Darwen Arkwright and the School of Shadows

by A. J. Hartley

  It was a mammoth, lying dead at the foot of the escarpment. Its thick white fur was blackened where it had been shot. There were oily tracks in the snow all around it: heavy boots and tank treads. It seemed that despite the mammoth riders’ insistence to the contrary, the scrobblers had entered this locus after all.

  “Oh no,” said Alex. “When they aren’t looking to kill you, they are really quite gorgeous animals, even if they do smell.”

  And so saying, she plucked from her pocket a tiny barrel-like container not much larger than an acorn. “Some of the zingers’ military-grade perfume,” she said by way of explanation. “Couldn’t let a scent like this go to waste. I had kind of planned to save it for my high school prom, if I ever have one, but I guess I’ll rely on my natural charm to knock the boys out.” She pressed the container against one of the dead mammoth’s glassy tusks till the barrel cracked open, and then she cast it over the shaggy corpse, allowing the aroma to spray everywhere. The air was suddenly full of fragrance so heady and exhilarating that Darwen felt a rush of warmth and happiness quite at odds with the situation.

  Alex anointed the elephantine head just above the two trunks, as if she was performing some ancient ritual. Then, frowning, she turned to face Darwen and Rich. “Okay,” she said. “We can go now, but if I ever find the scrobbler that did this or whichever of Greyling’s lackeys was holding its leash at the time, I won’t be held accountable. You got me?”

  Darwen nodded, but Rich was once more gazing across the open plain. “Guys,” he said. “We may have a problem.”

  Far across the snowfield but closing fast, churning up a cloud of white powder as they came, were four mammoths and their riders.

  “Given what they said last time,” said Darwen, “and the fact that we’re standing around one of their dead mammoths, I think we get out of here fast.”

  Rich and Alex didn’t even pause to comment. They just started running, trying as hard as they could to make it the few hundred yards to the portal without falling face first into the deep snow or skidding on the hard icy crust.

  The mammoths were considerably faster and more sure-footed, and only moments after they had started to run, Darwen saw the first jet of blue flame that had been shot after them. They didn’t have much time.

  Alex had a knack for finding the quickest route, and she was light and quick. Rich had sheer, blundering power. Darwen was the weak link, lagging behind the others, sweating despite the cold, and close to exhaustion.

  But the portal was only yards away now.

  He didn’t dare look back, but he could feel the earth shaking from the mammoths’ pounding footfalls. He weaved left and right as another jet of blue flame dissolved the snow into a flaming pool only a few feet in front of him, and then Rich was grabbing him, pulling him into the portal.

  The mammoth herders did not follow them through to the mansion gardens, but the three of them took a long moment before they relaxed. Their fear faded like the cold, and only when it had gone completely did they permit themselves a nervous smile.

  “Still alive,” said Alex. “That’s good.”

  “Always,” Darwen agreed.

  They located the working portal, stepped through it, and found themselves in the heart of the Great Apparatus. They were only yards from where they had been before they’d ventured on what now seemed like a wild-goose chase, and a dangerous one at that.

  “Sorry,” said Alex. “I’m gonna shut up while you find the right portal.”

  “The jungle thing wasn’t your fault, Alex,” said Darwen, scanning the numbers above the vast ring of doorways.

  “Kind of was,” said Rich.

  “It was worth a try,” said Darwen pointedly, “and she wasn’t to know the place was crawling with scrobblers or that we’d then go the wrong way out and wind up running from mammoth herders again.”

  “Thanks,” said Alex.

  “This one,” said Darwen, choosing the portal numbered 25. He pushed a button, threw a lever, and waited for the curtain of energy to shimmer into place. “Here goes,” he said, and stepped through.

  He had been here before. He recognized the antique railway station with its iron footbridge and pearly gas lamps. He recognized the empty ticket office and the silence where there should have been the bustle of people waiting for their connections. He recognized the night, and even the train itself, a black steam locomotive covered in pipes and pistons and funnels.

  Alex recognized it too and shivered. “I have nightmares about this train,” she said.

  “We aren’t going to Woodvine,” said Darwen, remembering the station where the Jenkins insects had attacked them. “We stay on till the end of the line.”

  “I’ll bet,” said Alex, gloomily. “The end of the line. That sounds about right.”

  “In our world,” said Rich thoughtfully.

  “It goes to a series of different Silbrican loci first,” said Darwen, “but then, yeah, it crosses over into our world at a place called . . .” He hesitated and pulled the ticket they had found on the dead scrobbler beside That Which Eats. “Blaenau Ffe . . . something . . . iniog,” he read.

  “Weird,” said Rich, following Darwen as he clambered into the nearest carriage and shut the door behind them.

  “There are only a couple of places where you can cross between worlds if you aren’t a mirroculist, apparently,” said Darwen, taking a seat. “Unless you have the kind of technology Greyling used at Halloween to open that portal at school that his scrobblers could come through. This is one of those spots where the barrier between realities is very thin.”

  “Where do we get our tickets?” asked Alex.

  “We don’t,” said Darwen. “It’s automated, remember?”

  “So why did the scrobbler have one?” asked Rich.

