by Abby Dewsnup
The blood in my veins ran cold as ice. “The sun. Jay, the sun is setting.”
Jay’s cocky expression melted from his face. “That’s not possible,” he said. “We entered the jungle this morning.”
The foliage was already coming alive around us, the mushrooms and leaves glowing a faint green. My horse gave another indignant whine. In an instant he was gone, racing away from whatever was causing his unrest.
“Looks like we’ll go on foot,” Jay said. “The horses are too uneasy to continue with us.”
“Roland and Lynx couldn’t have followed us this far,” I said. “Jay, what do you know about time manipulation?”
“Time manipulation?” He echoed. “How is that helpful right now?”
I pointed to the jungle around us with an exasperated sigh. “The sun is setting, but it rose only an hour ago. Something isn’t right.”
Jay turned in a circle to take in the bioluminescence that was rising around us. “Okay, for the record, I don’t know everything.”
“And?”
He sighed, defeated. “The creature we’re hunting more than likely can’t step out in the daylight, considering its name has dark right in the title. I think she’s created this darkness.”
I swallowed the lump rising in my throat. “And what does that mean?”
He looked at me with a grave expression. “I think she knows we’re here, and she’s coming to meet us.”
The cliffside next to us now felt ominous in the fading light. “And what if it stays dark? How many days will pass?”
“Hard to say. Let’s get moving,” Jay replied.
We seemed to walk with a destination in mind, though I knew neither of us quite knew what was waiting for us. I reminded myself over again that we needed the information from Kincho and the ferry from the Skysailors. I had never realized the enormity of the Fringe until I was standing beneath the towering trees of Coppice, scarcely an ant to the sky above. We would never get anywhere without the free ferry.
The night was coming alive around us. I sighed as fireflies swirled through the sky, their yellow glow warm in contrast to the stark greens and blues that erupted from the foliage. I glanced at Jay, smirking at the way his serious expression melted away into emotional disbelief. He marveled at the world, and for the first time, I saw the weight on his shoulders lift.
“You’ve been missing out,” I said, breaking the silence. “Isn’t it incredible?”
He turned to me, his stunned face growing stricken the moment our gazes met. “It is — but Anya, you’re the one who is incredible.”
I froze. “What?”
It was then that I realized where his gaze had fallen. My exposed arms glowed from the inside, revealing the light marks I had seen yesterday. Tonight, the scars glowed a luminous blue.
I had forgotten about the marks. “Weird, right?” I asked, trying to make a joke out of it. “They only show up sometimes.”
“Have they always been there?” Jay asked, touching my wrist as if I could fall apart at any moment.
“I dunno, they only appeared once I left the Caves.”
Jay shook his head, his eyes distant, staring at the marks with all the fascination he had held for the sunrise back at the Boneyards. I was reminded of the little girl I met in the jungles last night, and how she had warned of betrayal the moment my friends saw the light marks. I curled my fingers into fists as if to stop the glow from emanating beneath my skin, but Jay only unfurled them again and inspected each tendril of light.
He looked up. “I knew you were special.”
Relief washed over me. “You won’t tell anyone, then, will you?”
He shook his head. “Not until we know why it’s happening.”
“Wait, hold your hand up,” I said, an idea blossoming anew in my mind. “Like this, against mine.”
He copied my movements. A pulse of light flashed between us, much like the reaction that had occurred with the panther the night previous. Jay pulled his hand away in an instant, flexing his fingers. “What did you just do?” He asked.
“Does it scare you, Jay?” I asked, managing a weak laugh. “Try again, one more time.”
I don’t know why I was persistent in testing out the limits of my mysterious skin condition. Something seemed to whisper that Jay wasn’t foreign to the power that was building within my bones, that I could trust him.
We touched hands once more. Without warning, a flash illuminated between us, but it wasn’t from my hands or the jungle around us, but from Jay. Light ran down the length of his forearm, coursing across his veins in a way that was similar to my own marks. The radiance came from both of us, a symmetrical symbol blossoming across our skin from his fingers to my own.
