Darwen Arkwright and the School of Shadows

by A. J. Hartley

  “Yes,” said Mr. Peregrine, “and I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you—”

  “I know,” said Darwen. “It’s fine. But I need to understand.”

  “Getting closer, Darwen!” said Rich, his voice urgent and anxious. The flittercrake on Mr. Peregrine’s shoulder flapped its wings distractedly, craning its neck to see what might be coming.

  “But he grew out of the gift,” Darwen continued.

  “As all mirroculists do,” Mr. Peregrine said. “But because he had been useful, the Guardians granted his wish to stay in Silbrica rather than returning to his ordinary life.”

  “They put him on the council,” said Darwen.

  “Eventually, yes,” said Mr. Peregrine, sounding defeated.

  “There!” shouted Rich, pointing through the glassless windows and through the craggy approximations of classrooms beyond the quadrangle. “Scrobblers for sure and other things. They are coming this way.”

  “Darwen!” shouted Alex, getting hold of his arm and yanking it. “We really don’t have time for this.”

  “But that wasn’t enough for him, was it?” Darwen persisted, his eyes fixed on Mr. Peregrine. “Because being on the council means staying in one place most of the time, and it means never leaving Silbrica.”

  “Indeed,” said Mr. Peregrine, and even though the shapes of the scrobblers were clearer now beyond the uneven walls of the shadow school, he seemed resigned to the conversation. “No one could have known how hard that would be for him. Being a mirroculist is about the ability to travel, to step between worlds. Not being able to do that anymore . . .” He thought for a moment, looking old and strangely frail. “It damaged him. He felt, I think, cheated. That sense of injustice, of power lost, has driven him ever since.”

  Darwen nodded, strangely calm now. It was not news, and though the confirmation weighed on him like sadness, he felt clearer in his mind.

  “Okay,” he said as the first of the scrobblers appeared in the classrooms only yards away. “It’s starting.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  The Invasion of Hillside Academy

  “To the portal,” said Darwen.

  They clambered up the iron gantry to the window, conscious that it was humming with electricity, but Mr. Peregrine moved slowly, and the quadrangle corridors were filling with scrobblers and gnashers. Darwen hesitated. “You two go on ahead,” he said to Rich and Alex. “I’ll be right there.”

  He reached back for Mr. Peregrine’s thin hand and pulled him up the steps, conscious of the scrobblers marching evenly through the corridors. They weren’t coming out into the central square but were lining the walkways on all four sides. They moved as one, like the army that Darwen knew them to be, and they were equipped with every kind of weapon Darwen had seen in Silbrica and many he hadn’t. It was the gnashers that came loping into the grassy area, bounding on their knuckles like great headless baboons.

  “It won’t open!”

  It was Rich’s voice. Darwen turned, still pulling Mr. Peregrine.

  “What do you mean?” he said. “The portal’s online? Why won’t it open?”

  “Just won’t, man!” said Alex, whose eyes were on the gnashers crossing the grassy enclosure at an alarming speed. “Get up here!”

  “Go,” wheezed Mr. Peregrine. “I can manage.”

  Darwen let go of his hand and leapt up the last of the stairs. “Hands!” he barked.

  Alex and Rich grabbed his, and Darwen braced himself for the strain of opening the portal, vaguely aware that Mr. Peregrine was still struggling up to join them.

  He could hear the pounding of the gnashers’ paws, could almost hear their probing tongues testing the air as they sought blindly for the intruders. And then there was only the gateway to Atlanta, rising up like a wall of bright water before them. He pressed Rich’s hand into Alex’s and reached back for Mr. Peregrine, fingers splayed, searching. He found the old man’s slender wrist, seized it, and stepped through just as Mr. Peregrine cried out.

  The reason for the cry became clear as soon as they reached the other side, but the strangeness of the scene still acted on Darwen like paralysis.

