The Plentiful Darkness Page 6

  The twisted-trunk trees fell still once more, their long limbs stabbing the ground.

  Rooney pushed out a breath, which sounded rather like a growl, and threw herself against the black branches. She wedged her arms through the narrow gaps, but no more of her body would fit. And no amount of shaking broke the strange entrapment.

  “Let us out of here!” she screamed.

  Sorka glowered at them from the throne. “Not yet, I won’t. I can’t have you running off.” And with that, she turned her cheek, dismissing them.

  Rooney whipped around, focusing her bubbling fury on Trick, who stood there with his head nearly touching the entwined branches above him. “What an absolute mess! All because of you!”

  Trick gazed through the barlike branches, a quieter anger simmering on the shaded planes of his face. “It’s the magician’s fault, not mine.”

  “It’s the magician’s fault and yours,” Rooney insisted. “And hers.”

  Sorka had trapped them, and now she ignored them. Apparently, she meant for them to stew in their disobedience.

  With a false note of cheerfulness, Sorka called the children closer and tilted a tattered book to the blue glow of the moonlit torches, preparing to read to them. It must have been a terrible tale, Rooney thought, horror filled and dark. One that would give all the children nightmares.

  Trick stepped closer to the tree limbs, staring out at the children and their gray-splotched skin. “There’s nearly a dozen of them.”

  Some of the children shot curious looks at Rooney and Trick from where they sat at the base of the throne. Others had eyes only for Sorka and looked up at her almost adoringly. They must have been fearful of disobeying her commands (and landing in a cage of their own), for there was no reason to like that awful girl.

  “They’re all against us.” None of them had lifted a finger to help Rooney or Trick.

  “We don’t know that,” he said. “We don’t know anything at all.”

  Rooney slouched, the fire gone out of her. “I know I don’t like it here. I know that I want to go home.”

  Trick rattled the branches, as if he thought himself strong enough to break through where Rooney could not. “We all want to go home.”

  Rooney bit her lip, touched with a pinch of guilt. Not at Trick’s sharp words, but at the realization that these strange children must have longed for the very thing she did.

  Their song ran through her head. The promise that there was no escape.

  The thought that death lingered, unseen, but near enough to snatch her.

  She smothered her spiraling thoughts. There must be a way out.

  Rooney dropped herself to the ground and folded her legs. The smudgy Monty nudged her knee, then curled up in a corner of the cage.

  Trick slouched down across from them, and when Rooney refused to look at him, he broke the awkward silence rather gruffly. “Let’s sort this out, okay? Why would the magician bring us all here?”

  “To silence us.” Rooney cringed, remembering the magician’s cold presence. Her scarred cheeks. That raven-wild hair.

  “Must be more than that.” Trick considered, then said, “Maybe she doesn’t like children much.”

  “Suppose so.” Rooney ran her hand across the earth’s glossy, black surface. “But how is it even possible we’re here? What must this place be made of to hold us all inside?”

  “Magic is how we’re here. Magic is what it’s made of.” Trick mirrored her suspicions. “And the strangest sort of … satin?”

  “It’s silk.”

  “If you say so. I’ve never touched anything this fine.”

  Rooney picked at the patch in her stockings, not knowing how to respond to Trick when he was being so agreeable. It unsettled her. But she spared it little thought as, just then, her finger snagged the holey wool at the knee of her tights, and an idea popped into her head.

  “Well, I don’t know much about magic, but silk isn’t so special. Not really.” She reached out her hand, feeling along the nearest of the silken branches.

  “Spiderwebs are made of silk, and they’re death traps,” Trick said quite unhelpfully, drawing closer the song’s blunt threat.

  Rooney’s throat went dry, but she forced her wandering fingers to continue their way over the branches, slow and careful. “Silk is made of threads just like the wool of my stockings. There’s bound to be a loose thread, and all we have to do is find it.” Her fingers crept along, searching and seeking. “And begin its unraveling.”

  There was just enough light for Rooney to see Trick’s sly grin and his hands sneaking fast to the tree limbs.

