The Book of Shadows
Page 19
“Not bad,” said the creature. “Not bad for a first attempt. Who knows what could have been?”
The air slipped around the trees, trailing cold behind it as the sun began to stir below the horizon. And Death came walking up the hillside.
“He’s mine,” said Sammael.
Death shook her head. “Look at his eyes.”
The boy’s eyes were a soft brown in his charred face. They held determination: a suggestion of the person he might have lived to become.
Sammael gave them a cursory look and nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “He walked into the storm, into his own death. He got away from me.”
There was no trace of anger in his voice. Death frowned.
“Just like that? You agree?”
Sammael put his head on one side, still contemplating the boy. “Plenty more fish in the sea,” he said. “I’ll take the ones who want to swim with me. The taro’s been taken back by the storm. He’s no threat to me anymore. You can put him where he wants to be.”
“He doesn’t want anything,” said Death. “He’s dead. Thanks to you.”
Sammael nodded. “He’d prefer being in the earth to being with me, though.”
“He’d prefer to be alive,” said Death, stooping to gather up the boy. “Shame you couldn’t have left him that as an option. But I’ll take care of him now.”
Sammael looked up at the last of his stars as the gathering day stole them from the sky. When he looked down again, Death’s back was turned, and she was beginning to walk away.
“Wait!” he called.
Death turned, sighing. “What now?”
Sammael pointed to the east, in the direction of the rising sun. From the edge of the trees, a stag stepped delicately into the half-light, his antlers silhouetted against the sky. As he approached, the hairs of his red-brown coat stood out auburn in the sun’s first rays, but there was silver around his muzzle and gray through his haunches.
“Do not come closer,” said Death. “The living should not approach me.”
“I am not here to approach you,” said the stag. “I am here to vouch for his courage.”
And from between the stag’s hooves a cat slipped into the daylight, sleepily blinking through gray tabby fur. She sat down, licked a paw, and yawned.
“I’m only a cat,” she said. “But I suppose if I’ve got to vouch for something, I’d say he is a friend of mine. I make no other particular claims.”
From behind the stag’s antlers, two birds flew out, although they should have been thousands of miles away, bathing in sunshine. The swallows fluffed up their feathers against the freezing dawn.
“We are freedom,” they said. “We are the freedom of the heart, to love what it pleases. We say that his heart loved us, and the world, just as it is.”
The small band of creatures rested together, looking at Death with hope in their eyes.
“It seems,” said Sammael, “that there are a few creatures who don’t want that boy to die.”
“Not many,” said Death. “There are always mourners at funerals. I can’t do anything more about it.”
“But I can,” said Sammael. “These creatures belong to me now. They gave themselves to me, and I’ll give all of them to you, in exchange for him.”
“What’s the use of that?” asked Death. “You won’t be able to bring him back to life either.”
Sammael held up the sailcloth book. “You did, once. With something very much like this. The covers have gone back to the storm, but the pages of a book contain its life, don’t they?”
And his face was neither smiling nor sad. It gave away none of his thoughts.
Death breathed in the sharp air of the new day, and it seemed to fill her tired old body with a flash of solidness.
“Take him,” she said. “I don’t want his friends, either. If you want to give their sand to anyone, give it to him. Give him dreams of cats and stags and swallows. I only want peace, and I wish the same for all the world’s creatures. He’s yours.”
“But only on loan,” said Sammael. “One day, when he needs to die, I’ll forsake him. I’ll give him to you.”
“And I’ll take him,” agreed Death. “Until then, he’s in your hands.”
“Oh, I’ll look after him,” said Sammael. And he tore up the sailcloth and the paper with all the scribbles on it, stuffed the bunch of scraps systematically down the throat of Danny O’Neill, and straightened up.
Nodding curtly to the stag, cat, and swallows, he slipped back between the trees just as the burning orange sun slipped above the far hills and sent out a ray of yellow light that fell over the blackened corpse.
Danny’s charred skin dissolved away back into smooth flesh as his friends stood over him and watched keenly for the moment he might begin to stir.
EPILOGUE
Danny chucked his bike down next to the others and made his way up the path between the trees. He heard them before he saw them: they must be in the clearing already.
Laughter. Scuffling. The ping of air-gun pellets hitting tin cans, and clattering, and more laughter.
He flopped down beside them, feeling the earth cold under his belly. Early spring still. It would soon warm up.
“Hey, Danny. Want a go?”
