Queen of the Dark Things (18 page)

“How many do we have?”

Colby looked down at his feet. Seven trips he'd made, making a pile tall and deep of wriggling, dying fish. Mandu eyed the pile, shrugging. “A lot,” said Colby, pointing.

“And how many of those do you reckon you'd have caught with a rod or a spear?”

Colby scuffed his feet, still staring at the ground, embarrassed by the lesson. “Not that many.”

“I reckon not. When you're up against great numbers, never fight them head on. Be clever. Know the land. Know the rules. And rather than struggle with them, get them to do exactly what you want.” He eyed the pile, doing the math in his head. “That oughta do.” Then he reached into his dilly bag and pulled from it his bullroarer, which he whirled about, making a louder, shriller noise than Colby had yet heard from it.

And then the forest came alive with motion.

Mimis poured out of every imaginable place. From under rocks, behind trees, out of bushes, beneath roots, out of the water, seemingly out of the sky, dropping from the canopy. They were long and thin, their bodies a series of lines, like dried branches—painted red with white dots, or blue with yellow, black with red, or green with white—stuck together to make the crude shape of a person. Though half as tall as a grown man, not a one could have weighed more than five pounds, each wispy enough that a stiff wind could have snapped it in half. Before long, a throng of painted stick men stood before them, bobbing, chanting, some fifty strong, the tallest no more than three feet high, looking exactly like they did in the rock paintings.

Mandu let the bullroarer wind down, raising his other hand. “Friends,” he said. “This is Colby. He's going to be out here with us for a while.”

The mimis let out shrill twitters and hoots, crying out in languages and dialects Colby couldn't even fathom. And though he had no idea what any one of them was saying, he got the general idea.

“Good. Good,” said Mandu. “I want you all to meet him. But first, we eat!”

C
HAPTER
25

T
HE
R
UM
T
HIEF

T
ell me about your dreams,” said Wade, his breath strong with coffee, his hands still red, nicked and sore from the cannery. “Where are you going to go tonight?”

“You don't believe my dreams,” said Kaycee. She was tucked in bed, tattered covers up around her neck, her father hovering over her, perching on the edge of the bed.

“I believe that you believe them.”

“That doesn't mean you believe anything.”

“I believe in you. And I believe in your dreams. So where you going tonight? To see your friend?”

Kaycee nodded.

“Are you looking for the bunyip again?”

Again she nodded. “He's out there somewhere.”

“Yes he is. And if anyone can find him, you will.”

“I wish you could come with me. Then I could show you. I could introduce you to my friend and show you the way the stars look and the way the air dances. There are so many colors, so many more than when we're awake.”

“I wish I could go too. But you're with me, you know. In my dreams.”

“You dream about me?” she asked, her lips curling into a slight smile, her eyes twinkling a bit.

Wade leaned in, spoke softly, as if sharing a secret. “All the time. I dream about the cannery too. But I try not to think about those. Your dreams sound much better than those.”

“Do you dream about Mom?”

Wade looked down at his daughter, his eyes welling with sadness. He gritted his teeth and fought back the tingles of tears. “Every night.”

“Tell me about her.”

“Kaycee, I—”

“I tell you about
my
dreams. But I never get to see her in those. I only know her from the pictures. Please?”

He paused, weighing the ache of his heart against the thought of disappointing his daughter. Then he nodded, trying to smile. “She was the most beautiful girl in all the world, your mother. Everything you said about the colors and the air and the stars. That's what she was like. Being with her did that to everything. She was my dreamtime. She was—” He broke off, held back the stutter of a sudden sob. “Hold on, Dad needs a drink.”

Wade tried to stand up, but Kaycee grabbed him by the cuff of his sleeve, shaking her head. “No. Stay here. Tell me about her.”

“I'll be right back. I'm really thirsty.”

“Dad, no. Stay here.”

