The Color of Darkness

by Ruth Hatfield

  “I know him,” she said. “What’s the message?”

  “His cousin is in danger,” said Barshin. “His cousin Tom is in great danger—there are hideous rumors flying around the world. And Danny O’Neill is the only one with the knowledge and power to intervene. Something has gone horribly wrong, and it is his duty to set it right.”

  “Jeez,” said Cath. “Don’t ask much, do you?”

  “It isn’t a question of asking much.” Barshin twitched. “It’s a question of what’s wrong, and what must be done in order to fix it. So, will you tell him my message?”

  “Sure,” said Cath. “Don’t mean he’ll listen, though.”

  “He’ll have to listen,” said Barshin. “He has no choice.”

  “Come to school, then,” said Cath. “That’s where he’ll be.”

  CHAPTER 5

  SAND

  “Sand. What harm can you do with sand? Throw it in someone’s eye? Scratch their eyeball? Sand’s harmless! And it isn’t even very much sand!”

  “Be quiet, stoat.”

  The tall, humanlike figure closed his fingers and opened them again to look at what he held. A few grains of brownish sand.

  The stoat peeped out from where she sat, tucked inside his shirt collar, and chattered angrily. “Rubbish! You’re telling me you can destroy the world with a few grains of sand? It’s rubbish! You’re useless! Powerless! I need someone who’s strong and vicious and mean and savage! They told me Sammael was the one to come to. And all you’ve got is sand!”

  Sammael’s fingers twitched. His arms were as thin as broomsticks inside his white shirtsleeves, and a low shine lit up his close-curled black hair, but no sun or moon hung in the sky. Here in Chromos, no lights followed him, only shifting clouds of darkness.

  “You misjudged me, stoat, if what you wanted was blood and fire. I’m the master of a better kind of revenge. Could you do this with a sword?”

  He opened his fingers and let the grains of sand trickle down onto the floor. They bounced for a second, and then a gray patch began to spread around the place where they lay.

  “It’s just another path,” muttered the stoat. “You’ve shown me them before. They don’t do anything bad.”

  Sammael stepped back to the edge of the patch, and then leaned forward to peer down it.

  “This one’s different,” he said.

  The stoat craned her neck. For a second all she saw was the real earth below, the world she’d come from and been normal in, until terrible things had happened.

  The wide, green earth, a field, a couple of humans walking through it.

  Humans. Hated humans.

  The stoat bared her teeth.

  And then a great puff of colors—scarlet, green, purple, yellow—rose up from the floor at Sammael’s feet, and rolled over, tumbling into the hole and streaming down through the sky toward the earth.

  The colors pounded down in a waterfall into the earth, and others swarmed to join them—blue, gray, orange, and pink—and the humans shrieked. They turned to each other, but neither seemed to notice the colors falling onto their heads. Instead, they stared madly into each other’s eyes, then began to dance, legs stamping and beating the heavy soil. Closer and closer they got, until their legs and arms became tangled together and they fell, shrieking and yelling.

  And then they began to fight. One tried to strangle the other. The second put up fists and feet, kicking and punching at his friend. They choked each other with mud. They hit each other with stones. They shouted and screamed and roared. They did not stop until one of them was dead and the other was lying beside him, bruised and exhausted.

  Still, neither noticed the colors that continued to fall from the sky and soak away into the earth.

  “The human mind turned inside out,” said Sammael. “Madness. Violence. Chaos. Was that the kind of revenge you were imagining?”

  “Hah!” screamed the stoat, her blood hot with excitement. “That’s better! But it’s only two of them. More must die! Do more! Do it to all of them, right now!”

  “Patience,” said Sammael, turning away from the hole. If only the earth didn’t absorb the colors of Chromos as fast as they fell. If only they would spread about its surface like a flood, then no more holes would be needed. But that wasn’t the way things worked. He needed more holes. A hole as big as the world itself.

  “More!” shrieked the stoat. “I want to see more!”

  Sammael’s fingers reached up to his collar. He closed them around the stoat and held her little brown body in front of his face, looking into the glinting black eyes.

