The Color of Darkness (23 page)

“She's already a part of me,” said Danny. “I killed her. She's already in my blood, I can feel it. Come on, Kalia.”

The lurcher didn't answer. He tried again.

“Kalia, please. Will you come with me? I'm going to take you back to Sammael.”

Her thin head high, she watched him steadily, and he saw dark shapes detach themselves from the tree trunk and come drifting around her. Formless and papery—what were they? He tried to catch one, but they dissolved as his hand reached out to them. Drawing his hand back, peering, he saw that the shapes were scraps of burned paper with trails of writing faint across their brown pages.

“Is it the Book of Storms?” he whispered, the words half catching in his throat.

Kalia's lips drew back—was it a snarl or a grin? She gathered her legs underneath her, and for a second Danny thought she was about to spring at him. He braced himself.

But instead of jumping, she sat down. Zadoc carried on walking.

“Stop!” Danny said to Zadoc. “I need to take her back! She's the only thing Sammael will leave Tom for. Oh, please stop!”

Zadoc ground to a halt, grumbling. “What are you going to do? She doesn't want to come to you.”

“But…” Danny tried to think of a way to persuade Kalia to come to him. There wasn't one. He would have to go to her.

He swung his leg over Zadoc's neck.

“What are you doing?” yelped Zadoc. “Don't get off! You can't get off!”

Danny looked down at the forest floor. It was a boiling mass of dark brine, bubbling and steaming.

He glanced back at Cath clutching Barshin in her arms.

“You can't do it,” she said.

“I need Kalia,” Danny said. “I need to save Tom.”

Cath shrugged. “What if I try to see her, too? Maybe if we both see her, she'll be a strong enough thought to take down there. Tell me what she's like.”

Danny looked at the dog. “She's gray,” he said. “Really skinny. Kind of hairy, only the hair's like an old scrubbing pad. And her eyes are really big.”

“But what's she
like
? Maybe … what sort of stuff does she like?”

He tried to see through Kalia's eyes. “I … I'm not sure. She must have liked Sammael. I don't know why. She stayed with him. They had some kind of bond, some bargain. She wanted to be his dog until she died. He wasn't that nice to her, but she stayed with him. And sometimes he was nicer to her than to anything else. But only sometimes.”

“But she was always loyal?”

“Yeah, always. He didn't deserve it, but she was.”

Cath snorted. “Deserve it? That's what kids say.”

“No,” said Danny, noticing how Cath's fingers had tightened around Barshin's fur. “If someone's that loyal to you, you should be good to them.”

“But some people don't know how to be good. Or some dogs, neither. And sometimes you're just loyal to them no matter what. It ain't wrong.”

Danny stared at her. “It is wrong,” he said. “It shouldn't be like that.”

“Or maybe you're wrong. Maybe Sammael isn't all horrible.”

Danny shook his head. She had twisted his thoughts around so that he couldn't even think them properly anymore. He knew how important it was to try and say that you shouldn't believe people are allowed to hurt you, you shouldn't believe that Chromos is the only place of peace in this world—but the words balled up like clumps of hair in his throat and he couldn't cough them out.

He swallowed the hair balls and forced himself to say, “It doesn't matter. Do you know enough now? Can you imagine Kalia?”

“Maybe,” said Cath. “I reckon I can try anyway.”

“Okay. Let's call her together then.”

They tried it. Kalia continued to stare at Danny, but threw a couple of glances toward Cath and Barshin, mistrustful.

“She's not coming,” he said. “I don't think you've got her right.”

“It's you who ain't got her right, idiot. You're still thinking about how wrong everything is. She'll never come to you.”

“I can't help it,” said Danny. “Sammael and her—it is wrong.”

“Sometimes right and wrong ain't important,” said Cath. “Sometimes it only matters what you do.”

Danny looked at Kalia. “If you were my dog,” he thought, “I'd never kick you. I'd never be mean to you or drag you around. I'd be nice to you, and I'd love you.”

“It wouldn't make any difference,” said Kalia. “Love is a steadfast arrow. Once the bow is fired and the barb has gone in, it can't be pulled out again. At least, not back the way it went in.”

And she came toward him and put her paws up onto Zadoc's shoulder.

“Pull me up,” she said.

She was no heavier than paper, and for a moment Danny thought he was gathering up a parcel of snakeskin. He didn't understand how they'd done it but he had her, cradled in his arms. She wasn't a real dog, solid and warm. But she looked like the animal he'd killed on that windy hillside.

He wrapped his arms around her as tightly as he dared. She rested her scraggy head against the side of his neck.

“Take us down, Zadoc,” he said. “We're ready.”

And then the air got thicker and became slimy and wet until water was running down their faces and arms, and they had to close their mouths because they were breathing in air so wet that it made them cough up splatters of salt.

Just as his lungs were starting to feel painfully tight, Danny's head broke through the surface of the sea and he gasped, gulping in the night air again. Cath appeared beside him with Barshin crouched around her head, and they looked around for Isbjin al-Orr.

“Swim!” Cath yelled. “Swim for shore!”

“What?” Danny readjusted his grip on Kalia. She felt so fragile he was sure she was about to dissolve.

“Swim!” Cath screamed again. “Don't go into the moonlight!”

What was she going on about? Danny couldn't understand the fuss. They'd survived Chromos; they were back on earth again. Not solid earth, not quite yet. But nearly. What was the panic?

“The moonlight!” Cath waved her arms wildly. “It was in my dream!”

