The Shadow Arts

by Damien Love

  “Ooh.” Zia grinned. “Getting mad. Maybe there is something of the family buried deep down inside you after all, Alexan-dah. Though I remain to be convinced it’s worth the effort of digging up. Wasted time on that before with your papa.”

  “What?” Alex said.

  “Oh yes. Your daddy, rabbit. He was sharper than you, but a wishy-washy weakling in the end. Although, your grandaddy has to take his share of the blame there. Gave the game away too soon, before the boy was ready to understand. Always a spoilsport.

  “But what has the old man been doing with you all this time if he’s taught you nothing at all? Weak spots on the earth and in the sky, bunny. The places where things get lost, and things get out. Places where things can slip through. Holes, from this side into the other, and vicey-versy. Into the Elsewhere!” She barked out a deep, booming man’s cry, like a circus ringleader introducing his greatest act: “The Great Beeeyond!”

  Throwing her arms wide, she made a pirouette, before continuing in her own voice. “Get the gist? The Black Forest’s riddled with holes. German woods are like Swiss cheese. And you’re standing at the thinnest spot of all. Or you will be in a few minutes,” she added, checking the sky again, “when everything all lines up.

  “This old castle was built around the weak spot by some little scared people. To keep it secret and keep all the happy peasants safe and stupid. Why else build anything in such a dreary dull nothingy place? But once upon a time, a very wise and very powerful man realized this spot was particularly special, and so he and his men took over the castle and settled in so he could examine it properly.

  “So. He settled in with his old books and stuff and got all comfy and studied the weak spot for years and years and years. And here’s what he found. Most weak places are one way. Either things can go in, or things can get out. Like Hamelin. You must know that one, bunny?”

  “Hamelin,” Alex said, reluctantly. He knew the name from the fairy tale that had always creeped him out most as a kid. “The town from the Pied Piper?”

  “The town from the Pied Piper?” Zia repeated in a maddeningly exact imitation of his voice. “Yes. Go through that door in Hamelin, and it’s bye-bye, little kiddiewinks. See? But this one, this one’s so very, very close to the next one that when it all lines up”—she pointed to the sky—“they become two sides of one. One door. One gateway. Right here is one side, and it’s a way in. Now, big test, see if you’ve been paying attention. Can you guess where the other weak spot is? Where the other side comes out? Here’s a clue: this comes from there.” She tossed the rock in her hand.

  “The mountain,” Alex said after a moment. “The Kandel.”

  “By George, I think he’s got it!”

  “No,” Alex said. “I don’t. I don’t get any of it.”

  “Suffering catfish on a bike,” Zia said with an exasperated sigh.

  “I . . . I’d like to know,” Alex said, quietly, as if he didn’t want anyone to hear him admit it. He kept his eyes down, studying the ground, their feet. “I’d like to understand.”

  “Hum.” Zia narrowed her eyes, suspicious, but faintly surprised. “Well. We don’t have all night. But okay. In simpleton speak.” She raised one hand in a fist and impatiently tapped the thumb clenched at the side with her other forefinger. “We’re out here, on this side, okay? Alive, sonny. Right?”

  Alex nodded. He took a step toward Zia, peering intently at her hand.

  “If you’re foolish enough to stop being alive, you, all the fizzly energy of you, drains through and gets trapped inside, in here.” She shook her fist roughly, then turned her hand over, opened it, and held it under Alex’s nose, with the fingers wiggling violently.

  “You’re sucked into eternity. Join the hot cosmic soup. Go where the wild things are. Dissolve into death, child.”

  “Okay.” Alex managed a hoarse whisper.

  “Death’s supposed to be a one-way street, rrrright? Go through the door and it’s locked behind you. Cheerio! You know about that. But at this spot, where we’re standing, when everything all lines up, just for a teensy-tiny moment, there’s a little gap, a hole.”