  “I said, patience. I need exactly the right sand to make these kinds of holes. It doesn’t grow on beaches.”

  “Well, find more! Come on!”

  The long fingers clenched, and the stoat squirmed in a spasm of pain.

  “Softly, softly,” murmured Sammael. “I’ll be getting a whole lot of it, quite soon.” He contemplated the angry animal, and then his impassive face softened. “But maybe you’ve got a point. No harm in trying to hurry things along a bit, is there?”

  He put the stoat back inside his collar and began to walk through the floor of Chromos, down and down, as smoothly as if he were striding down the long slope of a hill toward the solid earth below.

  CHAPTER 6

  NATURE AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

  Tom was mending the fences around Hangman’s Wood. Sweat ran between his shoulder blades as he slammed the mallet down onto post after post. The rain had stopped for a moment, but a stifling thickness in the air spoke of a coming storm. Still, the sky was now pleasantly blue with white clouds scudding across it, and even if the fence line did stretch on ahead of him and there were a hundred more fence posts to beat into the ground, it was good to be working. And to have something to hit.

  Johnny—thud!—what a coward—thud!—running away and leaving him to it—thud!—those dogs leaping on the badger—thud! thud!—those men laughing—thud!—and he, Tom, had run away—thud! Running away—thud!—what kind of a thing was that to do?—thud! thud! thud!

  Sometimes, in the pauses between thuds of the mallet, he heard the rapid rattle of a woodpecker in the wood, and earlier there’d been a few soft hoots from an owl, unwilling to close its eyes against the morning. The skylark had grown used to the sharp bangs too, and was hovering high above him bellowing a crazy jumble of tumbling song. Crows and magpies were cawing irritably at one another as they prowled the corners of the empty field.

  He stopped hammering for a moment to let his arms and back recover a bit. As he leaned against one of the new fence posts, a woodpecker fluttered down from a tree at the edge of the wood. It began poking its beak into the ground to look for grubs, so silent and focused that he thought it must be alone until he heard a squeak behind it and saw another, younger woodpecker tumbling down the tree.

  “Mum!” the squeak clearly said. “Mum! Mum! Feed me!” The young woodpecker bounced up to its mother with its beak open. “Mum! Feed me! I’m hungry!”

  The mother woodpecker sighed and stuffed a few ants into its beak.

  “Mummy! I only like fat ants, and these are thin! Get me fat ants!”

  “Stick your beak in the ground, you useless bunch of fluff,” said the mother woodpecker tartly. “It’s not the science of flight, for tweeting out loud. Just stick your beak in and get the fat ants yourself.”

  Tom grinned to himself. Not every sound was a cry of pain, then. And his grin broadened as he thought about it: he, Tom Fletcher, could understand the woodpeckers, the owls, the badgers, the starlings, and the sparrows—every single thing they said. He had spent the past year learning the calls of hundreds of birds and animals. Last week, after days of struggle, he had come to understand the endless poetry of the skylarks, who sang for hours as they soared over the wide fields. Yesterday, he had pretty much got to grips with the crows.

  One day soon, he would understand every creature that shared his land, or flew in the skies above him.

  He was
thinking about this so strongly that he didn’t notice how the woodpeckers froze and shrank into the shade of the tree trunks when the man stepped out of Hangman’s Wood. All Tom noticed was that Sammael was back—Sammael, whom he’d met a year ago, and who’d given him the book of bird and animal calls that had led him to this happiness.

  His heart leapt with joy as he saw the tall figure in the white shirt.

  “Hello!” he called out. “You’ve found me again! Welcome to my farm!”

  Sammael came forward with an open, smiling face. He shook Tom’s hand in a vigorous way.

  “Hello! How’s it going? You still having fun with that book?”

  Tom grinned. “Never put it down. I’m almost at the end, would you believe it? A handful of pages left. How lucky you came up here today! What brings you?”

  “Ah.” Sammael cocked his head back toward the woods. “Please excuse my trespass. I’m looking for badger setts. I think there’s some baiters around—I found a new sett earthed up, down in that little copse on the other side of the valley. Thought I’d check up here.”

