The Dark Materials

by Amanda Churi

  Griffin, who flanked my left slightly behind me, gave the strap of his backpack an anxious tug. “Stop trying to be funny, acting like everything will be ok,” he growled. “There’s no one who can help us, and you know it.”

  “No,” I urged stubbornly, keeping my eyes fixed ahead so that I could only see my companions with my peripheral vision. “I don’t believe that. There’s something out here… Somewhere. I know it.”

  “Nothing good,” Laelia mumbled with distaste.

  I stopped, glaring at her over my shoulder. They were being such buzzkills that the little bit of real faith I had left was being destroyed. “Look, I know you blame me for this,” I admitted stubbornly, “but I don’t see you doing anything.”

  Laelia’s eyes were wide and empty as she stared at me, finally snapping. “What am I supposed to do?! Fetch us some frozen fruit from the dead trees? Ooh! How about I carry your demonic body back to the forest so you can frolic with your demon friends and feast on our flesh? Would you like that you little fucking traitor, huh?!”

  “How about you put a bullet to your head?!” I suggested angrily. “I don’t know who or what they are, alright?! Stop pointing an arrow at anyone that you have a bone to pick with! No wonder the Senate killed you! It wasn’t because of your father; it was because you’re nothing but a blood-sucking, conniving, bitching, selfish brat!”

  Stunned by my outburst, Laelia said nothing. I huffed indignantly, sharply turning my head back to the decimated land and walking forward at a brisk pace. We had never gotten along, and with her complaining about every little thing she found to be wrong, I was just about done. I couldn’t keep acting upbeat if there was no one who noticed, and a being as pitiful as her was not about to be the downfall of my already faltering drive to get out of this death hole.

  There was an aggressive shove against my shoulder, my eyes flashing up as Laelia stormed past me, her eyes raging with rue. “Don’t even speak,” she snarled as she turned her head away from me. “We know that we don’t like each other; why bother pretending any longer? I have no sympathy for you any more than you do me.”

  I remained silent, part of me scolding myself and absorbing her pity, the other half wanting to clobber her around the neck for acting like a fragile doll. Griffin fell in step beside me a second later, staring into my eyes as though I was transparent. I paused, stiff for a moment as he kept his eyes honed in on me before he gruffly looked away, dismissing my presence like muck on the bottom of his foot as he caught up with Laelia.

  I was shocked, unable to believe he had taken her side over mine. After only a day, a wedge was being driven between the four of us.

  Not knowing what to think, I chose to linger behind them. I just needed time—time to figure out where exactly we stood in this world and what we could do to save ourselves from not only the unknown enemies but each other, because I could already guess that the longer we were out here, the more intense the strain between us would get.

  I also needed time to compute and digest the words of the lerial from last night. They knew me, but I had no recollection of them, and that bothered me terribly. There was a big piece missing in my head—a memory gap that I had never known was there until hours ago, and I needed to fill it in. Fast.

  “Whoa!” Griffin suddenly exclaimed, my head snapping up at the urgency of his voice.

  The earth suddenly vanished beneath my toes, my body quickly lurching backward as I tried to regain my balance, squeezing Mabel tighter. I inhaled sharply as my legs shakily resituated themselves, taking a wary step back and stretching my neck high to see the danger.

  Two feet from where I stood, the land suddenly dropped away at such a sharp grade that the bank was almost a perfect vertical angle. Shards of skin-slicing ice broke the petrified soil, holding a dull, sickly gray aura to it. Large quantities of thick, pitch black liquid sloshed lazily against the treacherous shore that lay nearly twenty feet below us, coating the soil, pebbles, and frost in a swathe of black slime. The waves churned with one another sluggishly, creating dense gray foam as the waterway crept through the sliced walls of earth, vanishing into the unknown lands in the far distance. The profound smell of acid rose up from the water, stinging my nose and burning my eyes.

  A faint, familiar entity began to form in the parched soil. I narrowed my pupils, slightly leaning closer as I tried to distinguish just what I was looking at. The ground looked like it rose and fell in a sort of pattern—a formation I knew but couldn’t place a finger on.

