An Artificial Night

“You die.”

“Is there a way for me to not die?”

Luna shook her head. “Not unless you go back to him.”

“What do I do for you?”

For the first time, Luna looked nervous. “You let me take your skin. I found … I know how the Selkies did it. Let me be Kitsune. Let me go free.”

“All right.” Hoshibara raised her hand and clasped it over Luna’s. She whimpered once as the thorn cut into her skin. Then she closed her eyes, movement stilling. Luna looked at her for a moment, then leaned down, pressing a kiss against her forehead.

“I wish there’d been another way,” she whispered, and slammed her hand down over Hoshibara’s, binding them together with the thorn. Then she threw back her head and screamed. There was a blast of light so bright that if I’d been watching it with anything other than dream-eyes I wouldn’t have been able to face it. When it faded, both Hoshibara and the rose-girl were gone. A dainty teenager stood in their place, slender hands covered in blood. She had chestnut hair and silver-furred tails, and looked like neither one of them. She stood unsteadily, clutching the hem of her suddenly too large dress, and staggered into the woods, vanishing.

“She got out,” Karen said behind me. “Can we?”

“Karen—” I turned. Karen and Hoshibara were gone. The landscape was dissolving in a pastel smear, and I could smell roses on the wind. I closed my eyes—

—and opened them to find myself at the edge of Acacia’s wood, hidden by a tangle of branches. The sky was black, and my candle was at least four inches shorter. Whatever Luna dosed me with knocked me out for more than a little while, and time was running out.

I stood slowly, leaning against one of the nearby trees. I was back in Blind Michael’s lands, and I knew how Luna managed her escape, and why she’d been willing to give me up to keep its secret. “The end justifies the means,” I whispered. “Oh, Luna.”

The cuts on my fingers were swollen and red and burned if I put too much pressure on them. Cute. “It’s poison Toby week, isn’t it?” I muttered, looking out over the plains. A thick mist had risen, bleaching the landscape; the lights of Blind Michael’s halls flickered dimly in the distance.

There was no time like the present and no time to waste. Shivering, I stepped out of the shelter of the trees and started walking. The steady whiteness of the land around me added an eerie quality to the trip that I could’ve done without. Boulders looked like looming monsters until I got close enough to see them clearly, while brambles and clumps of grass turned the ground into an obstacle course. I held my candle up to light the way, and it burned the mists back just enough to let me see that I was walking in a straight line. The flame was my compass and the light from Blind Michael’s halls was my lighthouse, leading me through the night.

Nothing stopped me as I walked through the mist; the land around me was silent. My candle kept burning slowly down; by the time it was another inch shorter, I was standing in front of the halls, aware of just how exposed I really was. The guards wouldn’t miss me for long. I hunched down behind a crumbling wall, eyeing the mist for signs of movement.

The Luidaeg said Blind Michael had taken Karen’s “self.” Remembering ALH, that phrase made me cold. January’s machine pulled the self out of people, left them empty and dead from the shock of separation. I didn’t think it was something you could just toss into a cell—he had to be keeping it in something more solid. A trinket or a toy of some sort, something she couldn’t escape from. So what was it?

The butterfly globe he taunted me with. That had to be Karen’s self, trapped inside the glass and beating itself to death as it struggled to get free. But where was it? He’d had it with him before. He might still have it, or he might have given it to his monstrous children as a toy. Either way, I needed to take it away. Neither place seemed more likely than the other, and I finally settled for the children as the lesser of the two evils. I might survive them and get a second chance if I chose wrong. I couldn’t say the same about him.

Crossing Blind Michael’s holdings alone in the dark is something I never want to do again. I moved from building to building, freezing and holding my breath at the slightest sound. Nothing came out of the darkness to attack me and somehow that wasn’t reassuring. There was no way to know whether I was walking into a trap, and so I just kept going, stopping when I reached the hall with the broken walls. It looked different from the outside, but I recognized it. I always know my prisons.

The outside of the hall was smooth stone. The only way in was the obvious—the broken walls were only ten feet high, and they weren’t barred in any way. It wasn’t a bad climb. I could make it.

An old water barrel butted up against one wall. I climbed on top of it and stuck my candle between my teeth, careful not to bite down too hard as I started feeling around for handholds. There was one clear path, a series of shallow indentations leading up the side of the wall. It made sense. Kids always find a way out, but in Blind Michael’s lands, that didn’t mean getting away. They also needed a way back in.

The climb was slow, painful, and one of the most nerve-racking things I’ve ever done. There was no way to run if anyone found me before I was over the wall; if I got caught, I was as good as dead. The cuts on my hand burned when they pressed against the stone, my knees ached from fighting gravity, and hot wax spattered my cheek and neck every time I moved. But I made it. I reached the top of the wall, my candle still burning a steady blue, and no one sounded the alarm.

The Children’s Hall spread beneath me in an unmoving patchwork of stillness and shadows. The children were gone, probably still searching for me back in the “real” world. That was a good sign. A tapestry hung a few feet to my left, anchored to the top of the wall with rusty metal loops. It looked as decayed as everything else in Blind Michael’s kingdom, but it would do. Inching along the wall, I grabbed the tapestry, intending to climb carefully down.

The decayed fabric had other ideas. It tore under my hands, and I fell, grabbing for a less tattered section of the cloth. This time I got it right. The tapestry stretched but didn’t tear, and I slammed against the wall hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs, nearly biting through my candle in the process. I hung there for a moment, breathing rapidly through my nose. When I was sure I wouldn’t fall, I started to descend.

The tapestry ended about three feet above the floor. I let go, landing hard but upright. I’d made it; I was in the hall, and the children weren’t, although I knew better than to count on that to last. I needed to keep moving.

There were a few makeshift toys scattered around the floor. Sticks, stones, and some bones I didn’t look at too closely; a teddy bear without a head and a doll’s head without a body; shards of wood and plastic. None of them looked as if they were used very often, save perhaps as weapons. I searched until my candle had grown shorter still and didn’t find anything but garbage. “Damn it, where is she?” I whispered. The darkness didn’t answer. Wherever she was, it wasn’t here, and it was time to get moving.

The tapestry I’d used to break my fall looked like it would hold me. Putting my candle back between my teeth, I grabbed hold and started climbing. It didn’t take as long as it did the first time; fear and failure were hurrying my steps. I hauled myself over the edge of the wall, pulling the tapestry with me and dangling it down the outside of the building. It was proof that I’d been there; that didn’t matter as much as not breaking my neck did.

The tapestry made an excellent ladder. I lowered myself down, dropping without a sound onto the water barrel. One down—the easy one—and one to go.

Of course, I’d left the hard part for last.

The night was getting colder. I crept from building to building, stopping outside the one other landmark I was sure of: the stable. The screams that surrounded it before were gone, replaced by nickers and whinnies. The children we hadn’t rescued weren’t children anymore. I shuddered as I slipped inside, hiding behind a bale of hay. No one was likely to look for me there. What kind of idiot hides in a prison? Damn it all, anyway. How many parents were crying for children they’d never see again? Those kids hadn’t done anything wrong—they were just human and in the wrong place at the wrong time. It had to end. I was going to save Karen, and then I was going to kill Blind Michael. Firstborn or not, he’d die for what he’d done.

The sounds of the horses faded into background noise, becoming almost normal, and a new sound began making itself heard beneath the stamp of hooves and the rustling of hay. A sound I didn’t want to hear. Sobbing.

I turned to look at the nearest stall. It was barred with brambles and wire like the others, but whatever was