The Plentiful Darkness

by Heather Kassner

  Except, when she looked closely through the gloom, she saw she wasn’t holding a lunar mirror—only something that could be mistaken for one. The Monty had brought her an ordinary pocket watch that no longer told the time.

  “Good try,” she said, so as not to discourage the rat. “But you’ll need to go again. The lunar mirror is what we want.”

  And so it dashed off—three times more, three times unsuccessful—bringing back a golden pillbox, a stringless metal yo-yo, and a silver locket on a thin, broken-clasped chain.

  “Oh, Monty,” Rooney sighed as she accepted this last item. “You might be sneaky, but you are not being properly selective. The mirror.”

  As the rat slunk away once again, she looked down at the necklace in her hand. A moment later, a sudden clatter broke the quiet. Trinkets spilled from the pile beside the throne. Smudgy nose twitching, the Monty scrabbled out of the wreckage, charging away from the little avalanche it had caused.

  Sorka stormed to her feet. The darkness cringed—a shuddering, a pinching—contracting the space around them.

  The children near her throne scattered as her cheeks burned red and the black ribbons at the ends of her braids lashed like furious snakes. “You rotten thief!” she shouted, and her words too, booming so loud, shook the darkness, gathering it closer around them.

  What would happen if it continued to shrivel and squeeze?

  A tickle of claustrophobia teased Rooney, but she shoved it aside as best she could. The rat fled with an object in its paws—maybe Bridget’s mirror at last! Dashing away from the woods, Rooney and the others hurried to meet it.

  At the same time, Sorka jumped to the ground. It rippled under her feet. The rat scampered against the wavering silk, but its long claws were unable to take hold and carry itself away. Sorka pounced, lifting the rat up by the scruff of its skinny neck.

  “Careful!” Rooney cried.

  The ground stilled, but Sorka’s temper only flared brighter. She let the Monty dangle there from the ends of her pinched fingers, its little feet kicking. “Oh, I don’t much like rats. But I very much dislike thieves.” She glared straight at Rooney.

  Bridget trundled forward, big steps for a small girl. She wore her sternest face, eyes cutting under her stick-straight bangs. “You’re the thorny thief. That mirror is mine!”

  Standing steady beside Bridget, who somehow even breathed with authority, Rooney could not help but feel stronger.

  And Sorka—unbelievably—seemed to shrink, just as the darkness had. “I’m not talking about the mirror.” The Monty dropped the trinket, which Bridget dived for and quickly scooped up as Sorka continued. “I’m talking about the locket.”

  Rooney glanced at the thin chain threaded around her fingers. She rubbed her thumb over the dulled surface, surprised that this broken ornament had made Sorka so upset. Unless it meant something more to her, the way Rooney would always love her charm bracelet of stars, even though she no longer owned it.

  She bowed her head over the locket, and dim blue light fell over an etching on its surface.

  A thorny stem, just like the design on the lunar mirrors.

  Heart thumping fast, Rooney clicked opened the locket. Within, instead of tiny portraits or a curled strand of hair, lay a small mirror. One that offered no reflection.

  A lunar mirror.

  Rooney gasped at the wonder of finding such a thing in the locket. At the horror of finding the glass lined with cracks.

  Sorka lowered her arm, releasing the Monty, who scampered away. “I thought I lost it for good.”

  “What’s so special about it?” Rooney asked.

  Keeping something back, Sorka shook her head. Silver petals fell from her crown. “Once, it contained stardust, but that’s long gone.”

  A shiver coursed through Rooney. This hope of hers—to catch the light of a star—shimmered like a possibility instead of a dream. Something her parents had longed for, though they had only gathered its imitation by way of silver charms and a telescope’s glass. “Stardust!”

  “Can it really be caught?” Devin pressed close to Rooney, as awestruck as Trick when he spoke of making music. “My mother always told tales of golden lassos woven from stardust and crowns glittering with starlight, but I thought they were fables.”

  “My father swore my mother’s wedding ring was made from the dust of a falling star,” Trick said wistfully.

  “Those are just stories.” But a question lingered in Bridget’s words.