  A sharp scream suddenly bashed my eardrums, my vision flashing white for a fraction of a second before a face with two lifeless gray eyes was suddenly staring at me from the riverbank. I grunted with surprise, stumbling back as my gut slammed into my heart.

  “It’s just a body…” Griffin mumbled, though he did not look my way.

  I tried to recoup from my brief hallucination. Every way I turned, my brain only compiled more and more questions. This was definitely what The Seeker referred to as the black river. I suppose part of me should have expected something similar considering the current state of the world, but as I was forced to take in all of the evidence that swarmed around me, I could hardly tell if this realm was actually real or nothing more than an illusion. How could anyone do this? That was supposed to be water. This was supposed to be a field or forest. There was supposed to be life.

  Yet as my eyes bore into the element which had once been the birth of everything, I knew it was no longer capable of bringing anything but death. If this was water, how did anything survive now?

  “I have nothing to say about this,” Griffin scoffed, shaking his head with repulsion.

  “This world is ruined,” Laelia added, her eyes remaining fixed on the wheezing river.

  Follow the dark river… The Seeker’s words echoed in my head as I stared at the toxic water.

  I didn’t have a better idea; her advice was my only hope.

  “We should follow the river,” I proposed, turning to Griffin, who looked interested in my suggestion. “I don’t know how this can be used, but water is a life source; it might lead to civilization somewhere.”

  Griffin pursed his lips, exhaling heftily as he quickly glanced back at the river and the defeated gray eyes staring mercifully at the sky.

  “Should we?” Laelia pressed impatiently.

  “Yeah,” Griffin agreed. “It’s the best chance we have.”

  I smiled, thankful for his compliance.

  Follow the dark river… Find someone to be of aid…

  I just hoped her so called help wasn’t too far off because my body felt like it was on the verge of giving out. The Seeker had just randomly appeared and left without a trace; why couldn’t she just poof us wherever she spoke of instead of putting us through more torture? It may have just been me, but in general, spirits seemed really unhelpful.

  Having no better option, the three of us began heading downriver along the elevated bank. The river, much like everything else, we found to look almost exactly the same no matter how far we walked. The only change in the scenery was that the farther we walked, the more bodies we began to see. Many resided by the river, though more lay sprawled across the empty earth as though their fight for life had lost its battle at a moment’s notice. All bodies were frozen, so cold and aged that they were encased in a sheet of ice. Others were torn apart, their frozen skeletons being all that was left of their lives.

  “What in the world happened here…?” Griffin wondered incredulously as we continued to push on.

  I was about to say something just before the pressure around my neck intensified, cutting off my windpipe as a weak, futile moan sounded in my ear. I paused, my arms tensing as I felt the small body in my hold stiffen up as the moans became stronger.

  Griffin and Laelia picked up on the disturbance fairly quick, coming to a halt and looking over their shoulders, alert in case of a possible threat.

  The pitch of her whine slowly rose, Mabel weakly pulling her head out from the crook of
my neck. She blinked dreamily, her weight swaying in my arms as she emerged from her deep rest. Her eyes were unusually dull as they focused on me, the fresh claw mark on her face stretching in discomfort as she tried to figure out just what was going on.

  “Mabel?” I whispered lightly, trying not to startle her.

  “…Hm?” she responded after a short frame of time, her eyes resuming their shaky path of travel.

  “Are you feeling ok?”

  She griped painfully, making her answer bluntly obvious. “No… What happened?”

  “You got your butt kicked by a bunch of bat-demons,” Laelia answered, her voice flat as she approached Mabel to check on her; Griffin held his ground and looked on from afar.

  “Oh, them,” she hissed bitterly. She looked back at me, discombobulated. “And I got out…?”

  I nodded. “It’s a miracle,” I answered, choosing my words carefully in order to keep the identity of The Seeker hidden for the time being. “There was a flash of light, and they ran away.”

  Mabel’s eyes widened hopefully. “L-light?”