  As they hunted, Sorka read to the children, her voice too low for the words to reach Rooney’s ears. Only a soft murmuring carried through the night.

  Until that stopped as well.

  Rooney’s hand stilled on the branch. From her perch, Sorka tossed the book to the ground where it landed facedown, spine split, pages ruffled. The children scattered.

  If she would treat a book in such a horrible manner, Rooney didn’t know what Sorka might do if she saw what Rooney and Trick were up to. Make the cage squish smaller. Bury them beneath folds of silk until they could no longer breathe.

  Or even break their lunar mirrors.

  Rooney gasped just thinking of it.

  As if the darkness itself had heard her, the ground rippled and sighed. Rooney tensed, waiting to be flung about once again, but the vibrations were gentle this time.

  Beneath the children, the ground transformed—little bedrolls and pillows of the silkiest black unfolded (none for Rooney and Trick).

  Sorka cried, “Torchset!”

  A word that made no sense at first. Rooney had only a moment to blink in surprise before the dim moonlit torches snuffed out all at once.

  Darkness descended. Like sunset happening all at once.

  Panic knotted in Rooney’s chest once again.

  “Good night, my friends.” Sorka’s voice glided through the pitch. “Good night, my foes.”

  All was quiet, except …

  Somewhere in the darkness, a child wept softly.

  15

  TERRIBLY LOST

  Rooney’s breaths came fast at the sudden shock of darkness. The blackout pressed against her, as did the muffled cries of the child, who must have missed his parents very much.

  Her heart pinched a bit; her resolve hardened.

  She slid her fingertips along the cage of branches. The silk was so sleek, so soft. The children probably longed for torchset each night, when they could lay their heads upon the pillows and dream of the world beyond the darkness.

  But what good was dreaming? Rooney would tear her way out of the cage, then cut right through the heavy pitch.

  Somehow.

  If only the branches were not so stubborn!

  “The trees are smooth and perfect,” she moaned.

  “They are smooth…,” Trick began, and then paused. He let out a grunt from somewhere above her. He must have risen to his feet, searching the highest part of the cage that Rooney could not reach. “… and imperfect.”

  Rooney jumped up beside him, so close she could feel his breath on her cheek. “A thread?”

  Trick did not respond. For many minutes, he fussed with the branches over their heads. Then his hand grazed her own, and he passed her the thinnest, the finest, the most wonderful of threads.

  Rooney plucked it gently, feeling it tug away from the branch and unravel. She gathered the length of it in her hands as she pulled and unwound, until so much had come undone that it overflowed from her arms in a tangle.

  “Monty. Where have you gotten to?” The rat followed her voice, bumping its wet-and-whiskered nose against her hand. “I need you to do some unraveling.”

  The Monty took the thread in its mouth and slipped away.

  Rooney touched the thinning branch, felt it getting slimmer and slimmer the farther the Monty traveled. “Get ready,” she said to Trick, for at any moment there would be just enough s
pace to squeeze through, and they needed to do so before the thread raveled back up and snapped closed the cage once again.

  At last, the branch whittled down, wispy as a spider’s thread, and Rooney shoved it to the side. She found Trick in the dark and closed her hand around his own. He tensed at her touch, but when he did not shake her off, she dipped through the narrow opening with Trick staggering out behind her.

  “Monty,” she whispered, but the rat did not come even when she called it a second time.

  They took several quick steps before Rooney realized she didn’t know where she was going—if she wandered toward the woods or the clearing. But Trick strode confidently ahead, and soon enough, Rooney’s eyes began to adjust to the dim, enough so she could just make out the silver flowers fluttering in the trees.

  She shot a look over her shoulder, worried Sorka would sneak up behind them. But the girl must have been dreaming (or more likely nightmaring) alongside the children, as she was nowhere to be seen.

  Trick cocked his head at the not-sky, but now was not the time to admire the darkness. She pulled her hand from his grasp. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting us out of here before we’re patch-marked like everyone else. Didn’t you see the shadows clinging to them?” He scratched his arm, his neck, the tip of his nose, as if he could feel the darkness crawling over his skin.

