“What’s that?” asked Danny, thinking it would be just another possible hazard in the ether.
“One can always see the fire ahead. But often it’s easy to be blind to what’s behind you. Sometimes you don’t see it until the flames are licking at your ears. So beware, sir. When you are dazzled by what’s before you, don’t forget to look around.”
* * *
Cath had fallen asleep on the tufted grass by the time Danny got back, her arms around Kalia, Barshin tucked against her legs. Danny was jealous of the way she could sleep anywhere, not noticing that the ground was hard or the night cold. Maybe she didn’t have so much to worry about, he thought. It must be kind of nice to know that you could go wandering off whenever you liked and no one at home would care.
What if Tom was miles away already? If someone saw Danny and Cath and called the police, and they were sent home, no one would believe how important it was for him to find those boots. No one knew what Sammael was planning to do, or how terrible it would be for Tom and for everyone else.
Again it was all up to Danny. He was so tired of hiding in hedges and not eating enough, and of the dirty world of mud and fields and rain. He was tired, even, of the sea—it felt like the end of a day on the beach when all the fun was over and the sun had gone, and the gathering clouds made you suddenly realize you’d stayed too long.
One more thing, he thought. I will find Tom. And then I’ll get back into the ether and take the boots, and it’ll all be over. As long as I get the boots, everyone will be safe.
He lay down beside Cath for a moment and looked up at the stars. There were more than he’d have guessed, out here in the countryside. Thousands of them. Were they in front of the ether or behind it? Danny didn’t know. Was the ether even a real place? Was Sammael even a real creature? Or was he, Danny O’Neill, actually crazy and inventing everything?
Cath was with him, so he didn’t feel alone, at least. But he didn’t understand how she could think so differently from him, and always seem so certain of herself.
Five minutes’ rest, he thought. And then we’d better go and find Tom. He looked across at Cath, asleep in the faint moonlight. Was she even real?
There wasn’t a way to answer that. One day all this would stop and it wouldn’t matter anymore.
As long as there was still a world left to live in.
* * *
Seagulls were wheeling and cawing in the sky when Danny woke up. An early mist lay heavily on the stone-gray sea. He shivered and scrambled to his feet in alarm. A whole night, gone! Perhaps it had already happened … Perhaps Tom was already dead, Chromos already open …
No, it couldn’t have happened yet. The sky was still a dirty white and the air was thin. No mad screams carried over the breeze toward them, and the only colors to be seen were the tiny pinpricks of flowers in the tufted fringes of the beach.
He shook Cath to wake her up, but she was hardly asleep. Her face looked even grubbier in the clear air, and her hair was a wild bush.
“Food,” she said, sitting up and hooking her wrist under Kalia’s armpits. “We’ve got to get something to eat.”
“We’ve got to find Tom,” Danny said.
“Eat first!”
Danny shook his head. “There’s no time. We’ve got to find Tom.”
Cath clenched her jaw, gripping the gray dog tightly. “I ain’t going hungry,” she said.
Danny felt her watching him as he took the stick from his pocket and fixed his eyes on the coarse grass around his legs. He spoke inside his head so that nobody but he and the grass would hear it.
“Grass,” he said. “Please listen to me.”
The grass bristled, chattered, and then the single voice of the chosen speaker emerged.
“Danny O’Neill,” it said. “What is it you want from us?”
Danny didn’t bother to ask how this grass knew who he was. The grasses had undoubtedly been watching his every step for days.
“I need to know where my cousin is. If I tell you what he looks like, can you track him down for me?”
The grass paused and muttered to its neighbors. There was a dubious tone to the muttering.
“We know he is involved with Sammael,” the grass came back with eventually. “We don’t want Sammael to blame us for assisting you.”
Danny looked over at the edge of the sea. It was calmer this morning, white foam lapping softly at the stony beach.
“Do you know about Chromos?” he asked.
An excited shudder ran through the tough grasses, as though they’d been struck by a tiny typhoon.
