Darwen Arkwright and the Insidious Bleck

by A. J. Hartley

  It was extremely dark; the canopy of leaves overhead shut out all but the softest starlight. Darwen took a small flashlight from his pocket and shone it around so that the colors leaped into sudden focus. The beam was narrow and seemed to emphasize the darkness around it. He moved cautiously away from the portal—its glass-fronted dials and brass controls hung with the twining vines that grew up from the jungle floor—and found what looked to be a path. The air was thick with a warm, sweet-smelling fog that hugged the ground and pooled wherever the earth sank away. Darwen, imagining the missing boy calling for help, took two careful steps and fought back the certainty that this method of investigation was hopelessly random and probably dangerous. Who knew what lived in such a place?

  The thought had just registered when something moved a little ways off the track. He stared into the shadows of a plant whose leaves were as big as rhubarb. It flickered with a bluish glow like that of the tiny sea creatures Darwen had seen in nature documentaries. As he tried to catch the creature—if that was what it was—in the flashlight’s beam, it flicked out of sight, leaving only an eddying swirl in the ground mist.

  Darwen became very still, his light trained on the spot where he had seen—or half seen—the movement under the huge and softly pulsing leaves, certain that something—or someone—was watching him.

  It surfaced on the other side of the path like a warrior stepping out from cover to make his attack. Darwen swung the light toward it, and its eyes tightened in the glare. It looked a little like an otter or a mongoose, but it stood on its hind legs, its fierce little eyes and whiskery snout only inches above the undulating fog.

  Darwen laughed—it was just a harmless rodent! “You scared me!” he remarked at the little animal. “You want to be more careful where you pop up.”

  “The same could be said of you,” snapped the creature, waving a paw at the flashlight.

  Darwen jumped and nearly lost his footing on the soft ground. “You can talk!” he said.

  The animal’s eyes hardened.

  “Did you think only you could talk?” it said. Its voice was rough—a snarl with words in it—and would have been funny in someone so small, except that its black eyes promised a nasty bite if you so much as snickered.

  “Sorry,” said Darwen. “I’m not used to talking animals.”

  This too, it seemed, was the wrong thing to say.

  “Talking what?” rasped the otter-like creature. As it spoke, one tiny claw rose above the mist, and Darwen could see that it cradled a brass implement with a long barrel and a broad, slotted muzzle. The animal pointed it menacingly in Darwen’s direction.

  Darwen began, “Is that some kind of—”

  Zap!

  The little brass weapon kicked in the animal’s paws, and a bolt of orange flashed inches from Darwen’s head and exploded against a tree like a firecracker.

  “Oy!” Darwen shouted, angry. “Watch what you’re doing with that thing!”

  He swung for the animal as he spoke, his fingers reaching to grab the creature by the scruff of its neck. It ducked and weaved with remarkable speed, vanishing again into the ground fog. As Darwen pounced on the spot where the creature had been, it popped up again like a gopher from a hole three feet away, its gun—or whatever it was—aimed squarely at the side of Darwen’s head.

  “I told you to watch where you point that!” Darwen whispered, keeping very still.

  For a long moment the animal did nothing but watch him shrewdly, then it lowered the weapon.

  Darwen turned very slowly and then snatched like lightning, catching the animal around the midriff with one hand while twisting the little gun away with the other. The creature sank its claws into Darwen’s wrist and leaned in toward his face, its tiny, pointed teeth bared so that Darwen had to hold the thrashing beast at arm’s length.

  “Put me down!” it rasped.

  “When you put down that gun,” said Darwen.

  “Put me down first, and I will,” said the otter thing, suddenly sly and still.

  “Oh, right,” said Darwen. He tried to wrench the weapon from its grasp, and it yelped with genuine distress.

  “You’ll break it!” it said.

  “I won’t break it,” said Darwen. “But you have to turn it off, or I won’t put you down.”

  The creature hissed like a cat, then its features sank into a comical sulk.

