and back, and now I’m down here where I don’t want to be.”
She was a girl who needed air and sky.
“But remember?” said Annabel. “Remember what the wizards said? The whole of good magic depends upon us.”
“Upon you,” said Kitty.
“But you saw those things!” cried Annabel, and the boat banged them against a wall for good measure, spun them in a circle, and flushed them out suddenly into a wider open place. “Mr. Angel wishes to raise an army of them and march on the city. You must help.”
“Do you never stop talking?” said Kitty, as though Annabel had said nothing of importance.
Annabel shivered with the cold. She had never felt so bad. She was on a stinking underground river, with the worst girl ever—who said she would not help her—and she had to find a wand and save everything by herself.
She peered into the darkness at the place where the water had slowed. She would have to find a way. She knew she would have to. She just had to think. She tried to empty out the cup of her mind, the way Miss Henrietta had taught her, but there was one huge thought in the way of everything: she really didn’t like Kitty.
Kitty began to hum softly, and that made Annabel dislike her even more. She blinked back tears in the dark. Yes, she disliked the girl very much. Miss Henrietta and Miss Estella were positively endearing compared with this girl. She disliked having to dislike someone. She wasn’t used to it. She was accustomed only to pleasant things. It seemed such a violent emotion and poked at her insides.
Kitty hummed.
“Stop that,” said Annabel.
But Kitty didn’t.
Kitty hummed for another minute, gradually getting louder, until she opened her mouth and out popped a blue orb of light, shimmering and starry, the size of her fist. Annabel fell back, astonished. By the orb’s light she saw Kitty’s solemn little face, the Ondona, the broomstick lying at the bottom of the boat, and her hand and arm all mapped over.
“How did you do that?” whispered Annabel. Now she could see the dark water and the arched brick ceiling above. They were in a large underground chamber. The water dripped and trickled loudly.
“I just raised it up with a magic song of my own making.”
“Where does it come from?”
Kitty shrugged. “My heart, I believe.”
Annabel remembered Miss Henrietta. I have heard it said she can sing up her spirit light. There are not many girls like Kitty anymore.
“You can do magic?” whispered Annabel.
Kitty didn’t answer. Instead, she made a loud hawking noise and spat over the side of the boat. Annabel shuddered. Kitty bobbed the light up and down. Her face disappeared in and out of the dark.
“Well, I’m going to find the wand,” said Annabel. “I have to. I have the map. I’ll find my own way.”
But her voice sounded weak and small.
They rocked on the river, and Kitty laughed again, but softly this time. She took a deep breath and expanded her heart light so that they could see better the place they had come to. The river had widened and slowed. The chamber was circular, the ceiling vaulted. Opposite them three arches stood like dark mouths.
Kitty thought. She thought of how the night would be up above. How the moon would be climbing the sky and the dirty fog might have lifted and, everywhere, the secret places of London would have woken. The great trees would be sending their shivering messages. A badness was coming, it was clear now. That was what they had been saying. The wild grasses at Hackney Marshes would be singing a warning song. The meadows hidden and tucked behind gasworks and factories, the places where the farms pressed their edges against town would be calling, shrill with summer bluebells and dog rose.
A darkness is coming. A blackness is coming.
The shadowlings scared her. The thought of them gliding over her places, wiping them away. She had seen dark things and known treacherous places, places brimming with bad feeling, but nothing had scared her as much as those shadowlings.
Annabel would not get far at all without her help. Kitty knew it just as well as she knew the river was singing to them of danger. It annoyed her, for she was hungry and tired and had not counted on her day turning wrong in such a way. But it made sense now, the strange feelings of endings and beginnings. She sighed.
“They’ve gone and ruined your pretty face