The Color of Darkness (22 page)

“But … I…” Tom tried to play over in his mind what he'd just seen. Had he really seen it? Or just imagined it?

“Shall we walk across the hill and over to town? I know it's a bit of a way, but we might see some good night wildlife. And then you can report the men to the police as soon as the station opens.”

Tom stared up at Sammael, and the shape of the man and the offered hand. How could he be so casual? He must have seen nothing out of the ordinary. Apart from the eagles and the stoats, of course.

Rising to his feet, Tom didn't quite know what to say. Perhaps he shouldn't mention the monster badger again. He must have made that up, out of shadows and fear.

“Do eagles fly at night, then?” he tried, still not seeing anything clearly in his mind's eye.

“Those did. Did you hear what they were saying?”

“No,” said Tom. “I haven't learned their calls yet—they're the only ones I haven't done. I didn't know where to go to find them.”

“Ah, I know the very place! We must go there. And then you'll know all the calls, will you?”

“All the birds,” said Tom. “I've still got a couple of pages of the animals to go. But the eagles were the last birds. What were they saying?”

“They were singing!” Sammael's face shone with happiness in the starlight. “It was an ancient eagle song about flying—about their wings being made of cloud silk and the sun setting fire to their tails. Did you know they can fly at one hundred and twenty miles an hour? And they can dive even faster—closer to one hundred and fifty miles an hour. Imagine being able to fly like that.”

Tom laughed. “You'll be telling me I could persuade them to take me for a ride next.”

But Sammael didn't laugh back. “Isn't that the kind of thing you'd like?”

“Of course it is,” said Tom. “Who wouldn't like that? But come on, be serious.”

“No, you're right,” said Sammael, beginning to walk along to the top of the hill. “It's daft to think that anyone who could learn to talk to stoats could take that even further and learn to talk to eagles, isn't it?”

“But … flying?” Tom strode to keep up with him. “I'm nearly six feet tall. Really?”

“You remember what I said?” Sammael stepped through a couple of closely growing trees, and for a second his silhouette looked exactly like the shapes to either side of him.

“About what?”

“About imagining.”

Tom pushed his own way between the trees. He wasn't sure about imagining. Monster badgers? Golden eagles?

But in the dark woodland, in the black spaces and the branches and the leaf shadows, he saw Cold Eyes's feet lifting off the ground, and the powerful wings of the eagles, and the starlight, and he heard the sound of feathers beating the air.

He opened his mouth to say, “Don't be daft.”

But what came out was, “Do you think it's really possible?”

 

CHAPTER 21

BEYOND THE SEA

Darkness opened its jaws and tore away the sky in one savage bite. Clouds flashed with lightning, rain snaked through the treetops overhead.

Trees? Yes, they were in a forest, the way upward barred by a mesh of twisting branches, and Danny didn't have to look to know that each and every tree was a sycamore. The lightning would get them all, one by one, and then it would get him.

He pulled at Zadoc's mane. “Please!” he begged. “Please stop! I hate storms—I've done enough of this. Don't take me into a storm. Take me back!”

Zadoc plodded on. A bolt of lightning sparked and thudded into the tree just ahead, yapping out a harsh sneer of triumph. The tree cried, long and high, and hissed into flames. Danny tugged at Zadoc's mane again, harder this time.

“Stop! It's all going to burn! You've got to stop!”

And Zadoc stopped.

For a second, the storm also stood still, holding its breath at Zadoc's motionless body. And then it began to roar. The trees were culled as fast as twigs on a bonfire, each great trunk flaring into orange fire, curling over into a twisted prawn, and exploding into a pile of gray-white ash.

It was snowing. No—those were the ashes, drifting through the air, clasping Danny's eyes and lips, choking up his mouth. He tried to breathe in, but his throat was papered with bitter smoke.

“Danny! Breathe!”

Cath's voice behind him was soft. He listened to the sound of her words in his head. And his breath came, sweet and clear, and the ash fell down to the ground so that he could see the world around him again.

They were wandering through a lamp-lit village at dusk, the houses' windows drawn over with softly glowing curtains. Danny knew this place. It was the village he'd come to in the search for the Book of Storms. Before, the houses had lined his way, still and silent, but now they sneered at Danny as he went past, and opened their doors, letting out a furious stench of moldy potatoes, sports socks, and eggs. He held his hand over his nose and mouth.

Dark blue birds with pointed tails began to shoot past his ears, clawing at his face.

“Coward! Stupid fool! Too slow to fly properly! Too slow to do
anything
properly!”

Swallows? But when he'd met them, they'd helped him. Why had they turned against him now?

A clump of fur shot down from a tree and launched itself at Danny's face, clawing at his mouth. Not the cat too? Not his friend Mitz?

“Blind buffoon!” Mitz screeched. “I've seen better guts on a violin! Only way to deal with nasty, selfish boys like you is to bite out your lying tongues!”

“No!” Danny let go of Zadoc and put up both hands to push Mitz away. The cat arched her back and reached for his neck with her hind claws.

“Danny! They're not real!”

He knew Cath was lying. His ears were covered in birds, and his face was covered in cat. Four sets of claws latched on to his head and neck; countless tiny wings beat at his ears. He scrabbled at them, trying to pull just one of Mitz's limbs away from his skin, trying to wheel his arms out around his head to knock the swallows away, but no sooner did he clear one patch of skin than it was being clawed at or flapped at again, until he could neither hear nor see nor feel anything except the gouges of cats' claws and the dry scratching of swallows' wings, and his eardrums were buzzing so loudly he knew they were about to burst.