  “True stories,” Sorka insisted, eyeing the locket.

  Rooney thought Sorka might lunge for it with greedy fingers, the way she’d snatched away the lunar mirrors. But Sorka only stood there, acting nothing like herself.

  Or maybe more herself than ever. Rooney had to admit she did not always see the whole of a person. She hadn’t with Trick, that was certain. And for all Sorka’s outbursts, she rather had a way with the children—how she gathered them to her and read stories, how she magicked their silken bedrolls at night, how she played with them so they might smile and forget, even for a little while, all that they missed from home.

  All Sorka must miss.

  Rooney thought of the way Sorka looked at the sky as Bridget fell through it, and all the stars she’d shaped from the pages of a book. She’d flung such vibrant magic in the winter woods, her emotions tangled within it.

  Sorka wanted to find her way out of the darkness too.

  “Well, how do we go about snatching stardust, then?” Bridget held the lunar mirror the Monty had dropped and looked at it this way and that.

  With an unsettling frown, Sorka righted her crown. “I said it’s been caught, not that you could catch it.”

  “Maybe I could, if I stole your locket for myself.” Bridget wiggled her fingers as if she meant to take it from Rooney.

  “Don’t be rotten to each other, all right?” Devin pleaded.

  “Oh, but I am rotten,” Sorka said, her grayed skin stretching as she smiled. “The darkness has sunken into my bones. It runs through my veins. It’s part of me more surely than anything else.”

  But Rooney had seen something in Sorka, a glimpse of a girl who needed protecting as much as the rest of them.

  Rooney thrust out her arm. Though Bridget grumbled beside her, Rooney held the locket aloft, hoping it was just what Sorka needed most. The necklace itself, but more so, the offering of it, and nothing asked for in return.

  Sorka lifted her hand, hesitant. She must have thought Rooney would snatch the locket away at the last moment. But Rooney wouldn’t; she didn’t.

  When Sorka’s fingers closed around the chain, the darkness around them sighed. Branches swayed in the woods, though there wasn’t any breeze, and far off, the river rushed. Cold came in waves from Sorka’s pale skin as she gazed at the locket.

  Then her voice broke, scratchy and unwilling—and sad. “All I want is to see the stars again. Not from the depths of darkness, but from the world above.”

  29

  AT LAST, AT LAST

  Rooney stared off into the pitch. It draped around them, a too-tight embrace. She did not want to remain here in the shrinking darkness, so far away from Warybone.

  And Sorka had finally admitted she felt the same.

  The confession seemed genuine, but Rooney scratched the splotch of gray on her cheek, unsure, uncertain, unsatisfied. A whisper of cold swept through her.

  Winter cold.

  At the edge of the clearing farthest from the throne, the highest tree branches swished back and forth, and the silver flowers began to fall and blacken. Crystals of ice cut through the air.

  Winter did not belong here.

  The chill ghosted Rooney’s breath and stole her voice. She pointed a shaky finger to the sliver of the woods where winter brushed against the border of autumn. Devin and Bridget widened their eyes in alarm.

  “Winter has come a-crawling,” one of the children, paused in their play, called out.

  Sorka tucked the necklace into the pocket of
her dress and patted it softly. Without a word, she climbed onto the arm of the onyx throne and reached for the paper ornaments she’d hung up so recently. One by one, she tore them down, plucking her handmade stars from the not-sky. She crushed them in her fist and hurled them about. Her fragile dreams lay scattered at her feet.

  “What’s happening?” Devin asked, wary of the silvering woods.

  Rooney scooped up the closest of Sorka’s fallen stars. She tried to smooth it again, but the paper was rumpled and creased beyond repair. “The darkness is closing in, isn’t it? Squeezing the seasons and all of us together.”

  “Spring is already gone,” Sorka whispered.

  Rooney startled at the idea of something so wondrous ceasing to exist. But she had seen its destruction for herself. Those cobblestones all broken. That tower all crooked.

  Devin had said, Whatever was at the end of this road is gone.

  The black hole had gobbled spring up.

