Magic, Madness, and Mischief

by Kelly McCullough

  “Because the Darkness lives under the capitol—the real Darkness and not just the shadow in the model.” Sparx winced. “That’s going to be rough.”

  I bit my lip. “Do you think we should bring Dave?”

  Sparx shook his head. “He’s not up to it yet. Today was the first day he’s been well enough to return to school, and it clearly took a lot out of him. You heard how tired he sounded on the phone when you checked in earlier.”

  “I promised not to cut him out of anything again.”

  “You can blame me.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t do that to him.”

  * * *

  Five minutes after we got into the capitol tunnels Dave was breathing hard and looking winded. He really hadn’t recovered yet, and I wanted to tell him to go back to school. But he kept his game face on and I knew he had my back, so I swallowed my worries for the moment.

  When we got to the little half-height door in the basement, it was closed and locked. Not good.

  “Sparx,” I whispered, “can you manage the door?”

  He slid through my backpack and the door itself, poking his head out a moment later. “Not without burning the lock away completely. That’s going to take some time and make a lot of smoke.”

  “That’s not good.” There weren’t any capitol guards around now, but smoke would set off alarms and bring them out of the woodwork mighty quick. “What do we do?”

  Dave grimaced and then sighed. “Let me take care of it.”

  “What? How?” I asked.

  “Provide a distraction. I’m no help on the magic side of things, especially when I’m not recovered. But I can open up a fire door and draw the more normal sorts of guardians away from this part of the building.”

  “What if you get caught?”

  He shrugged and looked grim. “That’s my problem, but I won’t get caught. Now, you find someplace close to hole up while I go buy you some freedom to work your magic.”

  Sparx started on the lock in the very same instant the alarm started ringing. I stayed in the niche I’d found in the shadow of some ductwork across the hall until the door, which now had a red-hot patch around the lock, suddenly popped open. Then I bolted across and yanked on the doorknob, burning my fingers a little in the process.

  A moment later, I closed the half-height door behind me as well as I could and then froze when I contemplated the path ahead. The three-foot-tall tunnel with its pipes and cables seemed to extend forever. It was infinitely harder to move onward knowing what waited for me than it had been back on that day in the fall when I’d known nothing about magic or what it could do. That had been an “adventure” for a boy with no concept of what the word meant, where this was the real thing, with a monster that had stalked my kind for millennia waiting for me somewhere up ahead.

  “It’s not going to get any easier if you think about it.” Sparx had taken up station beside me. “Quite the opposite, really.”

  “That’s very helpful.”

  “You’re welcome,” replied Sparx.

  “I was being sarcastic, Mr. Funny Bunny.”

  “I know, but you weren’t doing a very good job of it.”

  “You are the most aggravating familiar ever!” I threw my arms up and smacked the knuckles of my right hand on a pipe. “OW! I’m … You … Argh!”

  Sparx quickly hopped out of reach. “That was smart.”

  Anger made me scramble after him. He hopped a few feet farther down the hall and I immediately followed.

  He laughed and pointed and kept just out of reach. “So, are you finally mad enough to end your little woe-is-me party and get moving again? Or are you going to let the time Dave bought you go to waste?”

  “Yes! I … Wait, is that what that was all about? Getting me going?”

  “Of course.” He continued ahead and I followed along.

  “You’re a brat and I am totally going to get even with you for this.”

  “You’ll try.”

  As we got closer to the little ladder that led down into the older tunnel, I felt the fear returning. But I kept moving. Pausing beside the little door had been a mistake. There is an inertia to fear. If you stop, it’s hard to get started again. If you start running, it’s hard to stop. As long as I kept moving, that tendency worked for me. Just keep moving.

  If the Darkness had any awareness of our presence yet, I couldn’t feel it. Which was all to the good. I don’t know if I could have advanced in the face of the implacable hatred I’d found here the last time. Not knowing what I did now. Perhaps it was asleep here at the brightest part of the day. That was why Sparx and Dave and I had chosen noon for this foray. The hope that even there, in the deep places of the earth, the monster that lay below could feel the weight of light pressing down from the sun in the sky above; that it would somehow weaken the thing.

