Magic, Madness, and Mischief

by Kelly McCullough

  As soon as we had the thing far enough out of the way to slip through, we tied off the line. Then I took my flashlight and shined it down through the gap. I couldn’t see much—mostly a top view of the big model of downtown. From here it didn’t even look all that scary. Still, I was super reluctant to take the next step.

  “Maybe we’d better wait a few minutes to see if anything happens,” I said.

  Sparx snorted and Dave gave me a knowing look, but neither of them argued the point. Time passed. Nothing climbed up out of the hole and no one came down from the closet above to make us stop. Finally, I sighed and handed Dave the flashlight. Then I started lowering the knotted climbing rope into the darkness below. When it touched the model I stopped and waited a few more seconds, but nothing happened, so I finished letting it out.

  Once the rope was all paid out, I slid my feet over the edge of the well. “I guess it’s time. Sparx?”

  The hare climbed into my backpack, and I half zipped it before sliding it over my shoulders. I took the flashlight in my mouth so I’d have both hands free, pushed off from the edge, and started down. With the knots to keep my grip from slipping, the climb was easy enough. But then I was hanging in the air over the center of the model, and I suddenly felt that terrible sense of presence again, though it had not yet become aware of me.

  It hit me so hard I almost lost my grip on the rope, which would have been disastrous when I crashed down and broke either the model or me into a million pieces. Terror thrilled through me and I could feel my whole body beginning to shake. The flashlight fell from my mouth, landing with a hard crack on the model below and tumbling so that the room went almost completely dark again. I didn’t know how long I could hold on, and I was certain I couldn’t climb back up.

  If not for Sparx I’m not sure what would have happened next, but his voice spoke sharply from my bag. “Freeze, boy!”

  I felt weight depart my back and heard a gentle thump as he landed on the table below. The pressure of presence eased immediately. I could sense that it was still there, but now I felt as though there were a curtain between me and it—a velvet shield hiding me in a limited way, at least for a time. I almost climbed right back up then. I probably would have if Dave hadn’t been there to see my cowardice.

  Instead, I took several calming breaths. I could do this. I had to do this. The next bit was tricky, as I was going to have to put at least some of my weight on the model. That was scary too. What if I broke it?

  There’d be no hiding that we’d been there if that happened. Gently, I put a sneaker down on one of the streets to the east of the capitol—right in front of the Free School, in fact. Keeping most of my weight on the rope, I slowly tippy-toed my way to the edge of the model, dragging the rope into a seventy-or-so-degree tilt. Then I hooked an edge of the big table with my foot and pulled myself out over the floor. I even managed to do it without crushing anything on my way to the ground.

  “Your turn, Dave. I’ll hold the rope tight so you don’t have to do what I did.”

  A few minutes later and we were both safely on the floor while Sparx remained near the center of the table.

  “Is everything all right?” I asked.

  “I’ll survive, but I don’t dare move right now.” The hare’s voice sounded sharp and strained. “This thing is too strong.”

  “Is there anything we can do?” asked Dave.

  “I don’t know. It feels like a deep power—earth and shadow. Turning on the lights might help.”

  “Hang on while I go get the overheads,” I said. “It’ll take me a minute. The switch is at the top of the stairs and I can’t get at the flashlight without climbing back up onto the model.”

  “Which would be an extraordinarily bad idea,” said Sparx.

  Normally, I would have been delighted to be moving away from that sense of presence, but what little light came from where the flashlight had landed barely illuminated a bit of the table. And the darkness beyond its reach felt … well, full of potential. As though it were alive somehow, but lightly sleeping. The idea that it might suddenly wake up made my bones feel cold and hollow. I really didn’t want to have anything to do with it, but I had no choice. I took a deep breath before I started to edge away from the table.

  “Just a second.” Dave pulled out his cell phone. “Does this help?” The light seemed unusually dim and pale, barely enough to penetrate the heavy weight of blackness, but it was the loveliest light I’d ever seen.

