Deepest, Darkest

by William Ritter

  “Sure you do. Heck, put a smudge of coal dust on your cheeks and a helmet on your head, and I would think your old man was back here sitting in front of me.”

  “That’s Cole. Cole looks like our dad. I just look like Cole.”

  “Stop it,” said Cole. “You’re being dumb.”

  “I’m being honest,” said Tinn. In a blurry wave, his skin was suddenly green and splotchy. Pointed ears rose out from his messy hair, and between his lips poked a row of sharp teeth. “This is what Joseph was worried about.”

  The sound of laughter in the distance halted. Tinn could feel half a dozen faces turning to look. He transformed back, but it was too late. Silence hung heavily over Echo Point. Tinn’s chest tightened and he put his head on his knees, wishing he hadn’t been so stupid.

  “If he had known what you are,” said Cole, “what you really are—deep down—he wouldn’t have been worried at all.”

  Tinn did not respond.

  He heard the shuffle of movement and opened one eye to see Winston Bell standing up. “Come inside,” the man said. “There’s something you need to see.” Bell stumped into the base without waiting for a response.

  Tinn lifted his head. Cole shrugged at him, and the two of them pushed themselves up and followed.

  The interior of the building smelled like firewood and clay dust. There were rugs on the floor and a brick fireplace at the far end with one thick log burning away. On one end of the room was a simple kitchen space with coffee mugs hanging from pegs over a washbasin. On the other end stood rows of lockers. Bell tucked his bright red lunch box into one of these and closed it with a click. On the wall beside them hung a huge framed map of the mining operation. Next to it were tacked two faded pieces of paper. One of them said Safety and held a list of rules. The other paper had come unpinned at the top and curled down over itself.

  It was to this paper that Bell turned next.

  “You boys used to be Thomas,” he said. “Before you were Tinn and Cole, you were both Thomas. Did you know that?”

  They nodded. Thomas Burton was the name on their birth certificate—the only birth certificate they had between the two of them. It was the name given to them back when there had only been one of them. Obviously the boys couldn’t share a name forever, so some choices had been made.

  “Your mama ever tell you where your new names came from?”

  Tinn looked at Cole. Cole shrugged. “It was just a mining thing, I guess,” he said. “A play on words.”

  Mr. Bell reached out a hand and smoothed the curling paper so they could read it.

  “Is that a . . . poem?” said Cole.

  “Mm.” Bell nodded. “The owner put it up here ages ago.”

  He plucked a few spare tacks from the corner of the map and stabbed them into the top of the faded page to hold it up properly.

  “Caught your old man copying it down on a piece of paper once, right at the end of our shift. Everybody was headed home, and he was in here, scribbling away. I asked him what he was doing that for. Wanna know what he told me?”

  The boys nodded.

  “He told me: I don’t know any lullabies. Working on learning one.”

  Bell stepped back and let the boys get a good look at the page hanging on the wall. The poem read:

  More precious than the purest gold

  are humble brothers, tin and coal.

  They are not rich, but compensate

  by making those around them great.

  No matter how a diamond gleams

  it cannot give an engine steam,

  or save the strongest steel we trust

  from falling prey to age and rust.

  Supportive and dependable

  are far more recommendable.

  So be not swayed by gloss and shine

  when choosing what you want to mine.

  Seek out the seams that fortify

  and keep you sturdy, warm, and dry.

  More precious than the purest gold

  are humble brothers, tin and coal.

  Cole read the poem twice.

  “Kept that paper folded up in his pocket the rest of the week,” said Bell. “He’d take it out from time to time and I’d see his lips moving as he read. He was reading it the last time I saw him. I told him to get some rest. He stuffed it away, grabbed his lunch box, and headed out like normal. Except that was it.”

  “What do you mean, that was it?” said Cole.

  “That was the last night. He never made it home. Nobody ever saw him again after that.”

  Tinn looked at Cole. Cole’s eyes glistened in the light of the flickering fire, unblinking. He was still staring at the poem.

