The Plentiful Darkness

by Heather Kassner

  The thread that Sorka was tugging. The thread that was growing taut.

  That’s what Sorka had found on the ground, and now the tangled strand led her toward them. Even if the Monty dropped it then and there, she’d be upon them in moments.

  Another yank from Sorka, and the Monty leaped from Rooney’s grip. Whiskers twitching, it glanced up at her and Trick and Devin, all of them blinking helplessly. Then it dashed off into the darkness, the thread clenched in its teeth. It ran as if its tail had caught fire, fast, fast, fast away from them.

  And Sorka, holding the other end of the unraveled thread, unknowingly chased not Rooney but the rat. Her dark hair streamed behind her as she ran.

  When they’d lost sight of her bony form, Rooney, Trick, and Devin hastened in the other direction. They pushed through the trees in the near dark, and only when they reached a safe distance did Rooney whisper, “Oh, Monty.”

  “What a good friend the rat is to you,” Devin said.

  “Very,” Rooney agreed, which sank her spirits lower, for now she was without the only creature who cared for her. The rat had risked Sorka’s wrath, all to keep them from being caught.

  “It’ll find its way back to us,” Trick said, and Rooney could only hope his words proved true.

  As they hurried on, Devin lit the candle from a tiny bottle of moonlight, and once she did so, the soft blue light fell upon a scattering of oddments—just as they’d spotted when they’d first entered the woods. Where had this random assortment of objects come from, and why were they here?

  “How sad it is, all this rubbish,” Devin said, sidestepping a fractured teacup.

  And it was sad. The objects were broken and torn and cracked, every last one of them ruined in some way. Forgotten things.

  A little bear with its stuffing unstuffed.

  A hairbrush missing its bristles.

  A clock with its golden hands stopped at midnight, and a pair of ballet slippers, the pink satin as smudged as the Monty’s nose.

  Trick’s jaw tightened when they passed a disjointed clarinet with a chipped reed and missing keys. “You think all this stuff spilled through the door at the edge of the woods?”

  “Might have,” Rooney said sharply, but her insides quivered.

  She’d owned things like this once, and she’d taken much better care. The charm bracelet from her father, dangling with silver stars—it had always circled her wrist so prettily, the charms clinking and tinkling against one another. And the little telescope her mother had given her, small enough to keep in her pocket or tuck under her pillow each night—it had always found a way into her hand as she sneaked from her bed and drew back the curtains so she might gaze at the stars, finding the constellations her parents had shown her.

  We gathered the stars for you, Rooney.

  Those gifts had meant so much to her. They were the very last things she’d sold when she’d run out of moonstones—and before she’d found her lunar mirror.

  It had felt like handing over tiny pieces of her heart. She missed those small trinkets.

  But most of all, she missed her parents. Very much. So fiercely.

  Had they still been alive, they would have pushed back the darkness and put an end to this nightmare. They would have drawn her safely into their arms. Her lip trembled.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Devin turned, looking all around, as if Sorka might have circled back and sneaked closer through the trees, quiet as a ghost.

  “Nothing.” Rooney hadn’t realized she’d become so lost in her thoughts that she’d fallen behind the others.

  “Everything, you mean. Can’t you see all these broken things?” Trick scowled at her, but his voice softened, as if wary of his own words. “And we’re just like them.”

  Rooney flinched. He shouldn’t have said that. He didn’t know a thing about her. “I most certainly am not.”

  Yet she could not help but think he was exactly right. Her heart was a shattered thing, and there was no repairing it. She wondered what bits of Trick lay wrecked inside. It was hard to believe he felt that way.

  His dark eyes soured and shuttered at her stern denial. “Come on, then. There’s no time to waste.”

  The three of them charged forward, Rooney overtaking Devin, then Trick. They ran past fallen toys and trinkets, until the trees began to thin and they left the heart of the woods behind.

  Until they found a black cobbled road, all broken to bits, stretching out before them.

  17

  THE MOST WICKED

  Rooney stumbled over the jagged cobbles, but she did not slow. This road of rubble and stone, as dark and winding as the silken river, must lead somewhere.