  “You’re a lifesaver, Dave. Follow me.” With Dave’s cell to illuminate the way, we quickly made it to the stairs and up to the switch, flooding the basement with light. Seconds later, we had returned to the big table.

  Sparx was waiting for us on the edge of the table with my flashlight. “Much better, though I’ll have to stay close to keep it blocked. I don’t know what that thing is, but it doesn’t like the spots.” He looked up. “There is an element almost like the sun in those lamps.”

  “They look like greenhouse bulbs to me,” said Dave, squinting upward. “Full-spectrum and brighter than all get-out. My mom has seasonal affective disorder, and she uses them in the kitchen and living room to help her get through Minnesota winters.”

  I took the flashlight and turned it off. “Thanks, Sparx, I’d have been cooked without your help. What is that thing?” Though its power had faded considerably, I could still feel a dark and brooding something centered on the model of the capitol.

  The hare shook his head. “I don’t know, but I think we’d better find out before we do anything else. It doesn’t feel all that intelligent, and I’m blocking it for the moment, but there may be more to it if it’s really tied to the thing you felt in the tunnels. If it’s smart enough to recognize you and tell your stepfather, then we don’t dare stay here for long or let it get too close a look at you.”

  That thought had never occurred to me, and I swallowed hard as it sank in. Again, I wanted to bolt. “How likely is that?”

  “No way to know without knowing what it is. In any case, I’m trapped up here for the duration.” I looked at the model and shuddered. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was get closer to it, but I didn’t have a whole lot of choice.

  I was still trying to figure out how to go about that when Dave spoke from somewhere under the table. “Thought so.”

  “What?”

  “My dad’s a model-trains guy. He takes me to shows sometimes, and when they have big setups like this one, there are always trapdoors in the table to let you get at the middle bits without having to play Godzilla with the landscaping.” A moment later the capitol lawn flipped upward and Dave stood up in the gap facing the dome, leaning in close. “Looks to me like the front of this building opens up.”

  “Don’t touch it yet!” Sparx hopped over to join him. “Let me give you some cover.”

  “Is that safe?” I asked, worrying for my friend.

  “Much more so for him than for you,” replied Sparx. “If he’s got any magic of his own, it’s not yet bloomed. To creatures like me or the thing in the model, he’s … well, not invisible, but much harder to identify.”

  “If I’ve got magic?” Dave’s voice came out much more wistful than I’d have expected. “Is that possible?”

  Sparx nodded. “Oh yes. Even if you’re not born to it, there are many things that can awaken magic in your kind.”

  Sparx moved forward and touched the miniature building with both front paws, speaking swift and low in the language of fire—the sense of presence from within receded, though it simultaneously became more intense and angrier, as though it had suddenly registered our existence. I was reminded of my earlier feeling that the darkness might awaken around us, and spared a quick prayer to anyone who might be listening that the lights would stay ON.

  Sparx backed up, but only a few feet. “There, that should hold it for a bit.”

  Dave reached around the back of one of the pillars on the capitol portico. There was a click and the left wing of the building swu
ng aside. I had to bite my lip to keep from shrieking or swearing. Inside was a sort of manikin head wearing my mother’s face.

  “What the ever-loving…” Before I could finish, Dave swung the other side of the building open—the eastern side. Another manikin, this one with Oscar’s face. “I don’t understand.”

  Sparx held up a silencing paw. “Open the center.”

  The front of the miniature capitol folded down onto the steps. Inside was a slender silver crown with a single bright diamond like a high star at its peak and three smaller diamonds trailing away on each side. It sat upon a cushion of what looked like black velvet.

  “Is that…?” I asked.

  “The Corona Borealis,” breathed Sparx. Dave reached cautiously toward the Crown, only to have his hand slapped aside by the hare. “Don’t touch that!”

  He yanked his hand back. “Why not?”

  Sparx looked around. “That’s no cushion it’s resting on. Kalvan, give me a pencil.” I tossed one over and he took it between his front paws. “Watch.”

