The Color of Darkness

by Ruth Hatfield

  “Oh, get over yourself,” said Sammael. “You and I want the same things, and we’ll get them very soon. Just don’t be a dimwit in the meantime.”

  Iaco arched her back and flexed her claws, growling at the insult. But Sammael reached out a hand and picked her up, and she felt again the powerful warmth of his skin. He set her to rest on his forearm, and gradually her back lost its tightness as she lay along the strong bones.

  “Those humans will get what’s coming to them, don’t you worry,” he said, raising his arm to his face so she could look into his hard black eyes. “When I get his sand, I’ll rip a hole in Chromos so big you’ll be able to push the moon herself through it. And those pure colors will pour down on every inch of earth, bringing every nightmare and terror screaming out from the darkest corners of people’s minds. All the stupid, ungrateful people, all the dull, unimaginative cowards, and the brainless, backward fools who won’t look at the world in case they see something that they don’t understand—none of them will survive.”

  A vision of her babies came into Iaco’s mind: the first one opening his eyes, beginning to struggle onto weak, shaking legs. His brothers and sisters following his lead, clawing out into the world beyond their fur-lined nest. How small they had been. How fragile.

  Iaco’s tiny heart sat as heavy as stone, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe.

  “I know something about death, too,” said Sammael in a tight voice. “The last human who stumbled on some minor unearthly powers was so afraid of the whole thing—so afraid to even look at me—that he murdered my innocent dog. I know what it’s like when the world takes and takes and takes from you, and gives nothing back.”

  Iaco closed her eyes. “Will it kill other creatures, too?”

  And Sammael nodded. “I should think so. But they’ve all had enough chances. And the brave ones might make it through, the creatures who aren’t afraid of the wilderness. Hardly any of them are humans, though. Humans are the most cowardly creatures of all.”

  “But … but what if the men and dogs who killed my babies survive? What if they’re brave, in some way, somehow…?” Iaco screwed her eyes tighter shut, trying to push away the thoughts of the heavy-booted feet, the pattering of the terriers’ paws, the sounds of danger stamping through the undergrowth.

  “Bah!” Sammael shook his arm, sending the stoat flying through the air and tumbling onto the ground. “People like that? Brave? Don’t be absurd! And don’t question me! There’s too much that a sniveling shrew like you could never understand.”

  “I’m not a shrew!” spat Iaco, recovering her feet and baring her teeth. “I’m a stoat!”

  “Hunger making you snippy, is it?” said Sammael, picking up a box and opening it. He set it down in front of the stoat. “Here. Dinner.”

  The box was full of a yellowish-gray fine sand. Iaco trembled at the smell. It had the cold scent of age and a mummified dryness that clung to her nostrils.

  “What’s the matter? Lost your appetite?” asked Sammael. “The souls of long-dead humans not tempting you today?”

  The stoat shuddered and gulped, trying to gouge pinholes in the floor with her claws. Sammael was a creature to be scared of—she knew that. The old legends were full of stories about him turning day into night and squashing mountains into the sea. He’d performed countless acts of strength and wild impossibility, and he’d behaved exactly as he liked since the dawn of time. She didn’t expect him to be nice to her. But his changes of mood were terrifying.

  It didn’t matter. As long as she stayed with him she’d be safe. He’d help her take her revenge. Nothing else was important anymore.

  Iaco watched as Sammael turned away and began to run his fingers along the stacks of boxes, pausing for a second on each one as if listening to its contents.

  “Nope … nope … nope…,” he muttered to himself. “None of you will do. But as soon as he’s finished the book, I’ll get his sand. And when I’ve got that—then you’ll see.”

  CHAPTER 12

  ESCAPE

  Cath sat in the corner next to the settee, hugging her knees to her chest. Her neck ached from where the sweater had dug into it, and her stomach was bruised. She concentrated on those two lines of pain, shutting out any memories of yesterday. Yesterday was worse than any pain: the single day in which she’d let herself think she might get away from Dad.

  Sadie stuck her head around the door frame and put her tongue out.

  “Yeah?” said Cath. “Come here and do that.”

