A Latent Dark (6 page)

Orrin let out a series of guttural clucks.

“I’m coming.”

They reached an alleyway and Orrin changed course, flying straight into the darkness. Skyla stopped at the entrance to the alley.

“Are you sure?”

In response, Orrin swooped from the rooftops, buzzing her. She ducked as he seemed to disappear into the ground. Skyla followed and found herself at an open manhole.

So this is how it’s going to be from now on
, she thought.

The sewers of Bollingbrook were ancient and—aside from her mother—were the only other thing that scared small children in the city. Orrin squawked from the darkness far below. She paused, looking down a series of slimy metal rungs before lowering herself into the shadows. A stone corridor stretched out before her.

Orrin skipped and flew ahead, down the dimly lit tunnel. His croaking echoed in the void, the shadows moving in dim methane light, but thankfully not living.

She wondered how he knew about this manhole, if it was somehow already arranged ahead of time.

But that seemed silly.

Orrin was her only real friend now, though one of flesh and feathers and claws. In the few days she had known him, he had been kinder to her than any human had ever been. Orrin never pulled her hair, or threatened to cut her with a shard of mirror from the girl’s bathroom. Orrin would never betray her, she hoped. Could ravens betray?

As the reality of leaving Bollingbrook settled in her mind, Skyla realized just how few regrets she had. She would miss little about this city. Not a friendly face in Bollingbrook, she used to say.

All except for Missy
, she thought with a sudden pang in her chest. That friendship had ended in disaster. There were little hands clutching Skyla’s arms, a pair of pliers grinning at her—Victoria’s smile with her tiny lizard teeth…

“A tooth for a tooth,” Victoria had said. “Teach you to punch me.”

“Hold her down! Get her down!” Dona’s laughing voice echoed in Skyla’s mind.

They had nearly gotten her too, the bullies with their expensive clothes and cruel eyes. Melissa had sold her out alright. It was a raven who had saved her in the end, never a person.

Laughter and taunting clouded her thoughts. Skyla shunted the memories away, forbidding herself to dwell on them.

Dwelling is a luxury for people with money and time, not for the dirty faces of the Gutter Wedge. Not for the hunted, not for people like me,
she thought, wiping a tear from her cheek.

Missy’s red book bounced in her rucksack, suddenly feeling heavier as her footsteps drove her forward, a cadence into the unknown.

*

Her journey through the sewers was damp and tedious, but not nearly as terrifying as the stories promised, aside from her discovery of a banana slug the length of her arm. Then there was the beetle colony that scattered, covering the floor in shifting blue before vanishing into the cracks. But there were no monsters, not like the monsters in her house before it burned.

Now that was a monster,
she thought. Even now it seemed more like a dream, the shapes too impossible, the movement too fluid.

They traveled down the same hallway next to the canal for miles it seemed. The only variation was the widening and narrowing of the walls and ceiling where different eras of construction collided. Juxtaposed slabs of reality hid behind curtains of moss and algae. They said all of Bollingbrook was built on the shoulders of greater cities. Now she could see why.

“The way they talk about this place, you’d think it ate children alive,” she said to Orrin.

Croak. Click, click, click
, went Orrin.

She had begun talking conversationally to the bird more and more, partly because no one else was around, but also because she had the feeling that he actually understood what she was saying. When she spoke, his head would tilt slightly and his eyes would gaze at her. Sometimes his vocal range was extraordinary, from croaks and clucks to deep squawks and actual words. Other times he would simply blink once or twice and then look away as if mulling over her statement.

“I mean the place doesn’t seem to be very scary at all.”

Squawk
.

“Dona would be scared, if only for fear of getting her shoes dirty. Missy told me once that Dona had over four hundred pairs of shoes. Who needs that many shoes?”

Cluck
.

“She had so many that her parents had to build a new room on their mansion to fit them all.”

Croak
.

“I miss Melissa…”

Squawk
.

“Do you think they’ll find us?”

This was met with silence. Orrin only stared.

As the thrill of being chased began to wear off, Skyla yawned. Her eyes felt like they had sand in them. There was no sun or moon to indicate what time it was. She hoped they could make it under cover of night, but who could tell? They may as well have been walking for days.

When Skyla had found Orrin, he was entangled, tethered to the ground, boys throwing stones at him. She had thrown herself in-between him and the cruel boys without even thinking, because Orrin was small. Orrin was defenseless and beaten. She could relate.

He had spoken her aunt’s name, and then her own.

“
Ree
-ah,”
he uttered from her shoulder. A rusty old sound, nothing like a common crow.

Much to her mother’s chagrin, she kept him, claiming that her crazy Aunt Rhia had sent him all the way from Rhinewall. How else could he know her name?

“Only if he stays in your room.” Lynn had allowed it begrudgingly. And so he did.