Danny managed to turn his head for long enough to see a vast, white wave sweeping toward them, soundless and soft. It was almost transparent, except that on the other side of it, instead of more sea, he could see shapes. There were tall things that looked like buildings, and other shorter shapes lower down.

As the salt water drove harder into his eyes, the tall shapes formed into separate things. What were they? Some kind of apartment buildings, like the Sawtry? He tried to look, but the wave was shining too brightly, rolling too close, and then he was in a dip with the whole white wall in front of him, and it was curling over, just as an elephant would curl its trunk around a log, and it was lifting him, Kalia, Cath, and Barshin together, raising them up into the sky as though they were weightless enough to fly.

Then they were streaming downward and the white wave was pushing them underneath the surface of the sea, and this time there was no Zadoc to carry them away, and they were going down and down and down, far too deep to ever swim back up again.

And the white water closed over their heads.

 

CHAPTER 22

THE ETHER

They were kneeling behind rocks, their legs and arms drained of strength. The world was white and stark, and the air was so thin that they had to draw hard at it, like thirsty people trying to suck water from mud.

Ahead, a path snaked from left to right in front of a steep rock face with a narrow white door set into it. When Cath tried to see where the path went off to once it had passed the door, her breath stopped working and her eyes clouded over with stars.

She heard a low rasping from her chest, as rough as a rusty blade biting into metal. Barshin slipped from her shoulders and dropped to the ground, panting weakly. Beside her, Danny's head was turned away downward, his mouth open in search of oxygen. None of them would last long here; only Kalia, under Danny's arm, seemed unaffected. The dog gazed calmly out to the path; her gray ears pricked.

And Sammael came along.

He had a big lump swung around his shoulders, which he threw to the ground with a silent shrug, raising a puff of dust from the white earth. He wasn't white—in fact, the back of his shirt seemed to be catching some kind of reflection of peacock blue from behind him, but there was a whiteness about his edges that seemed to fix him to this colorless world.

They'd found him in the moonlight on the sea.

But this wasn't the sea, or the earth, or Chromos. This was another place entirely. How many different worlds were there?

Cath had to pull her thoughts back toward her breathing, which didn't seem to want to work on its own. Were they still in the water, drowning? Had they
died
?

Danny's eyes were as bright as flint. “We're in the ether!” he whispered.

Kalia twitched and strained for a second out toward Sammael, but Danny's arm held her close.

“What?”

“The ether,” Danny repeated. “It's his place—the top of the sky. A river told me once—but it said I could never get here. Sammael's
made
of ether. Don't you see? Everything feels like him!”

The top of the sky?
Wasn't that Chromos? Cath looked down to see what surface she was crouching on, but it was only white dust, with no fragments of color in it that she could see. It seemed undisturbed by Barshin's long, panting shape.

“Look!” Danny nudged her sharply.

She followed the direction of his pointing finger.

Sammael was stooping outside the white door, putting his arms around the lump he'd thrown down. The door was open and he was going inside and taking whatever it was with him. Kalia tried to free herself again, paws scrabbling in the thin air.

“What is it?” said Cath. “What's that thing?”

Danny shook his head, putting a hand over Kalia's paws to keep them still. “Can't see,” he said.

The air around the lump had a darkness to it. Cath couldn't look for any longer than to run her eyes over it, and then her brain couldn't explain what she was seeing.

Sammael disappeared through the door. Cath's breath became heavier and heavier, her skin clamping in a band around her rib cage. She turned to Danny to see if he was having the same problem.

Danny's eyes were bulging, but he was still fighting to keep breathing. Of course he was—had Cath expected that he'd lack the courage even to do that?

Yeah, she thought. Yeah, I did. And in a minute, he probably will. He'll get really scared and lie down in a ball, and give up and die.

“Go on!” she whispered. “Go out! Show him the dog!”

Danny drew in a hoarse breath and tightened his arms around the struggling dog. He half got up onto one leg and then hung his head, shaking with the effort.

“I … can't…”

A black shadow drew itself across Cath's mind. Of course he could. He was just afraid to, that was all. He couldn't make himself stand up and face Sammael, so he was going to hold on to Kalia and agonize about what to do, and end up choking to death instead.

At least if he died, she could have his bike. She'd command the deer to take her back to the wood and get the bike, and have it at home with her, so no one could steal it. She deserved it more than he did anyway. What had Danny O'Neill ever done to deserve a bike, except be a pathetic wimp with stupid rich parents? And if he died, they could forget all this rubbish about stopping Sammael. Sammael would let more of Chromos onto the earth, and Cath would be able to bathe in it and watch its colors spreading over the world.

She could reach over and press down on his chest, right now, and he'd just stop breathing. It would be easy.

But when she turned to him, his eyes were on her in the same way. Not struggling, not giving up, not thinking of asking for help. They were burning with hatred.

She reached out toward him, her hand flexing in a claw, ready to latch on to his neck.

And then in a blinding flash of light, a great, pitted ball of silver came stinging across the white sky. Instead of a shadow, a stream of fire was racing over the white ground beneath it. The flames roared up the path, squealing over the stones and dust.

Sammael stepped out of the doorway, looking up at the silver ball. His face was sharp and calm.

“What's this?” he said. “Dropping by? I'll put the kettle on, will I?”

The trail of fire swept toward his head, blowing at his black curls with a thousand orange mouths, trying to chew him and scrape at him and scour away his face, but he was laughing.

“I've missed you!” he said, his arms spread wide. “I've missed you up here!”

And then he took off his boots and stood barefoot in the sheet of flame, laughing as it tried to burn him.