  “It’s lost in the darkness.” Sorka lowered her voice even further so the children couldn’t hear her. “And it’s only a matter of time before we’re smothered too.”

  Devin staggered back, bumping into Bridget, who slung her arm roughly (almost protectively) around her shoulder. Rooney would have liked some reassurance as well. Some sign that Sorka knew how to hold the wintry darkness back. But it must have been Sorka’s undisciplined magic that brought this danger all the closer.

  No longer was it just a strange feeling, a far-off threat. If they didn’t escape, and soon, the darkness would fold them into their graves.

  “Do you remember what you asked us?” Rooney swallowed, digging deep to find her strength. “Friend or foe?”

  Sorka offered another lean smile. “I remember everything.”

  “Then you should remember we came as friends.”

  Rooney glanced at Devin and Trick (and Bridget, who hadn’t actually answered the question at all, but never mind that). The three of them waited and watched. Sorka took a long look at them too. Her jaw worked back and forth.

  “If we’re all supposed to be friends…,” Rooney began, knowing they weren’t, not really. Not yet. But she was trying at least. “If we’re supposed to tell each other the truth of things, then we must be honest with you too.” Sorka narrowed her eyes, and Rooney finished. “About our plan for escape.”

  Behind her, Bridget grumbled. Devin, however, said loud and clear, “Yes, tell her.”

  Everyone slipped closer, and Rooney shared the not-wholly-full-and-finished plan—to use the lunar mirrors to catch whatever bits of light they could at the very next opportunity (whenever, however, that might come) and follow it out of this place.

  “So you see why we need the mirrors,” Rooney said at the end of the telling. “Not to strike out at the darkness but to bring in the light.”

  Sorka frowned. With gray-tipped fingers, she touched the decay along her collarbone.

  “So you see why we need you,” Devin amended with a small smile, in the same manner she had looked at Rooney from the window—so eager to keep the trouble away from others, even as she plunged right into it herself.

  “To use my magic,” Sorka said stiffly, perhaps thinking it was the only thing someone might want from her.

  “No, not that,” Trick said (though Rooney would not have dismissed it so quickly). “To lead the children. They’ll follow you anywhere because they trust you.” And what he didn’t say but expressed all the same was that he would trust in Sorka too.

  Avoiding the whisper of winter at the woods’ edge, the children played close by, hands of cards with incomplete decks and made-up rules, wooden puzzles that could never be finished for all the missing pieces, and games of catch with … a round silver object.

  Rooney’s mouth dropped open. “You gave them one of our mirrors!”

  “I might have.” Sorka grinned. “I did.”

  Oh, Rooney had tried so hard to set things right, and all for nothing. She dashed away from Sorka and the others, tearing into the middle of the clearing. A streak of silver shot through the air.

  “Be careful,” she cried. The mirrors were the only things that could save them.

  The children laughed as she hollered, tossing the mirror over her head, changing their game from catch to keep-away. When it soared by again, Rooney leaped for it. And missed.

  A blur of movement swept past, a shadow grazing her arm—Bridget, with her cropped black hair and dark dress. She tackled the child who’d just caught the mirror and wrestled it from his grip. The boy cackled, as if he was well used to such mischief (and was usually the culprit).

  Bridget pushed to her feet, casting a look over her shoulder so severe the boy ran.

  “Here,” she said gruffly, plopping the mirror into Rooney’s hand.

  It fit just right in her palm. Not any old mirror. Her mirror. Rooney’s heart swelled. Despite the chill in the air, the moonlit fire in her chest burned, so bright the others must have been able to see its glow.

  She traced her thumb over the familiar groove and then the silver-etched thorn. At last, at last, her mirror was returned to her.

  Rescued, most surprisingly, by Bridget Mullen.

  The gesture was so unexpected. Rooney lifted her head, but before she could offer even the smallest of thanks, Bridget stalked over to Sorka.

  “We need one more,” Bridget said, not a bit out of breath from her tussle with the boy.

  “Two more,” Devin said, linking her arm with Bridget’s, making it seem so easy to align with someone. To befriend someone.

