The Plentiful Darkness

by Heather Kassner

  “Trick!” she called.

  The hushed lapping of the water was her only reply. The magician had been true to her word, shrouding him in silence and gifting him to the darkness.

  Rooney’s limbs went weak, but she had to continue treading, no matter what. Maybe Trick had forgotten or had tired. Maybe he bobbed somewhere beside her, all the air gone from his lungs.

  But no. She could not think like that.

  With a decisive stroke of her arms, she headed that-a-way, swimming faster now, as it occurred to her that anything might lie beneath her in this water-that-did-not-quite-feel-like-water.

  Beasts forged from darkness might grab her from below.

  She kicked her legs as hard as she could, fleeing all she could not see. Including the tug of the current that strengthened the more she struck against it.

  Something crackled in the darkness.

  Far off, then closer.

  Rooney churned her arms harder still, needles of cold cutting through tights, through coat, through skin. The water swirled around her like clawed fingers catching hold, sharp with the bite of winter.

  An impossible undertow sucked at her scissoring legs.

  It yanked.

  Rooney had no time to pull the thin air into her lungs. She went under, sputtering and breathless.

  Panic lanced through her. Her body convulsed.

  That crackling sound rippled through the water, louder now that she floundered beneath it. She threw her arms overhead, stretching for the surface.

  Her fingers glanced off ice. It spread as fast as frost above, sealing her under.

  So long without air, Rooney’s chest pinched. Her thoughts clouded.

  She pressed her hand flat against what was about to become the icy cover to her coffin.

  In her near-death stillness, the current let her go. She floated upward. Her cheek touched ice.

  And a pocket of air.

  She gulped it down. She breathed.

  And oh so carefully, she rapped her knuckles against the fragile layer of newly laced ice. Her face once again met air.

  With fluttering breaths, she swam forward, ice fracturing to let her body pass. It was slow going, for the moment she kicked too hard, the current twistered beneath her.

  The water only remained calm when she remained calm. Outwardly at least. Inside, every part of her trembled with fatigue and fear.

  At last, she waded to shore, but the solid ground beneath her feet brought little reassurance. Who knew how carefully she’d have to tread upon it? Or if it too would lash out against her?

  Hesitant to take even a single step, Rooney looked up toward the not-sky from which she’d fallen. She could see it no better than she had from the water. Only the same stretch of black. No doorway. No window. No twisting stairway leading out.

  No escape.

  Panic welled within Rooney once again. How much like a grave it felt here—buried beneath darkness instead of dirt.

  She brought her trembling arms protectively around her middle, only to immediately unwrap them and grope for her shoulder, her cheeks, her hair.

  Somehow, she was completely dry.

  It was magic, of course, but a strange and sinister sort.

  As if that magic wanted to expose more of its secrets, it thinned the dark veil. Bit by bit, her eyes adjusted to the starless, moonless murk. Not by much, but enough so she could see the winding of the black river beside her and the midnight landscape everywhere else.

  Rooney’s stomach knotted. There was no telling what might be hidden in the folds and shadows.

  With cautious steps, she crept forward. So long as the river ran beside her, she had something to track her way. But to where?

  Rooney tried to remember what else the magician had said in the alleyway and what the stories told of the thing stealing children away in the night. But it was all a jumble in her head. Everything around her was unknown.

  So focused on the darkness ahead, Rooney missed what lay right before her. When she stepped down, something smooshed.

  Something squealed.

  Rooney shrieked, spinning away. She looked all around, but of course it was so dark she could barely see the boots on her feet, let alone whatever creature scuttled so low to the ground.

  But it must have seen her, for all at once claws scratched at her ankles, scampered over the tops of her boots, and clambered up her holey tights. The little beast clung to her skirt. It raced up the sleeve of her coat.

  Everywhere it touched, Rooney’s skin crawled. She swatted and poked, but it was too fast. Reaching her shoulder at last, it dug its claws in and went as still as a stone gargoyle.

