The Night Itself

by Zoe Marriott

  “Whoa,” Jack said.

  Hikaru bowed to us formally, then rolled his shoulders back, rotating his neck to the accompaniment of loud popping sounds.

  “Well, that wasn’t the most fun afternoon I’ve ever spent,” he said. “But the king’ll see you. You guys had better behave yourselves, because I’ve stuck my neck out to set this up, and if you piss someone off, it’s probably going to get wrung.”

  “Behave how?” Jack asked. To my surprise, she sounded serious rather than sarcastic.

  “Don’t speak to anyone unless they speak to you first, and bow before you speak. When you approach the king, you need to kneel, put your hands flat on the floor in front of you, and press your forehead against them, and you don’t sit up or look at him until he gives you permission. Don’t turn your back on the king. Don’t interrupt him when he’s speaking, and when you do speak, address him as Your Majesty. Got it?”

  Jack nodded, her face earnest. Somehow, in the absence of her normal snark, I felt it was my job to mutter, “Geez. Even the queen of England only expects a curtsey.”

  Hikaru didn’t laugh. His eyes fixed on my face like green lasers. “When the queen of England has been on the throne for four hundred years and can fry you where you sit, then I think you’ll do whatever she says. The rules you’ve lived by all your life don’t apply any more. You’re going to an entirely different plane. You mess up there, and you won’t get the chance to mess up again. So if you’re not down with that? Stay here.”

  Is this how a sausage feels right before it leaps out of the frying pan and into the fire?

  Jack gave me a pleading look.

  I was the one who had started this, and it wasn’t my sister’s life that was on the line. I needed to suck it up.

  I bowed. “Sorry. Thank you for your instruction.” The words and gesture were borrowed from dojo etiquette, but Hikaru seemed to relax a little. “Right. Through the looking glass we go.”

  CHAPTER 15

  TRANSFORMATIONS

  The myrtle bush flared with new light. Hikaru sucked in an audible breath. “Someone’s getting impatient.”

  Jack stepped over the threshold onto the greyish-brown winter grass of the garden and strode towards Hikaru and the bush. I quickly hopped down after her, looking around warily. The small, shadowy space of the garden, echoing with the distant noises of traffic, felt exposed and dangerous. Shinobu’s solid presence behind me, sticking close, was incredibly reassuring.

  “I’ll go first and hold the rupture open for you to pass,” Hikaru said to Jack.

  “Rupture?” I repeated.

  “In order to allow you to move on to our plane, we have pierced the veil that separates our worlds, creating a rupture which we will travel through,” Hikaru said, faintly lecturing.

  The dream image of my reflection’s hands straining against the surface of the mirror flashed before my eyes. A hole in the veil? Did that mean that things could cross from both directions? Involuntarily my hand went back to check the grip of the katana.

  I told myself to relax as Hikaru knelt by the blazing, orange glow of the bush and shoved the branches up with both hands, making a gap large enough for him to crawl through.

  “I hate doing this in human form,” Hikaru grumbled, spitting out an errant leaf. His tail, sticking incongruously out of the split in the back of his coat, made jerky, whipping movements. I half expected him to get stuck, but after a moment he managed to cram himself into the foliage, and the white gleam of his coat and the red of his tail disappeared.

  “I’ve got it! Come on through!” His voice drifted back to us, sounding a lot further away than the wall at the back of the garden.

  “Here goes nothing,” Jack said.

  She got down on her hands and knees and squeezed into the gap Hikaru had left. Her progress sent leaves, bits of bark and lacy scraps of cobwebs flying up behind her. The debris spun and sparked in the orange light, making weird patterns that my eye struggled to follow.

  The bush rattled violently, and I could hear Jack’s muffled swearing. Then the sound and movement stopped, as abruptly as if someone had pressed the off switch. The quiet within the garden seemed twice as ominous as before.

  “You go next,” Shinobu said, his eyes scanning the gathering darkness. “I’ll guard your retreat.”

  I hesitated. Clearly we were only going to be able to go through there one at a time – but leaving him alone like this felt wrong. He didn’t even have a sword. I grabbed hold of the sleeve of his leather coat and gave it a hard tug. “You’ll come straight after me,” I said firmly. “No hanging about, no heroics. Got it?”