  They were standing on the stage that had been erected beneath the great window. Principal Thompson, his back to them, was standing at a podium overlooking the quadrangle, whose grass was almost completely obscured by a mass of upturned faces. Even in his panic, Darwen scanned the crowd for Aunt Honoria. He couldn’t see her, though she was surely out there. Teachers, the lunch staff, janitors, students, their families, and anyone with even the slightest connection to Hillside were there, gazing up at the platform on which Darwen, Rich, Alex, and Mr. Peregrine had just materialized. But amazingly, the ripple of surprise, the outbreak of sudden chatter, was not about them, and it took the first scream for Darwen to realize what everyone was looking at.

  The gnasher that had been chasing them had caught hold of Mr. Peregrine just as they crossed over, and it now stood, hulking and savage, on the stage beside them.

  “Ta-da!” sang Alex, striking a pose.

  A woman in the audience, sitting in the front row, began to clap, but as the uncertain ovation began to course through the audience, the gnasher’s chest split open to reveal its awful shark mouth, and as the snakelike tongue lolled out, the screaming recommenced.

  The principal turned on his heel and gave them a long, baleful look. “Fine,” he said, taking a step toward Darwen and staring down at him. “Fine. We begin a little earlier than scheduled. Mr. Stuggs,” he said, turning to the side of the stage, “if you will?”

  For a moment Darwen thought the principal was talking about the gala, but there was a grim determination about the man that suggested something darker. Even so, Darwen was too slow to realize what the command to Mr. Stuggs actually meant. The PE teacher waddled across the stage and, before Darwen realized what was happening, took hold of the lever that Alex had pulled to inadvertently bring the two schools into the same space.

  “No!” Darwen shouted, but the PE teacher just gave him a wide, satisfied grin and leaned on the long metal handle till it shifted. Whether or not Stuggs knew what he was doing, Darwen couldn’t possibly guess, but that hardly mattered. There was a familiar droning sound and the clunk of something mechanical locking into place, and then the shadow school began slowly to materialize around them.

  “Rich!” shouted Darwen. “The tower.”

  But the only way up to whatever Greyling had installed above the clock was through the door at the foot of the stairs to the stage.

  “Wait!” said Alex. She stepped forward, seized the microphone stand from under the principal’s nose, and with a rush of feedback that had everyone slapping their hands to their ears, sent it crashing through the stained glass window. As it shattered, the hum of energy around it buckled and vanished, leaving only an irregular hole giving onto the stairwell inside.

  “You’re welcome!” shouted Alex as Rich clambered through and up.

  But breaking the window clearly had no effect on the larger process. All around them, the school was changing, its edges becoming rougher, more approximate as the precise brick gave way to something more like the irregular stone of the shadow school. The two places were occupying the same space. The sign above the stage proclaiming the Hillside gala was fading, becoming insubstantial, and the light was dropping fast. Pieces of equipment they had seen in that Silbrican no-place that had seemed disconnected appeared precisely aligned with other components that were already here, locking into place and powering up, their circuits complete.

  The crowd’s faintly amused bafflement had been replaced by something altogether different, something more deeply unsure and fearful, but they were also hesitant, too busy muttering and standing up to get a better view to realize that what they should have done was run for the exits. Darwen scoured the crowd for his aunt, but there was too much uproar and bustling aimles
sly about for him to spot her.

  Darwen glanced over to where Mr. Stuggs stood, the confusion on his fat face turning to horror as the gnasher made its decision and lumbered murderously in his direction. It would guard the lever till Greyling’s forces arrived, Darwen realized, and they were already on their way.

  The windows looking onto the quadrangle where the Hillside community sat in their Sunday best were suddenly full of masked faces sprouting tusks from their heavy, greenish jaws. Parents rose and pointed, demanded explanations or expressed their outrage, while others watched affably, as if this might all be part of some kind of theatrical stunt to kick off the gala. Somewhere among them was Aunt Honoria, but he still couldn’t see her.

  Everyone had to get out of here, and fast.