  “I guess it was coming in the other direction,” said Darwen.

  “You’re saying a scrobbler bought a ticket in our world that put him on a train to Silbrica?” said Alex. “Just, like, walked into a regular station in its goggles and grunted that it would like a return trip to another dimension?”

  “Maybe one of their human allies buys the tickets for them,” said Darwen with a shrug. “Something is going on in Wales. I don’t know what, but it’s important, and not just because that’s where Mr. Peregrine is being held. Blodwyn wanted to tell us about it, remember? It’s something bad, something I think we have to stop.”

  And with that ominous pronouncement the train began to move.

  “What are the chances that we’ll pick up a platoon of scrobblers at the next station?” asked Alex, but no one answered, and she let the question hang in the air.

  They listened to the rhythmic clickety-clack of the wheels on the line, gazing out into the dark and misty Silbrican landscape. There was very little to see, and much of the time their view was blocked entirely by trees or the masonry of an embankment. They passed through three stations, all basically the same as Woodvine, all deserted, and Darwen found his unease increasing. He didn’t know how he would recognize the point where they crossed into their own world, so he studied every signal box, every little bridge, every gantry that spanned the track, as if it might be a gateway out of Silbrica and into Wales.

  But when he saw the tunnel up ahead, he knew.

  “This is it,” he said, staring at the black mouth in the hillside into which they were chuffing at full speed.

  “How do you know?” asked Alex, regarding him carefully.

  Darwen just shrugged, and then the locomotive entered the tunnel and light flickered up and down the carriages. The train rattled over a dozen unseen points, as if joining another rail system entirely, and then they burst out into an entirely different place, where the sun was already up and there were streets full of cars and familiar little houses with gray roofs just beyond the railway line. They crossed a flat coastal estuary, then climbed into
forested hills and a little town nestling high above them, where the train pulled slowly into a simple station whose sign proclaimed it Blaenau Ffestiniog.

  Darwen checked the two fragments of the scrobbler ticket and nodded grimly. This was the place.

  “This is seriously strange,” said Alex, gazing out of the window.

  Next to them, waiting at the head of six old-fashioned carriages painted burgundy and cream, was a green-and-black steam locomotive with a funnel at each end and gleaming brass trim.

  “This is Wales, right?” she asked. “Not Silbrica? They use steam trains here?”

  “It’s like the area around Hillside,” said Darwen, though he wasn’t sure how he knew. “We’re in our world, but there has been a lot of movement from here to Silbrica over the years. There are echoes.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Rich, unlatching the carriage door and jumping down onto the platform.

  “I can just feel it,” said Darwen, shrugging.

  Alex raised an eyebrow. “Like you can sense where the portals are? Like you can open some of them now without their being online?” she probed.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Darwen replied. But his thoughts took a darker turn. Something is happening to me, he thought. Everyone knows. The gift is leaving me.

  He must have managed to conceal his fears from his face, however, because neither Rich nor Alex said anything to suggest that they recognized all was not well. If anything, they seemed only more determined to continue with their mission. Rich checked his watch. “We have maybe three hours,” he said as they boarded the train. “Four, tops. If they haven’t already noticed we’re missing back home, they will then.”

  The whistle blew and they watched the locomotive belch thick black smoke as it pulled out of the station. The sky was heavy with rain, gray as the slate cliffs that towered over the buildings of the town.

  “Now,” said Darwen, “we walk.”

  But where they were headed was far from clear. They left the station and traipsed along a narrow road through the town, which climbed still higher into the stern and rocky hills. They walked till they got away from the houses, and then Darwen found a gate in a dry stone wall and went through it. When they had followed him, he sat in the damp bracken against the wall where no passersby might see them. From his pocket he drew Mr. Peregrine’s tiny brass whistle, checked that no one was watching him, and raised it to his lips.

  He blew it but could hear nothing.

  “You really think there might be a flittercrake around here to summon?” said Alex. “And if there was, how would that help?”

  “Just a hunch,” muttered Darwen, putting the whistle back in his mouth.

  Darwen blew another soundless blast on the whistle, then stood, expectant, staring up into the misty sky. He stayed like that for a minute or more and was about to raise the whistle to his lips again when something came hurtling through the air, plummeting like a diving falcon, its leathery wings almost folded until they splayed parachute-like at the last moment. The birdlike thing thudded onto Darwen’s shoulder, clinging with its long claws. It was a flittercrake.

  Darwen considered the creature’s little bald head, its keen mannish eyes and cruel beak, and he felt sure his hunch was correct.

  It wasn’t a flittercrake. It was the flittercrake. The one he had first seen at the mall. The one that had led him to the old mirror shop. It fixed him with its beady eyes, its sidelong, knowing grin telling Darwen that he was right.

  That first day, the day that changed his life, Darwen had thought he had simply noticed the flittercrake by happenstance, that his decision to follow it straight to Mr. Peregrine’s shop was due to nothing other than sheer curiosity. But that hadn’t been right. The flittercrake had been sent to find him, and then—later—to feign an attack on a rabbit-like creature on the other side of the mirror, in a way calculated to lure Darwen into crossing over into Silbrica for the very first time. Eileen had essentially told him as much, but only now did it occur to Darwen that the creature had been working with Mr. Peregrine more closely than anyone had guessed. If the flittercrake was somehow connected to the old man, and it had been able to creep through broken portal mirrors and any other little gaps between worlds, maybe it knew something about where he was.