  Maybe to the edge of the darkness.

  “Hurry,” Rooney called, for there was no telling when Sorka would catch on to the Monty’s little trick. And if there was a way out (a door or otherwise), they needed to reach it before it was too late.

  “Careful,” Trick said, and Rooney tossed an anxious look back just as he clasped a steadying hand on Devin’s arm.

  The light from the candle jumped all about as Devin staggered along. Its blue glow bounced off their faces, casting strange shadows that reminded Rooney of the darkness crawling across the children’s skin.

  “Come on!”

  But Trick and Devin suddenly faltered to a stop.

  Their heads tilted back. They looked up and over Rooney’s shoulder. Devin raised the candlelight.

  Hairs sprang up on Rooney’s arms. She spun around.

  A dark tower stood at the side of the crooked road. It leaned toward them, gray stones misaligned and crumbling, the roof cracked, its door hanging open from greasy hinges. In the quiet, a grating sort of sound shivered through the air—stones shifting ever so slowly out of place.

  “The Tower of Thistle,” Devin whispered, as though she feared the magician would descend the spiral stairway and storm out to punish them.

  Rooney backed up, clunking into Devin and Trick. Her eyes raked the night, but everything remained still. No one sneaked out of the decrepit tower or peered down from the high windows.

  “It’s only made to look like the Tower of Thistle,” Trick said. “But it can’t be. We’re not in Warybone.”

  “Not yet,” Rooney said, and edged forward, pulling Devin along with her so the light shone ahead.

  They crept over the coal-black cobbles, giving a wide berth to the tower, which threatened to collapse upon them should they disturb it.

  “What happened here?” Devin’s voice shook, as did her hand.

  Rooney held her breath as they passed the tower, tripping over the loose cobblestones, then breathed out. “I don’t understand a thing about this place.”

  “It’s like a warped mirror of the world above,” Trick said.

  If that was true, Rooney did not much like this bleak reflection: the stream now as wide as a river and deathly cold; the wilder lands grown thick as a forest; the familiar streets of Warybone narrowed to one frayed ribbon edged with a straggle of broken lampposts and trees.

  And the not-sky, eating the light.

  The candle still glowed in Devin’s hand, but its radius of moonlight grew smaller and smaller. Rooney could no longer make out the buckled road ahead.

  Because there was no road ahead.

  It ended abruptly in a scattering of broken stones. Rooney, Trick, and Devin froze.

  Before them rose a wall—of darkness. So thick, so plentiful, it swallowed the candle’s light. When Rooney squinted and focused and stared very hard, she could see that the rippling wall extended on and on, and up and up, until it disappeared in shadows too far and too dark for her to glimpse the end.

  “The edge of the darkness,” Rooney whispered.

  “What…” Devin cleared her throat. “Whatever was at the end of this road is gone. Like it was sucked up by the darkness.”

  Rooney put on a brave face. “Or else it’s just beyond reach.”

  Tentatively, she stretched out her arm. />
  “Oh, don’t,” Devin said in a small voice.

  But Rooney had to, and so she let her fingers dip into the inkiness, touching nothing and nothing and more nothing. As if she’d reached into a space that didn’t truly exist. Her hand all but disappeared in the pitch, then her wrist and her elbow followed. Cold seeped into her skin.

  She thrust her arm deeper, until her fingertips brushed against something soft and silky, like woven threads. Except they were just as not-right feeling as everything else here.

  They slithered.

  She cringed away, not wanting to become ensnared in the coils of darkness.

  Trick grinned bitterly, his blackberry eyes like pits. “It’s a dead end, not a doorway.”

  Rooney bristled at the way his words stung. “We just have to … open it.”

  Boldly, she reached out again. Her hand groped, first to one side, then to the other, but no matter where she touched, she found the same thing. A pitch-black wall that felt like a threadbare web.

  It creeped over her skin, so cold, so spidery.