  Rooney’s breaths came in great puffs. Slowly, she turned her head to the side.

  Two glossy black eyes stared back at her.

  9

  THE NOT-SKY

  Perched on Rooney’s shoulder, the creature clicked its sharp little teeth. It hunkered there, with long pointed claws and fur so black it blended with the night. A ribbed tail curled over her shoulder. Its smudged-white nose twitched.

  She might have screamed again, if she were Bridget Mullen. But Rooney smiled.

  “Monty!” she exclaimed. “How did you find me here?”

  Never, never had she been so glad to see the sneaky rat, who must have tumbled into the void just as Rooney had. Its whiskers brushed against her cheek, a gentle tickle.

  “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” It looked all right to her and neither whined nor hissed. “Sorry all the same.”

  Rooney rambled on, all her nerves frayed. “We’ve gotten ourselves into a big mess, thanks to Trick Aidan.”

  She peered through the gloom, hesitant to move forward. But then something winked in the darkness.

  “Monty, look.” She pointed.

  Ahead, a small light flickered, the faintest blue haze. Oh, it was so familiar.

  The faraway gleam and glow of lunar light.

  “That might be my mirror just ahead, fallen from Trick’s pocket.”

  The rat gazed into the distance, but it probably saw no better than Rooney. It hadn’t even had the sense to scramble out of her way.

  Rooney patted its head with the pad of one finger. “Be on your guard.”

  Then she called for Trick once again, baiting him. She liked the idea of him knowing she was coming for him—that she was brave and would take back her mirror. (Though her bravery felt a tiny bit false, for her insides were all aquiver at what else might await them in the darkness.) “Trick!”

  Trick, Trick, Trick …

  Her voice bounded back to her, eerie and muffled. Still, Trick offered no response, but the echo of his name taunted her.

  The glimmering light brightened by the smallest degree the closer she came to it. When she reached its source, she stopped, looking all around for Trick. There was no sign of him—only the round silver object on the ground.

  A lunar mirror.

  Rooney dropped to her knees and lifted the case. A soft glow shimmered in her brown eyes like the tiniest stars.

  The clasp had sprung open, allowing the light to slip out through a thin crack. She poked at the little catch, hoping it wasn’t damaged, and shut the lid. It closed with a click—unbroken.

  It closed like a drape swept across the sky—leaving complete darkness.

  The pitch rushed at Rooney, surrounding her, reminding her there was no moon. There were no stars above.

  Her heart went wild. It was too dark. Completely suffocating.

  She scrambled to open the mirror again, pressing down on the latch, which stuck in place. It felt just off beneath her thumb.

  With a final, forceful push, it popped open.

  The faint blue light swept out. It hung like mist in the air.

  But Rooney frowned. The thinnest, smallest crack touched the glass.

  It set her heart racing—that her mirror might be damaged. But though it had the same thorned stem etched in the silver, it didn’t have quite the same weight or wear. She felt fo
r the little groove along the rim that she knew so well for all the times she’d rubbed her thumb against the smooth surface.

  She could not find it.

  It sank in then. This was not her lunar mirror.

  It must have been Trick’s.

  “Oh no,” she whispered, crushed by the discovery.

  The mirror sat cold in her palm. She tightened her fingers around it, trying to convince herself it didn’t matter so long as she had this glimmer of light.

  “He lost it, I guess,” she said to the Monty. “So now it’s ours, fair and fully. It might not be my true mirror, but”—she sniffed—“it will have to do.”

  The Monty shifted on her shoulder. Its claws dug through her coat, sharp little pinpricks that seemed to voice the rat’s disappointment.

  Turning Trick’s mirror over and about in her palm, she feared what might have prevented him from retrieving it.

  Rooney stood, and the rat wobbled. She swung around and followed the river in reverse for several steps.

  But that unwanted sick feeling jabbed at her belly again. A twist. A knot.