  Sadie smirked. “You’re in so much trouble!” she said, retreating safely to the doorway of her bedroom. The words floated up the hallway and mooched around the living room, but Cath hardly heard them. She didn’t need Sadie to tell her anything.

  Macy came in wearing a leopard-print dressing gown. She sat down on the settee, rubbed makeup-crusted sleep from her eyes, lit a cigarette, and turned the TV up.

  “Yer Dad’s getting up,” she said over an audience-fake-booing noise. “And then he’ll sort you out. And you let the dogs crap in here again. I ought to rub your dirty little face in it, teach you some manners.”

  Cath swore at her.

  Macy took another puff of her cigarette and said, “I’ll tell that to yer dad, will I?”

  “Yeah,” Cath said. “Go on.”

  “You’re a waste of space,” said Macy. “No wonder yer own mum didn’t want you.”

  Cath tried to get up but Macy was on her feet, quick as a terrier.

  “Don’t you get any ideas, missy. You just sit there and keep yer mouth shut.”

  Cath sank back down to the floor. Where was Zadoc, who could lift her up and carry her high above the world? And where was Barshin, who’d put all those strange talking thoughts in her head, so that she’d seemed to be having a conversation with him? It couldn’t really have been true. She’d just been going crazy. People did go crazy and started seeing things, and talking to things that weren’t there. That must have been what had happened to her. But it was all over now.

  The bedroom door clicked and squeaked, and Dad’s footsteps thumped over the junk in the hallway. A tang of stale air floated into the living room.

  “Sadie!” yelled Macy, getting up. Sadie came slyly in, smirking at Cath. “Watch her. Yell if she moves.”

  There was something said in the kitchen. Macy’s sharp voice and Dad’s low, hard one, and then more footsteps.

  Sadie stepped backward, and Dad filled the doorway. He looked at Cath. There was nothing on his face, just the same blank look he’d give to a dog in the road.

  “I’ve got school,” said Cath, trying to make her shaking voice sound defiant. “I’ve gotta go.”

  “Oh yeah? So you can run away and get the pigs on me, is that right?” Dad said quietly. “We’ll see about that.”

  Cath looked down at her feet pressed against the floor. There was a hole in one of the toes of her socks. If she looked very hard at it, so hard that she could convince herself the sock hole was another way to Chromos, with Barshin and Zadoc waiting just on the other side of it—if she could imagine that, maybe she could forget about Dad.

  That spiky yellow plant with the coconut smell. She saw the bush as clearly as if it were growing from the living room carpet, yellow flowers holding tightly to the air. She breathed in and something pulled at the corner of her mouth.

  Dad grabbed the top of her arm and yanked her to her feet. Cath’s shoulder swung forward, arm twisted behind her. She bit her tongue.

  The yellow flowers. The thorns. If her fingers were thorns, poking out into Dad’s face …

  Dad lifted her up against the wall. And then there was a knocking sound and he dropped her, stomping out of the room. For a second she lay frozen on the carpet.

  In the hallway someone opened the front door and someone else spoke. A boy’s voice, light and nervous.

  Danny O’Neill? But he couldn’t be here. He didn’t know where she lived.

  The door slammed shut. Cath’s chest felt heav
y. What else had she expected? Danny O’Neill, rescuing her?

  Dad stomped off to the kitchen. Cath heard the mumbling of his voice but not the words. Maybe if he kept on talking for long enough, she could get out of the apartment.

  She inched toward the door. The dogs began to bark from the kitchen and rushed out into the hallway. Cath froze. But it wasn’t her they were heading for. They threw themselves against the front door, frantically slapping their great paws against the plastic.

  “I told you, she don’t live ’ere!” bellowed Dad, stomping through again. Cath tried to whip her head out of the way, but she wasn’t quick enough. Dad gave an outraged yell and thundered toward her, fist raised.

  A rattling sound came from the door. Dad stopped, turning his head.

  The door was hissing like a basket of angry snakes. Behind the noise of the dogs’ barks and scrabbles, the whole thing had begun to shake.

  Cath thought she heard a squeak, but maybe it was just another dog claw. No—there was another squeak, and another.

