The Deepest Black

by Rainy Kaye

  The pieces turn in my head, trying to find the right sides that match up and snap together. My gaze lands on the pile of rocks where I had let the lizard loose. Then to the tool building where Dell and Oliver liked to rummage around. Then I settle on the turned over haunted shed.

  My heart skips a beat. Dell's hands had been stained blue, not from paint, but from blueberries.

  Ghosts don't need blueberries.

  I shudder, and no matter how I try to stomp it down, the trembling grows until my teeth are chattering. I wrap my arms around my torso.

  I have to get into that shed.

  Trying to ignore the shadows—from the corner of me eye, I think I catch them gesturing at me—I beeline toward the tool storage. My boots crunch over dry grass, and I can't remember if earlier, the ground had been green and lively or if the shadows are sucking out the literal life from this world too. Is that what happens when they touch the fae? If it touches me? Does becoming a dark fae also kill a part of us? Is that why the Penumbra elixir can't undo it?

  Something hisses nearby, a strangled sound. I whip to one side then the other, looking for the source, but I'm alone. Just me. . .and the shadows. They're churning amongst themselves, and my stomach follows suit. They're angry they can't touch me. Not yet. Not til the elixir wears off. Then I'm done for.

  I force myself to keep moving forward, and I feel as if I'm a mouse scurrying through a row of cats. That they know what I'm planning to do, even if I am uncertain myself, and are waiting for the opportunity to strike. I try not to think about it, afraid that they if they don't actually know my plan, I will give myself away. So I hug my torso tighter and focus on the tool storage, trying not to hear the hissing of the infuriated shadows.

  My arm reaches out for the storage door, my hand wrapping around the latch. I yank it open, the hinges squeaking, followed by the thundering of metal. My gaze sweeps over the interior: small gardening tools mounted on the walls, shovels and hoes propped in the far corner, and an engine block set to the side. I have no idea what it will take to get into the haunted shed, and I don't know how much time I have to work on it. This is probably my only chance.

  I go for a pair of clippers, then halt. An ax is lying across the top of the engine block. I yank it up by the handle and turn, one arm still around my stomach, as I hurry toward the haunted shed. The shadows flicker and crawl across the ground, testing how much time they have until they can own me.

  I want to beat them back. I want to swing the ax at them and defeat them with physical effort, with satisfaction of feeling them fall apart under my attack.

  But they're shadows.

  It fades.

  She will take more.

  There is no more to take. It fades.

  I shake back the voices and charge at the haunted shed, ax swung high. I bring the head down into the metal siding, and it gives under the blow. I pull the ax loose and swing it again, and again. The air fills with booming shakes and screeches.

  People will be coming soon. And they will stop me.

  The noise grows as I attack the shed, not just with the ax, but with my frustration, anger. My resolve to end this, to stop fearing the dark fae or the even darker shadows.

  They may win yet, but I will no longer be afraid.

  The ax tears part of the metal siding loose, revealing something inside that moves. I stop, ax pulled high for another chop, and squint.

  “Please, please, please,” a small voice inside the shed begs.

  It's not the shadows; I hear this with my ears and not my mind.

  I glance over my shoulder at the farm house, expecting to see my fae parents out there, but the eyes staring at me from a distance are in my imagination.

  I continue to work the ax against the shed, breaking the hole wider. Fine dirt bounces into my face, and I turn my head, coughing, until it clears. For an instant, I expect my arms to be pulled inside, twisted in an attempt to dismember me. But the thing inside makes no attempt to grab me.

  I blink back the dust, holding the ax to my side, and peer into the opening. A dark-haired boy is sitting on a chair. . .except he's tied to it. His bare arms are covered in slashes. They look familiar. . .

  His wide eyes stare at me like he knows death is the least of the terrible fates waiting for him.

  “Who are you?” I whisper.

  His cracked, peeling lips remain in a hard line.

  “Stand back,” I say, then feel dumb for it. He can't move.

