Darwen Arkwright and the School of Shadows

by A. J. Hartley

  “Wait,” said Darwen. However much his strength had left him, he could still feel the energy of another portal close by. He scanned the area and his gaze fell on the glittering water of the falls. There was no question what it was, and he felt both exhilarated that he had found a route out of here and weary beyond words at the prospect of trying to open it. “There’s another portal in the waterfall,” he said. “We should use that. But I need a moment.”

  “What if the man in the gas mask follows?” asked Alex. “He came through the portal like he was a mirroculist himself.”

  “Yeah,” said Rich. “How is that possible?”

  Darwen shook his head. “I don’t know,” he sighed, “and I don’t know how long Blodwyn and the scrobblers can keep him busy, but I really need a moment.”

  He sat down and put his head in his hands.

  “Blodwyn and the Scrobblers,” Alex echoed. “That sounds like the worst rock band in history.”

  For a moment, Darwen just sat there, listening to the roar and splash of the waterfall, arranging his thoughts. He didn’t want to say it, but he had to. He needed to know.

  “I have a question,” said Darwen, turning to Mr. Peregrine.

  “He’s really tired, Darwen,” said Alex. “Can’t it wait?”

  “No,” said Darwen.

  “What do you want to know?” asked the old man with an attempt at a smile.

  “Who was the last mirroculist?” asked Darwen. “The one before me.”

  Mr. Peregrine hesitated. “Well, Darwen,” he said between shallow breaths, “that is confidential information. The Guardians feel it is best to preserve the secret identity of anyone who serves the council. . . .”

  “It was Eileen, wasn’t it?” said Darwen.

  Rich gaped, then turned to Mr. Peregrine, expecting him to deny it. But the old man just frowned thoughtfully.

  “I thought so,” said Darwen. “I could tell. I could see it in her eyes when we crossed over, how much she missed it, how sad she was. My time in Silbrica is done, she said. Lightborne told me about how mirroculists grow out of their gift. Have you any idea how hard it is to lose something that special?”

  He caught himself before the halt in his voice stopped him from going any further.

  “I should have said,” Mr. Peregrine replied wearily. “I should have warned you that you would not be a mirroculist forever. As for Eileen, I thought that if she worked for me, it would be easier for her, if she stayed close to Silbrica, that the sense of loss would not be so great.”

  “Yeah,” said Darwen, still angry. “I don’t think it worked that way. Replace the ability to cross into another world full of beauty and wonder with spying on some kid and his friends? I don’t think that really cut it. But I guess that when you’re no use to the Guardians anymore, no one worries too much about what happens to you next.”

  “Dude!” said Rich. “He said he was trying to help her. What’s got into you?”

  “Greyling was a mirroculist,” Darwen shot back. “Lightborne told me that too.”

  Rich had opened his mouth to protest, but no words came and he just stared. Alex gave Mr. Peregrine a searching look, and at last the old man nodded slowly.

  “I didn’t want to confuse you,” said Mr. Peregrine. “I thought that—”

  “Yeah, I know,” Darwen retorted. “You were trying to protect me, right? From the truth.”

  “I just assumed . . .” Mr. Peregrine began.

  “Yeah, you Guardian types do that a lot,” Darwen snapped.

  “Darwen, I know you’re upset,” said Rich, “but give the guy a break, okay?”

  “One more question,” snapped Darwen, ignoring him.

  “You are way out of line, Darwen,” said Alex. “The man has been through a serious ordeal. . . .”

  “I said,” Darwen repeated, his voice rising, his teeth clenched. “One. More. Question.”

  Mr. Peregrine seemed to brace himself, then nodded.

  “Tell me about the man in the gas mask,” said Darwen. “The man who just tried to kill us.”

  “What do you mean?” said Mr. Peregrine, hesitant.

  “You recognized him,” said Darwen. “I saw it in your face. Blodwyn knew him too. I wondered how you could know one of Greyling’s henchmen, but then I remembered what Moth and Weazen said about this terrible agent called the Fixer: a killer who worked not for Greyling, but for the Guardians.”

