached the snowy plains below, Darwen found himself struck once more by the beauty and variety of Silbrica, so much so, in fact, that Rich’s cry of desolation took him utterly by surprise. He and Alex scrambled on to see what Rich had found.