  Slowly and carefully he leaned forward until the tip of it touched the cushion under the Crown, then he leaped back, leaving the pencil behind. It didn’t fall. Instead, it hung there in the air as smokelike darkness rolled up from the “cushion,” quickly enveloping it completely like a pointing finger of purest night. Then the darkness rolled back, taking the pencil—if it still existed—into the thing pretending to be a cushion.

  “What is that thing?” I breathed.

  “It has many names, though most would mean little to you. Fear of the dark hours runs deep in your people, and it is not irrational, it is a memory in the blood and bone. A memory of the time before your kind befriended fire, when that and its many siblings hunted you and yours in the deep hours between sunset and sunrise. You may think of it as a simple fear of the absence of light, but it is not that. What you fear is that which holds the Crown. What you fear is the Dark.”

  12

  The Redcoats Are Coming

  I TOOK AN alarmed step back from the table as Sparx’s words sank in. “The Dark?”

  He nodded. “Or Nightmare, if you prefer another common name. In any case it is ancient and deadly, a powerful enemy to your kind and mine.”

  “But it’s so small…” Dave didn’t look half so scared as I felt—maybe because he couldn’t sense the weight of presence lurking there in the miniature of the capitol.

  “No.” The hare shook his head and his voice took on that formal tone I’d come to associate with things he had learned long ago. “It may appear that way, but only because most of it is elsewhere and what is here is hemmed in by light and what power of fire I have used in my warding. Had it wakened before you turned on the lights, or met you in its full strength, things would be very different.”

  “That’s the thing I felt under the capitol,” I said. “That’s where the main body is.”

  Sparx nodded. “Very likely. The Dark has made alliances with powers of earth going back to the beginning of days. The sun is the Dark’s greatest enemy. Any Nightmare that doesn’t wish to run continually before her in an endless circling of the earth has little choice but to lie hidden deep and quiet when day looks down upon the earth with her great golden eye.”

  “So, what do we do about it?” asked Dave. “Get a bigger flashlight?”

  The hare leaned back on his haunches and met Dave’s eye with a grim look. “That would have much the same effect as poking a bear with a sharp stick.”

  “Get a big enough stick and you’re talking about a spear.” Dave looked ready to take on the world, and I wanted to hug him for it. “If all those shows about ancient history are right, spears have taken care of an awful lot of bears.”

  Sparx gently shook his head. “Disregarding how very much television gets wrong about the history I remember living through, there isn’t a flashlight in all of creation that is big enough for that purpose. Not without considerable magical backing. No. And this is an especially bad time to try it. Today is October the twentieth. Tomorrow crowns the winter monarch, and the waxing power of the Corona Borealis will be very great for some days afterward—almost as strong as on the solstice.”

  Sparx pointed at the mask. “If your Oscar is a power of earth and the Winter King to come, as seems likely, this is not the moment to challenge him. We haven’t a hope of making any necessary preparations in the next few hours, even if we knew exactly what we needed to do to oppose him. No, for now, we close up the model, remove all trace of our presence, and pray to the powers that we have not been meaningfully identified, while we figure out what steps we can take in the future.”

  I didn’t much like the idea of walking away—not with that mask of my mom in there. And it was clear from Dave’s expression that he liked it even less than I did, but Sparx was the expert. Besides, I had felt the power of the thing under the capitol, and I didn’t think it was any old bear we’d be poking if we started something today. More like a dragon.

  With the exception of one nasty little dent in a building on the west side of the capitol mall where the flashlight had fallen, cleanup went quickly and easily. Even there, Dave was able to make some quick fixes with Oscar’s modeling supplies, which reminded me of how much time he’d spent with the people who built the sets for our school plays.

  Once we had that settled, I looked sadly up at the hatch in the ceiling. “It’s going to be even less fun climbing out than it was getting in.” I really didn’t want to spend any more time hanging over the model with the lights out.

  Dave gave me a funny look at that. “Why don’t we just go out through the door at the top of the stairs? I looked, and it’s one of those old-style latch bolts that lock when you slam the door.”