“The land of colors! The land of endlessness! Of course we know of Chromos. They say Chromos is a wide green plain, full of grass. Have you been there?”
Danny felt his face redden at the lie he was about to tell. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve been there. All the grass dies and dries up, and lies around all twisted and brown, all over the floor. Chromos is full of the screams of dying grass. It’s awful.”
The grasses let out a thousand small gasps of agony.
“It can’t be true!”
“It’s true. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. And Sammael wants to tear open Chromos and let it pour all over the earth. He’s found out how to do it—he’s going to use my cousin. So if you can find out where Tom is, I can stop it from happening.” Danny crossed his fingers inside his pocket, hating the lie. If the grass found out and got angry with him …
There was more discussion among the grass. Some of the voices were scared, insistent on helping. Some were scornful, full of disbelief. But eventually the lead grass spoke again.
“We will send the messages. We will find out where he is.”
Danny, already trying to think up more stories he could tell to persuade them, swallowed in surprise. “Er … thanks. Great.”
But the grass hadn’t finished. “It does not matter if you are lying to us, Danny O’Neill. We are the grasses, and we cover everything in this world. The scars. The lies. The fires and the battles and the marks of destruction. We are the stability and the guardian of the earth, and whatever some of us might say, that is our first and foremost duty. Therefore, if there is a threat to the earth, we will help you counter it.”
Danny let go of the stick, afraid that the grass might hear some of his thoughts. He looked out to sea again, tasting the clean salt air, shivering as the breeze blew flecks of sea foam against his sweater and pushed damp spots into his skin. What if Tom was miles away? What if it was too far for Isbjin al-Orr and Teilin to carry them? Would he have to face going back into the sea again and trying to travel swiftly through Chromos?
He picked up the stick and waited. The message took several minutes, but it came quickly enough to be reassuring.
“Not far! Not far! Not even a day’s journey.”
Danny’s breath shot so fast from his lungs that it made his jaw hurt, and he realized that his teeth had been clenched tightly shut and all the blood had drained from his face.
* * *
“I cannot take you. We have strayed too far from our herd already. Many days’ journey and another many to return. I will have to fight every young stag in the neighborhood to regain my position. And I am graying and old, and I do not have the strength I once did. I cannot do it.”
Isbjin al-Orr looked down his fine nose at Danny. The wind tugged at the whiskers around his soft lips, and his eyes were half-closed against flying drops of sea spray.
“Please?” Danny tried again. But the stag dipped his muzzle in regret.
“I cannot. I have responsibilities. To Teilin. To my herd.”
The doe, standing as always with her head tucked against his flank, raised her face. She said something so quietly that neither Danny nor Isbjin al-Orr understood it.
The stag turned his head to her. “What? Speak up, sister. Your words are of no use while they stay in your mind.”
Teilin, her small hooves unsteady on the shingle, stepped forward a pace or two. She looked up to the gr
ass-covered land, following the line of rough fields toward the north. It was the way they had not yet traveled.
“We should take them,” she said.
Isbjin al-Orr flicked his antlers against the gusty wind. “No,” he said. “It is sufficient. We have done our duty and can return. You need not endure any more.”
But the doe kept her gaze on the north, and her eyes were steady. “Why return?” she said. “We know what is back there. Onward—it could be anything. Adventure at the least.”
“But … you didn’t want to leave,” said Isbjin al-Orr. “I only demanded it of you because I knew you were the strongest of the does. You only left because I demanded it.”
“Ah yes,” said Teilin. “But then I did leave. And the world is so large.”
Isbjin al-Orr looked at her for a moment longer, then he too turned in the direction she was facing and sniffed at the wind.
“It seems we go,” he remarked. “I fear there is no turning back from here for any of us. Come, let’s run.”