  Rich and Alex looked baffled and uneasy.

  Mr. Peregrine met Darwen’s eyes and, for a long moment, said nothing. “The Fixer is not so much a person as a role,” he said at last. “The job is passed on. But you are right. The assassin in the gas mask is indeed the Fixer, and I can hardly imagine a more terrible development. No one is more”—he sought for the word—“efficient. If he is trying to eliminate you, then it seems, unfortunately, that this Fixer has now turned rogue or, more likely, has simply joined with Greyling.”

  “When did he join Greyling?” Darwen asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Mr. Peregrine.

  “In the last few months?” Darwen pressed. “The last few weeks? Or is it longer? A year or more?”

  “I don’t know,” Mr. Peregrine repeated.

  “You do,” said Darwen, his voice hard, his eyes starting to burn. “When was it?”

  “I’ve told you I don’t know,” said Mr. Peregrine. “What difference does it make?”

  “You’re lying,” said Darwen, getting to his feet. “You know.”

  “Easy, man,” said Alex, concerned. “He was in those tanks for months, remember? And besides, he said he doesn’t know.”

  “It’s okay, Darwen,” said Rich soothingly. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

  “It does,” Darwen spat back.

  “Why?” said Rich. “The Fixer is our enemy now. Who cares how long he’s been working for Greyling instead of the Guardians?”

  “I do!” Darwen yelled.

  “But why?” asked Alex.

  “Because he killed my parents,” said Darwen.

  There was a horrified silence.

  “No,” said Alex. It wasn’t a denial or an argument. She said it as if she couldn’t bear for what Darwen had said to be true, as if she could push the sentence away and it would vanish from her mind forever.

  But Mr. Peregrine just closed his eyes tight and said nothing. It clearly pained the old man to have the truth brought into the light like this, but that did not make it any less true.

  “So it was the Guardians after all,” said Darwen. “I saw pictures of the man in the gas mask at the road accident where my parents died, and I figured he was someone who worked for Greyling, but he wasn’t, was he? The Fixer does what the Guardians tell him to and the Guardians don’t look too closely into how he goes about it. That’s what Moth said. ‘The Guardians do not ask enough questions about how the Fixer gets the results they want.’”

  Darwen’s voice was quiet and cold as he strung it all together, and no one else made a sound.

  “The Guardians could see trouble coming in the form of a powerful and disgruntled former mirroculist called Greyling,” Darwen went on, “and they knew they needed someone on their side who could open portals. But there wasn’t one to hand. So they decided to make one, like Greyling makes his scrobblers. They killed my parents to trigger my mirroculist gift. An emotional trauma, right? Killing his family ought to do the trick, they said to themselves. Just what we need to give us a weapon against Greyling. So yeah, send out the Fixer with his gadgets to arrange a car crash. No one would suspect a car wreck, right? Happens all the time. And those people in it, the Arkwrights, they were nobody, right? Not compared to what we got out of it: our pet mirroculist. They were NOBODY!”

  He was shouting now, the tears running down his face.

  “You did it!” he yelled, his fists ba
lled. “Maybe the Fixer pushed the button, but you people gave the order. You killed them!”

  Mr. Peregrine reached up with sudden speed, shrugging off his exhaustion, gripping Darwen’s arm and pulling him down and into his arms. Darwen fought to free himself, but the old man was stronger than he looked, and the grip was viselike as he pressed Darwen to his heart.

  “I didn’t know,” Mr. Peregrine whispered. “I swear it. I’m so sorry, Darwen, but I didn’t know.”

  Darwen squirmed and fought for breath, then collapsed, sobbing his rage and despair into the old man’s chest.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Battle Plans

  It was a long while before Darwen was fit to move, and the others spent most of the time watching the portals in the waterfall anxiously, but, for whatever reason, the Fixer—the man in the gas mask, who had killed Darwen’s parents and joined with Greyling—did not pursue them to Devil’s Bridge. Rich caught Darwen looking at him as he checked his watch and gave an apologetic shrug.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I was trying to calculate the time back home. The gala . . .”