  Tom realized that his hand had clenched around Sammael’s and he pulled it away quickly.

  “They’ve been here,” he said, and the sunshine seemed to fade.

  “Already?”

  “Last night. I saw them. They killed a pregnant sow by the sett at the top of the wood. Evil men.”

  Sammael’s face, too, lost its cheerful air and became pinched.

  “Evil is one word for it. I could think of a few others.”

  “So could I,” said Tom. “But what’s the use? People like that—”

  “Oh, come now.” Sammael raised an eyebrow. “You can’t be thinking of letting them get away with it?”

  Tom reached out to the fence post, more just to touch something solid than because he really needed to lean on it.

  “No!” he said. “Of course not! I just … I don’t know what to do. I knew they were coming last night. My mate told me. I tried calling the police, but they wouldn’t do anything. So we went up there and waited. I even took my shotgun, but I couldn’t shoot at the fight in case I hit the badger, so I went for the guys but I missed, and then they turned one of the dogs on me. I had to run away. Stupid!”

  Tom bit back a pointless curse and made himself loosen his grip on the fence post, trying to remember the feeling of listening to the woodpeckers. But it was right to be angry about cruelty. Maybe if he did shoot one of the men next time, he’d get away with arguing it was in self-defense.

  As if he’d seen into Tom’s thoughts, Sammael gave a bitter laugh. “A shotgun? That’s a bit dramatic, isn’t it? There’s not much point in trying to fight angry men with dangerous dogs. You’re bound to end up getting hurt yourself. I think you need to be a bit more creative.”

  Tom eyed him, not liking the half smile on the older man’s face. Was he being patronized?

  “Oh yeah?” he said eventually. “How’s that?”

  “Well, isn’t there someone who could help you? If you could get a few people together, the baiters might not want to take you all on.”

  “There were two of us last night,” said Tom gloomily, thinking of Johnny White’s panicked flight. “The other guy was the one who told me about them. But he got scared and ran away as soon as they let the dogs go.”

  “What about your family? They own this farm, don’t they? That brother you were looking for when I met you last summer—surely he’d be brave enough to help you?”

  Tom snorted. “Danny? He’s not my brother, he’s my cousin, and he’s scared of the sound of a leaf falling! And he doesn’t care a fig about badgers. Maybe Mum might help, I don’t know … I think she’d just keep calling the police, though. And my sister, Sophie, is at university now. She used to like animals, but she’s not been near the woods since she discovered wedge heels.”

  Sammael’s lip curled in scorn. “And that’s it? No giant brass-knuckled dad or tattooed uncles?”

  Tom shook his head.

  “Well then, we’ll have to do it ourselves. What about your book?” Sammael indicated the thin paperback sticking out of Tom’s tool bag. “Knowledge is a powerful tool, you know. Couldn’t you start making use of your new knowledge?”

  Tom frowned. “Understanding bird and animal calls? How’s that going to help me stop dogs killing badgers? I can already understand the badgers, and it didn’t help last night.”

  “There’s got to be a way,” said Sammael, looking toward the edge of the woods and falling into a thoughtful silence. Tom waited, and then a streak of sunlight caught the pale green hazel leaves and they blazed up for a second, shining with hope.

  Sammael turned back to him. “I’ve got a sort of half-formed idea. But it would require some preparation. Maybe leave it with me, for now. Have you seen the kingfisher down at the Tybourne brook? I’ve just come up from there this morning—she was sitting on a willow branch over the stream when I left.”

  Tom took his hand off the fence post to reach over for the book. He smoothed his fingers over the cover and read the title for the thousandth time: Nature at Your Fingertips.

  “Kingfishers!” he said, flicking through the pages. “I haven’t seen one since early spring. The stream at the bottom here is too shallow once the weather improves, so they don’t come here later in the year. Where exactly was it?”

  He found the page of the book, stroked it, and listened to the kingfisher’s quiet calls. A vision of electric-blue plumage and a bright orange chest came strongly into his mind.

