Shadow Hand

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

Now the stream was dry, the bed cracked with dust. Wasteland crept up and overwhelmed the greenery until all was gone, and that place of scenic serenity could not be told from the rest of the ruin.

  “All the once living places of her mind vanish one by one,” said the she-wolf. “Soon there will be nothing left but me. And I am as you see me: trapped.”

  The thing in Sun Eagle looked down at the wolf, considering. Does she want to free you? it asked.

  “No!” The she-wolf snarled bitterly. “No, she wants to suppress me forever!”

  We want her for one of ours. We have use for her.

  At that, the wolf struggled to surge to her feet. She strained against the chains so hard that the ground shook, and the thing that was Sun Eagle staggered and nearly lost its balance. But the chains were fast to the ground, the links too short to allow any freedom of motion. The wolf fell back, and her four legs bled where the manacles bit.

  Still she growled, spitting blood. “You’ll take her over my dead body!”

  No.

  The hand of Sun Eagle moved to his throat, touching the bronze stone on the cord around his neck. For a moment, one finger brushed the other stone, the blue one painted with a white flower. The body responded to this against the will of that inside it, shivering with a sudden thrill of passion and resistance. But the hand moved on and untied the cord on which the bronze stone was strung.

  The creature within Sun Eagle knelt before the wolf and fastened the bronze stone around her neck.

  No, it said. Over your bound body.

  As though weighed down by a chain far stronger than the four upon her limbs, the wolf collapsed flat against the ruined soil. And she did not move, not even to breathe.

  Now. You are theirs—its—

  Mine!

  ———

  Daylily gasped. She came awake kneeling in the Wood Between, shuddering, her arms wrapped about herself against a cold that pierced her from the inside out.

  Sun Eagle crouched before her, a hand on her shoulder. “There,” he said. “There, it’s over. You’re safe now.”

  Daylily, her chin drawn to her chest, saw something gleaming. Struggling still to breathe, she grasped the gleam and held it steady. It was like a shard of ice in the palm of her hand and she winced. When her vision stopped swimming, she looked at what she held.

  It was a charm, a bronze stone of no particular shape strung on a cord of animal gut.

  Her breath came easier with each gasp. Soon she was able to sit upright. The spasm passed; the cold, though present, was bearable. And suddenly she felt stronger than she had in . . . in she could not remember how long!

  “What has happened?” she asked the warrior, turning to him as a child to an older brother. Though he was a stranger, she felt somehow that she knew him. She felt that she was—in some odd way—part of him. “What did you do to me?”

  “I?” said he. His voice was strangely gentle. “I have done nothing. But you have taken the Bronze. You are now one of my brethren.”

  He stood then and helped her to her feet. He did not release her hand, and she found that she did not want him to.

  “Come. Walk with me,” said Sun Eagle. “Let us find your world.”

  9

  ONCE UPON A TIME.”

  No phrase is more intriguing to those who know nothing of Time.

  Immortals understand Time in the same way they understand air. It is there. It always has been and always will be. They live in it, but it isn’t something to be concerned about unless it is unduly removed. Otherwise, who’s to bother?

  Mortals are different. Time matters to them, for they experience it in such limited quantity. Like a man plunged into the ocean who gasps for each breath with desperate urgency, so mortals, trapped as they are by their mortality, put out their hands and try to grasp Time even as it slips through their fingers.

  And it’s all so fascinating to watch!

  This was precisely why sylphs—which are neither immortal nor mortal but simply are in the same way that the wind simply is—find mortals irresistible. Time-bound creatures existing in a world so other to that which sylphs know are beautiful and beguiling and utterly impossible to pass up.

  Once upon a Time . . . and here are creatures, oddly ugly, intriguing mortal beasts, that actually live upon a Time like it is the most natural thing in the worlds!

  But one sylph did not find the prospect so enticing.

  This creature of wind and whisper held back from its brethren, though never so far as to be totally alone. It had been alone too long, and it never wanted to suffer that yawning closeness of isolation again. Even now, free and airborne though it was, it still felt the bite of iron around its neck, a neck made solid with imprisonment, and it remembered its wind-wild spirit trapped in a Time-tortured form.