  It was more than wanting her true mirror or not knowing how to escape the darkness; it was the thought of abandoning Trick (no matter how rotten he was). He might be lost within the river of darkness, gasping his last breaths. He might be smashed somewhere upon the ground, bones all broken and poking through skin.

  Rooney slowed. She stopped.

  She whirled back around, glaring into the shadows. “Monty, I think we must keep going.”

  The mirror illuminated the ground beneath her feet, soft and glossy black. Now that she could see it properly, she realized it was made neither of grass nor dirt. In fact, her footsteps left no mark; they made no sound as she walked upon the ground. No wonder she hadn’t heard the Monty’s approach and it hadn’t heard her.

  Around her, everything was strangely quiet. The river didn’t gurgle. No birds sang in the night.

  She lifted the mirror, shining the light forward. And there, just ahead, black trees rose in the distance, tall, slim silhouettes. They reached toward the not-sky. Crooked branches and twisted trunks. A most forbidding wood.

  She could strike out in another direction. But if she knew one thing about Trick, it was that wherever the tallest tree grew, he would either be found climbing its branches or sleeping beneath it.

  “To the trees,” she said. The words were not for the Monty this time but for herself.

  At the edge of the woods, Rooney paused. Jutting up from the ground, the trees loomed leafless and strange. They stretched, thin and overlong, like the finger bones of monstrous giants clawing up from the ground. The skinlike bark gleamed as glossy and black as the earth, as if they were one and the same.

  Branches twitched, heavy with round, rough-peeled fruit that resembled rotten, black oranges and smelled of autumn’s fallen leaves. Each long limb bloomed with tarnished-silver flowers that fluttered like moths.

  And like moths, they tipped their petaled faces toward the light.

  The trees too, they angled toward her. So slow, so subtle. A tilting of their highest branches.

  Rooney retreated one step and then another.

  Within the woods, something shuddered.

  A long, exhaled breath. A shivering. It gusted between the trees. Rooney felt it in her bones as much as she heard it sighing in the dark, dark woods.

  It could be Trick, injured.

  It could be a monster, waiting.

  Rooney straightened her shoulders. The Monty pressed close to her cheek.

  She’d come this far. She would find her mirror. With a shaky breath, she took one step forward.

  A low voice sliced through the quiet. “I wouldn’t dare.”

  10

  MOST UNGOOD

  Rooney shrieked and scrambled back. Her hand shot out, shining moonlight into the trees. It misted blue over the lowest branches and the silver flowers and the rot-black fruit. She tipped the mirror, sweeping the light higher, where it wavered across the not-sky, the treetops, the thick darkness.

  Rooney steadied her hand. The moonlit glow caught upon the spiny tree limbs.

  And the upside-down boy hanging from them.

  “Trick!” she hissed.

  He dangled awkwardly by one leg, a slender branch coiled around his ankle. “The tree caught me as I fell. Don’t suppose you’d help me down, would you?”

  She gaped at him. “Why should I? Why would I?” Her fingers circled around the mirror that was not her own. “You stole my mirror.”

  “That’s why you should help me.” His dark eyes gleamed. “If you want it back.”

  Rooney stalked forward until she stood right beneath him. With their heads cocked, he glowered down at her, and she scowled up at him.

  “Give it.”

  “I know better than that.” He crossed his arms over his chest, which looked ridiculous with him swinging there upside down, his dark hair standing on end. “You’d just leave me.”

  “It would serve you right. For thieving my mirror. For leading us here.” Rooney tore her eyes away from Trick, peering into the woods again. The darkness folded over and around itself. Around them.

  “Help me down, Rooney,” Trick implored.

  “I’ll knock you down,” she said, then rose to her tiptoes, raised one arm, and whacked his shoulder none too gently.

  “Hey!” Trick’s arms flailed out as his body swung back and forth.

  Rooney reached for Trick’s dangling arm and gave a great tug. “The minute you’re down…” Her breath heaved as she yanked and pulled. “You’d better hand over my mirror.”

  “You’re ripping my arm from its socket,” he groaned.