  I blinked at Dave for several long seconds. “Because I’m an idiot?”

  He chuckled, and the tension really broke for the first time since we’d gone through the trapdoor in the closet above. “Could be, my friend, could be.”

  * * *

  That night, after my mom had stopped by to give me a peck on the cheek and say good night, I crawled out of bed and turned my light back on. For the first time since I was really little, I was afraid to sleep in the dark. I also set my alarm extra early so Oscar wouldn’t find out. My dreams were full of flame and shadow—nightmares, if not Nightmares.

  Even with the early setting, I woke before the alarm. Looking around, I found Sparx perched atop the shelf by my bedroom door, watching both me and the door with an intensity I’d rarely seen from him. When he realized I was up, he looked a bit sheepish before he hopped down and hid himself in my backpack. I didn’t see Oscar at all that day—a business trip, according to my mom. One that would keep him away all weekend. I was simultaneously relieved and more scared than ever. When he came back he would be the Winter King.

  When night came again, I could feel it like a weight pressing against my window. I half expected to see the panes bulging and cracking. I turned on my light and didn’t sleep at all. Fortunately, it was Saturday and I was able to go to sleep once I’d opened my shades to the dawn light. I slept nearly all of Sunday as well, though my mom seemed too preoccupied to notice. She was always a little spacey, but this was something more, like she’d gone through some door deep in her head that led to a room in an entirely different world.

  Monday at school I was dead exhausted and cold to boot—fall had gone icy with a heavy frost Sunday night. If not for napping through my open period I don’t think I’d have made it through the day upright. I took another nap when I got home, and Mom checked me for a fever. Oscar got in late, and I stayed out of his way even though he was obviously in one of his rare good moods—the kind that sometimes resulted in elaborate gifts for no apparent reason. Like the brand-new laptop he’d brought home for me the previous fall, or the game console he’d bought for me last Christmas.

  A few days later we lowered Dave into the basement again—headfirst this time, with Sparx in one of those baby packs upside down on his chest�
��while I shined the most powerful flashlight we’d been able to buy down from above. He only went far enough to reach the doors on the capitol model, where he went straight to the center this time. That was all we needed to know about. The mask of Oscar’s face had been moved into the central spot, and the Crown, black and tarnished now, rested on its brow while Darkness peered out of the empty eye sockets.

  Oscar was the Winter King. Which meant that the terrible things Sparx had feared were happening with the succession of the Corona Borealis—whatever those might be—were happening in the heart of my family. I didn’t sleep again that night.

  * * *

  “Hey, Kalvan, wake up.” My mother’s voice was gentle and a little worried.

  “Huh.” I rubbed my eyes and sat up in my bed. “Is it time to go to school?”

  She touched my nose with a finger. “No, silly, it’s almost time for Sunday dinner. And you need to change out of those wrinkled clothes and get a shower in beforehand.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry. I was only going to take a nap, and I must have gone down harder than I planned. I’d better get to that.”

  But my mother, who was sitting on the edge of my bed, didn’t get out of the way. “Not quite yet. First I want to know if you’re all right.”

  That brought me wide-awake—there was a lot of dangerous ground in that question, especially now, with Oscar being the Winter King. “Sure, of course, why do you ask?”

  “Because you’ve been sleeping with your light on every night … when you’ve been sleeping at all. Also, tomorrow is All Hallows’”—that’s what my grandmother had always called Halloween, and my mom followed her tradition—“and you haven’t spoken a word about costumes or trick-or-treating.”

  “I’m thirteen, Mom! Don’t you think I’m getting a little old for that stuff?”

  She looked terribly sad for a moment. “It’s hard to believe you’ve grown up so much so fast.” Then she sighed. “You might be getting past the door-to-door stuff, at that. But I don’t think you’ve lost your sweet tooth, and I’m sure there’ll be a ton of costumed stuff happening at school tomorrow. Are you sure you don’t want something special to wear for it?”