  Once it had been too curious and too clever. It had ventured out of the Between, lured by the voice of the Death-in-Life. And there, in that world where everything gave way to the decay of moments, hours, and years, the sylph had been made the slave.

  “Aad-o Ilmun!” the sylph breathed through the leaves as it moved, following the merry shouts of its brothers and sisters. “I am saved! I am rescued! I will never deal with mortals again.”

  They had caught a new one. The lone sylph could tell by the manic laughter, the triumphant songs.

  “We have the mortals by their hands,

  And so we lead them through our lands!

  Oh, laughing, fey, and fair are we

  Who spring and sing from tree to tree!

  Come and join our dance!”

  They were foolish, but they could not help it. Intrigued by the strangeness, they failed to recognize the horror. So the lone sylph hung back. Let them sing and harry the poor mortals. Only let them never learn the terrors of a corporeal body, the horror of a spirit trapped inside a head, the painful beat of a heart! Even now the memory was enough to make the sylph moan.

  Then it heard a shout.

  “By the Prince of Farthestshore, I—oof!—command you—arrrgh!—to release—ugh!”

  Every whisper of the lone sylph’s strange and billowing being sang in response to that voice, which it recognized.

  “Savior!” it cried.

  Then it plunged forward through the trees, hurtling itself after the congregation of its kindred until it found the mortals clutched at the center of the wild hurricane. The sylphs were not gentle with their new toys but tugged them right off their feet, carrying them through the Wood so swiftly that neither captive could protest, and were indeed hard-pressed to protect their faces from the knifelike branches as they were gusted along. One of the mortals hit a tree trunk, only just putting up an arm in time to protect himself from a severe concussion, then was pulled on around so fast that he could not catch his breath.

  “Savior!” cried the lone sylph again.

  A horrible, wafting face presented itself before Lionheart’s terror-struck eyes. Both visible and invisible at once, it put out its great, gale-like arms and caught him close to its breast. All breath knocked from his body, Lionheart could not so much as moan when he, with a jolt that certainly must have left his stomach far behind on the woodland floor, was torn from the throng of wind beings and lifted up, up, up, until he thought he would break through the canopy of the forest itself.

  But no. Not even a sylph has the courage to climb above the trees in the Between. High in the upper branches, however, the lone sylph was able to bear its mortal burden more easily away from the throng. Lionheart felt his head pillowed on a bosom made of breezes, soft and gentle as a mother where his cheek lay. But the rest of the sylph’s being billowed tumultuously, crashing through the foliage with all the care of a typhoon.

  The gates to the Near World from the Wood are not known to all the fey folk. But the sylph had a fair notion where the mortal clasped in its arms might have entered, and it bore him back that way. In this place, a grove of silver-branch trees, the sylph had waited with its brethren, patient as only those who
know nothing of Time may be, waiting for mortals to accidentally step over the boundaries separating their world from the Realm Between Worlds.

  So the sylph set Lionheart down beneath these ageless trees. Lionheart, numb with roaring and flight, staggered three steps, then fell headlong. The sylph, ever eager to please, reached out and gently righted him on his feet. Once more, Lionheart tried his luck with a pace or two, but his legs failed, and he collapsed again.

  All around him stretched the Wilderlands, and he could see no break in the trees’ long shadows. He did not know how close the gate to the Near World stood, for his eyes were untrained. He saw only more Wood.

  The sylph bowed over him, touching his forehead.

  “Savior,” it said. “Now I have saved you!”

  “Wh-what?” Lionheart pushed himself up onto his elbows, spitting dirt and leaves, and gazed once more into that face that was not quite a face. “Who are you?”

  “Don’t you remember?” said the sylph. “I am the poor creature you rescued from the Duke of Shippening.”