Only, his symbols were a dark, obsidian black.
Something in the air shifted. A chill ran down my spine, despite the warm air. Jay’s fingertips were growing cold and rough, and ice began to spread across an invisible barrier between our hands. He blurred away, disfigured by the wall.
The glow between us diminished. I put my other hand against the ice and slammed it once, twice, with my fist. “Jay?” I called. The wall stretched out across the clearing, and I recognized that neither of us had created it. Something was keeping us separate. The creature we were hunting — the Dark One — had found us first.
My light marks grew faint. The jungle frosted over, as was to be expected with a mythical ice wall, and I folded my arms, shivering. Walking the length of the wall, I pressed my fingers against the thin ice.
A shadow fell next to Jay across the clearing. I made out Roland with his bow drawn, and Lynx clambered to the ground next to him. They circled around the grass, and I understood, with a pang of uneasiness, that the threat lay on the other side of the barrier.
Jay drew his sword, holding out a second blade and curving it against the other in an instinctive position. I wished for a sword of some sort, my wood staff suddenly feeling inadequate as the darkness grew around us.
“Can you help me?”
I drew a sharp intake of breath. Turning to face the voice, I whipped my staff around until it was inches from the little girl’s throat. “Why are you here?” I asked.
Her form trembled, flickering in and out of view. For a moment, she was a dark panther, much like the creature I saw last night. And then I was looking at an older version of the young girl. She wore a dark, regal dress and hair piled on top of her head. Black makeup stained her cheeks, the remnants of tears.
“Did I not warn you?” Her voice was coarse and thick as if she was speaking from a distant, bloody battlefield. “Are you not entertained enough?”
“What?” It took me a moment to realize that she was not speaking to me. Her eyes gazed beyond mine, conversing with an invisible figure.
To my left, a growl emanated from a shadowed creature. I tore my gaze from the flickering memory and found myself staring into the amber eyes of a black panther. Her eyes never left mine as her tail flicked with vigor against the tree trunk.
I knew at once it was the Dark One. I took a step back, colliding with the ice wall. The panther strode forward, growling.
Jay pounded on the ice. “Anya!” His voice was muffled, faint. He pressed his hand against the ice, motioning for me to copy his movements. Behind him, shadowed figures were detaching from the trees like smoke. Roland fought them off, but they were growing in numbers. The sight reminded me of the Stygian back home, sending fear slicing through me.
“Were you not warned?” The girl behind me repeated.
The panther leaped forward with a vicious growl. I slammed my hand against the ice, meeting with Jay’s in a blinding flash of light.
The world around us vanished.
Jay’s palm was still pressed against mine, but his form was flickering and vanishing in and out of view. It was as if the scenery was made of shifting sands, growing and collapsing, destruction and creation. I didn’t want to pull my hand from Jay’s for fear of the sand swallowing me whole.
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I had to squint to make sense of what was around me, but I made out the silhouette of the panther. Her jaw was reared inches away from my outstretched arm. Behind us, his bow drawn and seconds away from firing, was Roland. Time moved agonizingly slow, their movements resetting every time the sand collapsed and re-made itself.
“What is this?” I asked, my voice rising.
Jay’s face flickered in and out of existence. “I figured it out,” he said.
“The creature is right here, about to sever my arm,” I said, fumbling to grasp my staff before it, too, drifted away like dust. “Could we kill it in this time-loop?”
Jay’s eyes gazed beyond mine. “We’re daft. The panther isn’t the Dark One.”
I managed to glance behind my shoulder with my hand still pressed against Jay’s. The girl I had met in the forest last night strode forward, the only creature that was exempt from the strange enchantment around us. Her face was serious as she said, “I knew I would see you again, Anya.”
Despite the situation, Jay looked at me incredulously. “Ah, so you two have met.”
“I didn’t know she was the Dark One!” I replied, trying to steady my beating heart. “She said she needed my help.”
