Deepest, Darkest Read online

  A chorus of chirps and chitters rippled through the group.

  A tall spriggan with a vest of woven twigs hissed and banged its spear against the rock. “Cowards. It is not right for spriggans to fear the darkness.”

  “It is right to fear the Ancient Ones,” the shrill voice spat.

  “Superstitions and stories,” growled a grizzled white spriggan with a cloak of cobwebs. “The Ancient Ones are long dead.”

  “They have only slumbered. And they are rising.”

  Voices overlapped as the swarm erupted into a cacophony of arguing.

  The first spriggan took a step closer to Cole and looked him up and down with narrowed eyes. “Take that wicked sigil away from here,” it rasped. “Destroy it. Bury it. It can bring you no good.”

  A few of the angrier-looking spriggans were whispering together and moving closer to the children.

  “I think we should go,” Evie whispered, tugging at his arm, “before they change their minds.”

  “But what is it?” Cole tried one last time.

  “It is a promise,” said the spriggan. “Pray that it is never kept.”

  Fable took a step away from the cave. “Come on, Cole.” She and Evie pressed back the foliage as they edged their way toward Candlebeard’s path.

  Cole tucked the stone back into his pocket and nodded. “Fine. I’m going.”

  Dozens of sets of glistening, wary eyes followed his every motion. Jagged spear tips remained trained on him as he took one step and then another away from the entry. He paused. He turned back.

  “The thing is—”

  But before Cole could finish his thought, a heavy blow caught him from behind, and he fell forward, tumbling uncontrollably toward the mouth of the forbidden cavern.

  Seven

  Tinn hurried down the goblin path through the Wild Wood. Thoughts echoed around in his head, each one humming like a piano string—except they came together less like structured chords and more like an instrument tumbling down a stairwell.

  What did it all mean? How had their father’s lunch box ended up on a mysterious Island of Bones? Had Joseph Burton gone there in search of something? Had he been taken there against his will? Did this mean that their father was among the dead?

  Tinn was halfway back to Endsborough before he remembered that Cole would not be there. He had been planning to spend the afternoon with Fable in the forest while Tinn was busy with his lessons.

  Tinn adjusted course and made his way instead toward the clearing near the old cabin in the woods. The clearing was empty when he arrived, but the bushes to the eastern side rustled as he approached.

  “Cole?” he called. “Fable?”

  A craggy rock troll stumped through the bracken. “Human is looking for Little Queen and her squishy friends. Won’t finds them here. Won’t finds them anywhere, most like.”

  Tinn scowled. “What do you mean by that?” he said.

  The troll shrugged. “Hinkypunks play tricks.” He shrugged. “Oddmire play tricks, too.” His granite eyes narrowed. “Spriggans don’t play at all.”

  Tinn stared for several seconds. “They wouldn’t.”

  The troll bobbed his head.

  “Show me where they went,” said Tinn. “Please?”

  The troll raised an eyebrow. “Why would Knurch help human?”

  “Because,” said Tinn. “Because . . . if you do, I’ll tell the Queen of the Deep Dark you helped look out for her daughter’s safety. She’s sure to be grateful.”

  The troll looked unconvinced.

  “And if you don’t—I’ll tell the Queen of the Deep Dark that you didn’t help look out for her daughter.”

  The troll seemed to turn a slightly paler shade of gray. “This way.”

  A few minutes later, Tinn was standing on the banks of the Oddmire. Sure enough, he could see several sets of footprints in the mud, all leading straight into the swampy waters.

  He certainly wasn’t going to step right in hoping to find a hidden hinkypunk path all by himself. The last time he had tried following Candlebeard through the mire he had nearly drowned.

  Tinn paced up and down the bank for several minutes, listening to the distant buzz of insects and the whistle of the wind through the trees all around him. A blue jay fluttered onto a tree branch across from him and tilted its head as it watched him.

  Wait. That was it.