  For the moment, at least, this comment could make no headway in Lionheart’s rattled mind. He lay as though paralyzed, unspeaking. The sylph put out a hand and gently played with his hair. “My kindred think too much of mortality and the strange ways of your kind,” it said. “The Lumil Eliasul favors you so, you and your dirt-bound bodies. They envy you! I once envied you too. And I suffered for my envy when Death-in-Life bound me with iron chains and gave me to the duke.”

  A shudder like the sadness of a desolate summer breeze glancing across a dry field passed through the sylph. But its hands continued to gently caress Lionheart’s face. “But you!” it said. “You were sent by the Lumil Eliasul himself. You were sent to rescue me!”

  Vague memories moved like shadows across Lionheart’s stunned consciousness. He saw once more an albino jester, a creature never meant to be trapped in mortal form, unhealthy, unhappy, almost unreal, performing for the amusement of a tyrant. He remembered himself stepping forward and loosing an iron ring from the creature’s neck. The burst of wind and roaring had been almost too violent to bear! But the sylph had been freed to its true form.

  And it had told Lionheart then, “I will grant you a wish if I may.”

  Now it said, its face ever shifting but filled with smiles, “I have saved you, my savior! Aad-o Ilmun! How glad I am to have been the instrument of the Song Giver!”

  “I . . . I remember you.” Lionheart blinked vigorously, as though to drive the apparition away. “I remember you. And the docks of Capaneus City.”

  “Yes, the docks,” said the sylph, its voice full of joy. Then the joy vanished, replaced with a solemn moan, like the creak of a moored ship on a still night. “There I told you where to learn the secret to the Dragon’s final end. A dreadful purpose.” Another instant and the shudder had passed. Once more the sylph smiled. “But I never granted you a wish! May I do so now to repay in full the debt I owe?”

  Lionheart shook his head, then wished he hadn’t, for his ears still throbbed with the painful noise of the sylphs in throng. “I . . . I think you have repaid me,” he managed.

  “No!” cried the sylph. “For you liberated me from slavery, while I merely pulled you from the dance of my kindred. It is not enough, and I do not wish to live in your debt forever. Have you no task for me now?”

  “Foxbrush.” Lionheart’s eyes flew suddenly wide, and he rose swiftly, swayed, and propped himself against a silver-branch tree. The Wood surrounding him was full of silent but no-less potent mockery. “Foxbrush,” Lionheart said and gnashed his teeth. “He’s in there. Somewhere.”

  “The other mortal dancing?” inquired the sylph, whirling about like an eager puppy. “He is with my kindred still. And he will die.” Its voice was uncaring but not cruel. It brushed Lionheart’s face with its long fingertips again. “Your kind cannot dance so long as mine.”

  “I must save him!” Lionheart cried. “Can you lead me to him?”

  “I can,” said the sylph. “But I won’t.”

  “What? Why not?”

  The airy being made no reply, but it pointed. Lionheart looked where it indicated, down at his own feet.

  And there Lionheart saw the Path for which he had searched. The Path of Farthestshore leading, not back into the Wood the way he had come, but into the grove of silver-branch trees, their branches twining delicately together in what might almost have been an accidental arch.

  Lionheart, stepping as gingerly as a cat over a puddle, approached the two trees, following the Path. He stood between their trunks and looked out. He saw the gorge. The rock cliff face, and the trail leading up to the tableland above.

  The Near World waited; Southlands waited.

  He stepped back quickly. Once more, the Wood closed in on all sides, extending forever. Here in the Between there was no gorge, only darkness and forest and those who dwelled therein. Here in the Between, where Foxbrush and Daylily now wandered, lost as children.

  “I can’t go back,” Lionheart said, muttering the words angrily. “I can’t leave Daylily and Foxbrush behind! Must I always be the coward and run away?”

  He waited, half expecting to hear his Master’s voice and the distant silver song of the Lord Beyond the Final Water. But there was nothing. Nothing but the voice in his memory.

  “Walk with me,” the Prince had told him.

  And Lionheart had vowed to do so.

  “Dragons eat it,” he snarled and pounded the nearest tree trunk. The tree shivered irritably and dropped a twig on his head. Lionheart brushed it aside, casting about as though desperate for someone to whom he might make an argument.