  “Yes,” said Darwen, getting slowly to his feet. “We should go. For the record, what we’re going to do tonight—or try to—is because it’s right, because Greyling must be stopped, not because the Guardians want it.”

  Rich and Alex nodded, their faces stern, and Darwen concluded, “Okay. Let’s do this.”

  He felt impossibly tired, as if he had aged at some extraordinary rate over the last hour. For most of that time, the others had avoided his eyes, half embarrassed, half trying to give him a little privacy with his grief and outrage. Only Mr. Peregrine did not leave his side. The old man sat rigid beside him, one arm around Darwen’s shoulders, his face set and his eyes closed, oblivious to the fine spray of water from the falls.

  “I should go back,” said Owen. “I want to help you, wherever you are going, but I have a family. . . . I don’t know what is happening back in Blaenau Ffestiniog.”

  “Yes,” said Darwen. “You’re right.”

  “I don’t know,” said Rich. “We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

  Owen looked pained.

  Darwen took his hand and shook it. “You’ve done enough,” he said. “We would never have got this far without you. And we’re grateful. But now you should be with your family.”

  Alex and Rich exchanged uneasy looks, but Darwen held Owen’s eyes and gave him a final nod. “He can’t go back to the mine,” he said. “It’s overrun by scrobblers.”

  Darwen didn’t want to admit that he doubted he could open the portal anyway.

  “That’s fine,” said Owen hurriedly. “I’ll call a taxi from the village and take the train.”

  Darwen nodded, too tired to speak.

  “Thank you,” said Owen. “You helped me make a choice.”

  “I knew you would do the right thing,” said Darwen, managing a self-conscious smile. “Go.”

  When Owen was safely on his way, they made their way to the second portal reflected in the cascading water of the falls. Darwen reached out to open it, but found he could do nothing until Rich and Alex helped. They watched him sidelong, but he didn’t say anything, so neither did they. Once the portal was open, they stepped through the water.

  The others seemed none the worse for wear, but Darwen collapsed on the other side before he could even look around. He lay, panting and exhausted on cool stone, his eyes still closed, only just awake enough to hear Rich’s muttered, “Oh no. Not here.”

  “What?” Darwen managed. “Where are we?”

  He rolled onto his side and, with an effort, opened his eyes.

  It was almost as dark as the mine had been. But he soon realized why his friend sounded so scared. Around them loomed familiar walls as if shaped by wind out of the living rock. There were stone doorways and windows and a stone quadrangle with a stone approximation of a clock tower. . . .

  “It’s the other Hillside,” said Rich. “The shadow school.”

  “This is where Greyling brought all those helmets,” Alex mused. They were stacked on racks all around the edge of the quadrangle, and there were cables and pieces of scrobbler equipment humming all around them.

  “Darwen’s right,” said Rich, his voice leaden as the reality sank in. “Greyling is going to use the gala to convert everyone there. Parents, teachers, students. He’s going to make them all into scrobblers.”

  “Stuggs,” said Alex. “He has the personality of a scrobbler already. I bet it wouldn’t take much to push him into being all green and tusky.”

  “We have to stop the gala from going ahead,” said Darwen, dragging himself upright. “Make sure no one is there when Greyling’s forces go through.”

  “Too late,” said Rich, checking his watch, whose hands were spinning as they had the last time they were in this locus. “Time has sped up again. The gala has already started.”

  Darwen pulled the compact from his pocket and pressed the button for Eileen. She answered looking pale, her whispered “Yes?” sounding strained.

  “We’re at the shadow school!” Darwen blurted.

  “Shh,” Eileen hissed. She looked startled and her hair was uncharacteristically messy.

  Darwen lowered his voice.

  “Something is about to happen at the Hillside gala. We need you and anyone else who might help there.”