  She curled her fingers and held the hand to her eye, blinking through it at Alex like a child playing with an imaginary telescope, then snapped the fist closed tight again. “You can step in this side here, at the castle.” Zia tapped the knuckle of the thumb. “And step out again over there, on the Kandel.” She tapped the curl of her little finger. “And in between, you’ve stepped right through death, without getting caught in death.” She gestured to Beckman. “Get Father ready.”

  “The gate is at the weak spot,” Alex said, trying to piece the madness together. “You step through here. And you’ll come out on the Kandel mountain. But, in between, you’ll have . . . passed through . . . death.”

  “Through death without dying.” Zia nodded, watching as Beckman and the big robot moved the tall man so his head lay centered at the foot of the gate. “Through fire without burning.”

  “Can I look closer?” Alex said. “The gate, I mean. Now that I know what it is.”

  Zia knotted her brow. “Maybe you are curious. Your daddy was. Okay. Slowly. But quickly. And keep away from Father. No monkey business, rabbit, or Hans’ll snap your paw right off.”

  Beckman gave the loop around Alex’s arm a friendly squeeze, then let the wire fall loose so he could move. Alex hobbled past Zia, leaning on his broom and wincing with each step, a little more than he needed to. The wire trailed slack along the ground behind him. He inspected the varnished old wood, letting them see how interested he was. But he was also studying the layout around him from the corner of his eye, the positions of Beckman and Zia.

  “How does it . . . work?” Alex asked, not really sure what he was asking.

  “Well, my little dummkopf kaninchen,” Zia said. “The gate is made from old trees that had grown here, right by the weak spot that sucked up the atmosphere. It was crafted by an extremely mighty sage. Back when people knew what’s what. Before they started splitting knowledge up. When the hole opens, the gate will hold it and keep it open,” Zia said, distracted, speaking faster.

  She pointed up at the moon and circled her finger in a spiraling motion. “You know everything’s all spinning around all the time? Yes? Planets and moons and such? Always in motion, always in different arrangements? Well, when everything lines up just so, just for a moment, that forms the lock. The gate is the door. All you need then is the key, and to know how to turn it.”

  “The key?”

  “That’s the artful bit. The key’s your fizzly energy. Your life force. That’s what death demands before you can pass through. So you have to give it up, to trick it.”

  “Give it your . . . life?” Alex said.

  “You know what I mean, rabbit.” She rubbed irritably at her forehead. “You send it out. You’ve done it yourself with the Soaring Spirit. But what’s needed here’s much more subtle, much more powerful. Much more dangerous. The gate takes your fizzly energy and uses it to keep the hole open. But you need to know how to give it all away, to the very last drop, then be able snatch it back as you pass through. Like breathing out and breathing in at the same time. Timing. Takes the very greatest skill and learning. Get it wrong and you—”

  She fell suddenly silent, staring down at the tall man with a desolate look. Moonlight glinted from her dark eyes as they briefly brimmed with tears.

  “But Father can do it. He’s studied more than anyone ever.” She sounded as if she was trying to convince herself. “Anyway. Time’s here. Come back away from the gate. Begin, Hans.”

  Alex stumbled to stand on the other side of Zia from where he’d started. At the gate, Beckman began a soft, whispering chant.

  “But why’s he doing it?” Alex said, trying to keep Zia talking. His mind was racing. He was playing actions out in his head, gathering courage to move. “If he’
s so weak and it’s so dangerous?”

  “How stupid are you, stupid?” Zia muttered. “To fix him, idiot. Go through death without dying, it takes the bad stuff away. Like a filter. You come out all fixed and clean. Better than before. And once you’ve gone through and come out, death can’t catch your fizzly energy again. Ever. That’s what the gate-maker discovered. To gain eternal life you must give your life away. Father calls it a conundrum of faith. It’s highly poetical.”

  Beckman’s breathy singing became higher, faster. All at once, he stopped, raised a mighty mechanical finger, and tapped the gate.

  Tap-tap.

  A second later, like a delayed echo in the woods, the sound repeated, but it was slightly different.

  Tap-tap—tap.