  The sylph wafted closer. “Will you go now to the Near World, savior?” it asked. “The Song Giver is leading you that way. Will you follow him to mortal lands?”

  “I—” Once more Lionheart cursed. Then he breathed a heavy sigh. “I must. I’ve doubted and fought and forged my own way too many times.” But he hesitated even so, sensing something more he must do, though he couldn’t guess what. “Are you coming with me?” he asked the sylph.

  “No, no,” it replied. “I cannot pass through that gate. The locks prevent the Faerie folk from entering your country.”

  “What locks?”

  “The locks of Nidawi’s people.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The sylph laughed then like a whooshing breeze and tickled Lionheart under the chin. “Foolish!” it cried. “You know nothing, but you think you know everything! How mortal you are, how clever, how sad.” Its laughter ended suddenly, and the sylph itself vanished. Lionheart, for a moment, believed himself alone. Then a little voice in his ear said, “Let me fetch the other mortal out of the dance.”

  “What?”

  “Let me fulfill my duty to you, kind savior. Let me fetch back the mortal you lost and bring him to you. Would that please you?”

  “Yes!” Lionheart said. “Yes, that would please me! Find Foxbrush and bring him back. At once, if you can!”

  “Farewell, then,” said the sylph. And it was gone. The leaves of the silver-branch trees fluttered gently, the only sign of the creature’s passing. Lionheart stood alone in the Wood Between.

  “I should have asked him to find Daylily,” he muttered. But it was too late. And was he now to leave her himself? To return to the safety of the Near World and . . . and what? He’d made his peace with his father. Rose Red no longer waited with faithful friendship; she was long since gone. All his ties there were severed.

  “Why, then?” he asked the empty air. “Why would you send me back? Why not let me find Daylily and at least do one good turn by her?”

  There was no answer. The Path at his feet pointed to the gate, and Lionheart could not deny it forever.

  He passed between the two trees, and the Wilderlands watched him go.

  The flock of sylphs crashed through the Wood, singing as they went.

  “We have him, and we’ll keep him!


  We’ll dance and whirl and sweep him

  Through the merry In Between

  To places he has never been,

  And never more will he be seen

  By mortal eye again!”

  At first, Foxbrush could not understand the words, so loud was the roaring of the voices singing them. But the deeper they progressed into the forest, the gentler his captors became, as though more certain of their catch. When at last they let him touch the ground once more—pushing and prodding him when he fell to his knees—he could hear their words very well. But his mind could not accept it.

  “That . . . that was quite a gale!” he gasped, clutching his shirt, which had been torn to ribbons by snatching branches. A little afraid what he might discover, he felt around, testing his own limbs to make certain they were all still attached.

  He found Lionheart’s scroll tucked into his trouser pocket. Somehow, feeling it there made him angry, and anger made him brave enough to stand. He coughed to clear his throat and smoothed down his hair with both hands. “An unusual natural phenomenon,” he said, lying to himself for what comfort a lie might offer. “A powerful summer gale is what that was. Probably several accounts of it in Gullfinger’s Guide to the Natural Sciences.”

  The next few moments were spent in far more desperate self-lies as he struggled to convince himself that the winds in the trees above him were not whispering to one another.

  “Look at me! I’m a natural phenomenian!”

  “A natural phenemenon!”

  “A natural phenomonomonom!”

  Lionheart was nowhere to be seen. But surely he must be close, perhaps only a few yards away. The Wood was so thick here, it was possible for all manner of things to lie hidden within inches of each other. Foxbrush shuddered. His imagination was not keen even at its best, but one needed very little to begin picturing wild creatures lying low, shielded beneath the heavy fern fronds, ready to leap; or snakes slithering silent paths and just brushing one’s foot.

  “Ahhh . . .” Foxbrush grimaced and tried to straighten the rags of his shirt. “There will be a clear trail back the way I came,” he told himself. “Broken twigs, bent grass, so forth. It’s always so in the books. Gullfinger himself wrote a section on surviving in the wilds, and I’m sure I can remember most of what he said.”