  “Yeah,” Laelia answered. “I don’t know what it was, but had it been much longer, we all would have been dead.”

  “You can thank Eero,” Griffin added. “He kept you from losing too much blood.”

  Mabel was quiet for a moment, looking over to her side and holding her arm up awkwardly, silently observing the quickly healing, large blue-purple slit, which ran from slightly above her wrist to a tad below her armpit.

  “If only my arm healed like that,” Griffin chuckled, a hint of resentment in his voice. “Magic is overpowered.”

  “It looks disgusting…” Mabel glowered with disappointment.

  “Sure does,” Laelia agreed.

  I flashed her a treacherous glare.

  Mabel cleared her throat. “I-It’s just an arm,” she reassured herself in a trembling voice. “Besides, I will live, and that’s what matters.” She slowly lowered her injured limb, looking back towards me gratefully. “Thanks, Eero…”

  I smiled sheepishly, my insides screaming at my cheeks to keep the color from shining through my skin. “You’re welcome.”

  She grinned, looking at the ground. “You can set me down; I think I’m fine enough to walk.”

  “You really shouldn’t,” I argued. “You’re still very weak.”

  “At least let me try,” she finished firmly through a muffled grunt.

  I didn’t protest, giving her a simple nod and slowly leaning down as she held me tightly around the neck. She placed her feet lightly on the ground, her legs shaking as she tried to find her balance. “You’re sure?” I pressed uncomfortably.

  “Of course, I am.” She let go of my neck and slightly pushed herself forward, making it clear that she wanted me to let go.

  I listened to her only because I did not know what else I could say or do to change her mind. Hesitantly, I loosened my grip, slowly retracting my hands from her legs and waist until she was on her own. I kept my arms raised in case she suddenly collapsed, my eyes watching her intently as her legs trembled beneath her weight. She held her arms out stiffly beside her, trying to steady herself as her knees racked against one another painfully.

  “You really look like you’re alright,” I huffed in exasperation.

  “Oh shut up,” she hissed, releasing a determined grunt as she forced herself to take a step forward. She was definitely shaken, but she was able to walk quite decently despite the circumstances.

  “See?” she bragged, picking up her speed. “They can’t keep me down! I’m too—!”

  Right in the middle of her boast, she slipped. Mabel squealed with shock as her legs flew out behind her, her body airborne for a moment before she hit the earth violently on her knees, her upper body thrown forward so fiercely that her small satchel flew over her neck and landed on the ground several feet away. I ran up to her, quickly grabbing Mabel from behind before the rest of her body could indent the earth.

  She gasped, startled as her wide eyes processed the rough plates of ice a foot below her face. Her heart raced frantically, her mouth gaped and body half-paralyzed as she was forced to succumb to the fact that she really wasn’t up to par yet.

  “Take it easy,” I said through a scoff, my voice a mix of worry and disgust due to how bullheaded she was being.

  “It was the ice,” she mumbled quietly.

  “And you.”

  She sniffled, what little water she had left in her body deciding it was extremely important to waste more precious liquid on tears.

  “Hey, it’s alright,” I reassured her frantically as she started to hyperventilate. She didn’t look at me; her eyes were so wild and distant that I was afraid her mental state was crumbling, much like her body was.

  “Calm down, Mabel,” Laelia tried, seeming slightly concerned as well.

  Mabel continued to sob, squirming out of my hold and pressing her hands to the earth, hanging her head in devastation. She did not hide her sorrow, crying profusely and allowing her tears to penetrate the dried soil.

  I could hardly look at her. Slowly, I kneeled down next to my girlfriend, resting my hand on her back in hopes to comfort her without getting a handprint across my face. “Mabel, it’s going to be fine…”

  “I’m sick of this, Eero!” she squealed, almost choking on her tears. “I want to go back to Phantome! This place is a nightmare!”

  “Mabel…”

  “Look at me!” she demanded fiercely, snapping her bloodshot, crimson eyes to mine in a flash. She pressed a hand to her cheek, her fingers trembling uncontrollably as she felt the disgusting scab crusting over her skin. “Two days and I look like this! I feel like I’m losing my mind!”