  “Of course I did.” Rooney scratched her jaw, her elbow, the top of her head, everywhere that suddenly itched.

  “I won’t let it touch us. We’ll escape before then,” Trick said.

  Those quiet sobs echoed in Rooney’s thoughts. Oh, how she would have liked someone to care for her when she’d felt abandoned—as these children now were. “All of us?” she wondered aloud.

  “Who says any of the others are even alive?” he asked.

  “They aren’t dead. They were breathing.”

  Trick’s voice came low and serious as he circled one tree and then another. “Maybe the dead never forget how to breathe.”

  Rooney shook her head, dark hair rippling like shadows. She had trusted in the rise and fall of their chests. But trembling as she was, she could not find her voice to object.

  “If the trees behave, maybe we can climb them all the way out of here.” Trick placed a hand to the nearest trunk, ready to scale it right then and there.

  Of course that would be his suggestion even after how horribly the trees had treated them.

  “They won’t behave. They’d only fling us back down. We’d splat on the ground.” Rooney slapped her palms together. “The children would have to dig holes for our graves.”

  Trick scowled.

  Quite decided, Rooney continued, “We need to reach the edge of the darkness. That girl said it was there, and it must be the way out.”

  “What must be there?” Trick scoffed. “A door? Just waiting for us to swing it open?”

  “Won’t know until we see for ourselves.” Rooney propped her hands on her hips, all the better to put forth her challenge.

  He grinned. “Let’s go, then.”

  “Wait for me,” a voice whispered through the darkness.

  Rooney’s head snapped to the side. She hadn’t heard a single footstep. The gloom masked whoever approached.

  “Who’s there?” Trick hissed.

  The dimmest, faintest blue glow sparked and almost immediately sputtered out again. Full darkness, and then it flashed again. Closer this time and holding steady.

  It illuminated a girl in the shadows, one who wore a long braid over her shoulder and had brown cheeks, thick eyelashes, and a heart-shaped face. Clutched to her chest, she held the Monty, the unraveled thread dangling from its paws, and a stubby candle, the flame of which wavered blue.

  “Your rat was terribly lost,” she said, setting the Monty on the ground. It skittered to Rooney’s side. “But aren’t we all?”

  Rooney gathered the Monty in her arms, never once lowering her eyes, worried the tiny moonlit wick would blink out again and she’d lose sight of this girl.

  “The girl with the violin,” Rooney said. “Devin Hayes.”

  “A violin?” Trick looked keenly at Devin, sizing her up.

  “Well, I don’t have it anymore. It’s gone, just like your mirrors. But I don’t care about that. All I want is to go home.” Devin ducked her head, wiping her eyes before lifting her chin again. “There’s nothing here but darkness and that awful girl on the throne.”

  Rooney frowned. “I bet she was the first one snatched away by the magician.”

  “Must be,” Trick said, “the way she lords over everything.”

  Devin ran the end of her braid through her fingers. “Just imagine being here alone. All this darkness…” Her shoulders rounded. “It seemed to … I don’t know … cinch in when you arrived.”

  Rooney felt a little dizzy at the thought, like a hand was pressing over her nose, like the sky was falling. The space around her was unknown, unpredictable.

  And so was Sorka.

  Rooney turned to the woods. “Then let’s get going before Sorka—”

  Devin’s brown eyes widened, her gaze flicking away. “Oh, don’t say it. Don’t say her name.”

  But it was too late. It had already escaped Rooney’s lips.

  The trees shook. The silver flowers trembled. Devin blew out the candle.

  Then, like wind through branches, came Sorka’s low voice.

  “If you say my name, I’ll hear it. The darkness will carry your words right to my ear. Even if you whisper.”

  THE MAGICIAN—A QUIET NAME

  The magician once had a perfectly ordinary name. Firstly, a first name, and lastly, a last name. It had been made of rounded letters and smooth sounds. A quiet name. One that suited her so perfectly. But no one spoke it anymore, and she’d all but forgotten it.