Danny and Cath, eyes stinging from tiredness, found large stones to stand on and scrambled up onto the backs of the deer. Danny took Kalia from Cath, holding her close against his side. The dog seemed less substantial every time he lifted her, as though her wiry coat and fine body were slowly disintegrating back into the air.
The deer put their muzzles to the north, lifted their hooves, and plunged off the shingle beach, striking hard against the tufted grasses. Barshin kept a pace clear of them, skimming close to the ground and dodging the clods of stony mud that flew from the deer’s hoofmarks. So they ran, five earthly creatures clinging tightly together, never once looking back at the growling sea.
CHAPTER 24
BY THE LAKE
Mist curled up from the silver lake, reaching out to the mud-fringed shore. Sammael and Tom stood together, looking across the water. Both were very still, listening for something.
“Look!”
Cath kept her voice low as they crouched behind a heap of stones halfway down the valley side. They weren’t close enough to be heard—the figures of Sammael and Tom were still tiny and distant, but she didn’t want to scare Danny. He was already as pale as the morning clouds, his trembling arms clutched around Kalia’s scrawny body.
A giant, golden-brown eagle soared overhead, swooping down toward the lake. Sunlight flared up across the little valley, catching at the burnished golden feathers and the yellow-blond of Tom’s hair.
The bird came to a gentle landing on a mound of rocks and tucked in its wings.
“It’s massive!” Cath was struck, for a second, by the weightless grace of the eagle. The ground dwellers around her seemed coarse and heavy in comparison. Even Barshin, just a little.
Kalia whined, and as Cath tore her eyes from the bird, she saw the lurcher’s gray head snap backward and its lips draw back from its teeth. With one savage dart, the dog lunged up at Danny’s face.
Danny threw up his hands to protect himself and let go of Kalia. She scrabbled free soundlessly, and shot out onto the purple heather of the hillside, sprinting madly down toward the figures by the lake.
“You idiot!” Cath ground her fist into the dirt.
“I couldn’t help it…,” said Danny, his face almost broken by tears. “I just thought … it was what she’d do, wasn’t it? She was his dog. I knew she’d go, I just thought it—”
“No matter,” said Barshin. “She won’t last long out of your arms, remember. As long as she survives long enough for him to see her, I think it’ll be enough.”
* * *
Sammael shaded his eyes from the sun and looked up the far hillside, toward the sky.
A figure broke out from behind a clump of bushes and came sprinting toward him.
His heart spun itself into a whirling carousel.
It wasn’t possible.
He knew it wasn’t possible.
It was against every single law of nature.
And yet she ran and ran toward him, and he saw by the long, lollopy swing of her scrawny legs and the low lurch of her head that it was her. No other dog in the universe could look so similar.
His vision went black, then red, and he fought it as hard as he could, because there was still something in his head that told him this was a trick. But the spinning of his heart crushed the suspicion.
Kalia was running toward him, her face full of happiness. Her eyes were shining and her mouth was hanging open as she panted.
He almost reached out to her, except that had never been his way, so he kept his arms at his sides and waited for her to press herself against his boots, for the warmth of her body to curl itself around him. The redness of his vision faded and for a second he saw her in her exact colors—gray coat, black eyes, purple paws—only the paws were nearly gray again, so something must have healed her.
He struggled. Kalia’s paws had been purple for years. How could they be gray again? But she had nearly reached him and the longing to take hold of her was so powerful that he couldn’t organize his sharp thoughts.
A brilliant surge of hope exploded into his mind, blinding him to anything but the wonderful sight of his dog, racing toward him once more.
“Kalia?” he managed to say, but as soon as the word left his mouth the shape of Kalia, so merry and solid, began to dissolve.
His hand leapt out, trying to grab hold of her fur. A cloud of colors puffed at every point he touched. He pulled his hand back sharply, knowing the nature of these visions. She was disappearing into Chromos—a dream, nothing more.
But something had brought her out of Chromos. Did that mean there was enough of her left in there to be brought out somehow? Could he go in there and do it himself?