“And I did. It is only with a source of energy that I can communicate with you in this form, and you two together are like the sun,” she smiled, her face brightening.
I wished she wasn’t so young. Her youthful face unsettled me. “What do you mean?”
“You play mind games, creature,” Jay spat.
I noticed Jay was trying, in vain, to tread through the sand closer to me. I knew once we pulled our hands away, time would resume and the panther would plunge his teeth into my forearm.
“You will be betrayed by the one you trust. Heed my warning, Anya,” the girl said. “You don’t understand what ancient customs you play with.”
“Why?” I cried. “What did they do to you for such a curse to fall on your grave?”
She smiled a smile that I knew would linger in my memory for years, a haunting grin of teeth and anger. “I was a peace offering, sent by my father to the High Prince in an effort to keep Coppice safe. I was the heir to a nation, and Kincho used me as bait. And when the Prince refused, I returned to my jungles.”
“You’re —” Jay stopped, strung on his words. “You aren’t alive, are you?”
Her grin persisted. “There are many ways to die, but only one way to come back to life. The High Prince is cruel to everyone but those he has killed.”
“That’s a dark way of putting it,” I replied.
She turned her attention to me. “I will not be so generous if you slay my panther. Let it be known that my promise will be fulfilled.”
“You mean to tell me that your father is Kincho, the chief?” Jay asked. “And he sent you to the High Prince as a peace offering when you were young, and when you died you came back for revenge like those old ghost stories?”
“Why can’t you let it go?” I asked.
A vibrating growl emanated from her throat. “You know nothing, Cave-Dwellers. You were adopted by the light. The darkness has never reached you.”
“You’re wrong,” Jay spoke the words so quick, so sudden that I wasn’t sure I had heard him right. “Anya and I were blackmailed into this quest. And I,” he hesitated, and his words hung heavy in the air. “My father gambled away every single orb our family owned in the night, betraying my family on his word. My little brother and I had to camp out in bars for safety in the night until we earned enough to keep the Stygian away. And the next summer, my father lay drunk in the fields and our harvests yielded no food. But I know not to run from forgiveness. People can change. They must change.”
“I have no need to hear about your woes, Jay Kurtis. You will find them void soon enough.” Despite her anger, the girl was curious now, her face exposing the secret pleasure she took in speaking about her struggles. “What about you?” She turned to me. “What could make you exempt from my curse?”
I thought long about it, trying to keep my hand steady against Jay’s. I wasn’t sure what possessed me to defy the Dark One, but I felt a sudden rage boiling in my veins. “Nothing could exempt me from a curse that holds no power. Today is your last night plaguing Coppice, ghost. Jay and I will bring an end to the darkness, starting with you.”
She smiled. “Let it be known that this was the moment you made your greatest mistake, Anya. Remember that betrayal never comes from your enemies. When you need them most, your friends will fail you, as you have failed me.”
“I’m over it,” I said. “I don’t care about your curse. I’m finding my brother, no matter the cost. I think you know that.”
She tilted her head a fraction of an inch. “I suspected it.”
I pulled my hand away from Jay’s. The sand ran together, materializing back into the glowing jungle. I dropped to the ground, hearing the panther thud to the jungle floor behind me. I pulled Jay’s sword from the sheath on his hip and leaped to my feet, bracing my staff in the other hand.
The ice wall was gone, revealing a grassy clearing. A form of Stygian I was unfamiliar with were scrambling around the trees, their claws burning away whenever the glowing light touched them. Despite this advantage, we were outnumbered. Roland fought viciously, but I foresaw the dark creatures overtaking him in an instant. Lynx parried with her knife, but she couldn’t hold off a hoard with no training.
Jay called out for me. I sprinted for the panther, the sword flat in my hand. Ducking to avoid a growling shadow, I slid on the damp grass.
I felt pain sear my arm, claws digging into my arm. I threw the creature off, gasping. Jay had already reached the panther, his knife in his hand. The cat leaped onto a tree branch and stalked along it, her eyes intent on Jay.