  A small black patch appeared at the bottom of the door, and a rat leapt through, hurling itself into the air above the dogs’ heads. As they threw up their jaws to snap at it, another rat ran in, and another, and another. The black patch grew and grew, and the whole bottom half of the door turned into a writhing sea of brown and black rats pouring into the apartment. They engulfed the dogs, the piles of junk, and the entire hallway in a dark, shimmering flood.

  “Cath!” Danny yelled into the apartment. “Cath! It’s me! Come on!”

  Cath ran out, grabbing at a coat from the hook by the doorway.

  “Oh no you don’t!” yelled Dad, straining to reach out and get hold of her.

  “Get the man!” shouted Danny to the rats.

  The rats swarmed in a bunch up Dad’s body and raced along his flailing arms. One perched on his head, two more hung on to the tops of his ears. One ran daringly down the bridge of his nose and leapt off. Soon they were all following, running along Dad’s nose and dive-bombing into the swarm of rats below.

  “Bye!” shouted Cath. She was already laughing as she shoved past Dad, dodged the howling dogs, yanked open what was left of the door, and threw herself out. Her feet, as precise as a pianist’s fingers, pounded down the stairs with such joy that Danny, scrambling and sliding, couldn’t keep up with her at all.

  She burst into the open air and slowed for a second or two so that Danny could catch up.

  “How did you find me?” she yelled, dancing backward.

  “Asked … at … school.” Danny panted, his thin legs flapping over the concrete.

  Cath grinned at him. Wobbly legs and all, he’d found her, and he’d gotten her free.

  “Rats!” she said, her eyes shining. “Ha-ha! Them dogs covered in rats. Dad covered in rats! Ha-ha-ha!”

  And she was sprinting off again, her coat swinging against her legs. She dodged along the side of the playground and hurdled over the bicycle barriers at the entrance to the footpath.

  “Wait!” Danny shouted. Cath swung back to see that he was having trouble running. His legs were swinging as if he’d drunk too much.

  Behind them, the apartment building doors swung open and Dad roared out, shaking rats off his arms. The rats flew through the air, squealing with joy, and ran straight back at his trouser legs. He had to slow down to shake them off, but he wasn’t stopping.

  Cath swore. “Barshin!” she yelled.

  And there he was, loping out from underneath a fence. He came a little slowly, but his eyes were chips of steel.

  “Barshin! We need Zadoc!” Cath shouted.

  The hare stopped at her feet. “Zadoc’s coming,” he said. “But we won’t all get on, you know. He can’t carry two humans.”

  “He’ll take us,” said Cath. “We’re not heavy.”

  “It isn’t the weight of your bodies,” said the hare. “It’s the weight of your minds.”

  And the air was dissolving around them, the world bending away. Zadoc’s hooves appeared, then his legs, and the tired old carpet of his hide.

  Danny O’Neill stared in horror.

  “Get him up there!” hissed Barshin. “He’s the one your father will catch first. I’ll come back for you.”

  “No way,” said Cath.

  “You can run. Hide where you did before. No man would harm his own daughter,” said Barshin.

  Wanna bet? thought Cath. But she grabbed Danny, shaking him roughly out of his stare.

  “Climb up!” She held out her hands, clasped together for Danny to step up on.

  “It’s made of dust…,” Danny mumbled, still half-frozen.

  “Nah, it’s just Zadoc. He’ll get us away.”

  “Where?”

  “To Chromos, of course!”

  And Dad was roaring closer, Irish dancing with the rats in his trousers. He’d be there in moments.

  Danny closed his eyes and reached out.

  A jet of pale light shot up his arm, as bright as a firework. Wisps of smoke leapt from Zadoc’s hide toward him, flaring into flames. Danny tried to reach out again, but instead leapt back and screamed, throwing up his arms to protect himself, and Zadoc reared up on protesting legs.

  “No!” Danny gasped. “No! Go away!”

  “Get on!” urged Cath, and Danny screamed again, fighting off something invisible to her eyes, something huge and leaping, that was going for his stomach, his legs, his face—

  “No!” he yelled. “No, Kalia, no!”