He forgot everything. He was no fool. But he was a creature, and every creature has a limit.
Sammael took three steps up into the air and vanished into Chromos.
* * *
“Quick!” said Barshin. “You won’t have long.”
Danny, Cath, and Barshin left the two deer lurking behind the bushes and ran down the hillside toward Tom, slipping and catching their legs in the tough stems of heather. The golden eagle started in alarm, but a sound from Tom quieted it, and it sat on its rock, staring with hostile eyes at the new arrivals.
“Tom!” said Danny, scrambling to a halt. “You’ve got to believe us! He’s going to kill you and use your sand to melt the floor of Chromos.”
“What?” Tom threw up his hands and tried to laugh. “Not this again! How’d you get here? Did you follow me all this way?”
“There’s no time to explain,” said Danny. “You’ve got to come with us and leave the book behind. Please!”
“No way!” said Tom. “I’ve only got one more page to go. And he’s starting to show me even better things—we came here through all these crazy secret tunnels left from the war. Miles of them! Nobody even knows they exist! No way am I stopping now. You’re just jealous.”
“Jealous?” Danny gaped. “Of what? You think I couldn’t have made a bargain with him a thousand times over if I’d wanted to?”
“Probably not,” said Tom. “There’s nothing you want, is there? You haven’t got the imagination to want anything worth having.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” shouted Danny. “It’s nothing to do with jealousy! He’s going to kill you, and use your sand—”
“Yeah, yeah, you already said that,” said Tom evenly. “Because my sand’s so special, isn’t it? So different from everyone else’s?”
“But it is! Because of the moon—you know, when those black dogs bit you, they changed you. Your sand is different. But I can’t explain it all now—we’ve got to get out of here!”
“It’s nonsense,” said Tom, staring at Barshin. “You’re making it up.”
A breeze picked up. Was it the stirrings of Chromos, about to belch out a furious Sammael?
The air began to shake.
“Quickly!” begged Danny. “Come on!”
Tom shook his head slowly.
The golden eagle spread its wings.
“We’ve got to go,” said Cath. “We don’t know what he’ll do. Use that stick. Call up something. Just get us out of here.”
Danny looked around the valley, his heart beginning to pound.
“Please, Tom,” he said again. “Please … we’ll take you into Chromos. When we’ve gotten away from Sammael, I’ll take you in. You’ll see it all, in there.”
Tom snorted. “Maybe I wasn’t giving you enough credit,” he said. “You do seem to have developed a bit of imagination. But I think it’s probably just lunacy.”
“Tell him to call the wind,” said Barshin to Cath. “Tell him to call it up and have it take us away.”
“Can’t we get Zadoc?” tried Cath.
But Barshin snapped, “Zadoc isn’t an omnibus. You won’t all fit on his back. Do as I say.”
“The wind!” Cath said. “Barshin says—”
Danny remembered, for one terrible second, what had happened to his parents, and then he forced himself to shut everything else out of his mind, and gripped the stick in his pocket.
“Wind!” he shouted, loud inside his head. “We’ve got to get away! Please take us!”
The golden eagle held out its wings and launched itself off the rock, soaring into the wide sky, feathers beating strongly against the air.
If only it was going to be that easy for us, thought Danny.
“Are you sure?” hissed the wind, whispering and scuttling into his ears. “Are you sure you want this?”
“Yes,” said Danny, holding every single muscle tight. “It’s the only way, isn’t it? Please don’t kill us.”
“Can’t be sure of that,” rattled the wind.
“Hey!”
Danny swung around at Tom’s shout to see Cath dodging away, holding something.
“Give that back, you little cow!”
It was the book. Danny’s heart soared. Good old Cath. While he’d been busy worrying, she’d crept up and stolen the book out of Tom’s pocket while he was watching the flight of the golden eagle.
“Brilliant!” he shouted across to Cath. “Don’t let him get it!”
The Color of Darkness Page 18