He took the air gun and aimed it at the rebuilt stack, careful to keep both eyes open, and sighted the lowest middle can. The pellet struck dead center, and the stack came crashing down.
He gave a lopsided grin and passed the pistol back. Of course he’d hit it. He never missed. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, after all those years of being useless at soccer, he’d discovered he had a better aim with air guns than any of the others.
Saturdays in the woods. He’d go home filthy, and his parents wouldn’t mind. Sometimes they caught themselves looking at each other, but what more was there to say? At least now when they caught each other looking, they smiled.
Two nights ago, there’d been a storm. Danny had woken in the middle of the night and wandered downstairs to have a look at it. He’d found his dad in the kitchen making cocoa. Still in his pajamas.
Danny raised an eyebrow. His dad took the cocoa upstairs. Back to bed.
The storm had broken the cold edge off the end of winter. Green shoots were beginning to break through the forest floor. Danny brushed his palm over a tiny frond as someone else lined up with the air gun. It was a girl with long, dark hair, messy in the wind.
Not Cath, though. He knew where Cath was now. He saw her everywhere—in the new shoots of spring, in the breaks of weather, in the stones and the streams and the starlight.
What had she written in the Book of Shadows? He knew that, too. She had left her secret inside the pages, and the pages were in his blood.
He stretched his arms wide across the earth, and for a second he felt it rounding up beneath him, as though the back of a giant animal lay under the soil.
Or as though the whole world were squashing itself into his arms.
He laid his cheek on it and listened to it breathing.
* * *
After a while, someone offered him the air gun again. He shook his head.
“I’m on my way home. Got to go to my cousin’s memorial service.”
“Your cousin died?”
Raised eyebrows. Awkward silence.
Danny smiled. “It was a while ago. Everyone’s happy to remember him. He was a great guy.”
Nods.
“See you Monday, then.”
“See you.”
He made his way back down the path, peering through the trees. As the sounds of human voices faded and the birdsong rose to claim the air, he heard a rustling to the left and slowed his steps.
The deer were there. Hinds, fawns, and at their head—
A stag with silver in his coat.
Danny watched for a moment. The stag raised his antlered head.
And watched him back.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my wonderful agent, Becky Bagnel
l; my editors, Jenny Jacoby and Kate Farrell; Sara O’Connor for making it all possible; all at Hot Key and Henry Holt who’ve seen these manuscripts through to publication; and the countless inspiring friends who’ve seen me through the whole Book of Storms trilogy. Special thanks this time to Nicolantonio Prentosito, who named Ori for me and who knows what the longer version of her name is. And lastly, so many thanks to L, L & S.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ruth Hatfield is a sometime archaeologist, sometime technician who lives in Cambridge, England. When she’s not writing or digging or making circuit boards, she spends her time belting around on a bike and roaming the countryside on her cantankerous horse. She is the author of The Book of Storms and The Color of Darkness. Visit him online at ruthhatfield.jimdo.com, or sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Prologue
1 Into the Sea
2 Ori
3 Holes
4 The Shadows
5 Gray
6 The Great Plain
7 A Bargain with Death
8 The House on the Beach
9 Inside
10 The Book of Shadows
11 The Elements
12 Four Friends
13 Four Stories
14 The First Shadow
15 Playing with Shadows
16 The Stoat
17 A Hole in the Sky
18 Home
19 The Battle
20 The Book of Sand
21 Tom
22 The Bargain
23 The Boots
24 The Guardians of Chromos
25 After the Storm
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Text copyright © 2016 by Ruth Hatfield
Illustrations copyright © 2017 by Greg Call
Henry Holt and Company, Publishers since 1866
Henry Holt® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
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All rights reserved.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Hatfield, Ruth, author.
Title: The Book of Shadows / Ruth Hatfield.
Description: First American edition. | New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2017. | Series: The Book of Storms trilogy; volume 3 | Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Hot Key Books. | Summary: When strange shadows appear over Danny’s town, draining pepole of all color and hope, Danny must overcome his fear, once again, to save the world from the monstrous Sammael.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016035855 (print) | LCCN 2017010654 (ebook) | ISBN 9781627790031 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781627790048 (ebook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | Shadows—Fiction. | Supernatural—Fiction. | Human-animal communication—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.H38 Bl 2017 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.H38 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016035855
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eISBN 9781627790048
Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Hot Key Books
First American hardcover edition 2017
eBook edition June 2017