  With a determined grunt, she tore her hand through the darkness, shredding its first frail layer. An icy rush of air gusted against her face. The brittle scent of autumn leaves spilled from the gash.

  “It almost smells like home!” Devin exclaimed.

  Rooney shot a smug look at Trick. “Guess we have to make our own door. One that will drop us right back into Warybone.”

  Trick spun around, scanning all the broken things strewn beside the cobblestones, then stalked from one discarded object to another. He flung things this way and that, careless for where they landed, and gathered three items up in his arms.

  A rusty-tipped letter opener.

  A silver butter knife.

  A useless pair of scissors with only one blade.

  The metal flashed in the dim as Trick offered them up. Rooney grinned, snatching the letter opener because it looked the most wicked. She touched her finger to the tip. Though rust crackled along its surface, the point was very sharp and stabby.

  Devin took hold of the dull knife, leaving Trick with the single-bladed scissors. They approached the wall of darkness, Devin to Rooney’s left, Trick to her right.

  It seemed a strange thing, to be standing so close to them. For once, Rooney wasn’t alone.

  Trick raised the halved scissors above his head, then quickly thrust down, jabbing the tool into the darkness.

  The point sank beneath the surface, and from the depths came a great hiss. Rooney jumped, but Trick held steady. He drew his arm left to right, pulling the blade as fast and fierce as he was used to swinging his fists. Maybe to him, this was only another kind of brawl.

  Rooney and Devin threw their arms out at the same time. They plunged the letter opener and the dull knife into the wall, as if they held the sharpest of daggers, and the darkness would yield to them.

  The weave unraveled where they cut. It curled like smoke.

  Cold, cold air lanced across their faces, spiraling out from the fissures. It rushed wildly around them. It tugged. The ends of Rooney’s long hair whipped forward, Devin’s braid too. Their skirts flapped around their legs, pulled by an invisible force. The candle flew from Devin’s hand, sucked right into the darkness.

  “No!” she shrieked as the last pinprick of light snuffed out.

  The scent coming from the hole deepened and darkened, no longer reminding Rooney of dry, just-fallen leaves. She covered her nose, but the smell—like something burnt to ash, like something rotten—curled up her nostrils.

  Devin backed away, gagging at the stench, but Rooney hacked again at the wall. She could feel that wispy layer thinning.

  Black fog churned, it bled, from the places they carved into. Thicker and thicker, it gathered, sliding around their wrists and their ankles, around their waists and their throats.

  Devin dropped the knife, which immediately spun away into the darkness, and waved her arms to ward off the fog. Trick slashed at the air, his blade passing right through it.

  As Rooney continued to jab at the webbed wall, she struck something solid. Something living, she could not help but think.

  It let out a great shriek.

  The silver letter opener dropped from her hand, gobbled up by the darkness as Devin’s knife had been.

  They stumbled away as the webbing tore like a wound ripping open.

  Beyond, a black hole spun.

  A wave of dizziness fevered through Rooney. She stared, hypnotized by its rotation, by its heartbeat of curves and swells.

  Such a cold energy spiked from its center, vibrating in her chest and in her limbs. It pulsed before them. It pulled, like a tornado lashing her closer to the center of its vortex. She struggled against it, digging in her heels, and so did Devin and Trick.

  But their toes lifted from the ground. Their bodies twisted in the air. The gravitational force yanked them toward the black hole.

  A doorway to death.

  “Fight against it!” Rooney cried, arms thrashing, while Devin tossed herself all about.

  Trick flipped upside down. His arm stretched long; his boots pointed to the not-sky. With a great howl, he stabbed his one-bladed scissors into the ground beneath them, lodging it there among the cobblestones—keeping himself from the maw of the void.

  “Grab my ankle!” he shouted, words muffled by the fog that continued to circle.

  Rooney swung her arm around, hooking her fingers on Trick’s frayed pants. With the additional weight, the scissors slid through the silken ground, dragging them nearer to the black hole.

  Her stomach lurched as fog plumed from the cut. Trick’s blade juddered, then caught hold, wedged between two crooked stones.