  “Fine,” it spit. “Fine. Look, see? I turned it off.”

  The creature took its free paw from the mechanism of the weapon, and Darwen saw that a tiny bulb that had been glowing with amber light faded out. Very carefully, Darwen turned and set the now limp body of the animal on a tree stump that rose out of the mist.

  “There,” he said.

  The animal did not respond.

  “Come on,” said Darwen. “I put you down. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

  The otter thing opened a baleful eye and glared sorrowfully at Darwen.

  “What?” demanded Darwen.

  “I let you do that,” said the creature. “If I’d really wanted to fight you . . .” The animal considered Darwen carefully, and something registered in its head. Its body flexed so that what had looked like someone’s discarded fur hat became lithe and supple again, rippling with life and strength, and it sat up, its eyes focused and hard.

  “You,” it said thoughtfully, “are a child. A human child. And you are here alone, which means . . . which can only mean . . . that you are . . . the mirroculist!”

  As it said this last word, a transformation came over the creature. All trace of brooding or irritation vanished. It became alert, excited, and, as Darwen watched, it began to skip on the spot, the brass muzzle of its weapon waggling about, forgotten.

  “You,” it announced with a thrill of delight that rippled through its fur from head to foot, “are Darwen Arkwright!”

  And it bowed.

  Now that he could see it properly, Darwen thought the creature that had ambushed him looked as much like a weasel as it did an otter, though its fur was slick and dark as a mink’s, except around the eyes, so that it looked like it wore a pale mask. Its paws, however, belonged to no animal he had ever seen, because though they ended in serious-looking claws, their digits were long, like fingers, so that the paws finally looked less like paws and more like hands. Around its waist it wore a belt that housed a holster for the weapon, a power pack, and a series of loops from which hung a helmet shaped like a soup bowl with a chinstrap, a long knife in a scabbard, and a tiny buttoned satchel.

  “What kind of . . .” Darwen began, but decided that animal was sure to cause offense.

  “What is your name?” he tried.

  This seemed to work. The little animal puffed up its chest and performed a species of salute.

  “Call me Weazen,” it announced, “Peace Hunter.”

  “Is that your surname or your job, Peace Hunter?”

  “Both,” said the creature called Weazen. “I keep the Silbrican peace by hunting out those who threaten it, don’t I?”

  “Like a policeman,” said Darwen. “Or something,” he added less certainly. It was hard to imagine Weazen, who was no more than two feet tall from snout to tail, being much of a law enforcer, even with that little brass blaster of his, but he supposed that were he a dellfey or something of similar size, he might feel differently.

  “Some’at like that, yeah,” said Weazen with a smirk and a sideways look. He picked at his teeth with one long claw. “Only I’m an independent contractor, aren’t I?”

  He started to absently groom his ears, watching Darwen.

  “So,” said Darwen. “How do you know who I am?”

  At first Darwen thought the little creature was having a coughing fit, but then he realized that Weazen was laughing.

  “How do I know who he is,
he asks!” Weazen chuckled. “The mirroculist thinks his actions are a secret in the land he saved! That’s most amusing,” he added, wiping his eye and forcing himself to calm down.

  “Word gets about, does it?” Darwen said.

  “That it does, Darwen Arkwright. That it does.”

  “Okay,” said Darwen, who was beginning to see an upside to the chance encounter. “Well then, I’m sure you—as Peace Hunter and what have you—will have heard that a human child was taken from my world—from a place like this—by a Silbrican monster.”

  Weazen stopped laughing abruptly, and his face got that shrewd look again, his head tipped slightly to one side, his bright eyes narrow.

  “Hmmm,” he mused. “Out of my league is that. But yeah, I’ve heard of it. Not the same as last time, mind,” he said, as if thinking the matter through, and Darwen was struck by the idea that Weazen might not be absurd as a kind of policeman after all. “Last time it was the big gates and the machines all over the place, but this time. . .” He shrugged thoughtfully. “They tried it again,” he said. “But it didn’t work. I saw the wreckage. Burned-out scrobbler equipment half in and half out of Silbrica, like they couldn’t get it through the portal. Then things go quiet for a while. . . .”