  She’d been so careless, misplacing it in the foggy corners of her mind. For when she brought the quiet, when she took the children, tiny bits of herself fell away, stolen by grief. Her name, gone most days. Her heart, gone far longer.

  The hollow inside her was all she had left. And how strange it was to be filled with nothing and to have it take up so much space.

  The magician pushed herself away from the desk and returned to the gray-glass mirror. Not a hair, not an eye, not the sharp line of her jaw reflected on its surface. She clutched the pocket scarf to her chest, right over the spot where her lost heart echoed.

  How dare it still beat, she thought.

  A sliver of moonlight lanced between the tower’s shutters, catching the edge of the mirror’s gilded frame. The moonlight was noisy. Too bright, and therefore too bold. She winced at what she once had loved.

  Now she longed only for darkness. The mirror reflected it, and the woods on the other side of the glass. Pitch black and empty but for the trees thick with magic.

  The magician peered through the darkness—at the beauty of what she’d created. She stroked her silk scarf, and in the glass, the treetops swayed, as if she’d run her fingers through their branches.

  Here, they seemed to say. This way, this way.

  It was the appointed hour, when the stolen children would be sleeping and quiet. The magician leaned forward. She blew out a breath and whispered a name. “Come. My devil, my dear.” The words clouded the mirror before sinking through and past the thin border, from one spinning world to another.

  But as had passed the last three nights, the darkness did not answer. The magician had waited. She’d been patient. She’d been careful.

  It would not do much longer—this worry eating away at her.

  She stayed there all night, half-asleep on her feet. Waiting and waiting.

  To remember her name. To hear it whispered in her ear by someone who still knew it.

  Tonight, though she was patient, it would not be, and only when dawn broke did she turn her back on the mirror. Did she fall into bed and find darkness in sleep.

  16

  THE DOOR AT THE EDGE OF THE WOODS

/>   No one made a sound in the darkness. All the same, Rooney knew Sorka approached. Her voice had been so near.

  Rooney crouched as small as she could, Devin and Trick stooped beside her, when out of the shadows a flare of blue light speared through the trees. Sorka crept forward, feet bare, ankles spotted gray, her face as rumpled as her dress. In her hand, a lunar mirror shone.

  Its pale light flickered in time with the sinister sway of her voice pitching high and low. “You’re not where you’re supposed to be.”

  The Monty, all curled up in Rooney’s arms, trembled. Rooney tucked closer to the tree before her as Sorka’s eyes pierced the night.

  “Come out!” Sorka cried, her words twisting cold and sharp. “If you know what’s good for you!”

  Devin clutched at Trick’s arm, and Rooney pressed her lips tight. Huddled all together, they moved not a muscle, not even a hair.

  A small murmur gusted through the night, and Sorka swung toward it, taking the glow of the light with her. She slipped through the trees, her slim figure outlined in blue. One step and then another, she moved away from them.

  And then she stopped.

  Her body bent forward. Her hand reached toward the ground.

  Rooney leaned around the trunk of the tree as far as she dared, but she could not see what had captured Sorka’s attention—and what she so slowly lifted.

  All at once, the Monty squirmed, its little legs scrambling. Rooney patted it. She tried to calm it and quiet it.

  Sorka straightened, spine snapping into place. Her head cut to the side, and upon her face a lean smile spread.

  The Monty jolted in Rooney’s hands. Trick and Devin cast horrified looks in her direction—Devin all squinty, anticipating being found out, no doubt, and Trick, dark eyes slashing, warning her to keep the rat still.

  A slow step drew Sorka closer. She hadn’t spotted them yet, but soon she would. Her hand touched the air, tugged the air.

  But that couldn’t be. She only had control of the fabric of the darkness, didn’t she?

  Again, the Monty jerked, so suddenly Rooney almost lost hold of it. And that’s when she noticed the wisp of thread still clasped in its little paws.