  “The last thing on Dad’s mind before he vanished,” Tinn said, “was a lullaby?”

  “For brothers,” said Cole. “A lullaby for brothers.”

  Four

  “Hold still,” said Annie Burton. “At least let me fix your collar before you go.”

  The sun had not yet reached its peak on a breezy Saturday morning, and the smell of salt water wafted in from the edge of the cliffs. Cole stood back and waited while his mother fiddled with Tinn’s shirt, brushing a bit of lint from his shoulder before she was satisfied.

  “Nobody in the horde is going to mind a few wrinkles,” Tinn said, but he allowed his mother to fuss over him just a little longer. He knew the ritual wasn’t about the shirt.

  It was time for Tinn’s weekly trip to his other family—to the horde at Hollowcliff. The exchange was never easy. It had taken a long time for Annie to get comfortable leaving her son in the care of goblins, even just for an afternoon, but she knew these visits were important to Tinn. Chief Nudd had given her every assurance the boy would be kept safe, and the goblin Kull dutifully prepared lessons every week that seemed to be helping Tinn grow more comfortable and confident in himself, not to mention more capable with his changeling magic. There were things that Annie could not teach her son, and things she would never understand about the man he was growing into—but Tinn would always be her little boy.

  “What do you think you’ll study today?” said Cole.

  “I never know going in,” said Tinn. “Kull likes to mix it up. One time he had a whole group of friends come in to help teach me a traditional Goblish folk dance. It was neat to watch—but there was a lot more biting and headbutting than I had been prepared for, to be honest.”

  “Just promise me you’ll be safe.” Annie brushed Tinn’s shaggy hair out of his face.

  Behind her, Kull and his usual goblin escorts were just emerging from the hidden path on the cliff’s edge.

  “I’ll be fine, Mom.” Tinn gave her a big hug.

  “Don’t have too much fun without me,” added Cole.

  “Say hi to Fable and Evie for me,” Tinn said. “Meet you all by the cabin after lessons?”

  Cole nodded. The quiet clearing had become their usual rendezvous point.

  Soon, Tinn was marching off down the path with Kull, while Annie and Cole stood alone on the bluff. Annie put her arm around Cole’s shoulder, and the two plodded back through the woods.

  “You boys are growing up so fast,” she said as they walked. “You’re going to be taller than I am in no time.”

  Cole smiled at her. “Was dad tall?”

  She nodded. “Tall and strong, with big broad shoulders, just like you’re shaping up to be.”

  They walked a few paces in silence.

  “Do you ever think about him anymore?”

  Annie took a slow breath before answering. “I do. Not like I used to, though. I used to think about him all the time—the way he would press his forehead against mine when he hugged me, how he smelled after he shaved, how he loved to make hot chocolate after a hard day.”

  Cole put an arm around his mother’s waist, and she looked down at him as if coming back to herself from far away.


  “Over time,” she continued, “I guess I began to think more about where he might be and what he might be doing, and then eventually about all the places that he wasn’t—all the events that he was missing. I think about what he would have said to you boys on your first day of school and what he would’ve done for your birthday when you turned ten years old. I think a lot about the man he would’ve been for you. For all of us.” She squeezed Cole’s shoulder a little tighter. “It’s been so long. Sometimes I wonder if I’m really thinking about him at all anymore, or if I’m only thinking about some version of him that I’ve created in my mind. And then I look at you and I see your eyes crinkle in just the same way his used to and he comes back to me all over again.”

  Cole leaned into his mother and they held each other close while the forest slid slowly past them.

  Gradually the sound of voices began filtering through the trees ahead. “That’s Fable,” said Cole. “It sounds like Evie’s already with her.”

  “You’ll be careful today?” Annie said, tucking a strand of hair behind Cole’s ear. “No wandering into brownie nests or going swimming in cursed pools?”

  “I promise,” said Cole.

  “And you’ll come right home with Tinn when he’s all done? I’ll be at work until nearly sunset. I do not want you boys out here when it gets dark.”