  I use the ax to pry away the metal siding instead of swinging at it. It's like opening a Goliath-sized can of sardines. My fingers ache, my upper arms burn like I've hit the gym for hours. My nails scrape along the metal, putting my teeth on edge, but I keep peeling it back, torturous inch by inch.

  Pain growing in my side, I drop the ax to the ground and then heft myself up and over the shed, one leg and then the other. I wiggle down up to my hips, then, sticking half out of the shed, begin jiggling up and down until the mouth of the opening pops up to my hips. It's like the reverse of being born. I put my arms up as I slide down the rest of the way, squeezing my eyes shut to protect them from the rough metal.

  I melt onto the floor, my legs collapsing under me, then push toward the boy.

  He is barely breathing, his gaze locked onto me. I don't bother to explain myself as I adjust my clothes, and then go for the ropes binding his limbs to the chair. As I work to free his arms, I survey the slashes. Some are red welted scars, others are scabbed over, and a few are trickling blood.

  When his arms are untied, he leaves them draped across the chair where they had been. Hopefully there's no weird voodoo spell on him that prevents him from running.

  Because we are going to need to run.

  If he was under a spell, they wouldn't tie him up...right?

  I duck to untangle the knots around his ankles. I don't know who he is, but he's obviously important to my fae family and the only leverage I might have with them. Maybe.

  “As soon as this last rope is undone,” I say to him in a low voice, “I'm going to—”

  Clattering erupts in the shed. My head slams into the wall, bounces. My back hits the floor. The boy spills on top of me, the chair pinning us down. I try to push it off, but he rears back.

  “You shouldn't have!” he screams in my face. “They won't believe me!”

  The terror in his eyes, the anger directed at me, stops me from breathing. Half-formed thoughts ricochet around in my skull, nearly indistinguishable from the clattering.

  The shed bangs again. My face smacks into the wall, and the chair rams into my rib cage. Wincing, I grab the leg, but the shed is sent into another roll. I slam onto my back and the chair bashes me in the mouth.

  I scramble up, throwing off the chair, and feel around for the opening. It's to my left. I grasp the edge with one hand and yank it back, the rough side slicing into my palm. Blood dribbles to the metal below me as I peer out.

  Franjo, still wielding the scythe, stands a few feet away. With a swing of his weapon, the shed topples again. My hand is caught in the opening, the metal slicing deeper. My arm goes limp as I'm swung back and then forward.

  There's no way the scythe reached us. He's using magic.

  He had said he could use the shadows in the way the Order, the other dark fae, could not.

  “It didn't have to be like this,” Franjo says over the noise. “I left you in your life. Isn't that what you would have wanted?”

  I yank my hand free, ignoring the gash, and lower to peer out the opening.

  “That's what I wanted,” Franjo continues.

  I don't reply, though I'm not fooling anyone—especially him.

  “I wanted to be left alone, left to the world they gave me, but they stole it away.” His voice is so dark and drawn out, it's nearly one with the hiss of the shadows. “I did this for you!”

  The shed rocks hard, back and forth. I brace on hands and knees for the roll that never comes. The boy is huddled somewhere behind me, the chair in front
of him like a shield.

  Can I just tell Franjo I do want this? But that is lie, one I don't want to live out for the rest of my life. But since I actually don't want to be in the fae world, does this make him. . .right? Is he really the only one who makes sense in all of this?

  I shake my head. Remy didn't deserve this, or the woman and her daughter hiding in the forest. There were dark fae, but there were also the normal ones—no different than me. They didn't deserve to be caught in the changeling rampage. . .did they?

  “I understand your fight,” Franjo says, and the realization that he's addressing me alone makes my skin crawl.

  He did this for me.

  “I understand how it seems so wrong, but it is them, Ember, not us. We didn't ask to be the changelings. We didn't ask to be raised as human, then have it ripped away,” he says, and the depth of his voice is so remorseful, so agonizing, that I can only imagine they took away more than his human family. They took his life, his love. There's so much more than just his words.

