Heather Kassner - The Plentiful Darkness

Gloom cluttered the whole of the tower, and within its dark folds stood a magician. She wore a grim smile and an ink-black suit. Both cut severe lines, softened only by the tendril of fog that plumed from her mouth.

The magician swirled her hand through the air. The fog tightened and heavied, it twisted and reshaped, and at last, it settled around her shoulders, the smokiest of magical cloaks. One that held close the quiet.

But it was not enough.

Beyond the tower, the village of Warybone and all the people within it breathed. In and in, and out. So loudly.

How dare they, she thought.

Her pulse thundered against the black ribbon she wore cinched at her throat. She stalked to the window and threw back the shutters. Glaring out at the town and the black sea beyond it, she cursed each chimney spiraling smoke, each moonlit lamp shining in a cottage window, each couple strolling down the lane.

Hush, she hissed to the night, wishing to smother it in a cloud of silence, to dim the candle glow until everything below the tower glimmered black.

With a whoosh of her cape, she turned from the window. Moonlight flooded the circular room, betraying every quiet space and exposing the beamed walls, which rose like a rib cage of brittle bones.

Across from her, a stairway descended into the belly of the tower. She alighted down the twisted steps. Around and around, lower and lower, she went, skipping fastest past the locked door on the third story. Cobwebs clung to the corners of the frame, evidence of how long shed left it closed.

As she stepped into the street, the magician pulled up her hood, concealing her raven-wing hair and her narrow face, which was best kept out of sight so as not to scare the children. It wouldnt do much good if they ran from her before she could catch them.

A chill filled the magicians bones. It felt like winter instead of autumn, though all the pumpkins displayed on the porches and stoops told her otherwise. Lights flickering, their jack-o-lantern faces leered at the magician, but at least they were silent.

Striding by, she murmured under her breath, and the pale moon-blue flames winked out one by one. The townsfolk would think it was the wind and nothing more.

Or the rain.

The tiniest drops had begun to fall. They struck the street, the rooftops, the bramble. But they did not touch the magician, not even when the rain poured heavier from the sky. She commanded it away from her the way she might sweep back a curtain.

As she glided farther down the hill, she touched the silken scarf in the pocket of her suit coat, rubbing her thumb over its seamless fabric. The scarf was darker than night, softer than air. It brought her equal amounts of comfort and pain.

Gently, she pushed it deeper into her pocket.

At the same moment, a shrill, grating noise ripped through the night. The magician stumbled, pressing her hands to the sides of her head. She cowered in her cloak of quiet, but it could not ward off this awful sound.

With widened gray eyes, she looked all around, seeking its source.

She had to silence it.

Ahead of her, on a rather flat stretch of the hill, a row of quaint houses sat beneath the clouds and rain. They looked much too tidy to hold such a sound, but there was no question it originated here.

And here it would end.

A flicker of movement caught the magicians eye. She slowed.

Someone stood there in the rain, tight to the little white cottage at the very end of the row. The figure dared to breathe. Of course it breathed. In and in, and out.

But it was not the source of that wretched commotion.

One thing at a time, she thought. Her focus turned from the small snooping body beneath the window to the shrieking disharmony churning from within the walls of the cottage. Whoever conjured the noise, thats the one she wanted firstly.

The magician waited, dry beneath the stormy sky. At last, the sound cut off. At last, the rain stopped. At last, the snooping figure peeled away from the house, running, running right past where the magician stood. She could have reached out one white hand and snatched the childs skinny wrist.

But not now. Not yet.

Youll have your turn. The cloak of fog masked her words as the dark-haired child fled, unaware of how close it had come to the magicianand the ever-dark night that awaited anyone she touched.

The magician took a step toward the house, bracing herself should the pitiful sound crash down again. An ache beat at her temple. Shed spent too long in the streets of Warybone. Too long away from the tower. It hurt, it hurt awfully, these sounds pounding in her head. (And in her heart.)

But the streets would soon be quieter by one.