  Tinn straightened. He took a deep breath. He held out his arms and closed his eyes as he concentrated. A warm tingle of magic rippled up and down his arms as he focused on the shape. Bird wings. Big, like an eagle’s.

  He felt a pinch of pressure as the bones within his arms shifted. He held his breath. The breeze picked up, and he could feel the wind beneath his feathers.

  He opened his eyes and flexed his new appendages. They were so much longer than his regular arms, but they looked just as Tinn had pictured. Yes! His best wings yet! They responded intuitively, bending and stretching, but they felt so heavy.

  Kull had mentioned something about the weight when they had first started practicing—what was it? Right. Birds have hollow bones to keep them light enough to fly. Tinn concentrated again, and inside him, his entire skeleton tickled. It was an unsettling sensation, but when it was done, Tinn could feel himself sway in the air currents.

  This could work.

  Cautiously, he climbed up on a nearby log and stretched out his wings. “Here goes nothing.”

  With a little hop, he took to the air and coasted in a wobbly arc down to the ground.

  “Okay.” He allowed himself a smile. “Pretty good!”

  The blue jay cocked its head and looked unimpressed before flapping away.

  “Right. Up. I can do up.”

  Tinn took a little running start and flapped his arms. At first he didn’t seem to be gaining any altitude at all, and then he caught too much air and nearly spun himself backward. With a few more tries, he was able to get himself airborne. He coasted along the edge of the clearing until his feet were brushing the grass, then flapped again, just a few times. It worked. He felt the wind under him like a gentle pillow. This time his body lifted with almost no effort at all.

  “I can do this,” he said aloud, beaming. “I really can!” He took a deep breath, stretched out his wings, and pushed off into the sky.

  The swirling mists of the Oddmire rolled around Tinn as he flew. The trees that grew out of the muck were sickly things, few and far between, easy to navigate around. This was working.

  The muscles in his arms felt hot and the mists made his eyes water, but he pressed on. Just a little farther. If he still didn’t see anyone, he would turn back.

  A flicker of light caught his eye. Tinn veered toward it, and soon a dark shape began to form in the fog ahead. It was an island—and on its shore was a little bald man with a candle right in the center of his enormous beard. Tinn opened his mouth to call out in his excitement, but then hesitated as the rest of the island came into view. Right in the center of the land was a wide cave, and at its mouth . . .

  “Cole!” Tinn’s words were swallowed by the wind. Cole’s attention was on the mouth of the cave, and he made no indication that he had heard. Tinn’s muscles were beginning to burn with the effort of keeping aloft, and his vision was starting to spin. It was the mist. He needed to get out of this mist.

  He angled his wings downward, feeling heavier by the second. He was coming in too fast. As he rocketed toward his brother, he tilted his arms to try to counter the momentum—arms. Oh, crud. He shot a startled look at his arms, covered in long eagle feathers, but decidedly human and not birdlike.

  Between Tinn and the rapidly approaching ground stood Cole. Arms flailing, helpless to change course, Tinn bowled into his brother from behind at full speed. He felt the breath knocked out of his body in a wheezy whoosh, and the two of them tumbled toward the mouth of the cavern.


  Eight

  The spriggan’s name was Clovermoss. It did not suit her. Her older brother had been clover-bound, covered with a vibrant coat of green all year round. Her older sister, too, had been blessed with foliage—a lively tunic of natural lichen that came in around her third decade. Clovermoss, however, had never shown so much as a sprout.

  Not that there was anything wrong with stoneskin. Some of her closest friends had stoneskin—but they also had fitting names like Jadeshine and Avalanche. Clovermoss had never loved her name, but from a young age she had determined to make something of it. She excelled in her training and had been highly decorated for her service during the gnomish riots in the year of the Appletree. Clovermoss had spent her life ensuring that when any spriggan uttered her name, it would be not with scorn, but with pride and awe.