  But how? The scrobblers lined the quadrangle. And now they were moving, marching out and around the edge of the square, armed to the teeth. The gnashers, by contrast, made for the racks of visored helmets, which had faded into place with the rest of the shadow school. The process was about to begin.

  Someone, a man in a dark suit, his face indignant, got to his feet and began fighting his way out of the row of chairs in which he had been sitting. One of the scrobblers at the perimeter took a step toward him and leveled his energy weapon.

  “Stop!” shouted Mr. Peregrine, but there was too much going on for anyone to hear him.

  “Yo, Mr. P!” shouted Alex. “Catch.”

  And so saying, she tossed him the microphone.

  “Don’t move!” Mr. Peregrine commanded the man in the suit. “Take one more step, and that creature will kill you where you stand.”

  He said it with such earnestness that the man froze, frowning, while the murmur of unease from the rest of the crowd increased markedly.

  “I realize that this is probably part of the show,” said a blond woman in oversized shades, “and your special effects are really quite impressive, but you are actually starting to frighten people.”

  It was, Darwen was sure, Princess Clarkson’s mother, the movie actress. Darwen gaped at her. Special effects? Could they still believe that this was all just part of the gala?

  “This is not part of any show,” Mr. Peregrine said firmly. “You are in grave danger and must do as I say.”

  Some of the students recognized Mr. Peregrine as their former world studies teacher, and they waved confusedly. Darwen looked out over the anxious faces and, at last, found Aunt Honoria. She was close to the back, sitting on the side so she could slip out to make a business call if necessary. Eileen was beside her and they were leaning in to each other, talking urgently. She looked not so much upset or worried as simply angry, and it occurred to Darwen that she had looked a lot like that recently.

  Your fault, he thought. She says it’s work, but it’s really you, all the pressure and stress you’ve brought into her life, none of which she could have imagined, none of which she ever wanted. And now she’s here, for you, and she’ll be forced into one of those helmets and then . . .

  Darwen turned away from the horror of the thought, and as he did so, something happened behind him.

  “Okay, gosh darn it!”

  It was Rich. Clearly the apparatus in the clock tower had been guarded. He was now being dragged bodily out of the tower by two scrobblers and shoved onto the stage. Rich’s eyes met Darwen’s and the bigger boy framed an apologetic shrug: I tried, it said. Darwen nodded his understanding, but he was starting to see just how badly things had gone wrong. What had they been thinking? And then the broken window frame pulsed with energy. For a second, Darwen thought the portal had somehow come back online, that someone was coming to help, but then the image clarified, and his blood seemed to freeze in his veins.

  It was a face, contained within the window frame but somehow with depth and shape, like a hologram or an image from a 3-D movie. The eyes were small and sunken, but the irises were hot and red. The nose was hawkish, not far from the flittercrake’s beak, and the mouth was thin, but a dark pink inside and lined with sharp, yellow teeth. Darwen had never seen the face before, and assumed it was yet another disguise, but he had no doubt who it was.

  Greyling.

  The face looked down over the quadrangle and the slim mouth smiled mirthlessly.

  “Welcome,” it said.

  The mouth moved, but the sound seemed to come from speakers to the side of the stage. Some of the anguished muttering from the crowd stopped, but there was something callous in the face that unsettled them still further. Something hungry.

  “While I explain the great experiment these good people are about to be a part of,” said Greyling’s ratlike face, licking his lips, “let us begin distributing the headgear.”

  Gnashers all around the quadrangle grabbed helmets from the rack and forced their way into the seated audience, which shrank back, wincing and crying with panic. Darwen watched as a woman cringed away from the monster’s wavering tongue, arms huddled to her chest, eyes tight shut. When the gnasher simply crammed the helmet onto her head, the people around her seemed positively relieved.

  “There now,” said the face of Greyling from the window. “Nothing to worry about. Resist, however, and my soldiers will have to deal with you terminally. Far better to just play along.”

  Mr. Peregrine seemed poised to argue, but when Principal Thompson wordlessly demanded the microphone with a single outstretched hand, Mr. Peregrine reluctantly gave it to him.