  They had destroyed him.

  “Go back,” I try to say to him, but I can barely manage a whisper. I don't want to talk to him. I don't want to acknowledge that he has a solid argument.

  Cowering here with the shadows waiting to claim me, my body sore and bleeding, it would be so easy to believe him. I don't want to be on his side, but they are doing to me what they did to him. And I despise them more for it every moment.

  “I can undo it,” Franjo pleads, catching me off guard.

  He's begging me? For what?

  “I can fix the human world,” he says. “The snow, the ice—it's just magic. I can undo it, wipe it away.”

  Can you wipe the snow beast blood out of carpet, too? Fix the broken pipes and roofs? Bring back the people who inevitably died in the freak storm?

  “Then do it,” I whisper, and then repeat myself louder, so he can hear me.

  My heart seems to swell painfully as I wait for his response.

  “Will you go back?” he asks at last.

  Is that all I have to do? Just go home and not be a changeling? How can it be that easy?

  “You'll clean up the snow and ice?” I press, my arms and thighs shaking, but I'm afraid to move and startle him with the noise. “You'll make it like it was before?”

  “I promise,” he says, and again, his tone conveys his conviction. “Just don't come back here.”

  I pause. Is he giving me the choice to go home. . .as long as I leave the fae alone?

  “What happens to. . .this world?” I ask, voice trembling.

  “It's not your world, Ember, and it's not mine.”

  I need to see him face-to-face, make him understand that I'm on his side, but this isn't the way to win back our rights. He needs to see that I believe him, but he has to compromise, too.

  Taking a deep breath, I shove through the opening in the shed. I ignore the scrapes and gashes as I charge out before I can be stuck and at his mercy.

  My boots plant solidly on the ground, the shed right behind me, and Franjo with his robe and scythe in front of me.

  He is my reaper, and I have only one chance to convince him that I deserve to keep living.

  I measure my words before speaking: “I don't want to be a changeling. I don't want to be a part of this.”

  My words are a flame to his hardened wax expression.

  Fueled, I add, “I would love to go home to my family. My human family. My real family.”

  A single tear melts down one of his cheeks. The surface of his eyes flicker with memories that I cannot see, but I can feel.

  The scars on his arms are nothing compared to the wounds in his spirit, gaping and infected. But there's still a little light inside him. A place where the darkness has not yet consumed him.

  “Let me go home to them,” I whisper.

  His scythe lowers, gradually.

  “Don't take them away from me,” I beg softly. “Save me like you always tried to do.”

  He blinks, long and slow, and I can't tell if he's trying to kindle the fire or keep it subdued. I say nothing else, afraid to destroy the little progress I've made.

  At length, he opens his eyes, and there's a person behind all this. He takes several strides toward me, and I tense up, breath short. He doesn't swing his weapon, but stops just close enough to reach out and caress my cheek, his robe sleeve falling back.

  “The changelings are born to different blood, but united in our tragedy,” he says, and I try not to flinch under his touch. “I didn't want you to experience it.”

  My gaze lands on where the robe sleeve has revealed his arm. The slashes are because of me. His misguided attempt to protect me from the fate of the changeling.

  But what about the slashes on the boy in the shed?

  “Promise you will stay away from here?” he insists. “Promise, sister?”

  I can walk away now. There's nothing in this deal I don't want: my home back, and never to play my role as the next changeling. I have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Everything I had wanted from the first time I saw the fae.

  But there's Remy, and Dell and Oliver. And the woman about to give birth in the woods with only her young daughter to help.

  “And the shadows will go away?” I ease into the compromise.

  He goes rigid, but the light in his face is still there. Still shining through. It gives me hope.

  “Please let them go,” I whisper, bottom lip quivering. “The whole world does not deserve to suffer.”

  “They caved so easily,” he says. His scythe flicks behind us, and I pull my gaze away from the struggling light on his face to look past him.