  “I’ll have to show you—it’s difficult to describe,” said Sammael, shrugging. “I’ll take you there one day, when you’re not so busy.”

  “Oh, this doesn’t need to be finished now—it’s more of a deterrent than anything else, and I know it won’t really work. I can leave it for a bit, easy. Why don’t we walk over to Tybourne now? It’s only a couple of miles.”

  Sammael looked doubtful. “If you’re sure…”

  “Yeah, of course. I learned the kingfishers’ calls when they were here before, but I’m not sure I really got all of them. I’ve been wanting to check for ages. Come on, let’s go!”

  Tom picked up his T-shirt, laid the mallet down, and shoved the book into his pocket. He didn’t bother getting his phone out to send a text to his mum. She wouldn’t worry—it wasn’t unusual for him to go wandering off. Sometimes you had to break free.

  * * *

  The kingfisher was still there. They watched as it swooped down over the brook and rose up to perch on the willow, waiting and then swooping again. The sun vanished, but even under the dull clouds the bird’s feathers shone sapphire-bright.

  “Easy does it,” it chirruped, settling back down onto its branch and staring into the water. And then, louder, in a single cry, “This branch is mine! Don’t even think about it!”

  Whatever bird it was calling to stayed hidden in the tangled copse behind the far bank of the stream, and Tom heard no answering challenge.

  “Did you understand it?” asked Sammael, leaning back against the smooth trunk of a wild cherry tree.

  “Every word,” said Tom. “They’re quite easy, those calls. Very clear. I don’t know why I thought I might not have got it right.”

  “Ah, it’s a good book, if I say so myself.” Sammael held out a hand, and Tom passed the small paperback over to him. Its brown cover was still clean, despite the thousands of times he’d thumbed through it.

  Sammael opened the book, stroked a few odd pages and listened to them, then passed it back to Tom.

  “The magic doesn’t fade, does it? How far have you got?”

  Tom smiled the forced little grin that he kept for occasions when he tried to ask himself how the book actually worked. The word magic was stupid. He couldn’t think of another explanation for it, though. Stroking a book, feeling the pages turn into a bird or animal, and hearing the sounds of that creature—it shouldn’t be possible. But that was what the book did, and he was happy with that unless
he started to think about it too much.

  He went for the more sensible question. “I’ve almost got to the end. There are so many groups of birds that share the same calls—it’s sort of like dialects of the same language, isn’t it? So it didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would. There are a few things left, though. Some animals, and golden eagles. They’ll be hard—I need to find a real one to listen to, if I can. Recordings don’t really work.”

  “Ah, yes, I remember finding that when I was writing it. No, there’s no real alternative to finding something out for yourself, is there? Well, that’ll be an adventure for you, at least. Look!”

  Sammael’s finger flicked out toward the far bank of the brook, and there was the kingfisher, returning to its perch with a silver fish crushed in its sharp beak. The bird threw back its head and snapped the fish down into its orange throat, then rustled out its wings in satisfaction as the sun broke through the clouds.

  “Brilliant!” whispered Tom. “She’s so beautiful!”

  Sammael dipped his head in acknowledgment, his eyes warm with delight. For a moment, both Tom and Sammael gazed across at the kingfisher, a glistening jewel against the dusty green willow leaves.

  “But there are still so many ugly things in this world,” said Sammael. “Badger baiters, for a start.”

  “Yeah.” Tom looked into the running brook. “Yeah, I haven’t forgotten.”

  The water bubbled darkly over the mud of the streambed. Tom noticed clumps of rotting grasses by his feet, teeming with squat black beetles, and the sun disappeared again. He shrugged and looked down the path toward home.

  “Well, I’d better get on with that fence while I can. I want to be up in the woods again tonight, in case they come back.” He put the book in his pocket.

  “I meant what I said,” said Sammael. “I think there’s another way we can go about it. Leave it with me. I’ll come and find you—tomorrow, say—and hopefully by then I’ll have a fully formed plan B we can try.”