Page 40 of The Darkening (The Darkening)

We often play with the clay, calling it fairy mud, fashioning lumpy creatures and building mock-ups of our dream houses. It’s the perfect toy for kids who have nothing—it’s a toy that could become everything. But of course, it will never measure up to a real toy, like my doll.

Amma comes while I sit sobbing, scrubbing at my doll, succeeding only in spreading the sticky clay around. “You can’t always just separate two things by force. First, you have to understand why they’ve gotten so attached.” She runs her finger through the clay, testing it by pressing her thumb and forefinger together. “My, this mud is well stuck, isn’t it? It sure has taken a liking to your little wooden girl. She’s been polished with oil, hasn’t she? Clay like this loves oil. It makes it even stickier. But let me show you something.”

She takes me into the kitchen, wraps the doll in husks, and sticks it into the oven where a fire burns. “The trick is to ask it to change a little, to get it to want something else.” She bakes the doll for a good half hour. When it comes out, she rubs the clay with a finger. It cracks off like dust, leaving my doll spotless, if slightly browner. The air fills with clay dust, and Amma smiles at me. “Look how the clay chases after the wind now.”

The boy went into the Storm a few months later. I’d given my doll to him the week before, and he took her with him into the Storm. I’d cried, thinking if I’d only kept the doll, he would’ve stayed. I don’t remember his name, but I remember he had hair the color of bronze and a gap between his front teeth that whistled when he said f-words:forever, faraway, father, friend.

I shake myself free of the memory, slipping out of an old sadness that fits like a favorite sweater.

I dab some dissolver on the edges of the window frame, and as soon as the sizzling starts, I force the window open. The tar makes a smacking sound as it gives, and light shines in. I go to the other window and repeat.

Two steady shafts of light beam into the room. I uncap the Very Shiny Sealer and dab it onto the tar, making a wide circle at the exact point a beam of light hits the floor. The tar turns mirrorlike, and the column of light bounces off the floor onto the wall. I trace the light’s path and apply the sealer onto the wall, and then again onto the wall opposite. The light bounces onto the ceiling. Even standing on the table, I can’t quite reach, so I go after the second beam of light.

The room grows as hot as an oven. Sweat sticks my tunic to my skin. I don’t know how many hours of sunlight I’ve got left. From the closet, I grab the box of Extra-Small Wood Shavings and sprinkle the contents out onto the tar. The shavings are so fine that when a breeze comes through the open window, they rise and dance in the air. If they work like the husks Amma used, they should draw up any remaining moisture.

I dust my hands off and head out into the hall. The air is wonderfully cool. I fish my lunch out of my pocket, unwrap it, and bring it to my lips.

I chew, but the taste doesn’t register.

Thing is, the sun needs time to work, an hour or two. I could wait here, like a good apprentice.

But I’m not here to be a good apprentice.