  “We were going to walk Evie back to her place first, but we’ll come right home after.” Cole gave his mother a hug and hopped off the path to go join Fable and Evie in the Wild Wood.

  Annie bit her lip. One of her boys was hanging off a cliffside with a horde of goblins, and the other was frolicking through an enchanted forest with a witch’s child. These were not the parenting choices she had imagined herself making thirteen years ago when she had sung the twins to sleep in their crib.

  “Hi, Cole,” said Evie. “What’s that?”

  Cole glanced down at his hand. “Oh. It’s nothing.”

  The stone, roughly the size of a half-dollar, fit comfortably in his palm. On its face was carved a thick central column with branches forking out and leading up to a domed top, like a simple tree. Cole rubbed the etching with his thumb, tracing the rough pattern for the thousandth time. He couldn’t remember deciding to take it out of his pocket—but there it was again.

  “It’s not nothing,” said Fable. “That’s the extra-special rock that the spirit of the spring gave him.”

  “Whoa,” said Evie. “What’s it do?”

  “It doesn’t do anything,” said Cole.

  “It’s got something to do with his missing dad,” Fable said. “Probably. Maybe. It’s super mysterious. Kallra never gives me special rocks. Everybody else gets the cool presents.”

  “What does the symbol on top mean?” Evie asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Cole.

  “Nobody knows,” said Fable. “That’s what makes it so mysterious.”

  “The spriggans know,” Cole mumbled. “One of them got really angry when he saw it.”

  “What’s it got to do with your dad?” Evie pressed.

  “I don’t know that, either.” Cole frowned. “I saw him in the reflection right before Kallra gave it to me.” He ran his thumb over it one more time, feeling the etching beneath his touch. “He’s out there somewhere.”

  “Maybe,” said Fable.

  “Kallra shows the future, not the past. And I saw him. That means he’s alive. He will be alive. Whatever. He’s out there.”

  Fable turned to Evie. “Where did that spriggan say he had come from?” Fable asked Evie.

  “What?” said Cole. “You told me you hadn’t seen any spriggans for weeks.”

  “I hadn’t,” said Fable. “And then I did.”

  “He said he came straight from a burrow in the Oddmire,” said Evie.

  “Oh. Right. Sorry, Cole,” said Fable. “Even if we could get through the Oddmire without it turning our brains all wonky, we still don’t know where to find it.”

  Cole’s eyes lit up. “But we do know someone who might.”

  “He’s always around here somewhere,” said Fable. They had been walking up and down the bank of the Oddmire for the better part of an hour. They had seen a pair of pixies, a hob, and a hedgehog that Fable introduced as Squidge—but no Candlebeard.

  Cole slumped down on a mossy boulder. “Maybe we need to try from the eastern bank?”

  Before Fable could answer, the rock Cole was sitting on shuddered. He hopped off just as the boulder unfolded itself with a grinding crunch into two arms, two legs, and a scowling, rocky face.

  “Troll!” said Evie.

  “Human sit on Knurch!” the troll growled. It stalked forward with heavy, thudding steps. “Knurch sit on human!”

  “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” Fable yelled.

  The troll glanced up. “Little Queen,” he said. “Knurch wasn’t going to kill humans.”

  Fable crossed her arms.

  The troll looked as sheepish as a craggy chunk of rock is capable of looking. “Knurch was maybe going to kill one human,” he mumbled. “Only little bit.”

  “Seriously?” said Fable. “There’s a truce on! Who’s the troll king?”

  “Kurrg the Ruthless,” answered the troll.

  “And what did Kurrg the Ruthless say about killing humans right now?”

  “To not do that.” Knurch shuffled a foot, effectively carving a small ditch in the soft soil.

  “That’s right. And Kurrg the Ruthless is friends with my mama. If you think he would’ve been mad at you for breaking the rules, you don’t want to know what my mama would’ve done to you. Now, maybe you can make it up to me by telling me if you’ve seen my friend around. He’s a hinkypunk.”