  “It’s working!” Zia beamed, actually jumping and clapping. “That’s little William von Sudenfeld. He’s on the other side of the gate. Up on the Kandel. Its shadow is falling there now. See?” In the brightening moonlight, Alex could clearly see the shadows of himself, Zia, Beckman, and the life-sizer. Yet the gate cast no shadow at all.

  “We took all the pieces of the gate to the Devil’s Pulpit first, to charge it on the rocks, remind it where it had to open,” Zia said. “It was so happy. Go on, Hans.”

  Beckman started singing new words. Zia looked to the sky and straightened, preparing herself.

  “Immortality?” Alex asked, playing for time. “So why hasn’t he done it before? If he’s known about it all this time.”

  Zia ran at him fast and rapped him hard on the forehead with a sharp knuckle.

  “Knock-knock. Hello? Are you listening? ‘You-have-to-give-your-life-away.’ Understand? That’s ve-ry dan-ger-ous. Father has studied the gate for years and always held back. But now there’s no time left. No choice.”

  “So, where is he?” Alex put weight onto his weak foot, testing it.

  “What?” Zia snapped.

  “Your gate-maker,” Alex said. “If he was supposed to have found the secret to eternal life here, then where is he now?”

  “Oh. He made a mistake. Surrounded himself with idiots. Scaredy-cats. Unable to believe. Father will be the first to go through. We’ll be next.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, big ears, we. Father will give the gate his life, then the gate will hold the hole open, and we can all pass through with him. It’s a great gift. The greatest. Immortality’s on offer: of course we go through! Besides, you wouldn’t want to be left out here when the gate opens and everything starts falling.”

  “The castle.” Caught by a new rush of panic, Alex barely heard her. He looked up at the shattered tower. “It collapsed.”

  “Yes, yes. Keeping the hole open long enough to go through is like ripping it open over and over again. There’s energy released. Everything’s energy and vibrations, Alexander, that’s the first secret. The energy has to go somewhere. It goes rumbling into the earth.”

  “But the story said, if it was opened again, it would . . . destroy the earth. The end of the world.”

  “Poppycock. Don’t be such a drama bunny. Why would we want that? Father’s calculated it. The fault line will only open from here to the Kandel. Just twenty-five miles long or something. And only a few hundred miles or so wide either side. Some things’ll fall in, yes. But we’ll be sheltered by the gate.”

  “A few hundred miles either side—but all the towns!” Alex cried. “The cities, all the people! There are thousands—”

  “But all the peeeeople!” Zia mimicked. “They’re all going to die, anyway, Alexander. They don’t seem to mind. None of them think about it much at all. No, what you should really worry about isn’t them all falling in. It’s the things that might come climbing out.”

  “What?”

  “Things, Alexander. Things. Things from the wild side. Things with wings and things you don’t have words for. You’ll see. But it’ll be fun. It’ll give Father and me something to hunt and study. Now. Shut your mouth.”

  She turned to walk to the gate. The moon hung directly above the broken tower.

  Alex had barely half a plan. Less. But he was out of time. He dived in front of her feet, scrabbled around fast behind her again, then threw himself back hard in the dirt. With the sleeves of his coat over his hand like gloves, he pulled desperately at the wire that was already tightening around his arm.

  Zia shrieked, tried to move, fell on her face.

  Beyond her, Beckman, still chanting, reeled his wire in faster. Alex yanked it in the opposite direction with everything he had. Between them, Zia lay in the dirt, with the loop Alex had managed to throw around her leg cutting tightly into her ankle.

  “Stop pulling, moron, loosen it!” she screamed at Beckman. He continued murmuring his ancient song, sounding nervier now. More wire started spooling out from under his coat.

  Alex got to his feet, shoved the broom under his armpit for support, and hobbled backward, straining to keep Zia caught tight between them. He cast a nervous glance at the motionless life-sizer, then jerked away as another spring-arm came flying at him. But Beckman was too absorbed in his ritual to shoot accurately. The flailing white fist missed and fell writhing to the ground. Alex pinned it down with the brush handle and leaned on it hard.