  “Don’t be daft, it’s only Chromos!” Cath pushed forward, scrambling up along the horse’s leg and onto his dusty back. Barshin took an almighty leap, bounced off Zadoc’s knee, and threw himself up in front of her. Cath held out a hand to Danny. “Come on, quick!”

  But Danny’s hands were up in front of his face, protecting his eyes, and then he lashed out at her, knocking her away. Did he think she was attacking him?

  “Time to go!” boomed Zadoc, his legs beginning to disappear.

  “Danny!” Cath tried one last time. “Come on, just get on!”

  Danny pushed out with his hands again, waving them wildly at the empty air.

  “Kalia!” he gasped. “The dog—”

  He took a shaking step backward, then another, and then turned on his heel and ran.

  Cath set her jaw and clutched Barshin to her chest. Fine, she said silently. I’ll go on my own, then. Coward. You don’t know what you’re missing.

  The world pitched into darkness, and they leapt into Chromos.

  CHAPTER 13

  A WARNING

  At first Zadoc galloped wildly, careering in a zigzag through alleyways and narrow streets, hurdling fences and gates and traffic barriers. Then the strange colors of the town grew dingy and dark, and the horse’s pounding hooves began to slow until he was moving hesitantly, stumbling a little. Cath looked down at his feet. A pale mist rose from the earth, growing thick so quickly that within seconds she could no longer see where he was treading.

  Before she could look forward again, a hand smacked the horse’s shoulder, nearly hitting Cath.

  She yanked her knee away. That hand …

  “Cath!”

  And that voice …

  “Catherine!”

  She didn’t dare turn her head. Her arm clenched Barshin’s squirming body, and her heels drove themselves into the horse’s flanks.

  “Go!” she yelled, sure that the horse would gather up his legs and spring forward, shake off the hand, and gallop away from the voice that was calling her name.

  But the horse slowed abruptly, threatening to stop.

  “Go!” she shouted again. “Just go!”

  “What is it?” Barshin squeaked, trying to struggle out of her arms.

  “It’s him!” Cath almost choked on the word. And still the horse didn’t move. The harder she kicked, the more his body turned solid against her.

  “Who?” gasped Barshin.

  The hand reached toward Cath’s knee. In a second he’d be touchin
g her. In two seconds, he’d have her leg between those fat-tentacle fingers.

  “Dad!”

  The word hurt her throat. She tried to say it again.

  “It’s D—”

  “He’s not here!” squealed Barshin. “He can’t be here! You’re imagining him!”

  The hand stopped just short and trembled.

  Was she? Was that even possible? No—it was Dad’s hand, rough and strong. It was definitely his.

  The hand moved another fraction.

  “No!” shrieked Barshin.

  And the fingers were around her left leg, clinging as tightly as cornrows of hair on to a scalp. Cath tried one last time to pull herself away, but it seemed as though the horse was almost helping Dad—his shoulder dropped, he leaned sideways, and Cath slid down his ribs. Her right heel came up to the horse’s knobbly spine and slipped over the top of his back so that both her legs were dangling on the same side. And Dad grabbed them both.

  She tried to see what she was sliding into, whether it was hard ground, or mud, or water. But there was nothing down there except darkness, a thousand colors blending into a starless night.

  Dad’s hands tugged at her. She tried to wriggle away, and he pulled her toward him, off the horse’s back, away from Barshin. Barshin—she couldn’t let go of him—he was her friend, her protector …

  Her guts exploded with a burst of slime that spattered wide across Zadoc’s flank. Looking down, expecting a ragged hole in her belly, she saw a shadow climbing up the front of her sweater, hot as lava. It was burning her away, eating into her skin, and she saw suddenly and certainly that she was dissolving into the darkness. Dad had got her, and she was disappearing.

  She had always wondered if he might actually kill her one day, and now he had.

  Pain tore at her shoulder and she flew upward, as smoothly as water. Her butt hit something, and her hands came to rest on a wiry scalp. The horse’s mane, right in front of her.

  The horse had picked her up in his teeth and thrown her up onto his back again.

  He had saved her life.

  The world stopped. Cath didn’t dare breathe. And then a furry body crawled into her arms and pushed itself against her chest, tiny heart fluttering as fast as the running paws of a mouse.