  Sorka squirmed on the throne. Rooney was sure she would deny them.

  But from under the silken cushion, Sorka withdrew a lunar mirror. Trick’s mirror. She looked at it, undecided. Carefully, cautiously, Trick reached out and eased it from her hand.

  Sorka sighed. “You all are determined to be disappointed. Don’t you know how many times I’ve tried?”

  Rooney rounded on the throne, for once knowing exactly what she wanted to say. “A thousand, I’m sure. But you haven’t had us here to help you. And I … we are the greatest moonlight catchers in all of Warybone!”

  Sorka jolted. She cracked a shadowy smile.

  Trick crooked his head, his black eyes serious as they locked on Sorka. “And as her apprentice, you need to call to the magician.”

  THE MAGICIAN—OH SO QUIETLY

  A faraway whisper slipped through the tower room, soft as a feather at the magician’s ear. Hushed as moonlight falling and silver flowers unfurling.

  seleneseleneselene …

  She turned to the mirror and the darkness beyond its gray surface. In the glass, a shadow hovered—a blur of long hair, black eye sockets set in a pale face, teeth flashing white.

  The girl had come to her. Oh so quietly.

  “Sorka,” the magician said.

  “Selene,” came the girl’s distant reply.

  And there it was—the magician’s name. She had forgotten it, but for now at least, it settled in her mind. Uncomfortably. Something that no longer fully belonged to her. It had fallen away like so many other things that had once seemed important.

  “I grew weary with waiting.” The magician blinked heavy eyelids. All the sleep she’d lost. All the magic she’d spent.

  All of Warybone breathing and breathing and breathing so loudly.

  The magician frowned. “What has kept you away?”

  Sorka’s eyes flitted to the side, gazing at something beyond the mirror’s frame. She gathered herself, then—a rolling back of her shoulders, a sharp set to her shadowed jaw. “It is not the same.” She turned back to the magician. “Being here”—she spread her hand to take in the whole of the darkness—“and being there.”

  Warybone.

  “Doubtful,” the magician said, for she’d magicked the darkness in its likeness.

  “Truthful,” Sorka said. “The darkness is being most disagreeable.”

  Sorka reached out one hand as if she might slip it through the mirror, but
it was only a looking glass and allowed no passage to Warybone.

  The magician shook her head. “My devil, my dear, tell me. Are you tending the darkness?”

  She leaned her face so close to the glass that fog bloomed where her lips nearly touched the mirror’s surface. And she could see very well that the girl had not taken care. The edges of the darkness curled closer, like a knot tightening.

  Sorka retreated, a small step back. Her form grew less distinct. A vague outline of a shadowed girl. “Come,” she beckoned. “Come and tend it.”

  The magician felt one slow beat of her absent heart.

  30

  AT TORCHSET

  Sorka stumbled away from the gilded-framed mirror, joining Rooney and the others among the trees. Her eyes had gone glassy. Her lips twitched into a smile.

  “Will she come?” Rooney asked, clutching her lunar mirror protectively.

  “Oh, she’ll brave it! I know she will.” Sorka circled around Trick. She pranced by Devin. She wiggled her long nose at Bridget.

  “Then I might return home by suppertime.” Devin looked up, but there was no telling if daylight or nightfall claimed the world above. “Or maybe breakfast?”

  “How can you be sure she’ll come?” Trick held his lunar mirror too, as if he were ready to point it at the sky right then, should the magician make a sudden descent.

  “Because.” And that was all Sorka would say.

  It was not helpful in the least, and Rooney suspected Sorka still had a secret tucked away behind those pale lips, not yet ready to tell them all her truths.

  “When will she come?” Bridget asked, tracking Sorka’s romping with her sharp green eyes.

  “When everyone else sleeps. When she can stand being away from … the darkness … no more.”

  Rooney’s skin prickled with anticipation. She was about to accomplish all she’d set out to do. And she would not have to do it alone. She could not do it alone. “Remember, we need a mirror for Devin too.”

  “Oh?” Distracted and humming, Sorka flitted between the trees.