  “Knurch help Little Queen,” the troll grunted. Then he turned, cupped his hands to his mouth with a clink, and bellowed: “HINKYPUNK, COME FIND SMALL, SQUISHY FRIENDS!”

  All three children slapped their hands over their ears, and a flock of birds took flight from the trees behind them. “He come,” said the troll. The troll nodded and hunkered back down, folding itself back into a knobby boulder.

  Sure enough, a minute later a light bobbed into view through the distant fog. The creature hopping from hidden step to hidden step along the surface of the swampy waters was more beard than body, and from within the bristles of that beard, the light of a stubby candle flickered.

  Hinkypunks were not known for being reliable guides—but this one had a debt to repay, and Cole knew it.

  Candlebeard was barely ashore when the kids rushed to explain the situation, one speaking over the other, until they had told him everything, concluding with their need to find the spriggans’ burrow. The hinkypunk scratched his long, scraggly beard and looked out over the misty, murky waters of the Oddmire. He looked apprehensively from Fable to Cole to Evie.

  “You know where it is, don’t you, Candlebeard?” said Fable.

  The furry fellow nodded unenthusiastically.

  “Please?” said Cole. “Will you show us the way?”

  Candlebeard looked pained.

  “My dad is out there somewhere,” said Cole. “The spriggans might be the only ones who have the answers we need to find him.”

  Candlebeard chewed on his whiskers. At length, he gave an almost imperceptible nod. Without further discussion, he hopped straight out into the mire, landing on an invisible stepping stone just below the surface of the muck. He bounded forward, and again his foot found purchase on an invisible support.

  “I don’t know about this,” Evie said, eyeing the wide gaps between the hinkypunk’s hidden steps and the burbling, sucking muck that awaited any traveler who missed their mark. “Didn’t you tell me that the last time you followed a hinkypunk path, Tinn almost died and you all got stranded in the middle of the mire?”

  “Yup,” said Fable. “But that was before I could do this.”

  With a squelch, a series of roots rose out of the muck, forming a kno
bby platform wide enough for all three of them to stand on. Fable stepped out onto it, and Cole joined her. More cautiously, Evie followed. The landing was not as elegant as the woven bridge that her mother could manufacture, but it was sturdy, and it held their weight above the muck.

  Candlebeard glanced back for just a moment to be sure they were following, then set off again, skipping from one hidden perch to the next.

  Fable tensed her fingers, and the roots of her platform extended farther out over the mire, forming a path to follow the hinkypunk. As the children stepped forward, the rear end of the magical bridge sank back into the mud. Evie felt the cords beneath her begin to sag, and she hurried to stay close on Fable’s heels. And so they proceeded, step by step, into the mists of the Oddmire.

  “Oof. Does this fog make anybody else’s brains feel all . . . bendy?” asked Evie after they had left the shoreline behind them.

  “That’s normal,” said Fable. “Well—normal for the Oddmire.”

  Cole could feel his head starting to spin, too. He had forgotten just how disorienting the mists of the mire could be. Fable kept the living platform inching forward, and whenever they began to lag behind, Candlebeard mercifully paused to allow them to catch up.

  Time passed strangely within the mire, but it could not have been more than a few minutes before they reached the muddy shore of an island. The land mass, no more than twenty feet wide, was covered in ferns and prickly bushes. Cole glanced back. The mists rolled and curled in his vision. He could no longer see the forest they had left, nor could he see any proper land in any direction. Out here, there was nothing but the mire and the mist—and the island.

  Candlebeard stopped short of the muddy beach. His eyes looked pained, and he shook his head, as if advising the children against going ashore.

  “We’ll be okay,” said Fable. “Don’t worry.”

  Evie was the last to step off the roots and onto solid—if rather spongy—ground. She nearly lost her footing as she did, and Candlebeard held out a hand to steady her.

  “Thank you,” she said, accepting it. Then she blinked and swayed. “I’m sorry. What was your name again?”