In the seconds that followed, I wasn’t sure what happened. I watched Jay turn to me, shouting for me to stay away. The panther leaped from the branch, her claws extended and mouth filled with dozens of fangs. I jumped over a fallen branch, soaring through the air. My light marks lit up with scalding light.
I plunged my sword into the cat’s rib cage, and together we slammed against the forest floor. I laid there like a dead man, breathing hard. Seconds ticked away until finally, the panther grew still, and the favor was complete.
8
The Captain
Sunlight flooded the dense jungles with light. I pulled the sword from the panther and handed the blade back to Jay, ignoring his exasperated expression.
Roland approached me, nodding. “You fight well,” he said. “With more training, you could be great.”
“We need to return to Kincho and Maddox,” Jay interrupted. “I don’t want to stay in this haunted jungle any longer.”
A shadow blotted out the sun above us. I squinted at the incoming shape, making out a descending boat with sails rippling in the wind. Someone hollered from the starboard, but I couldn’t understand what they shouted.
“Skysailors,” Roland said with an edge to his voice. “What do they want?”
Jay approached me and said, “You fight well. Anya, Roland wasn’t lying about that.” He pulled his hand away from where he had clapped my shoulder, his fingertips stained with scarlet. “Blood? Are you bleeding?”
“One of the creatures must’ve clawed me.” I lowered my voice. “How did you know that would happen when we touched hands?”
Jay pulled off his jacket and pressed the cloth to my shoulder. He shrugged. “How did you know someone would betray us if you killed her?”
I squinted at him. “You’ll tell me when we get back to the village, deal?”
He squinted back, mocking me. “Only if you tell me everything else.”
A voice interrupted us. “Roland, you and your company are in danger. Board our ships on orders from the chief.”
I glanced at the hull, making out a woman leaning over the side. Her skin was fair, her sturdy arms crossed over a white shirt. Her hair was a fiery red, pulled back in a ponytail, and
her eyes filled with anger as she watched Roland.
“Lang, have you come to ferry us back to the village?” Roland asked, dropping his serious tone. “Or are the Skysailors wanting credit for defeating the infamous Dark One?”
I began to notice movement around us. Shapes were peeling themselves off the trees, lingering in the shadows around us. I was achingly familiar with their smoking armor and their stoic archer uniforms. I finally realized why Roland’s own armor disturbed me.
“Stygian,” Jay cried, grabbing my arm instinctively. I gasped in pain from his touch, my shoulder igniting.
“You need to come, now,” the Skysailor woman called, coming into focus as her ship descended closer. “Unless you wish to die, which is all the same to me.”
The Skysailors unfurled a rope ladder. Roland grabbed the ladder and extended his other hand to me. I flinched away from the gesture.
“What, don’t you trust me?” He asked with a grin.
I took another step back, running into Jay. I was being paranoid, I reminded myself. Roland was as trustworthy as anyone around me.
Roland shrugged and began to climb up the ladder, the arrows on his back rattling against the quiver.
I grabbed the rope ladder, but a sudden spell of dizziness caused me to hesitate. “Are you okay?” Jay asked. “Can you climb the ladder?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I replied, trying again to haul myself onto the rope. Back in the Caves my wound would be far more serious — if anything, the Stygian would have already twisted me into one of them. In Coppice, it seemed as if the Stygian were weaker. It was probably because the jungles were alive with light.
“Hurry up,” the Skysailor called, her voice strained. “We’re being overrun.”
Lynx clambered onto the ladder and disappeared over the hull of the ship. Around us, the Stygian were coming closer, pressing in on all sides.
Jay jumped onto the ladder and offered me his hand. I took it, feeling his strong arms brace us against the rope. The crew began to haul us onto the deck.
I turned my head away from his and watched the Stygian in the dark. Their raised heads studied our ascent into the clouds. In an instant, one of the creatures let out an unearthly screech and leapt onto the bottom of our rope ladder.