  All too soon, we arrived at the short descent to the lower tunnel. My brain wanted to pause and think things over. Or, better yet, to turn and run for it, but my body kept right on doing the last thing I’d told it to do, and I climbed down to the lower level, where the walls changed from concrete to limestone block and the air took on a dank weight.

  Fifty feet more passed in a dream, and then I stood above the big round hatch in the floor that led down into darkness. Or, more terrifyingly, into Darkness. With one hand I pulled out my little flashlight and flicked it on while I used the other to brace myself as I began my descent. As my head passed through the hatch, Sparx hopped onto my shoulder.

  Simultaneously with his weight I felt another. A weight of presence, as the Darkness finally noticed me. Only it didn’t push down. It pushed in. I felt it like deep water, a pressure that pressed on me from every side. I was four again, back at the lake and losing my footing as I plunged into the drop-off. But this time there would be no rescue. My grandmother was long dead and my mother … well, just as she had on that day at the lake, my mother remained on the shore, lost and unable to help me.

  I opened my mouth to scream and the Darkness rushed in with my breath, a cold, aching poison, bitter and black, that invaded my lungs and ran from there into my veins. I almost lost the battle then, before it had truly begun, without even realizing the danger. I almost reached for my throat there on the ladder, almost let go of the rungs, almost fell. Almost.

  What saved me? The same memory that nearly drowned me. The memory of my mother standing on the shore, lost and weeping. My mother unable to save me on that fateful day. Unable to even save herself. If I drowned, who would save her? It was a quiet little question there in the dark. A tiny thing for a drowning boy to cling to, but sometimes a tiny thing is all you need. A tiny thing that moves the focus from the problem to the solution. From mindless reaction to active thought. Who would save her from Oscar?

  It had to be me. I squeezed the rungs tightly in my hands and forced the Darkness up and out of my lungs, making myself exhale through sheer force of will. Then, in again, breathing the Darkness in with the air that I had to have to keep from drowning. Out again. And in. I did not master the Darkness, did not tame it to my will, didn’t even beat it. But I didn’t let it beat me, either. And so I passed the first test: learning that I could survive the Darkness within, if only for a time.

  I opened my eyes, only then realizing that I had closed them against that first icy wave of the Darkness. The pale glow from my little flashlight painted the shadow of the bars across the limestone blocks of the wall behind. I willed my right hand to let go of the rung, to move down and take the next one. Willed my left to follow. My feet to descend. On the wall the shadows moved, and I knew that my body was obeying me despite the press of the Darkness.

  Time slipped past, one rung at a time. Eventually, I became used to the weight pressing on me and began to have thoughts of other things. How long had I been climbing down? It seemed like years, a feeling reinforced by the ache in my hands and arms, the numbing of my toes. Had I passed a hundred rungs? A thousand? Should I count? How far did I have to go? />
  They always say don’t look down. Never look down. I looked down. And … it made no difference at all. My flashlight should have illuminated the ladder for at least a couple of yards below me. I couldn’t even see my knees. The rusty steel ladder might have extended another twenty feet or two hundred or two thousand. There was no way to know until I reached the bottom. If I reached the bottom. If there was a bottom …

  Slowly, my light began to dim. So slowly that I barely recognized it in the fading of the shadows on the wall, the blurring of those lesser darknesses into the greater Darkness all around me.

  “Sparx, do you see that?”

  “What?”

  “The light’s going out. Is the battery dying? Have we been climbing down that long?” It sure felt like it.

  “The light isn’t going out,” said the hare. “The Darkness is deepening. Night has compressed itself into the blackness of the abyss and it is crushing the light, like the ocean crushing a swimmer who dives too deep.”

  The imagery made me shudder. “Oh. Thanks. Also, soooo not helping.”

  “You asked.”