  The corners of his lips twitched up. “On my honour, Mio-dono.”

  I turned away quickly, bent and then ducked into the dark space within the bush. The knees of my jeans were instantly soaked. Branches caught at my hair and dragged along the back of my coat. The bush stank of wet mud and cat pee. I crawled forward, trying not to squeak like a boy as something – I didn’t want to know what – scurried onto the back of my hand with tickly feet.

  I shook it off and lifted my hand, palm outwards, so that I wouldn’t end up bashing my head into the wall. I kept shuffling further into the bush on my knees, waiting for my fingers to touch bricks. The pee smell was getting stronger, although I wasn’t sure if it was cats’ any more. It was a deeper, muskier stink. And I was still crawling, and my hand still hadn’t bumped into the wall.

  The wall isn’t there…

  “Jack? Hikaru?”

  Silence. I couldn’t even hear the traffic.

  The ground under my knees disappeared. A shrill scream ripped out of my throat as I fell, clawing helplessly at the air.

  I landed hard, and felt someone go down underneath me.

  “Ow!” Jack’s voice and mine blended together.

  “Jack?”

  “Who do you think? Get off me – I think you cracked my rib!”

  “Sorry, sorry!” I rolled sideways and hit something else. Not a person this time. My groping fingers found dirt, packed hard and covered in hairy tendrils that I thought were tree roots. I hoped they were anyway. I snatched my hands back just as someone’s elbow connected solidly with the back of my head.

  “Ow!” I said again. “Watch out!”

  “Sorry.” That was Hikaru. “I was trying to help.”

  “Does it really need to be pitch black in here?” Jack said.

  “Everyone back up slowly until you’ve got a wall behind you,” Hikaru said, ignoring the question. “Your other friend is going to arrive in a minute and he’ll take up all the space that’s left.”

  Arms outstretched, I got cautiously to my feet, pressing my back against the curved soil wall behind me. “Where are we?”

  “Between.” The way he said the word gave it some deeper meaning. “Opening the veil here instead of directly into the spirit realm prevents things from either side crossing into places they shouldn’t by accident.”

  “Like an airlock?” I’m not the only one worried about wandering monsters.

  “Pretty much. Once we’re all in here, I can close the rupture in the veil and open the entrance to my plane.”

  “Clever,” Jack said. “But I still don’t see why it has to be so dark.”

  Hikaru let out a low laugh. “It’s only dark to human eyes. I can see you just fine.”

  There was a tiny, gulping noise from Jack. If Hikaru was trying to be sexy, he’d picked the wrong angle. Jack had always been scared of the dark, and knowing that he could see her when she couldn’t see him probably made her want to punch him, not get cosy.

  There was a rush of cool, damp air that made my hair flitter around my face, and then a thud and a muffled grunt.

  Jack asked nervously, “Shinobu? Is that you?”

  I didn’t dare reach out in case I ended up hitting him the same way Hikaru had hit me. “Are you all right?”

  “I am fine.” The already familiar voice came out of the darkness. “Although a warning abou
t the drop might have been helpful.”

  “Sorry, dude,” Hikaru said. “I had no idea. It’s different every time. Trust me, it could have been a lot worse.”

  “Well, we’re all in. What happens now?” Jack asked.

  As if in answer, the earthen walls around us began to shake with a deep, grinding noise that reminded me of the problems we’d had on the Tube the night before. A rain of soil and pebbles pattered down. I squeaked as a rock bounced off my bad shoulder. The next second I was in Shinobu’s arms, his large body sheltering me from the debris. I buried my face in his T-shirt.

  “Just a minute, folks,” Hikaru said, his voice rough with strain.

  Light burst into the space. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, then blinked rapidly. A hole had appeared in the wall, a perfect circle, about six feet in diameter. Hikaru was silhouetted in the centre of it in a cloud of dust and falling earth, his hands and feet braced against the sides as if he was holding it open with his own body. Maybe he was. Slowly the rumbling and shaking stopped, and Hikaru dropped his arms wearily.