He relaxed, put his meaty hand, abraded with scars, on Kaycee's thick black hair, stroking it gently. “She had hair like yours. Exactly like yours. Curly. Never wanted to do what she wanted it to in the morning. On days when it was hot and the rains were coming, it would frizz out—and because she was tall and thin, she looked like a woolly tree fern.” Wade boomed out a laugh, trying to mask how hard the words were to get out. “But she was beautiful, even then.”

“Did you tell her?”

“Every day. Even on the hot wet ones when she banged on and on about how her hair was a tangle.”

“If you had to choose, would you pick—”

Wade's eyes went wide and his face went red. The monstrous Wade Looes now hovered, terrifying, over his daughter. “Don't you dare! Don't you ask me that!” His sudden anger caught her off guard. She'd never seen him this angry, not when he was stone-cold sober.

“But if you could—”

“No! Don't you ever think about that.”

“But why did she have to . . . I mean, I never even got to see her.”

Wade calmed, trying hard not to scare his little girl. “Because sometimes things are like that. Some people are only allowed to have one truly amazing person in their life at a time. If I had both of you, I would have been too blessed for words. That much joy, it makes a man soft. We're Looeses. Looeses are hard. Tough. Nothing can stop us. So I had many years with her and now I get many years with you. If I didn't have you, well . . . I'm not sure even a Looes is tough enough for that.”

“I love you, Dad.”

Wade stroked his daughter's cheek, a tear forming defiantly in his eye. “I love you, darlin'. Now get to sleep. Dreamtime's waitin'.”

T
HE PRETTY LITTLE
girl in the purple pajamas was racing beneath the stars once again, the moon bright, the land effulgent. She ran past the black stump and knew that she was free. Time bent and the universe bowed and all the world became a dream; there was nothing that was going to stop her from finding bunyip tonight. Not a thing in the world. Not even the murder of crows trailing behind her.

They'd been following her since just outside her house, a mass of chirping, onyx-black beasts slightly larger than the average crow, their eyes glistening a sickly yellow, their beaks shiny, polished, sharp. Their wings beat loudly behind her, their squawks screaming for her to wait up.

Then they changed, their feathers molting, their bodies shifting. Black became pure darkness, and their sleek avian features gave way to oblong shadows. They were at once like squashed men, their heads bent in odd directions, and their arms cocked every which way.

They ran, scurrying, galloping across the land on all fours, barking shrill chirrups into the night. One of them, the fastest among them, trailed very close, so close she could feel its hot breath on her neck.

“Why are you running so fast?” it asked, galloping up alongside her.

“I'm hunting bunyip,” said the girl.

“Why would you be looking for a bunyip?”

“Because I was told that I would find one.”

“But they're very dangerous. You could be eaten.”

“I won't be eaten,” she said.

“But how do you know you won't be eaten?”

“Because finding the bunyip is my destiny. And being eaten by a bunyip would be a terrible destiny that no one would bother telling me about.”

The shadow thought about this for a moment—his feet wheeling furiously to keep up with her—then nodded. “That's an excellent point. But you won't find a bunyip going this way.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because we see them all the time. And they're never out in this direction.”

The pretty little girl stopped in her tracks. The shadows swarmed, forming a circle around her, each ten feet out, not a one of them standing too close. “You know where the bunyip are?” she asked.

The shadow nodded, waving his stubby, handless arms in the air. “Of course we do.”

She looked around at all the other shadows, every last one nodding as she glanced their way. Each was about three feet tall, boxy, malformed, their proportions all out of whack, with one hand at the end of one arm and a blurry stump at the end of the other. “Would you show me?”

The shadows silently exchanged curious looks before turning to look at the fastest of them—the handless one. Jeronimus. He nodded. “Of course we can show you where the bunyip are. But only if you do something for us first.”

“Why do I have to do something for you?”

“Because those are the rules.”

She put her hands on her hips, cocking her head. “And just what would I have to do?”

“You have to appease us.”

“How do I do that?”

“Through a test.”

“I don't want to take any tests.”