  “Excellent,” said the principal, as if he was addressing a school assembly. Darwen had never suspected the principal of being involved with Greyling, but it now seemed unavoidable that he was. He probably had no idea just what he was helping Greyling do, and he had probably been promised all manner of things that would somehow benefit the school, but in Darwen’s eyes that only made him stupid rather than evil. “Now it might save time to just pass the headgear along the rows,” the principal continued, smiling with something like pride. “As you get yours, put it on your head and keep it there. Under no circumstances should you remove it. This is a brave new day for Hillside as we lead the world in crossing new educational thresholds.”

  A lot of people did as they were told, some laughing uneasily as if this all might still be part of the show. Others hesitated.

  “This is ridiculous!” exclaimed the man in the suit, slamming his helmet down and making to get out of the row. This time the scrobbler at the end did not hesitate. An amber streak like lightning from the scrobbler’s weapon caught the man squarely in the chest. He gave a long, constant shriek as his body was thrown backward and landed, smoking, on the grass ten feet away.

  Even the principal looked shocked, and some of his former enthusiasm was lost in a sudden uncertainty that flooded his face.

  “Tut, tut,” said the face of Greyling. “Someone doesn’t want to play. My scrobblers have an array of equipment to make you more compliant. My power supply is wired through every portal in Silbrica, and my communication system can reach every corner of a world you people don’t even know exists, a world on whose colossal energy I can draw at will. That scrobbler just used the lowest possible setting on its discharger because—believe me—I would rather keep you alive. Dead you are no use to me, but I will not permit interference. So . . . would you like to see what the next setting does?”

  A woman had leapt from her chair and dropped to the body of the man in the suit.

  “He’s alive,” she said. “Barely.”

  The mood of the crowd had shifted in an instant. Where there had been uncertainty, even an impulse to make light of the situation, there was now a deathly hush and the air felt charged with dread that Darwen could almost smell. It hung there, like electricity in the unnatural night. In unison, the scrobblers took a step forward, hemming in the crowd and raising their weapons so that soon everyone who had not yet put a helmet on had some kind of blaster trained on them.

  “There now,” said th
e face of Greyling. “That makes life simpler, doesn’t it? Choice is really overrated. And you’ll thank me. Those helmets will bring you power and purpose. They will bring you clarity uncluttered by human doubt or weakness. You will never worry about a single decision ever again, and you will be free to wield your new strength without fear, without conscience.”

  There was a silent pause, through which Darwen caught a scattering of sobs, and then they complied. All the people in the front row put the helmets on. Some merely looked scared of the scrobblers, but others seemed curious, even eager. Mr. Stuggs pressed his helmet into place. He looked excited at what might happen next, so that for a second Darwen was reminded of Alex’s observation that the man was—at least in spirit—half scrobbler already. Darwen stared, then turned back to the seated crowd, watching in horror as Aunt Honoria lifted the helmet over her head. As she lowered it into place, his aunt’s face was completely unreadable.

  For a second, Darwen couldn’t breathe. He saw her eyes vanish inside the dark visor of the helmet and he could think of nothing, even when a scrobbler behind him shoved a helmet into his own hands. He looked around and saw that the same thing was happening to Mr. Peregrine, to Alex and Rich. Their eyes met briefly, desperately, and they shared the obvious truth that they had failed. Indeed, their resistance had been so useless that the scrobblers weren’t even paying them attention anymore. Alex stood looking lost, but beside her Rich was suddenly considering the microphone, which the principal had set down on the stage.

  Darwen knew that look. “What?” he asked under his breath.

  “The communication system,” said Rich. “It’s wired to everything in Silbrica, Greyling said.”

  “So?” asked Darwen. “You can divert the power away from his machines?”

  “No,” said Rich. “But if I plug this microphone into that transmitter there, you can send a message through every portal in Silbrica. The energy surge may even lock the portals open for a while so anyone can pass through them. But the key is the message. Got anything you’d like to say?”