  I tried to speak, but I didn’t know what I could possibly say. All that I knew was that I felt like the scum of the Earth for having caused her all of this grief that she certainly did not need.

  Griffin decided to try as well, wandering back towards the group when he truly realized just how much his friend needed him. “Mabel, we’ll find some place soon…”

  “And in the meantime, we’re going to get weaker!” she cried pitifully. “Do none of you get it?! We’re not safe out here! We’re nothing but prey to the darkness! Who’s to say we will even make it out alive?!”

  Our unison silence gave her our answer.

  A weak, foreign, fragile cry broke the tense ambiance; our senses immediately heightened as we frantically searched the land with our eyes for the unknown source. Mabel knitted her brows with puzzlement, remaining on the ground and shifting her gaze around until her eyes promptly settled on her satchel. Getting the cold shoulder, the three of us followed her line of sight, immediately noticing the faint rise and fall of the brown, cotton frame.

  We followed every movement that was made, watching the indistinct mold of a veiled entity press against the wall of the bag, trying to break free.

  A small, bony gray hand hesitantly reached out of the satchel, its long black claws scraping the frozen ground as it searched the environment with its small fingers. A flap of gray skin covered in black slime dragged behind the arm, several large, pounding blood vessels throbbing against the surface. Guardedly, an ear poked out from the flap, twitching as it rotated on its hinge, scanning for danger.

  The only thing it had to be afraid of was Mabel.

  As soon as the small head began to peek out from her bag, she screamed—a high-pitched scream of bloody murder that made me slam my hands to my ears to save them from going deaf. Mabel was on her feet in the blink of an eye, her instability abandoning her body, immediately replaced by anger and fear. She looked crazy, and the moment she was on her feet, she charged her bag, her scream somehow increasing in volume.

  The creature quickly detected the rampaging female, scampering out on its hands and knees as Mabel slammed her foot against her bag, kicking it with such intensity that she punted it well over ten feet into the air.

  “Leave me alone!” the creature screamed, scuffling
across the ground and struggling to raise itself up on two feet before Mabel was already throwing another foot towards its tiny skull.

  “You leave me alone, you demonized pest!” she screamed furiously. She lashed out with her foot once more, the small being screeching in alarm and quickly jumping into the air, frantically flapping its arms to gain height with its tiny wings so that it was just out of Mabel’s reach.

  “Get down here, you brat!” Mabel ordered, trying to swat them out of the air.

  “Make me!” the creature taunted, sticking a sharp, black-purple tongue in Mabel’s direction.

  A threatening growl rose in Mabel’s throat, her arms shaking aggressively and begging to knock the creature upside the head.

  “Why did a lerial follow us?” I asked aloud, utterly surprised that one had snuck out of the forest with us by taking refuge in Mabel’s satchel. As much as I hated the things for almost brutally killing us last night, this one didn’t intimidate me; I wasn’t going to admit it to any of them, but part of me found the small bat-thing to be somewhat cute.

  This lerial was the smallest one I had seen yet, and that said a lot considering the swarm that attacked us last night. Its eyes were larger than most, the entire cornea a mix of ghostly purple and black ink. While I guess it was impossible to really tell, I was under the impression it was a female by its young, high-pitched voice, and something about the features on its face. She was about the size of a sugar glider; her wings were so small that she had to keep them moving at a hummingbird’s pace to stay out of Mabel’s clutch.

  “Guess it wanted an adventure,” Griffin finally answered, stifling a chuckle as he watched Mabel jump into the air, her small height making her fall short of her target.

  “I’M GOING TO KILL YOU!” Mabel roared madly through a hefty pant, the height of her jumps decreasing the more she pushed herself.

  I snickered in amusement, finding their scuffle to be entertaining. I got to my feet, shaking my head while struggling to hide my smile, coming up behind Mabel and wrapping my arms around her stomach before pulling her away from the lerial. “Lay off, feisty.”