  “My bad. Is it going to crush us, too? If we go deep enough?” I’d had a slowly growing sense that the pressure of the dark was increasing, but I’d figured it was just my imagination. Now …

  “Not if we don’t let it.”

  “Good. Good. Glad to hear it. Any idea how to do that?”

  “Not a clue.” Sparx sounded worried. “That’s on you, I’m afraid. It’s why the Accursed Master makes the big bucks and familiars always end up way down toward the bottom of the movie credits, along with special effects and incidental music.”

  “Right. Good to know.” The light blinked out as I moved down a few more rungs, and I winced. “Was that bad? Because that feels bad.”

  “It’s definitely bad.”

  I realized then that I couldn’t see the dim fiery glow I’d come to associate with Sparx, either. “How about you? Can you light things up a bit? I can’t even see if you’re still on fire.”

  “I’m burning as bright as I can.”

  “I was afraid of that.” I had a really horrible idea then. “We’ve been climbing down forever. I counted rungs for a while and hit a hundred and fifty before I gave up. That’s way more than there should be. I think the Darkness is playing games with space and time.”

  “That’s certainly possible. Why? Do you have an idea?”

  I nodded. “A really stupid one.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I think I’d rather show you. Hang on tight.”

  “What!?! Wait!”

  I let go, turning as I did, so that instead of climbing down I was now diving down into the Darkness. In that moment I passed the second test: accepting that the rules of the Darkness are not the same as the rules that prevail under the light of sun and stars. Just as letting go earlier would have left me broken and bleeding at the bottom of the ladder, now letting go freed me to push down into the heart of the Darkness.

  It was like swimming through syrup, thick and slow and heavy. As I moved deeper and deeper into the Darkness, it pressed in on me, a great weight growing ever greater, until it crushed me utterly … or tried to, at least. There came a moment as I pushed downward where I felt the pressure grow so great that I knew I could not hope to survive it a moment longer in my present shape.

  And that was the third test, if only I could find the answer to it …

  19

  A Midwinter Night’s Hare

  I REFUSED TO be crushed by the Darkness.

  When Oscar had trapped me, he’d spoken of a hard core to my soul, a place that resisted all the weight of stone magic that he could bring to bear. In that moment, when the Darkness would have smashed me flat, I found the place in myself that Oscar had described. It was a hard, proud, stubborn place, the part of me that couldn’t give up.

  It was what made me climb onto the stage when I was terrified of an audience, what made me look out for my mother when she was the one who was supposed to be looking out for me, what had brought me here and now to face the Darkness without any true idea of how to defeat it. What my mother had called my true heart.

  I shifted then, shaping myself to that core of unbreakable will, conforming my outer self to fit the inner. Before I tried it, I would have told you it was impossible, but I was born with a heart of fire, and fire is the ever-changing element, flickering and fleeting in a constantly moving dance of form and light. In that moment, changing my shape was the most natural thing in the world.

  Almost as natural was catching the dim and fading spark of flame that rode my soul like a hawk on the falconer’s glove and pulling it into a shape that complemented my own. For the k*tsathsha was another form of fire, and fires merge and split almost as easily as water.

  Thanks … Sparx’s voice spoke directly … into my soul? No. In that time and place, there was no easy way to say where one soul ended and the other began. Say rather that he spoke from within my soul and you would have something more like the truth.

  You’re welcome.

  Hang on, I wasn’t done. Sparx’s soul voice sounded shaky. I wanted to say thanks … but please don’t ever do that again. It’s not at all comfortable being you. That is what we’re doing right now, isn’t it? Being you, I mean. Both of us. Together. In this. I got the impression of wildly waving paws. Whatever this is. Also, can we stop soon? Us being you, that is.

  I don’t know. We’re not moving anymore, but it’s still dark out there and I feel like there’s something else we need to do. Some final test we have to pass.

  Any idea what that could be?