  “And then?” Darwen prompted.

  “Rumors,” said Weazen. “Whispers of something different, something alive and very old that no one has seen for years, centuries even.”

  “A thing with tentacles,” said Darwen with certainty.

  “Hmmm,” Weazen echoed, nodding and smiling a strange, mirthless smile that showed his sharp little teeth. “Too big for the likes of Weazen,” he added, “but yeah. The Guardians say nothing, but I know its name. So do the dellfeys. It’s been in and out of their bedtime stories since before the Guardians came, and they call it”—Weazen hesitated and did a half check over his shoulder, as if anxious about being overheard—“they call it the Insidious Bleck.”

  Darwen suppressed a shiver. Moth had told him that name one of the first times they met. He still remembered her fear and guessed that that was why she didn’t want to talk about it. “What is it?” he asked.

  “No one knows for sure,” said Weazen darkly, “because those who see it don’t tend to stick around, if you catch my drift.”

  “Where can I find it?”

  At this the little creature looked at Darwen, its face wry.

  “Find it?” it said. “You don’t find the Insidious Bleck. It finds you, and then you run. Very fast and as far away as possible.”

  “But how do you fight it?” Darwen pressed. “Surely you, as a Peace Hunter, know. . . .”

  “I know which battles can be won,” said Weazen seriously, “and which give you the choice of retreat or, if you like, total destruction. Take it from Weazen, who has seen sights told only in songs: you can’t win against the Bleck. If that is what is taking children, Darwen Arkwright, you will have to let them go.”

  “Never,” said Darwen. “I won’t.”

  “You’re a tough one,” Weazen said, nodding in a grandfatherly way. “But you’ve got to have a bit of nouse,” he said, tapping the side of his head. “Sometimes, my lad, you have to know when to walk away. This is one of those times.”

  “No,” said Darwen. “We could fight it together. You could come with me. . . .”

  But the little creature was shaking its head sadly, and suddenly it looked old.

  “You should go back to your world, Darwen Arkwright,” he said. “There may be a way to fight this thing from there. Here in Silbrica, you are up the proverbial creek with nary a paddle in sight.”

  Darwen tried to unravel this remark.

  “You can’t win,” said Weazen, to be clear. “Most creatures that hunt are themselves hunted by something larger or more terrible. Very few have no natural enemies, Darwen Arkwright.”

  “You are saying this Insidious Bleck is an apex predator?” asked Darwen, borrowing a term he had learned from Rich. “The thing that lives at the top of the food chain that everything else tries to stay away from, like tigers or great white sharks?”

  “Right, and correct,” said Weazen. “In the forests of Silbrica, the Insidious Bleck is your apex predator, and I’m pretty sure it would eat your tigers and sharks—whatever they are—for breakfast. So I’ll say it one more time. Go home.”

  And so saying, he bowed once more, adjusted the settings of his weapon, and dived neatly into the carpet of fog, leaving Darwen alone.

  “Wait!” Darwen called after him, but Weazen did not surface again, and after a few minutes, Darwen gave up waiting. He had already been in Silbrica too long and couldn’t risk being trapped inside the oven door after the sun rose. It was time he got back.

  He returned to the Great Apparatus and rotated the chute so that he could use the built-in steps up to his bedroom, then he crawled in and started to climb. It was a long, exhausting ascent. At last he could see the bright hatchway of the oven door up ahead, but then he saw something that stopped him cold.

  Legs.

  Long, slim legs in black slacks. Aunt Honoria was in his room.

  Darwen panicked. How was he going to get out without her seeing him?

  He had frozen in the shaft so that she wouldn’t hear the metal echoing as he moved, but then he decided that she wouldn’t be able to hear him for the same reason she wouldn’t see him behind the oven door: only mirroculists could see the world beyond the reflection. He slithered as close to the end of the square shaft as he could without poking his head out into the room.

