Page 18 of The Darkening (The Darkening)

What will you do?it asks.

“What can I do?”

It steps closer.What you will.

It pushes me and I fall back through the silvery pool, into a starless night.

I wake up with ten inches between my nose and the soft black of the Storm. My body jerks back, and I’m halfway across the room before I know what I’m doing.

I press my palms into my eyes and breathe, pushing down that sharp-edged thing inside of me, pulling forward the memory of the pale Wardana’s cruel sneer, Prince Dalca’s stony, untouchable face, his glinting royal-blood eyes. I welcome the anger that fills me, feeding it memories—Amma’s burnt cane, Jem’s teeth, Amma’s voice, the sundust tea she’d make—until the sorrow no longer threatens to eat me whole.

The Storm rumbles with thunder. I turn until it’s just a hint of darkness at the corner of my eye.

I get to my feet and walk the length of the room, waking up and warming up as I do. I’d noticed nothing before, hadn’t bothered to look at anything but the Storm. The stripped down skeleton of an old loom stands in one corner, and the walls are notched with deep stone shelves. This must’ve been a manufactory of some sort, long ago. The fifth ring was once a place of smiths and weavers; a place where things were made. But, as the Storm invaded the sixth and the displaced fled to higher rings, all the old manufactories and workshops were remade into homes, often with odd quirks and strange layouts.

The fifth once had a proper jail, until that too was made into homes. Now the handful of cells in the Wardana’s fifth-ring watchtower are where lawbreakers are imprisoned, for a time. For those who’ve committed minor crimes, freedom comes with a fee paid by their loved ones. For those who’ve committed worse, there’s the Storm.

That’s not where Prince Dalca took Pa.

The beginning of something flickers to life in me. Pa’s not gone, not the way Amma and Jem and all the rest are.

I come to a round wooden lid set in the ground, half decayed, about four feet across. I lift it up and find a metal tub. It’s deep enough to sit in, though I can’t imagine it was built for people. In the streets, I’ve seen women with strong arms and red cheeks dyeing mosscloth over freestanding tubs about this size.

A layer of moss coats the bottom. There’s also a wooden doll, tucked away for safekeeping by some long-lost child. I lift it up and set it aside.

Beside the tub, I unearth a faucet and a pump from under a mound of moss. The pump groans, but with a little effort, water comes out. Though it’s red at first, it clears in minutes.

A small spark of desire pierces the numbness in me. I’d like to be clean, to scrub the cinder from my skin and the stench of smoke from my hair.

Most of the moss comes off easy, and I use a fistful of it to scrub the sides of the tub. Under all the moss is a circular ikon. As the cold water touches it, steam billows out and up, warming my face. I strip off my singed, smoke-gray clothes. Goose bumps rise all over my body, a little due to the chill, a lot due to the proximity of the Storm.

A hiss escapes my lips as I step in, sinking down until the level of water rises over my lips, over the tip of my nose, past the corners of my eyes.

My body tingles all over. My awareness sinks into it, as if I’m coming back to myself: my long feet and bony ankles, my smooth calves and knobby knees, the faint curves of my hips and chest, my scarred hand and my untouched one. My skin is perhaps the same brown as the prince’s, but while mine is sallow from living under the Storm’s shadow, his glows from the sun’s kiss.

From under the water, the room is nothing but brushstrokes and pools of dark color. Fragments of light dance on the water’s surface, in intersecting lines and ephemeral curls—almost like an ikon. If I rise up, what will this ikon of light do to me?

Let it change me. Let it make me as fierce as Ma, as smart as Pa. Let it kill the weakness that twists my stomach into knots.

My lungs burn, but I stay down.

Let me come out strong.

I jolt up, coughing, sucking in air to fill my lungs.

Lines of light dance across the wet skin of my chest and arms, bouncing off the water’s surface. It’s no ikon; there’s no power in it. And yet.

I kneel before the Storm, Amma’s sitar in hand. My fingers run along the strings, and I pluck out a few notes. The sitar hums in its familiar voice.

I ignore the tears that come to my eyes. The sorrow, the sharp-edged thing in me, I can’t keep holding them in my throat, in my chest, in my belly. Not if I’m to leave this place and do what I must.

I press my lips to the sitar’s head, where Amma used to rest her hands. With that kiss, I let the sitar have every dark thing in me, every shred of the despair that threatens to swallow me whole.

My fingers wrap around its neck, silencing it. I cast it into the Storm.

It flies through layers of darkness, going slower and gentler than it would’ve through air. It sings, as if ghostly hands now play it.

The Storm welcomes the sitar into its heart. With it goes my sorrow, until all that’s left in me is fury.