  “Wow, you all look terrified,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “Guess I should have warned you about that part too?”

  I nodded wordlessly. Jack, who was plastered against the wall next to me and Shinobu, face-palmed. I felt the tension in Shinobu’s body relax fractionally. He let me go and I stepped away, hoping my face wasn’t bright red.

  “This is probably why there’s a rule against bringing humans home,” Hikaru said, thoughtfully. Then he flashed Jack a brilliant, reckless smile. “Oh, well. Welcome to the spirit realm, ladies and gentleman.”

  He stepped through the opening. The light set fire to his hair and tail as he stretched his arms above his head. This was not the stressed, neck-popping movement I had seen in my garden but a smooth, almost catlike unfolding of muscles. The white tip of his tail flipped lazily. It made him seem disturbingly inhuman.

  That’s because he’s not human, genius. Bear it in mind.

  Jack unpeeled herself from the wall, and I stepped up to stand beside her. The two of us paused in the circular opening, shoulder to shoulder, and stared out at the spirit realm.

  It was the opposite of everything we had left behind. Home was wintry cold, dark, brick and glass. This place was bathed in warm sunshine, and everywhere was green. I could hear birds: beautiful, liquid trills and low, mournful calls, like something from a rainforest. The wind rushed around us, scented with water and pollen.

  This world was different … and yet the same.

  It took me a moment to realize what I was looking at. The shape of the garden, the skyline of the neighbouring buildings. It was all there, completely familiar, and completely alien. A mirror image of my parents’ house.

  The flat, triangle-shaped lawn that had been covered in greyish turf all my life now rippled with waist-high, green-gold grasses. Their feathery fronds drifted gently in the breeze. The walls that enclosed the garden were covered so thickly in brilliantly shaded mosses and lichens that they looked soft and rounded like cushions. The neighbouring houses were buried under saplings and ferns and climbing vines that concealed any hint of brick or render. On the back wall of the house dozens of thin waterfalls cascaded down the sheer surface, splashing musically into silver pools at the base. Flat, glittering planes of mica took the place of the windows and glass extension. On top, where the roof tiles had sloped down, there were huge trees. Their bent, gnarled trunks were almost hidden under heavy, drooping canopies of crimson flowers.

  “God…” Jack breathed.

  I squared my shoulders. “Come on.”

  Together, we stepped over the threshold to another world.

  As my foot touched down, a high, singing note filled the air. My fingers and toes tingled. For a moment it was almost pleasant – like being welcomed. Then the tingling became an angry buzz, spreading through my body. The singing note became piercing. I could literally feel my eardrums vibrating.

  Beside me, Jack’s hands flew up to cover her ears. “Mimi, I feel…”

  Suddenly I was unsteady, my legs spindly and weak underneath me. I bent over, hands slapping onto the ground. But they weren’t my hands any more. They were changing.

  I tried to shout for help. What came out was a high-pitched bark, not quite a dog’s.

  Ohshitohshitohshitoh…

  Shinobu yelled my name. I saw Hikaru whip round, his lips forming a curse as he ran back towards us.

  Then everything went fuzzy and grey, but too bright at the same time. I whined. I felt as if someone had smacked me sharply in the nose. Hundreds – thousands – of scents assaulted my nostrils. I could smell rotting wood and the tasty grubs that wormed beneath it, the day-old trail of a rabbit passing under my snout, the marker that another of my kind, a healthy male, had left on the stones near by.

  I bent my face towards the ground, scrubbing at my watering nose with both front paws. My ears flicked back and forth, absorbing the strange, lowing sounds of humans near by. Some part of me knew that humans weren’t a threat, not to me. I ignored them, rubbing my muzzle against the soft fur of my foreleg.

  A big shape, a human shape, moved slowly towards me. It was bright white with red patches. Distantly, I remembered it. Friend.

  The friend smelled funny. Like my kind, and like a human, and like something else … something hot and irritating that made my nose water more. I sneezed and rubbed my snout again. The friend made more of the lowing noises as it got closer. The irritating smell got stronger. My fur puffed up around me. The burning smell was bad. Dangerous.