  I don’t know. We’ve reached the heart of the Darkness and survived. I don’t …

  Then I did. It’s not something I could ever have seen on my own, not without Sparx in my head—a much older soul sharing the same space, frightened, but also full of insight and a loving wisdom he masked with sarcasm and cynicism. I get it! I’m not afraid of the Darkness anymore. And I never would be again, because now I knew how to defeat it.

  Shine!

  I opened my heart then, not to fire but to light. The simple light of the soul. No matter how scarred, no matter how tattered and torn, no matter our element, we are, all of us, creatures of spirit as well as flesh, as much beings of light as we are of blood and bone.

  That is why the Darkness hates us. That is why the Darkness fears us. That is why the Darkness will never defeat us.

  Because we all shine from within, and it is a light we can share if only we are willing to let down the walls that separate us, as the walls that had separated Sparx and I had fallen. If only we are willing.

  WE SHINE

  There was a horrible scream, more felt than heard, and the Darkness was gone. I felt a bright sense of triumph, but only for a moment, because I realized then another truth I could only have seen through Sparx’s eyes. No matter how bright the light, the Darkness can never be destroyed. It can only be driven away, and only for a time. Knowing what I did now, I could and would fight it for all the length of my days, but eventually my light would go out and then the Darkness would return.

  It took me several long minutes to realize that things had changed around me as much they had changed within me. I was lying on my back on a cold concrete floor, and my whole body felt stiff and old and wrung out. The flashlight hanging from my wrist was pointed the wrong way for me to see much of anything beyond the suggestion of a curved metal ceiling. At least not without moving, and I really didn’t want to move. I wanted nothing more than to close my eyes and take a little nap.

  “Don’t EVER do that again,” said Sparx.

  “Huh?”

  I rolled my head to the side and saw Sparx flat on his back with all four legs pointing straight into the air, each tipped with a yellow flame. He looked like the world’s weirdest festive Easter candle.

  “You heard me, O Accursed Master.” For the first time since he’d started calling me that, the Accursed bit had some real
venom. That stung.

  “I should have left you to drown in the Dark?” I grumbled back.

  “Well, no, but…” He ran down. “All right, no buts. I just…” He shivered all over. “Let’s say it’s not my idea of a great way to spend a Wednesday afternoon, and never speak of it again. Deal?”

  “It’s not exactly an experience I’m dying to re-create myself. Deal. So, now what?”

  He sighed. “Now we get up and find what we came here to get.”

  “No nap?”

  “No nap.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Starting to sound whiny there, thumb-monkey.”

  “So, definitely no nap.” It took me three tries, but eventually I managed to roll over onto my stomach. “Ugh.” From there to my feet didn’t go at all well, but it did go. Eventually. With a lot of effort. “I think next time I’ll let the Darkness win and destroy me. It’d be a lot less work. Probably less painful, too. Ow. Ow, ow, ow.”

  “Big baby. You don’t see me whimpering about getting back up on my feet.”

  “Hey, I’ve got a lot more up to get than you do, Mr. Knee-High.”

  “Fine.” Sparx clapped his paws in slow applause. “How’s that? Or do you want a medal for standing up, too?”

  “A medal would be perfect. Why don’t you get on that?”

  “Your wish is my command.” The hare gave a sharp salute. “I’ll take care of that the Tuesday after never. Is that good for you, O Accursed Master?” And that sounded much more like the old Sparx.

  “Perfect.” I flicked my little flashlight around.

  The beam revealed an enormous barrel-vaulted space with a corrugated-steel ceiling like an airplane hangar. The curved surface was a uniform glossy gray about three shades lighter than the concrete floor. Something at about head height caught my eye. Something red. I directed the beam that way, catching a sign stenciled on the metal wall.

  CIVIL DEFENSE SHELTER

  “Bomb shelter,” said Sparx.

  “Uh-huh.” I aimed my light along the base of the wall and picked out hundreds of waxed cardboard boxes labeled CIVIL DEFENSE SUPPLIES. “Do you suppose the case with my great-grandfather’s Vulcan uniform is hiding in one of those?”