Chapter 17 The Welcome of a Kitten
The Welcome of a Kitten
Sascia is almost done with fourteen and glad about it.
The year has dragged by like a plow turning over the soil for a new seeding. It all feels like preparation: first year of high school, new teachers, new classmates, new friends. The field of Sascia’s life is all furrows and fresh soil, but nothing has bloomed yet.
Her birthday is on Monday, but her parents insisted on a Saturday night party, for maximum attendance.
They went all out: sectioned off the best tables in Athena’s Yard and ordered decorations, made her a four-tiered chocolate cake.
Sascia decided to match their energy by inviting every kid she even remotely likes, from her class, track team, and drama club. Amazingly, they’ve all shown up.
A Happy Birthday sign hangs on the wall and balloons are sprawled all over the floor.
The candles have been blown out, the cake scarfed down, and the space has been cleared of tables and chairs.
Danny is DJing to an audience of almost sixty elated freshmen.
But Sascia is happiest for her parents, swaying to the music in a corner of the dance floor, bodies close, eyes only for each other.
She knew they’d like the nineties theme.
They’ve been trying so hard to make up for last year; she thought she’d return the favor.
Last year, on the twelfth of April, the eve of her birthday, the entire tristate area went on a six-hour blackout.
A little after midnight, every power plant around the city just went boom.
The sky was moonless, overcast—the darkness was absolute.
In mere minutes, the streets were crawling with Darkcreatures big and small.
Sirens rang over Astoria. Her father had burst into the room and whisked them away to the only safe place in the neighborhood, the New York Presbyterian Hospital in Queens, whose backup generators had quickly kicked into gear.
It had been a terrifying night of wolfish howls and crowing screeches, of police cars and army vehicles zooming past, of nova-gun blasts painting the sky white.
Sascia had huddled between Danny and Ksenya in a crowded hospital corridor, watching the adults exchange furious whispers.
She’d drifted to sleep sometime before dawn and had woken up fourteen years old, in a city in ruins.
Now, over the music, Danny motions that they’re out of cups and Sascia, putting on her best hostess hat, hurries to get new ones.
The supply closet is crammed with stacks of napkins, surplus silverware, and a half-dry mop that smells like vinegar.
She’s skimming the shelves for cups when a high-pitched squeak startles her nearly out of her clothes.
She follows the sound to the very bottom of the shelves, where a Darkrat squirms in its trap.
It’s a hideous contraption that NovaCorp launched a year or two ago: when the bait lures the pest onto the flat surface of the trap, a dozen thin strips of nova-light burst out, spearing the poor creature.
Dark blue blood oozes from where the light impales the rat’s spiky fur.
“Hold on, little guy,” Sascia coos. “I’ll get this off you.”
She yanks the plug from the outlet first, then turns the lights off.
Darkness envelops her, soundless and sightless and odorless, an absence of space and yet substantial in all the ways that matter. The kind of darkness that things crawl out of, creatures made of onyx stone and violence. She should turn the light back on.
She doesn’t. She crouches and feels around for the trapped rat. “Little guy?”
Small reverberations slit the air: a nose sniffing or claws screeching through.
Something touches the back of her hand, wet and warm and alive.
She knows it’s likely the Darkrat, but her mind imagines elsehow: the muzzle of a unicorn; the webbed hands of a gorgon.
They won’t look like the illustrations in books, she knows.
They will have skin made of black gemstone and razor-sharp scales and rows upon rows of pointed teeth.
But they will still be beautiful. They’ll still be magic.
“Take me with you,” Sascia whispers. “Please, can I come with you?”
For a moment, she thinks the Darkrat pauses. She thinks its head strokes the knuckles of her hand, like the welcome of a kitten after a long time away. It has heard her, she thinks. It has understood. It will take her away and all will be good.
Then fangs are raking through her flesh. Sascia screams.
Half an hour later, her hand is disinfected and bandaged, her sobs have settled down to sniffles, and the entire party is crowded around her, wanting to hear the whole story.
Sascia lies, a skill she’s been honing over the years. The light just went out. In seconds, the Darkrat had crawled out of the trap. It bit her before she could throw the door open and let the light of the hallway sizzle it to bits.
Ksenya is hovering at the edge of the crowd, lips pressed together; she ran away when Sascia stumbled bleeding out of the closet.
Their parents are whispering worriedly over the first aid kit.
The kids are ecstatic—hanging out with sophomore Danny Jacobs and an encounter with a Darkcreature? This is the best party ever.
Only Danny knows. He sits with an arm around Sascia through the rest of the night, his gaze locked on the red spots blooming on her bandage.
When the kids are gone and the decorations put away and it’s just the two of them in their pajamas in Sascia’s bedroom, he says, ever so gently, “Sascia, what happened, really? The light was working fine when I checked. But I found the nova-trap unplugged.”
Sascia flexes her fingers. Her palm feels sore, but there’s no sign of poison or infection. It was harmless, her poor Darkrat, just scared and in pain.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
She doesn’t cry, but burrows deeper into her cousin’s shoulder. Danny lets her rest there for a long, long time.