  And so it was Clovermoss who had been assigned the role of chief guardian the day the children approached the sacred Oddmire Entry. There had been only three trespassers to set foot on the secret island in more than a century. Two of them had been injured birds who had collided in midair, confused by the mists. The third had been a young and foolish hinkypunk, one whose family cluster had collected him promptly, bowing low in apology as they scurried away across the mire. Clovermoss was keenly aware that if these humans crossed the threshold now, it would be a historic failing.

  It complicated matters further that the “Little Queen” was with them. Bringing the fury of the girl’s mother—the Witch of the Wood—down on the nest was almost equally unthinkable. The truce had been tested enough in recent months. So it was with tremendous relief that Clovermoss watched as the children finally retreated.

  “Fine,” said the boy. “I’m going.” He turned and took one step, and then another. But then he paused and glanced back.

  Clovermoss tightened her grip on her spear. All around her she could sense her comrades tensing for action.

  “The thing is—” the boy began.

  And then, abruptly, a fourth figure exploded out of the sky above them in a tornado of flapping arms, fluttering feathers, and kicking feet.

  The half boy, half bird barreled into the first boy from behind, sending both of them tumbling, skidding, and rolling straight into the open mouth of the forbidden cavern. For half a second time slowed as the two clutched at the slick rocks, trying to prevent the inevitable fall.

  Clovermoss stared, openmouthed, as a matching pair of panicked faces disappeared over the lip of the cavern and plunged down the steep drop, straight into the sacred spriggan underground.

  Clovermoss could feel the weight of her reputation plummeting alongside the boys. Little Queen or not, there could be only one response to the transgression.

  “Well?” she rasped, when she found her voice at last. “Kill them!”

  The boys fell. Rocks and roots and damp earth raced past them on every side. The passage bent beneath them, and in a blur they were suddenly sliding and bouncing, crashing against the walls of a dark tunnel—and then the walls were the floor, up was down, down was sideways, and the whole world was spinning. And then the boys came to a stop.

  Tinn could hear Cole panting beside him.

  “Are . . . you . . . okay?” he managed.

  “Tinn?” Cole groaned and righted himself. “Oh no. This is bad.”

  Tinn blinked. It was not fully dark in the tunnel beneath the mire. All around them the earth glowed with the faint light of a thousand tiny, glistening gems, sparkling pale blue dots nestled within the soil. It was like looking up at the open sky on a clear winter night. In the hazy glow, Tinn could see paths and corridors, much too small for anyone their size to navigate. This cavern was not made for human beings. The two of them might be the first humans to ever see this far into a spriggan burrow.

  “This is very, very bad,” said Cole.

  Tinn followed his brother’s gaze upward. A circle of gray defined the opening high above them. Shapes moved in the space between, and the circle became clouded. Tinn’s eyes gradually made sense of what he was seeing. Scores of spriggans were pouring down into the tunnel after them. They came in a chittering, descending swarm, hopping from wall to wall as they neared. Tinn winced as a sharp pain shot through his arm.

  “Ow!” He glanced down and saw a barb as long as his index finger sticking out of the skin. Another stinging bolt suddenly shot into his leg. “Hey! Ouch!”

  He glanced up at his brother in time to see a ribbon of bright red appear on Cole’s cheek as a jagged spear cast him a glancing blow. “Ugh!” Cole grimaced and held a hand over his face. Almost at once two more ivory javelins lodged themselves in his arm.

  “Stop!” Tinn yelled. “Please! Help!”

  Tinn’s head was spinning. The blood running down his arm was hot and the pain was everywhere. In another moment the whole swarm would be upon them. Another sharp, hot pain in his shoulder. Was this the end? How long would it take?

  And then the cold swept past.

  It whipped from the depths of the cave behind the boys and up into the open air high above. In a wave, the twinkling lights of the cave blinked out. A dark blanket of shadows rose around the brothers like an inky tide. The shadows swept along the walls of the tunnel, rising out of the depths of the cavern as they surged upward.

  Tinn heard his brother gasp, and then he heard the frightened shrieks of the spriggans above them. He strained to see what was happening. Dozens of the tiny guardians were now scrambling back up the sides of the tunnel as the darkness threatened to overtake them.