  The duvet had been torn from his bed, and the floor was strewn with clothes from his wardrobe. Honoria had obviously gone nuts searching the room. How long had she been there, fretting over his absence? She was sitting on the edge of the bed now, her phone clutched tightly in one hand and a hanky in the other. He could hear her sobbing.

  Great, thought Darwen. Now what?

  He had, he figured, two choices. Stay where he was until she moved far enough away that he could get out and come up with some plausible explanation about where he had been, or come right out of the oven door in front of her very eyes. Then, if she didn’t have a heart attack on the spot, he would have to tell her everything.

  Boy, he thought, do I not want to do that.

  In the last few months he had grown more comfortable with his aunt, but she was a practical, no-nonsense woman. Darwen didn’t think there was room in her head for Silbrica and its various monsters. At best, she’d have him seeing a psychiatrist twenty-four hours a day. At worst, she might believe him and spend the rest of her life in terror of what might be lurking behind the bathroom mirror.

  No, he decided. He could not tell her.

  Which meant he had to stay where he was until she left, but he couldn’t wait too long, because once the sun came up, he was trapped. He sighed, shifting to find a more comfortable position in the confines of the shaft, but it wasn’t possible. He lay on his back, staring at the metal inches from his face, and when he had exhausted the interest value of that, he closed his eyes.

  He woke with a start, banging his forehead on the metal. For a moment he had no idea where he was, but then he was rolling, straining against his cramped and aching muscles to peer out into his room. He heard voices, but they were distant, and he couldn’t see his aunt no matter how much he twisted and turned. He thought he heard the crackle of a radio like on cop shows. She was probably sitting up in the living room with the TV on. Now was as good a time as ever.

  He worked his arms through the oven door, grabbed it by the rim, and pulled himself out in one smooth motion. He got to his feet hurriedly and, without thinking of what he was going to say, walked quickly into the living room.

  Honoria wasn’t watching a cop show. She was sitting on the couch looking teary, and with her were two police officers, one male, one fem
ale. Darwen stared at them, and as they turned to gape at him, he said the only thing he could think of:

  “Hi.”

  It was a disaster. It was dangerously close to dawn, which meant he had been missing for at least six hours. The police had been searching the building, waking their neighbors in the process, calling his friends and teachers, and scouring the surrounding streets. Worse, Darwen could think of nothing that would explain his absence. He suggested he had fallen asleep under the bed, which sounded so deeply stupid even to his own ears that he couldn’t believe he was saying it.

  “But I looked there!” his aunt exclaimed.

  It was awful. The cops were annoyed with both of them, uncertain whom to blame. No one was convinced by Darwen’s story that he had never left his bedroom (though he was able to argue this point convincingly, since it was—in a manner of speaking—true), but they couldn’t figure out how he had gotten in and out of the building unseen. The female cop insisted on going back over his room in search of a rope ladder, but since they lived on the seventeenth floor, nobody thought that was plausible either.

  Worst of all, of course, was Aunt Honoria. Darwen braced himself to be yelled at, but she just cried and said, between sobs, that she was glad he was back. It didn’t make him feel like he had gotten away with anything though. She looked more than humiliated that the police thought her incompetent, more than scared that he had been missing. She looked crushed, as if Darwen’s acting out just proved what a failure she was as a parent and exposed all her careful Christmas planning as an empty shell, an idea of family that wasn’t real.

  “I thought you were doing so well,” she said, suddenly exhausted. “I thought we were doing well. I’m so sorry, Darwen.”

  Darwen had hoped that going to school would take his mind off the previous night’s fiasco, but it was only when he reached Hillside that the full scale of the disaster became clear. In her panic Honoria had given the police the names of every kid in his class, and their midnight calls generated a lot of hostile looks. His classmates watched him everywhere he went, scowling and muttering. Darwen, tired beyond anything he had felt before, tried to avoid their eyes, but it was impossible.