*   *   *

“What am I supposed to do?” Cath hissed at Zadoc. “He's gone mental. I dunno what he's looking at. I can't see it.”

“Of course not!” said Zadoc. “Of course it's not the same! In order to see the same things in here, you'd have to have the same mind! And the same heart! Or at the very least, be thinking about the same thing. That might help you for a while, I suppose. You must both be thinking a little bit about the same thing, or else I wouldn't be moving at all, you know. I can feel you're both pulling me in the same direction. Or rather, you're pulling, and he's going along with you.”

“We need to find a dog,” said Cath. “That's the thing he needs to help this guy Tom.”

“Well, you know what to do,” said Zadoc. “We've told you what goes on in here. Come now, help him before he chokes.”

But how could she make Danny see through her eyes?

Cath found her voice. “Danny, don't think about them,” she tried.

That wasn't any good. Remembering what he shouldn't think about wouldn't help Danny now. She needed to tell him what he
should
do.

“Look past them,” she said. “Let them do whatever they're doing. They ain't real, you know it. Just look over them. What's there?”

Danny gasped and choked. “Cat,” he said. “Cat on my eyes. Can't see.”

“She ain't. We're in Chromos. You're just making her up.”

“No!” insisted Danny. “On my face! I can
feel
her! Get off!”

Cath thought hard. Could she try and see the cat? Could she pull it off him, if she knew what it looked like?

She tried. “What color is it?”

“Tabby.” Danny sounded as though he were trying to strangle himself. “Gray … and brown and … white … on paws.”

“Gray and brown?” said Cath. And then she had it. He just needed to make the cat into something else that couldn't possibly be real. Then he'd see it wasn't here.

She smiled at the back of his head. “Nah. Cats ain't normal colors in here. She'd be blue and green in here, with orange paws. Maybe red.”

“No,” said Danny.

“Yeah, she is. Just look at her!”

“No,” Danny said again, but a little more weakly. Something in him was shifting.

“Purple ears. And yellow tail. And bits of her you'll see through. Her guts! Cats have windows in their guts here. All of 'em. Honest!”

“If I could see through her … I'd see her blood,” said Danny. “And intestines. All that.”

“You'd see forward,” said Cath. “You'd see where we're going.”

“But I can't.” Danny sniffed. “There's a cat on my face.”

“There ain't!” Cath held herself back from thumping him between the shoulder blades. “God's sake! There's whatever you want! Just dream up something you want. Just … just
want it
. You'll get it.”

“That's impossible,” said Danny.

“This ain't the other world, stupid. This is Chromos. Just do it yourself!”

Her fist, without any kind of permission, snaked out and punched Danny square in the back of the head.

Good, thought Cath. At least even he might reckon that a fair way to dislodge a cat.

*   *   *

Danny's head snapped forward, and he had to cling to Zadoc to stop himself from falling off. The back of his head smarted, but at least Mitz had dropped from his face. She couldn't have gone far though. Would she be able to jump straight back up?

He wrestled with the smoke in his brain. One thing that he wanted. A single thing. Apart from an end to all this, he couldn't think of wanting anything else.

Ahead of them, a woman leaned against an oak tree, shabby and greasy-haired. She turned warm red eyes onto Danny's face.

“What did I give you?” she said.

Danny didn't know who she was. But suddenly a book came to his mind. A book of his own, made from the pictures he'd drawn. When he went home again, he'd start drawing Chromos. He couldn't hope to understand it now. But once he sat down with a pencil in his hand and made Chromos his own—he'd know where he was then.

He closed his eyes. How would he do it? Which bit would he draw first? Here, it would be the leaves along the tops of the hedges on either side of the lane. Then Mitz: the real, kind Mitz, her tabby stripes bent into the shapes of tiny tigers running across her coat to show her bravery. Shimny the horse, sleek-backed and proud, her bored old eye rolling at him. And the swallows would be away at the highest point of the sky, wheeling in joy.

It isn't much, he thought. Maybe it isn't enough. Cath would be dreaming of a whole new world in here. That's what I want though.

He forced himself to open his eyes.

And Chromos was shining.

*   *   *

They were still in the forest; as dark and glossy as Isbjin al-Orr's tiny woodland, but a million times larger. Now the trees were warm and breathing, and they called out to him as he passed by. The forest was full of animals, and Danny thought he saw Mitz again. But instead of launching herself at him, she stalked along one of the low branches and stood watching him pass. Her eyes were yellow and defiant, and her fluffy tabby coat was in perfect order.

“Mitz!” Danny called out to her.

“Cat-torturing weasel!” spat Mitz, arching her back. “You deserve to be boxed into a corner and pelted with rotten haddock! If I were your mother, I'd roll you in fox poo and hand you over to a slobbery Rottweiler!”

This time, Danny didn't let himself be upset. He grinned at her. Some of the things that had happened to her really were his fault. One day she'd forgive him, probably if he just bought a special piece of fish for her.

“See you at home!” he called.

“Not if I see you first,” spat Mitz. For a long second she stared at him and narrowed her eyes, and then she said, “I am partial to meatballs in gravy.”

Danny's heart soared, and he thought, Cath
was
right. There is everything here but there is also something special—something entirely belonging to me.

And then, from between two trees in a darker corner of the forest came a spindly gray dog, a lurcher narrower than a sapling, its woolly head pointed and earnest. It looked up at Danny with round black eyes that held a single, unanswerable question.

“Is it you?” said Danny. “It is, isn't it?”

He held out a hand.

“Careful!” warned Zadoc. “You can't touch anything in Chromos. It'll become a part of you.”