  “How long do you think you can keep this up, idiot?” Zia yelled. “What actually is your point?”

  “Doesn’t have to be long,” Alex muttered. “I don’t understand what you’re doing, but I know enough to understand it has to be done at the right time. You said you only had a teensy-tiny moment to open the hole. So, a teensy-tiny moment will do.”

  “What?” Zia gave a despairing chuckle. “It’s already happening, bunny-brain. Look.”

  The gate was glowing steadily brighter. Alex saw that the light seemed to come from countless burning letters and symbols hidden beneath the layers of varnish, spelling out some long, indecipherable message. Within the structure, the dark air was shuddering. The shuddering began to center above the tall man’s head.

  “You won’t stop it. Father can’t stop now. And he doesn’t need me to do it. He just needs Hans singing on this side, Willy calling from the other. So, all that’s going to happen now is, if we aren’t over there—me and you, bunny—in the gate, we’ll be caught out here when everything starts falling.”

  Alex pulled tighter on the cord. “I don’t care. We’ll go together—”

  He heard the whirr of her flier a millisecond before it slammed into his temple. A blade slashed his cheek and his grip on the wire loosened momentarily. Zia instantly slipped free, leapt up, and ran to touch the gate.

  “Bring him, Hans. Try not to damage him. Too much.” She bent to lift the flower.

  The ground vibrated, very faintly.

  The white hand jerked out from under Alex and grabbed his ankle. The wire round his arm bit hard. Then he was being reeled rapidly, helplessly, in toward the blazing gate.

  The ground rumbled, stronger this time.

  Within the gate structure, the vibrating air was spinning, spiraling, forming a wormy whirlpool. Slivers of the white-blue light emanating from the frames seemed to get sucked into it, whirling around. A low, rhythmic whine started from somewhere, growing louder, faster, like the gears of some vast, far-off machine beginning to turn. Above it, Alex thought he heard the barking of dogs.

  The life-sizer stooped to the foot of the board the tall man lay upon and began pushing him. The eyes behind the mask were wide in furious ecstasy. The gate swung open inside its huge frame, setting off shivering cascades of light. As the tall man’s head passed within the frame, the air around him burned solid white. Slowly, the robot pushed him deeper through.

  Beckman was whispering feverishly as Alex arrived at the gate. The ground bucked and complained. It seemed as if the moon was shaking in the sky. There were figures moving on the slope beneath the tower. Dogs ran before them, bar
king ceaseless warnings. His grandfather was there, looking old and tired, but lifting his cane high.

  The big robot kept pushing steadily, until the soles of the tall man’s shining boots were swallowed up and disappeared. As soon as he vanished, the machine fell lifeless.

  “Now!” Zia shouted. Alex felt her take his elbow. Beckman’s mechanical hand crushed around his other. Then they were moving, forward, into the light.

  The grinding noise was racing, deafening. Alex strained to look back over his shoulder. It was perhaps a trick of the light crackling blindingly around him, but, for a second, he thought he saw the quaking old castle change—phantom hints of long-vanished walls re-forming, rebuilding. He tried to call out.

  But he was already touching the light, stepping over into eternity.

  XXXIV.

  MEETING THE MAKER

  The first thing he thought was that the pain in his ankle was gone.

  The second thing he thought was that there wasn’t any air.

  Being underwater was as close as Alex’s mind could get to understanding the sensation. A feeling of the silent environment pressing in, simultaneously surrounding him and supporting him. But it wasn’t like being underwater at all. After a few panicking seconds, his body relaxed.

  The stormy night had vanished. It was a bright but dismal day, and they stood on a small ledge jutting out from a high cliff. Behind them, where Alex would have expected to see the gate they had just stepped though, stood only a sheer, solid wall of rock, stretching up out of sight.

  Far below, a pale landscape spread out like a desert of snow, vast and featureless, save for a black forest clustered darkly along the distant horizon. Their narrow shelf led off around a curve in the rock face, just a few feet away. And there, just where the path turned, the tall man stood, pulling on his coat.