  “Don’t care.” All the same, Rooney released her hold on him. No amount of tugging was going to free him.

  In fact, the tree only gripped him tighter, looping the branch round and round his leg. Lashing out at Rooney when she shook its trunk. She dodged out of the way, and the tree pulled Trick higher.

  Out of Rooney’s reach.

  “Ahhh!” Trick cried, his voice gone panicky. He threw his arms toward her, but even when she jumped, she couldn’t grasp hold.

  “Keep still,” she said, recalling how the river had yanked her under when she struggled.

  But Trick squirmed and kicked.

  And the tree squeezed and squeezed.

  If Rooney didn’t do something—and fast—the branch might pinch off his foot.

  Only one idea sprang to mind, but it would be risky, as it involved sharp little teeth.

  Rooney grinned mischievously at the Monty. “Hurry him down!”

  The rat scampered forward, climbing up the tree’s twisted trunk and ambling out onto the branch from which Trick hung. Balanced there, the rat bared its teeth and began to gnaw and chew. Oh, the tree didn’t like it much, but the Monty was too quick, too nimble, to be swatted or shaken.

  In defeat, the branch recoiled like a length of ribbon unraveling. It unknotted itself from Trick’s ankle, dropping him to the ground. He landed with a grunt and grimace, flat on his back, eyes trained on the starless not-sky.

  Rooney nudged his leg with the toe of her boot.

  He sat up slowly. All the blood that had gathered in his head from hanging upside down must have been rushing to the rest of his body now that he’d been righted. “Everything’s spinning.”

  “Don’t. Care.” She held out her empty hand. “My mirror is all I want.”

  Trick climbed unsteadily to his feet. “Haven’t got it.”

  “Turn out your pockets,” she said impatiently, tired of his games.

  Grumbling, Trick did so, proving (most horribly) that his words were true. “I lost them both. They slipped from my pockets when the magician swept me into the darkness of her scarf.”

  Rooney’s mouth dropped open. She looked at the trees and the river, at the soft ground beneath her feet that she didn’t trust. Was everything made from—manipulated from—the same material? Were they r
eally inside the magician’s magical scarf? It seemed a most ungood place to be.

  Trick continued, oblivious to her distraction. “One mirror tumbled that way.” He pointed in the direction from which Rooney had come. “The other fell somewhere over there.” His eyes scraped the forest.

  Rooney stared at the looming trees. “Then that’s where I must go.”

  “Not alone,” Trick said, as if she were not only foolish but also helpless. “It’s nice, you know, when someone’s got your back.”

  Now he was just rubbing it in—how he had the roughhouse boys and she had no one. She gestured for the Monty, who scrambled up the length of her body and settled on her shoulder.

  “There’s something in the woods.” Trick trampled over her purposeful silence, his voice low and anxious. “I heard strange sounds. Whispers and eerie music.”

  Rooney’s skin crawled. But that’s probably what Trick hoped for. To scare her. She clamped down her rising fear, latching onto the last word he’d said.

  Music.

  That reminded Rooney of the missing violin-torturing girl, Devin Hayes, who might be lost somewhere in the darkness as well. It wasn’t only Rooney’s mirror she ought to search for. “Well, I’m going.”

  Trick squared his jaw. “And so am I.”

  He eyed the mirror in her hand. The mirror that brimmed with light for now but would eventually dim. Stranding them in complete darkness.

  She clutched it all the tighter so he couldn’t wrestle it away, then bravely entered the woods.

  They passed beneath the trees, which might snatch them up at any moment. But it was down Rooney went, for she stumbled.

  Books with cracked spines lay scattered in the path.

  Steadying herself, she skirted around them, suspicious of their curious placement here in the woods.

  As they stole ahead, they spotted other odd objects. Alongside a pair of bicycles with bent wheel frames, a rag doll sprawled on the ground, one of its button eyes missing. Propped against a tree, a gilded frame rested crooked, empty of its painting or mirror. Skeins of yarn and rolls of ribbons hung knotted from the trees.