Now Orrin’s little mimics were the only clues she had.

“
Ree-ahh
,”
Orrin sang, his voice echoing against the walls,
“
Reeee-ahh
.”

“Are you taking me to see Rhia?” she mused. “Judging the way I am giving
you
a ride, I think it’s the other way around.”

Or are we just going to die down here in the sewers?
she thought.

In response, Orrin stretched out his neck and opened his mouth wide. The sound that came out was a clicking, chittering sound. It electrified the hairs on the back of Skyla’s arms and neck.

“Where did you learn
that
call?” she asked.

Orrin only blinked, his body bouncing along on her shoulder as if detached from his head. He clucked a few times indignantly.

“Where did you learn that call you just made?” she asked again.

Orrin croaked and it almost sounded like he said,
“Eyes.”
But Skyla couldn’t be sure.

After walking for what felt like hours, they came to a fork which forced them to turn. What had been a tunnel leading to the right had been sealed ages ago. To her left was the canal, dark and deceptively smooth. It bisected the city and provided power to turbines humming behind thick walls.

This leads to the Flux, to the Wilds,
she thought with a thrill.
This leads out of the city. I’ve never even been out of the city… I’ve never been anywhere.

As they rounded a corner, blue gray morning light poured over the damp concrete walls, lifting the gloom and hurting her eyes. The canal that had rushed along beside her seemed to fall off the edge of the world. A cool breeze smelling of pine and loam hit her face, washing away the shadows.

Orrin caught the breeze in his feathers and spun around happily on the edge of her backpack. He launched from her shoulder and flew up ahead, his shadow fluttering on the sides of the damp walls.

She found her path blocked by a gate, which spanned the width of the tunnel. She gripped the bars like a prisoner. She sighed.

What now?
she thought.

Orrin whistled from across the canal. She turned to see him perched on a large, wet lever sticking out from the opposite wall. A chain dangled from the lever, an open lock hanging from the end. Orrin was wiping rust from his beak with a claw.

“How am I supposed to get over there?” she yelled over the roar of water.

Orrin looked at her from the lever and squawked.
Not my problem, kid. I want to get out of here as bad as you,
he seemed to say.

The bars had two crossbeams that ran along the width of them. Skyla shimmied her way across the rapid water, given a sharp fright when her foot almost slipped at first. School uniform shoes were less than ideal for this.

Black, violent water rushed underneath her, pressing debris that had built up for decades—maybe centuries—against the bars, a throbbing viscous garbage dump. The lever, she decided, was probably to purge the filter somehow.

Skyla cringed as her fingers sunk into the slime covering the lever. Despite the coating of sludge and rust, it moved with ease. Several tons of steel bars fell through the floor of the canal with a loud
sploosh
. Foam drifted out over the surface toward the ledge, followed by the smallest bits of refuse,  an aquatic parade of castaway rejects, free of their watery purgatory. What looked like a large blue and pink fish drifted several yards beneath the surface and was gone. Skyla shivered when she thought she saw a face—and hair.

The parade of random waterlogged objects finally dwindled to a boot, a newspaper, some rope and other small indescribable objects. Skyla decided that it was probably best to keep moving.

Orrin perched at the edge of the drop, cawing cheerily. Skyla watched him as she sat down on the lip of the canal, only a few feet away from the violent current. From the edge of the pipe, the city wall of Bollingbrook fell away on either side in rows of great copper monoliths, so high that it was impossible to see where they ended. They blended into the distant fog where the forest trees, grown wild from the Flux, crowded and pressed against them.

Nobody knew what the Flux was. Most people simply called it The Wilds, a place that caused visions and madness. Others said it held the truth—whatever that meant.

Below her feet, the water cascaded out of the canal in a deafening roar, vanishing into the gorge below. A large branch plunged over the edge, performing a dramatic suicide. A deep canyon had been carved by centuries of water from the city, trailing off to where it would eventually merge with the greater Lassimir River. The forest was simply cut off at the river’s edge as if a great axe had come down, cleaving the earth in half. From the granite face, exposed roots twisted to find purchase. Gnarled toes from a beggar’s shoe.

The forest spread out in front of her, a vast blanket of greens and grays, hinting at the jagged Flux-torn landscape that lay hidden beneath. It rolled and rolled until it too vanished into the morning fog.

She shrugged off her backpack and rummaged inside, her stomach growling. As she grabbed the last scrap of cheese from her rucksack, her hand brushed up against the smooth surface of the box. It had honestly been the last thing on her mind. Holding the food in her mouth, she removed it from the satchel.

Now that it had been jostled, it was somewhat free of dust and she could clearly read her name written in thick red letters on the lid. Skyla placed the box on the ground and tugged the cord that held the lid in place. Fine particles of dust and old twine flew into the air as the strand unraveled.