  I stood upright and made noise, a high-pitched scream-bark, warning the friend back. He had something I didn’t like on him, in his front paws. And it was getting stronger the closer he got to me.

  Magic. Magic in his hands. Magic bad.

  The friend dived at me suddenly.

  No. Bad.

  I skittered sideways. The nasty, burning smell wafted around me, and he grabbed at me again with his big white paws.

  Bad friend.

  I plunged away from him into the towering grasses, ears pinning back with effort as I wove between the shifting fronds. I could hear pursuit behind me. Up. Go up. Away.

  There were rocks piled ahead, rocks with green shelter. Hide. I leapt – and jerked to a stop as a pair of human paws closed around my ribcage, catching me in midair. I snapped and struggled ferociously, then went still as I recognized the smell of the human holding me. It was familiar and good. Safe.

  I relaxed, drawing my paws and tail up over my vulnerable belly as the human lifted me in his arms. I found a patch of human skin and snuffled it, sighing contentedly. Good friend.

  A human hand stroked down my back gently. The bad smell burned my nose once more, stronger than ever. I sneezed, but I didn’t try to run this time. I knew the good friend would protect me.

  There was a loud human noise. “Got it!”

  I blinked – and found myself back in human form, cradled in Shinobu’s arms as if I weighed nothing. He made a pained noise and clutched me to him, burying his face in my hair. “Thank the gods.”

  “I’m all right. It’s OK.” My voice came out weak and trembling, and I wasn’t sure that I was telling the truth. I helplessly patted whatever bits of him I could reach.

  Deep shudders worked through his body as he rocked me. I remembered what he’d said before – that me getting hurt caused him pain too. He’d been telling the truth. Despite the warning ache from my shoulder, I put my arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. I needed the comfort as much as he did.

  “I’m OK,” I repeated. “It’s all good. But I just need to know, was I a—?”

  “Fox,” Hikaru said, moving into view behind Shinobu’s shoulder. “Yes.”

  Shinobu’s arms tightened until I wheezed. Slowly, he let me slide down to stand on my own two feet. For a minute more we clutched at each other, unwilling to let go.

  “I’m fine. Shinobu, I’m all right.”

  “This t
ime,” he said, voice flat. I felt his hands curl into fists against my back.

  I twisted my head to meet his gaze – but he wasn’t looking at me. His furious eyes were fixed on Hikaru.

  I shifted back and, reluctantly, Shinobu let go. Immediately I stepped in front of Hikaru, shielding him from Shinobu’s wrath. But not from mine. “Explain.”

  “Look, I know you must have a lot of questions. But we need to get going.”

  “Why?” I asked. The word came out like a fox’s bark, and I coughed.

  “Um, take a look around. Where’s your friend?” Hikaru said.

  I turned in a circle, searching for Jack in the green landscape. There was no sign of her. “Oh my God! Jack’s a fox too! Where is she? Why didn’t you say before?”

  “I’ve been trying to,” he snapped. “She’s bolted, and we have to find her before somebody else does.”

  CHAPTER 16

  SPIRIT LONDON

  Close to, the wall of rock wasn’t nearly as flat and featureless as the brick walls of my parents’ house. It was more like a cliff, riddled with crevices and cracks. Which was a good thing because I’d only ever been rock-climbing once, and I had about twenty pounds of ropes and safety harnesses attached to me at the time. Right now, I had nothing.

  Shinobu had discarded my dad’s leather coat for the climb and I could see the muscles standing out on his arms and legs as he climbed ahead of me, apparently without effort. I made a grab for a handhold, dug the toe of my boot in and pulled myself up. My good arm was trembling and my bad arm was sending shards of pain shooting up and down my spine. I was puffing like a steam train, my face felt like it was glowing, and sweat was sticking my hair to my cheeks and forehead. Attractive.

  “Hikaru, how did this happen?” I demanded between pants.

  “The transformation ward is a protective mechanism, like Between,” Hikaru called down. He was about six feet above me and wasn’t even breathing hard.

  I gritted my teeth. Ignoring the rock scraping my knuckles, the pain in my shoulders, my injury, and the sweat trickling down my skin, I climbed faster. “Go on.”