  The dark fae come out of the distance, emerging from the distant mist. More than ten. More than a hundred. They stroll forward, at ease in their number and the assurance provided by the cursed shadows.

  “I didn't have to ask twice,” Franjo says, and when I turn back to him, he sneers. “Do you know how long it took before someone even tried for an elixir? They wanted no cure. They wanted the excuse to give into their inner beast, to destroy their own then carry it into new worlds.”

  “But some did look for the elixir,” I say politely.

  His eyes meet mine. “Not enough.”

  Indignation broils in my chest. He didn't see what Remy went through to find his brother; how he fought and resisted; how devastated he was when the elixir didn't work on the dark fae.

  Who is Franjo to sit in judgment of every single one of the fae, just because a few—or even most—of them had done wrong? How was it fair to let Remy and the others slip through the cracks, punished for things they had no control over?

  I open my mouth to tell him they will help us. Metal crunches behind me. Franjo's eyes snap past me as I spin around. The boy from the shed has sprung through the opening. He trips as he pulls his feet through and takes off in the opposite direction.

  Franjo yells, and I drop to the ground as the scythe wooshes over me. The blade catches into the side of the shed. I dart from under his arm.

  “You!” He yanks the scythe free, spinning around to face me. The light in his face has snuffed. “You left the portal open!”

  I stumble back a few steps, stuttering over his accusation. How did I leave the portal open? What does that even mean?

  “You activated your own curse?” His top lip pulls back into a beast-like snarl. “Lies! You planned to use the shadows for your own!”

  He trudges toward me, scythe raised. My gaze hops along the darkening ground, landing on the ax that had been propped against the shed before it was sent tumbling. I lunge for it, fumbling to pick it up.

  “Did you think you'd know how to use it? You dumb little changeling.” He storms toward me, closing the gap as I hold up the ax in some half-assed form of self-defense. “Only the witches can show us how to use our magic, how to channel the curse without letting it consume us.”

  “I didn't open. . .I didn't. . .Why would I. . .?” I can't formulate complete thoughts. My brai
n struggles to analyze his advance, to guess his next move to so I can block it, the whole while trying to figure out how to escape. I don't have the capacity for his added riddles.

  “Or did you just want the portal open, at any cost?” He swings the scythe just out of reach.

  I take a few more steps back, my ankle twisting slightly on a rock. He swings the scythe again.

  “I didn't open the portal!”

  He growls, pulling back his weapon.

  I can't keep retreating; it'll be right into the crowd of dark fae closing us in.

  How can he possibly think I opened the portal? Why does that not make any sense?

  “I'm a changeling!” I say on impulse. “If I wanted to open the portals, I could without the curse!”

  He halts, realization sinking into his expression, and I'm proud of myself for understanding at least one rule in this topsy-turvy world.

  “I only had to convince a witch,” I add. “And they'll do anything for the right price.”

  He lowers his scythe. “Why the Glenwood boy, then?”

  My small victory is smashed. What is he asking about Remy? Why don't I ever fully understand this damn place?

  My attention flicks past Franjo, into the direction the shed boy had run.

  Oh, crap. Franjo isn't talking about Remy. He's talking about his brother. The one who didn't return with the beacon—because he was locked in a shed.

  “I didn't—” I'm cut off as Franjo charges me.

  I take a step away, stumbling and falling. The small of my back hits the ground. The weight of the ax in my fingers smashes my hand into rocks. I try to lift it up to block the scythe coming down at me. The scythe blade plants in the ground next to me, Franjo standing over me with an unmistakable expression: he missed on purpose, and it won't happen again.

  He glares down at me. “How did the Glenwood boy make it over the wall?”

  “We paid for him,” a voice says.

  I glance up, tilting my head back as Mama approaches from the direction of the house. Papa is on her heels.

  “We waited so long for you to do your job,” she spits at Franjo. “You were supposed to bring our baby home, and you wouldn't. No matter how much we tried to. . .convince. . .you.”