Page 16 of The Darkening (The Darkening)

Chapter 5

Awareness comes in small doses.

My cheek is cold and wet. It smells of the earth and decay of damp moss. The palm of my hand stings, all hot, sharp pain. The stench of smoke—wood smoke, burning hair smoke, lost family smoke—greets me as I draw in a breath.

“She’s alive,” a voice murmurs, muffled as if through a layer of blankets.

I open my eyes. Everything is blurry—round moons of faces and, beyond them, the blackness of the Storm—but I stagger up onto my knees, ignoring the grasping hands and murmurs of the people around me.They didn’t help Amma.

My knees buckle as I get my feet under me, and a hand steadies my elbow. The husk of Amma’s home lies before me. I shove all thoughts from my mind, forcing it clear, blank, numb.

I wrench my arm free and snarl. “Don’t touch me.”

They clear the way. A cough works its way out of me, a sharp-edged one that tears up my throat, followed by a dozen others. I move on leaden legs that don’t seem to be mine. I’m untethered from my body, just floating, strangely and peacefully detached.

My palm throbs, still wrapped around the sitar’s neck, and the pain draws me back.

My ears ring, but my vision stills, straightens, sharpens.

The Storm is pure black. No red streaks, no black cloaks, no cruel blue eyes. They’re not here yet. Maybe they don’t know that they missed me, that they’ve one more innocent to kill.

Hair rises all along my skin, from the back of my neck to my arms. Animalic dread sinks my stomach. People are watching me. Any one of them could report me. I’m out in the open.

My heart pounds, and in each heartbeat is one word:run.

My legs carry me toward the Storm, away from people. My toe catches on a tuft of moss, and I steady myself on the side of a building. I keep my hand to the wall as I half run, half stagger. The moss gets thicker and thicker, until it’s so thick my hand sinks all the way into it. I slow to a stop.

The buildings before me jut out of the stormwall, partly devoured by inky darkness. An electric hum fills the air, and I run my tongue over my teeth, tasting the copper-and-sugar sweetness of the Storm.

I take another step and find that I’m shaking. I watch, detached, as shudders rack me, goose bumps rising on my skin.

I find myself before a tall building covered in yellow-green moss. Under my palm, the springy rotted-wood door falls open, hanging crookedly on a rusted hinge.

A little room: three walls of mossy stone and one of black stormcloud.

The moss on the floor looks soft.

A soft thump of wood against moss.

My eyes close.

I’m gone.

I wake up with my eyes salted shut. I’ve spent my dreams crying, and now I’m hollow to the bone. A soft blue glow from a street ikonlight filters in through the cloudy window. Though it’s the dark of nighttime, between the ikonlight and the violet lightning streaking in lazy arcs through the wall of the Storm, the room is well lit enough to see by.

I sit up and cross my legs. My hand aches, and I spread my fingers wide, watching the seven red lines branded on my palm flex and stretch. A glint of light on metal catches my eye.

Amma’s sitar. It lies beside me, turned on its side.

A keening howl tears itself from me, a wordless wail, a child’s cry. I muffle it with the back of my hand, and when that doesn’t work, I fold myself into a tight ball with my mouth pressed into my knee. My arms wrap around me, and it hurts, how much I wish they were Amma’s.

The tears slow but don’t stop. I should take better care of Amma’s sitar. I take off my shawl and wrap it up to keep out the damp.

My hands shake. I press them together and lock my fingers till it stops.

It takes a monumental effort to focus and take stock of myself. My clothes are wet, as is my hair. My face is taut and dry. My throat stings.

And inside me is a horrible sharp-edged thing. I can’t face it.