Malcolm - September Patreon (Patreon)

He had been missing for three days. Day one started with a tilt, this little inkling that said something wasn’t the same. The strange feeling came with Malcolm’s name on my lips, entwining the two states of mind in a concerning way. But I tried to give Malcolm the benefit of the doubt. He was a grown man and had once held the safety of this world, of me, in the palm of his hands. Even if there was something wrong, he was far more capable than most of the individuals I knew.

Then he didn’t come home. 

His absence was a gnawing pit that left me restless most of the night.

Day two had been no different and by the morning of the third, I was frantic. Malcolm had been known to disappear, but I was self assured enough to know that he wouldn’t have disappeared on me. Not without saying something first. No one had seen him, however. There was no sign of his presence and for a fleeting moment, I nearly walked back into that liminal space, terrified he was lost there once more. It wasn’t until I was in the middle of yelling at Milo to just do something that I felt it. That small nagging feeling that had torn at my stomach for days shifted to the right. A bubble ballooned in my veins and then popped sharply. I felt myself gasp and nearly fall to my knees. Sweat gathered across my brow as my eyes became blurred with shadowed movements, the likes of which were murky and cold. Pieces of charcoal and half drawn parchments floated in a nearby body of water, scattered and dissolving into nothing.

Later, if someone would ask me how I knew where to find him, I would chalk it up to Night Market intuition. There had to be some sort of benefit to being a world entity and having people use my veins like city streets. The truth, however, was I didn’t know. I followed the pain that I felt in the pit of my stomach, imagining it to be a gold line that would lead me right to Malcolm’s side.  I don’t know if I walked away from Milo, leaving him baffled and yelling in the middle of the room. Or if I disappeared completely. When next I opened my eyes, I was in front of a rock wall.

The cave was cold, water dripping in soft chimes down the adjacent wall, holding back an underground river. The roar of it echoed around me in a dull groan. The cave smelled like damp moss while the air was thick with sediment. I coughed, my eyes narrowing as they adjusted to the fallen rocks I was standing on and the jagged wall before me. Small fissures cut across the surface, revealing cracks so vividly black they looked like lines of ink. I looked around me, afraid to move in case my body stumbled. I had an eerie suspicion that if I fell here, no one would find me except for Pen.

When the cough came, it was so slight that I thought it was an echo of my own. I breathed deeply, feeling my lungs expand before that sharp pang hit me again. Another cough, though this time I was wheezing with pain.  My eyes snapped up, hearing it muffled from the other side of the wall.

“Malcolm!” My feet tripped over each other as I crashed against the wall, some of the rocks falling loose as my fingers curled around their edges. “Malcolm!”

There was a hiss of air and the clanking of more displaced rocks. “Lamplight?”

I felt giddy at the sound of his voice, pressing myself flat against the wall. “Mal! It’s you right? You’re not some sort of weird specter thing made up from me hitting my head or falling into a panic coma?”

There was a brief moment where I felt his fear surge through me. Then, he mentally stamped it down. Because it was me and he knew me. He also knew that I was no good in stressful situations.

“No, Lamplight,” he said softly, a chuckle of relief in his voice. “It’s really me.”

I closed my eyes swallowing thickly as I pressed my forehead to the cool stone. “I found you,” I breathed. Malcolm, for most of my life, had always been the one to find me. The tides changing felt good in a way.

“You did.” Then, because he was Malcolm and even though he was stuck behind some sort of rock slide, he directed his concern towards me. “I really wish you hadn’t come down here. It’s dangerous. You could get hurt.”

My laugh was wet. “I don’t know how I got down here, actually. So that’s going to be fun. But first we have to get you out.” Already I was straightening, assessing the wall in from on me.

“I’ve tried already. The wall is too thick.” Malcolm’s voice was coming slightly above me and to my right. Was he standing on something?

“What were you even doing down here?”

“Drawing.”

Of course he was.

“There was some sort of shift and one of the walls cracked,” his voice was muffled as he spoke. “Water started coming through and then I think the underground compensated and did a rockslide to block it off.”

I paused. “Wait. Are you in water right now?”

“Yeah. I can’t say it's comfortable.”

I suddenly had an image of Malcolm, shivering alone in the dark for the last three days. He had been alone with no food or ability to sleep. Had he called out for me? To any of us? What had his thoughts been while time passed in a crawl?

The urge to release him from his prison clawed at my insides. Malcolm was a master at keeping his voice steady even during crises. The fact that it was so even now did nothing to provide me with confidence. I started to frantically pull at the rocks, looking for a loose stone. If I could just get a hole started, we could work together.

“Lamplight, it’s useless. I’ve already tried.”

It was cute that he thought I would have listened to him in this situation. Malcolm had a lot of wonderful qualities but self preservation was not one of them. 

My fingers bent back as I pried at the rocks, nails chipping under the pressure. The tackiness of my own blood began to mix with the damp sediment and I could feel it grinding beneath my nails. There had to be a way to get to him. I had been led here and for what reason? To listen to him slowly die?

“Lamplight,” he was saying again. “You closed this wall for a reason.”

“I wouldn’t have closed you in,” I growled.

“No, you wouldn’t have. But the part of you that is meant to protect this world, would.”

“There’s nothing down here, Malcolm! There’s nothing to protect!”

“There is,” he told me gently. “There is so much that lives in these tunnels. Creatures that were not wanted up top. Ones who come to seek solitude. There are entire pockets down here and something about this wall bursting would have hurt them.”

“So I’m supposed to just leave you in there? Because a bunch of people who may or may not live down here could get hurt?”

I heard my words. I knew how selfish they were and I didn’t care. Malcolm deserved so much more than he had been given. I wasn’t going to have him die alone in a cavern somewhere. 