  Devin’s fingers curled toward Trick’s other leg, but the void wrenched her out of reach. She tumbled through the air, her eyes flashing all around—finally landing on the swirling black hole that awaited her.

  Devin screamed.

  “Grasp on to that tree!” Rooney yelled.

  Devin spun around. Her fingers grazed the end of a branch but lost hold.

  “The trunk’s wiggling like a loose tooth. Kick its branches toward her!” Trick groaned, fighting against the pull of the void.

  Rooney flung out her leg. Her heel cracked against the tree. It leaned farther to the side, and whatever planted it in the ground snapped as would roots. The trunk tore free. Branches smacked against Rooney’s thigh, sending her and Trick flying after Devin.

  All three of them crashed toward the churning pitch, the tree alongside them. End over end, it spiked through the air, falling across the black hole and snarling in the weave of darkness.

  Their bodies struck the tree. They threw their arms around the trunk and, all in a row, hung on for dear life.

  The black hole swirled just before their noses. Gravity clawed at their airborne legs.

  One after another, the forgotten objects flew past their faces. Some caught in the fog. Some slipped through it, disappearing forever.

  Rooney thought her hair would be pulled from her scalp. That her skin would be dragged from her bones. She tightened her grip on the tree and screamed, but even that shrill sound was stolen by the void.

  All the while, the fog, the magic, circled Rooney, Trick, and Devin. It coated their hair, their eyelashes, their skin. In and out it went with each of their fast breaths. It filled their lungs until Rooney could scarcely breathe.

  “Oh no,” she coughed out, catching one last clouded-gray glimpse of Devin and Trick.

  And then she could say and see no more, for she fell unconscious.

  18

  A LIVING GRAVEYARD

  Rooney woke groggy. Her thoughts spun, or it might have been the black hole tossing her round and round.

  Except her body wasn’t moving. Not even a bit.

  But something scuttled through the darkness. It drew closer. Tiny claws plucked at her hair.

  She lay on her side, cheek to the ground, so when she cracked open her eyes, all the wor
ld grew atilt: fallen trees; the overlap and sprawl of Trick’s and Devin’s legs; the single-bladed scissors.

  And a rat nosing up to her face.

  “Oh, Monty,” she whispered, sitting up slowly for all the bruises she’d suffered.

  Rooney put a hand to her head, out of sorts. The fog that had seethed from the wall still clogged her brain.

  And all the fear that had flooded her chest still overflowed there, unshakable.

  Before her, in the very spot she’d stabbed the letter opener, the dark hole pulsed. Like a rotten heart beating behind a rib cage made of twisted darkness. Mistrustful, she scooted away, worried the fog would rise again and the hole would yank her forward, not finished with her just yet.

  Rooney whipped toward Trick and Devin. They lay on the ground so still and quiet, as if they might never wake. As if the darkness might have stolen their breaths.

  “Devin?” Rooney said. “Trick?”

  A groggy groan broke from Trick’s throat. His fingers twitched. Devin rolled from her back to her side, her braid falling across her chin. Rooney crawled over, more relieved than she could say, and shook them awake.

  “Enough, Bridget,” Trick mumbled, shrugging off Rooney’s hand.

  “Mother?” Devin’s long lashes fluttered, and she opened her eyes.

  Rooney sat back. She brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms tight around them. “It’s just me.” Not at all the person they each had hoped it might be.

  A great disappointment sat heavy inside her—that she had not succeeded in gouging a hole back to the starlit streets of Warybone. She hung her head. She’d almost gotten all of them killed.

  “I thought we were done for,” Devin said, sitting up and warily looking at the wall. So slowly, the darkness continued to weave itself thicker and deeper, building a barrier between them and the black hole.

  Trick pushed his hair out of his eyes. “At least it didn’t hurt us any.”

  But in that instant, his pale face exposed, Rooney feared he was wrong.

  She squeezed her bent legs, keeping her hands from trembling. She stared and stared at Trick and then dared a closer inspection of Devin. Without a light, it was harder to see but not impossible.