  “Already in place,” Eileen muttered. She rotated the mirror fractionally, and Darwen could see Aunt Honoria sitting stony-faced in the folding chair beside Eileen. Her lips were so thin they had almost completely vanished. “I had to convince your aunt that you would meet her here after you’ve done your part in the talent show,” Eileen whispered, “and for that conversation, Darwen Arkwright, you owe me big time.”

  In spite of their predicament, Darwen smiled. He could only imagine how hard that meeting must have been. He wanted to tell her that he knew what she had been, what she had lost, wanted to share that his own gift was, it seemed, leaving him, but he couldn’t. Terrible things were about to happen. He could sense it. Now was not the time.

  “What’s going on there?” he asked.

  “Everyone is gathering in the quadrangle under the clock tower,” she whispered back. “Looks like the weather is going to hold.”

  “Great,” said Rich bitterly. “The one time we could use a real Georgia gulley washer and it stays fine.”

  “How long till the speeches and stuff start?” asked Darwen.

  “Could be any moment now,” said Eileen. “They are just waiting for everyone to get into their seats.”

  “It’s okay,” said Darwen. “We’ll be right there.”

  “What are you going to do?” Eileen hissed.

  Darwen shrugged.

  “Just . . . I don’t know,” he said. “Have you spoken to Weazen?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He’s on his way.”

  “Good,” said Darwen. “Though to be honest, we have no idea what we’re doing. Okay, just . . . give us a minute, okay?” he said, and snapped the compact shut.

  “So what’s the plan?” asked Alex.

  “Theirs or ours?” asked Rich.

  “Either,” said Alex.

  Darwen thought furiously. “If we’re right,” he said, “then Greyling has technology that will convert everyone at the gala into scrobblers. To do that, he’ll bring the shadow school into the same space as Hillside, and then he’ll have to keep the people in the quadrangle from escaping. We should assume he’ll have forces to keep them corralled: more scrobblers, probably, gnashers too, but maybe other things as well. They will have to come from this side: from here in Silbrica, so we should expect company soon. They may already be in other parts of the shadow school or waiting just inside the perimeter fence.”

  Mr. Peregrine eased himself up and started scanning the empty
windows of the uneven quadrangle walls anxiously. The flittercrake clinging to the torn shoulder of his jacket flapped but did not let go.

  “As soon as we reach Hillside, we have to disable Greyling’s equipment,” Darwen continued. “Rich, that’s on you.”

  Rich nodded, his face pale.

  “You said the cables ran up to the tower, right?” said Darwen. “So when we cross over, you’ll have to get up there. Somehow,” he added with an apologetic shrug. “We’ll have to get the people out,” he continued. “Mr. Peregrine, that’s your job. Adults respond better to other adults.”

  Mr. Peregrine looked rattled, but he just nodded.

  “Alex,” Darwen concluded, “we have to assume Greyling will use the window as a portal. Smash it into a million pieces as soon as we’re through it.”

  “That,” said Alex approvingly, “I can do.”

  “And you?” said Rich to Darwen.

  “Greyling will be there,” said Darwen. “He’s bound to be. And he’s mine.”

  Rich opened his mouth to protest, and Alex had a thousand questions on the tip of her tongue, but Darwen glared at them both, and they let it go.

  “Well,” said Alex. “I guess we know what our gala talent is.”

  “What’s that?” said Darwen.

  “We save the world,” she answered.

  “Or we appear—very briefly—in the bloodiest, most horrible school play ever,” said Rich.

  “Yeah,” said Darwen. “Let’s call that Plan B.”

  He paused, then turned to Mr. Peregrine. “One more thing I need to understand,” he said, “and I’d like a direct and honest answer.”

  “I told you, Darwen,” said Mr. Peregrine, “I knew nothing about the circumstances of your parents’ death.”

  “I know,” said Darwen, “and I believe you. This is different.”

  Mr. Peregrine’s eyes narrowed warily, but he nodded for Darwen to proceed.

  “Darwen,” said Rich, pointing. “I can see lights out beyond the quadrangle. Something is coming!”

  “So Greyling was a mirroculist,” Darwen said.