A rock came loose near my chest and a gush of water began to spill out. It flooded with such a force that I was knocked off my feet, my head hitting the rocks beneath me. Somewhere, I felt like another version of me was laughing.

“-ight!”

I blinked, hearing the ringing in my ears. Did water ring? Probably not. It had a more whooshing quality. And then when you were under it, you could sometimes hear the bubbles pop. Or was that fish singing? I would have to ask the selkies the next time we had tea.

“Lamplight!”

I sat up, gasping. The water had evened out around me, spreading across the much larger chamber. The hole I had made was barely any bigger than my head but I could see Malcolm on the other side, peering through it.

“Are you okay?”

I winced. “Yeah.”  I rose from the position I had been flung in, trying not to focus too closely at the ache that I felt in my side. Instead, I made my way back towards the wall separating the two of us, and reached for him. 

His hand stretched through the hole and grasped at mine. It was cold and clammy and his grip was weak. “I told you not to do that.” When Malcolm got mad his voice dropped an octave. It was a low rumble from his chest. I had only heard it a few times but each time I had, I had also heard the panic within his words. “You need to get out of here.” The shadows shielded his face from me but I could tell he was shivering, his body stiff with cold.

“I’m ripping this wall down,” I told him.

“Lamplight, no.”

“Funny, I am pretty sure I am your boss.” I softened my words by kissing his knuckles. They were scabbed over. He had tried to dig himself out already and had failed. “There is enough room in here that the water will be fine. Where is it up to on you?”

“My chest now. It had been at my neck.”

“Is it actively pouring in still?”

“I don’t know. I can’t see too well. If it is, its at a slower rate maybe?”

I nodded. “Okay. So we rip this wall down enough for you to climb through and then I can always seal it back up. It saves you and saves these magical people you are convinced are down here but I don’t think actually are.”

“They’re here,” he told me with a certain sigh. His fingers twitched against my own.

“I don’t care. Can you help me pull these rocks out?”

“I’m not taking the risk of it being another rockslide. Not with you down here.”

I stared at him, lips pursed. Hazel had once told me that when Malcolm made up his mind, changing it was a feat that was never worth the effort. He was stubborn and could become cruel when challenged. I didn’t know this side of him. I didn’t want to know this side of him. I also, didn’t care enough to stop myself. “Okay, then I’ll be doing it by myself.”

“Lamplight,” he snapped.

“Malcolm, shut up! I’m sorry, but shut up! I will not have you die.”

I hadn’t realized I was crying. I think I had been since the moment I realized he was down here. My fingers were desperately prying at the rocks as I tried to break more loose. I just needed enough to pull him through.

“Life has been stacked against you too much,” I found myself babbling. “You were born in the wrong body. Your mother hated you for it. Your other mother is just gone. You had to do everything on your own. Protect Hazel on your own. You had a role that was forced on you that you never would have wanted and you mutilated your own body to keep others safe. You died. You simply died. Then when you came back we put this expectation on you to be the one who had it all together and that has never been fair. None of your life has been fair and I’m not letting you die down here.”

His hand gripped mine. I was breathing fast, my lungs tight and head swimming. But I could feel the way his hand gripped my own. I looked up at him, his dirty hair falling across his face. There were bruises there. Dried blood at his temple. His eyes were clear, though as he gripped me hard.

“Okay,” he said gently.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Good. Then help me.”

We worked in silence, finding the right rocks to move becoming tedious at best. With each rock we were able to displace, I could see the panic in Malcolm’s eyes. The way his gaze would tick up to see if the entire cave was about to collapse. The constant need to keep me in his sight, the urge to reach out and touch me and then tell me to go. I could feel it all swelling within him. But he stayed silent this time.

“There,” he said after who knew how long. The water had been rushing out from the hole, making our progress worse but it looked just big enough for him to squeeze through. “You’ll have to help. Once I get out of this water, my body is going to feel like a lead weight.”

I reached my arms through the opening, getting them under his shoulders and pressing my face close to his. “On the count of three,” I told him.

We counted off and on three, I felt Malcolm jump, pushing his front half up through the hole to lay halfway through it. He let out an unbidden groan and I saw his face freeze up, somehow becoming more ashen than it already had been.

“Do you need a minute?”

With his teeth clamped together, he shook his head. “Keep going.”

I pulled and yanked and tried to ignore how he cried out. When his legs finally slipped through, he fell against me, the two of us falling in the puddle of water beneath us. I could feel it then. The way his body felt more fragile than before. He smelled of dirt and fetid water and his skin was wrinkled and sallow. But he was solid in my arms.

I wrapped myself around him tight, squeezing my eyes shut. I had no idea how I was supposed to get him home. But I had him. I had him and he was safe. If I had to flood the entire underground to buoy us up to the surface, I would.

“I can’t fall asleep,” he mumbled against my skin.

I jerked awake, not realizing how lulled I was by the weight of his body. With a groan, I sat us both up. His eyes were fluttering as exhaustion finally began to take him over.

“Up we go,” I told him, hooking my shoulder under his arm. He was unsteady on his feet but he was nothing if not determined. I looked around, looking for any sign to just get home.

“Just do it like you did before,” he told me softly, head lolling against my shoulder. “Trust yourself, Lamplight.”

I hadn’t trusted my gut the first day he had been lost and it resulted in him down here for three days. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake.

Closing my eyes, I pictured home, and with Malcolm against me, I trusted that we would make it out of here alive.

A/N: Okay, seriously, this feels like something that belongs in the books? I don't know how or why but it very much feels like something like this is going to happen at some point. Also, opinions? Do we want another chapter as a follow up to what happened here? Milo finding out what happened? Milo taking care of MC and Mal? Or do we want our own Milo down the well situation. I already have Hazel's written up and so she will be forthcoming soon.