The Darkening

spiny, bristled legs and wicked little fangs and clusters of cold black pebble eyes, crouched.

She turned and ran.

And got one step before her right foot caught on a root.

She fell.

An instant later, the wave of spiders swept over her.

Hannah curled into a shrieking ball, waiting for the pain of a million stings. .

But it didn’t come.

The spiders seemed frozen. Their hooked feet grew rigid, snipping gently into her skin, her lips, her ears. All of them — large as breakfast bowls, small as match heads — were motionless. Listening.

Then they fell away.

They dropped off her and began scuttling over one another. Some wandered in confused circles. Some burrowed for cover. Some sprang away into the darkness. Some hunkered down stupidly to hide in her hair.

She sat up and brushed the few remainders away. Whatever had been guiding them was gone. The spell was broken.

And Hannah heard a splintering crash from the direction of the cottage.

She got to her feet and ran towards the sound.

Nicholas was on his back. The cage had rolled as it fell, and had struck the firm, wet ground with a sharp crack. He had instinctively tried to shield his head from the hard branch and bone and so had left his torso exposed; when the cage crunched into the ground, knurled branches and knobbled bones thudded into his exposed kidneys and ribcage. He was winded. Of all the fights he’d lost in high school, the worst was to a Scottish boy named Murray who had hammered his freckled fist deep into Nicholas’s solar plexus, not only knocking every scrap of air out of him, but seeming to switch off his lungs so they wouldn’t draw back in. Nicholas was left humiliated, gasping, desperate for air. This was worse — he was drowning in pain.

He curled on his side, mouth wide, frantically willing a scrap of air to draw into his burning lungs. His diaphragm finally jittered alive and he sucked in a throaty gasp.

His eyes rolled, hunting for Quill.

The old woman was on the ground. She had clung to the cage as it fell, but it had rolled as it collapsed; only one leg had been caught beneath it, and now she strained to pull it from the splintery grid of spiny wood.

‘Feck ya!’ she hissed, but Nicholas didn’t know if she was cursing him, herself, or someone else. Her hands patted the earth, crawling like grey crabs, hunting.

For the knife, he thought. Where is it?

‘Where is it?’ she whispered, echoing him.

Nicholas in the cage, Quill on the wet, sandy ground. Both rolled to their knees. Both scoured with eyes and fingers for the knife.

‘You fucking bitch,’ whispered Nicholas.

‘Feck you,’ she hissed again, this time surely to him.

‘You cut their throats!’ he spat, fingers crawling under the hard, gnarled branches and into the damp soil.

‘For Him!’

‘For yourself, you greedy whore!’

‘Feck you,’ she repeated quietly. ‘Where is it?!’

Nicholas painfully rocked back on his haunches. His shadow was a black smudge inside the half-collapsed sphere. The cold moonlight made the bones in the cage as white as the ribs of undersea things. A wink of silver! His eyes jerked to the shine off the keen edge of the knife. The weapon lay just outside the bars. Near to him. Far from Quill.

‘Yes,’ he whispered, and reached between the branches.

‘No!’ snapped Quill. She scrambled.

Nicholas grabbed the knife.

And a small figure shrieked from the shadows and drove its own knife down at Quill.

As Hannah crept into the ring of trees, her eyes widened. On the ground was the cage she’d dreamt of, the cage of bone and branch, the round prison where she’d dreamt that spiders had bound her ready to die. It had collapsed on the ground, and Nicholas was inside it, on his back, heaving like a landed fish. An old woman was nearby, clawing at the ground like a blind thing. Hannah didn’t hesitate. She ran.

‘Horrible!’ she yelled as she pounced on the old woman.

But Quill saw Hannah’s shadow before she heard her voice, and rolled aside. Hannah’s paring knife whisked down and through Quill’s cardigan, nicking her withered breast and driving into the sandy dirt.

‘Hannah!’ yelled Nicholas.

‘You little brasser!’ cried Quill, and her voice trembled — not with anger, but with delight.

‘Hannah, run!’ shouted Nicholas. He scrambled backwards for the hatch, but his feet fouled on the branches and his clothes snagged on the snapped bars. ‘Run!!’

Hannah scooted back, eyes locked on her paring knife driven blade-first in the ground.

Quill whirled on her, grinning brightly.

Nicholas fumbled with the cage hatch. But the frame had distorted as the cage landed and the hatch was firmly stuck.

Hannah eyed off the distance to the knife. Quill watched her, and the grey skin around her eyes wrinkled. ‘Are ya quick, girlie?’

Hannah stared. I can make it. I can get it. She’s old. She’s slow.

‘Quicker than ya sister, I hope,’ taunted Quill in a singsong.

Hannah’s jaw clenched.

‘No, Hannah! Get out of here!’ cried Nicholas. He bashed at the hatch. It didn’t move.

Hannah dived.

Fast as a crow beak, Quill swung out. Her arm struck Hannah mid-flight, knocking the girl face first into the dirt. Hannah’s outstretched hand grabbed nothing but wet, dark sand. Quill rolled, snatched up the knife, and drove her free hand down on the back of Hannah’s neck.

Hannah yelped, but the cry was cut short as Quill pushed her face hard into the cold, wet dirt.

‘Get off her!’ yelled Nicholas.

‘He is cruel and kind, isn’t He?’ twittered Quill. ‘Eh, pretty man? Sends her back, whole and ready, out of His woods to me!’ She laughed. Wind tickled the trees, and their leaves whispered approvingly. She straddled Hannah’s back.

Nicholas stopped beating at the hatch. In his left hand was Quill’s wicked little knife, but it was as useless as a burnt match with him trapped inside.

Hannah kicked and struggled, but Quill had her pinned. She tested the paring knife’s blade with her thumb, and nodded. Overhead, the moon sailed high in clearing skies. Pleased, Quill looked over at Nicholas. Her mouth creaked open in a dark smile. ‘Let’s send her on her way, then,’ she whispered, ‘so that you and I can be.’

Hannah tried to scream, but Quill pressed her mouth deeper into the sandy ground.

‘Don’t, Quill. Don’t do it,’ whispered Nicholas.

Quill looked at him, as a mother looks at a child.

‘She’ll not feel much. Blood is the only sacrifice that pleases the Lord.’

Hannah’s one eye above the dirt stared at Nicholas, wide with terror.

The moon rode high and easy overhead.

The sharp paring knife glinted.

And, suddenly, Nicholas knew what to do.

The idea arrived as clear and bright as the moonlight had, casting everything sharp and lucid.

There was a choice. He took it.

‘Rowena,’ he said softly.

She didn’t hear him, and put the knife in her right hand and took a handful of Hannah’s hair.

‘Rowena,’ he repeated. He was surprised at how calm he felt.