  A woody spriggan with armor like tree bark lost its grip, and a tendril of darkness swallowed it up at once, pulling the struggling shape down and into one of the narrow side tunnels. Another, its skin like chipped granite, lost its footing and yelped once as it fell backward into the sea of liquid blackness.

  The icy chill enveloped Tinn, and he shuddered. He had felt this cold only once before, in the heart of the Deep Dark. No. It couldn’t be. The Thing.

  In another second, the inky wave swelled, and Tinn’s vision went black. His whole body felt numb and weightless. He reached for Cole, but he could not feel anything. He hung helplessly in space, unable to speak, unable to even breathe, his mind reeling.

  The Thing had returned to finish what it had started last year. Tinn had been a fool to set it free—but at the end it had seemed such a pitiful creature, shivering with fear in the palm of his hand. This time there could be no rescue, no forest folk coming to his aid, no mother finding him in his moment of need—not here, not now. The Thing had them.

  And then the darkness ebbed to gray.

  Tinn felt his heart pounding hard against his chest, and he gasped for a breath. Beneath him, he could feel soil and grass. He was not dead.

  His fingers tingling with cold, he pushed himself up to sitting and clawed at the thin veil of shadows that clung to his face. The stuff stuck to his fingers like spiderwebs, but bit by bit it fell away. Tinn shook his head, panting.

  Cole was there beside him, tearing sheets of darkness from his own head and shoulders. The scraps melted into the earth where they fell. Tinn looked around. They were not in the tunnel anymore. The wave of darkness had deposited them safely back at the mouth of the cave.

  “What . . . just . . . happened?” Cole huffed.

  Tinn watched as the last of the shadows slunk back into the tunnel. There was no sign of the spriggans. There had been droves of the little guardians—but now the opening to the tunnel was barren. A leaden lump rested in Tinn’s stomach, and he thought he might be sick.

  Sensation gradually crept back into his skin, and with it came the burning of dozens of bleeding cuts and fresh bruises. Dully, he realized a familiar voice had been calling out from behind him.

  “Come ON!” Evie yelled.

  And then she was holding Tinn by the arm and Fable was there, too, guiding Cole away from the tunnel, and the four of them were pushing their way through the bushes. A very bald head with a big, bushy beard was
waiting for them as they emerged once more on the shore of the little island.

  “Candlebeard,” breathed Cole. “You waited.”

  A few minutes later, all five of them were free of the murky mire and standing once more on solid ground in the relative safety of the Wild Wood.

  Nine

  The rooftops of Endsborough peeking through the trees were a welcome sight as the children finally crossed over the trickling stream that defined the western edge of the Wild Wood. The sun was beginning to sag in the sky, and the noisy chirping of crickets surrounded them.

  “Mama wants me to be back by sundown,” said Fable. “Are you sure you’ll be okay from here?”

  “We’ll be fine,” said Cole, trying hard not to look like he felt—as if he had been run over by a building.

  They bade Fable goodbye, and the remaining three of them slogged onward up the winding path toward town.

  “It’s pretty neat that you got the bird thing to work,” said Evie, finally breaking the silence.

  “It might need a little practice,” said Tinn.

  “Still,” she said. “You should be proud. I’d be proud.”

  Her hand slipped into his as they walked, and Tinn’s aches and pains faded to the back of his mind. Even in the cool dusk air, he could feel his ears get hot.

  A twinge of guilt crept into the back of his skull. He hadn’t told Evie he was thinking about his goblin Turas yet, either. How do you even start a conversation like that? The times he was with Evie were times when he least wanted to go away.

  He gave her hand a squeeze, and she leaned in.

  “Can you become any kinda animal?” she asked.

  “Hm? Oh. I think so,” said Tinn. “With enough practice.”

  “Could you make yourself tiny? Like a ladybug or something?”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” answered Tinn. “It’s all still the same me, just squished around into new shapes.”

  “What do you think they meant—It’s a promise?” said Cole.

  “Huh?” said Evie.