  He kicked himself for not thinking of trying to contact the flittercrake before.

  Alex peered at the creature, her distaste evident as it flexed its bat-like wings then turned and stuck its tongue out at her.

  “Oh, that’s just wrong,” she said.

  “I remember you,” said the flittercrake to Alex, in a high-pitched rasping voice that raised the hair on the back of Darwen’s neck. “From the place with the mirror shop.”

  “The mall?” said Alex. “I don’t remember you.”

  “Didn’t see me, did you?” said the flittercrake. “You weren’t supposed to. He was.”

  The little creature flicked a long-nailed thumb in Darwen’s direction and rolled his eyes as if he was bored of dealing with such stupid people.

  “You know where Mr. Peregrine was taken?” asked Darwen.

  The flittercrake considered him thoughtfully, then nodded.

  “Is it close by?” Darwen pressed.

  “Close enough,” said the flittercrake, his hard little gaze unflinching.

  “Show us,” Darwen concluded.

  “You sure you want to go?” said the flittercrake, grinning maliciously. “Not a nice place. Dark and dangerous.”

  “If Mr. Peregrine is there, then yes,” Darwen said, holding the creature’s eyes with his own.

  “He might be,” said the flittercrake with a tiny shrug. It turned from him sulkily.

  “You just said he was!” Darwen exclaimed, his patience growing thin. “Do you know where he is or not?”

  “I know where he was,” rasped the flittercrake, its voice like fingernails on a blackboard. “He might have been moved. He might not be alive. I haven’t been anywhere but the portal itself. There are rooms.”

  “Show us,” said Darwen, ignoring the suggestion that Mr. Peregrine might not be alive with an effort.

  “All of you?” hissed the flittercrake. “Not just you?”

  “All of us,” said Darwen.

  “Fine,” sniffed the flittercrake, “but I’ll be very surprised if you all make it out alive. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  With one last leering grin, the creature shot straight up into the misty air like a skylark. Once up, it circled lazily, waiting for them to get back out onto the road, then flew up and into the rocky hills. There were few trees here, and the low vegetation broke through jutting slabs of splintered, gray slate. To the left they saw the mouth of an arched railway tunnel set into the scree-scattered hillside, from which a single track emerged. The flittercrake shot them a wolfish grin, then beat its wings into a long, looping flight past it.

  “Is that a portal?” asked Alex as the creature vanished into the dark.

  “No,” said Darwen, conscious of the others watching him closely. “Come on.”

  Darwen wasn’t sure how far they walked. A mile, maybe two, then they veered off to the right and into a complex of low buildings where a sign read Lechwedd Slate Caverns.

  “It’s a mine,” said Rich.

  “Of course,” said Alex miserably. “I was hoping for a theme park or a mini-golf course, but it’s a mine. Naturally.” She watched as the flittercrake dived and settled, clinging to a piece of sagging gutter, following them with its ratty eyes. “You think we can trust that thing?”

  “No,” said Darwen, “but I don’t think we have a choice. We’re running out of time, and if I’m right, and his connection to Mr. Peregrine is real, then we need to take advantage of it.”

  The sun was still low in the sky, the parking lot cold and empty, and the buildings seemed deserted. The flittercrake paused, then l
eapt into flight again, alighting this time on a sign whose arrow read Deep Mine. They followed it till they came to a turnstile and what looked a little like a railway line, except that it was tilted so that it descended steeply into the ground, the passenger waiting areas made up of stepped metal gantries. The “train” beside them was four yellow metal boxes with glass panels, also stepped to meet the pitch of the rails, each with seating for six.

  As Alex gazed apprehensively down into the blackness below, Rich considered the controls dubiously. “It’s operated from in there,” he hissed, nodding toward an office building beside the track. There were lights in the windows, and as Darwen watched, he saw a shadow move across one of them.

  Something was inside.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Choices

  Darwen laid a finger on his lips and moved cautiously toward the door, which was, he now saw, slightly ajar. He could just make out a hum of machinery, but over the top he could hear voices. He flattened himself against the wall by the doorway and listened intently.

  “Always the early shift, me,” said one voice, a man. Welsh. Soft-spoken and bored-sounding. “I don’t know why they bother. They aren’t even using most of these anymore. Waste of my time.”

  “Easy money then, innit?” said another voice, also a man, but not local. A Londoner, perhaps, Darwen thought. It was a deep, roughsounding voice: almost a snarl. “Don’t see what you’re complaining about. Sitting around ’ere, doing nothing, and taking home a fat check at the end of the week. Money for old rope, innit?”

  “But what’s it all for?” the other returned. “Science experiments, they say, but for what? And what kind of laboratory looks like that? And why is it in a mine? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Don’t have to,” the other grunted. “I don’t need to know so long as the cash keeps coming. And you shouldn’t be snooping around either.”