The shadow crept ever closer, nodding and waving a stump as if it still possessed a hand and finger to gesture with. “But I thought you said finding a bunyip was your destiny.”

“It is.”

“But you haven't found one yet, have you?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“But you found someone who knows where they are.”

She hesitated. “I guess.”

“So what makes you think this test isn't your destiny—that it isn't part of the big thing that will happen?”

The girl let that rattle around in her head for a moment. The strange little shadow man had a point. The Clever Man never said just
how
she would go about finding a bunyip, just that finding one would change her life. He could very well have been talking about this encounter.

“Okay,” she said with a determined smile. “What's the test?”

The shadow grinned. “Tonight you must go home, crawl up into your father's liquor cabinet, and pull down every bottle of rum you find.”

“I can't take Daddy's liquor! He'll be so mad that, well, I can't do it.”

“Oh,” said the shadow. “I understand. I thought you were serious about finding bunyip.”

“I am serious.”

“No, you're not.”

“I am, I swear. What do I have to do next? With the bottles. Tell me. I'll prove I'm serious.”

“Well, next you must fetch a wooden bucket—you'll find it waiting out back by the shed—then pour all of the rum into it, leaving it in your backyard.”

“Then what?”

“Then you wait. You go back inside, crawl back into bed, and when you fall asleep, we'll be waiting. And we will show you where the bunyip wallow.”

The pretty little girl in the purple pajamas looked around nervously. “Do you want me to go and do that . . . now?”

The shadows nodded excitedly. “Yes! Oh yes, please,” they each muttered, their heads bobbing, torsos bouncing. “Bring us a bucket of rum! A bucket of rum!”

She smiled, turned, and ran, leaving the shadows behind, her heart racing, her feet carrying her faster than they ever had. She was finally going to see the bunyip. Things were finally going to change. All she had to do now was get home.

K
AYCEE AWOKE, HER
head swimming with visions of shadows still dancing around her. She looked, but they were gone. She'd left them behind, hundreds of miles away. It was dark out and the stars still wheeled slowly above, hours from being chased away by morning's light, but close enough that her father would have already passed out in his chair. It was the perfect time for her crime.

But the TV wasn't on. Most nights her father passed out before shutting it off and slept through the night to the infomercials and, eventually, the static. Other nights, however, he took pity on her and shut it off. In truth, he believed he did this most nights, thinking Kaycee had simply turned the set on to help him wake up. She never did, but never contradicted him about it.

Were the TV on, she could stroll out singing a song and dancing on the creaky old floors without waking him. But the TV wasn't on. The house was silent save for the raucous din of his snoring.

Quietly she swung her legs out over the side of the bed, sliding her backside down the edge of the mattress, slowly easing her weight onto the wooden floorboards beneath until her hands were the last parts of her touching. First with her good foot, then with the club. She took a deep breath and let go, her body now standing up straight without having squeezed out the slightest groan from the boards. Then she stepped each limping step one at a time, her gate wide, pace slow, like a cat burglar in a cartoon show. Kaycee dared not make a sound. Drunk though he was and hard to wake as he might be, if her father caught her skulking through the house after bedtime, especially on a quest for his liquor, he would put a stop to it right away.

And that couldn't happen. Not tonight.

Her toes came down on a loose floorboard and it squeaked, just a little, causing her eyes to clench and her stomach to tighten.
CREeeeeeeak.
As her clubfoot came to a rest, she sighed, convinced that this was the sound that would disturb her father, drag him out of his chair swearing, and lead him right to her malfeasance. She held her breath, listened close. Snoring. So she took another exaggerated step, making not a peep. More snoring. This was going well. Very well.

At this pace, it took her nearly five minutes to cross the meager house, three of which she spent on the stairs alone, afraid that every tiny groan would be the end of her. But time and again, these squeaks went unnoticed and she pressed on, trudging through the dark toward the pantry. It was only near the end of her slog that she thought about how quickly she could cross an entire continent in her dreams, but how slowly she had to go in waking life. The thought wasn't comforting.