These Shadows Remain

by B W Powe

  *

  He’d crossed between realms and already a forgetting was setting in, confusion too.

  Santiago still had his sword.

  And the eyes were back.

  They were popping, red and white lights bursting with erratic brilliance.

  The tourists to the castle had brought cameras – small disposable cameras that they had found in the one store left with supplies inside the walls. They clicked off picture after picture, craving keepsakes, images for their albums and collections, flashbulbs and flashcubes bursting.

  Tomas found himself dodging the bursts, turning away.

  *

  Cyrus approached him again, after speeches and promises.

  “What do you want for yourself?” His question was kindly.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Doubt and uncertainty. Very human traits.”

  “I’m still learning.”

  “There’ll be a need for leadership. We can raise lots of money here.”

  “I think,” Tomas said, hesitating. “I need somewhere to go.”

  “The conclusion we’d come to ourselves.”

  Cyrus spoke as if he represented a new network that had coiled up, extending quickly after the images had been confined into the frames that would allow people to view them at their leisure. Tomas had the impression that another powerful structure had come into place, but that it was in part invisible.

  “We’d like to offer you a position on our committee of change.”

  “What?”

  “The committee will allow us to come to grips with what happened. We’ll make studies.”

  Cyrus spoke in a way that suggested he enjoyed his new power. He liked to rule, Tomas thought. Maybe he cast himself in the image of a king. It ran through Tomas’s mind that the image realm had infiltrated deeply into human affairs.

  “You are the one who was between worlds. You could have a special place.”

  “Where are Gabrielle and Santiago? Where’s Adina?”

  Cyrus explained how he could find them outside the castle. He gave careful directions.

  “We owe you more than you know.”

  Tomas walked away, and when he did, he found his heart pounding, and his eyes watering strangely.

  *

  It was late afternoon and the glowing castle attracted more visitors. Tomas moved through the crowd towards the gate. The knight found himself an object of searching eyes and talk.

  “Is that him?” a woman asked, surprised.

  “Yes,” a man said who had been a guard at the gate. “I knew him.”

  “Well, well,” she said. She went silent, watching.

  The former guard couldn’t tell if what she’d said was said in admiration or disappointment.

  “Look at his hands,” another woman said. “They’re older-looking than he must be,”

  the first woman said.

  “What do you suppose that means?”

  “Sure weird.”

  “He doesn’t look so brave,” a man sneered.

  “Maybe he isn’t,” another man said. Several young men looked on.

  “Hey cool dude.”

  “Metro warrior wear.”

  “All the knight stuff.”

  “O yeah.”

  *

  Outside the walls Tomas made his way towards the path.

  At the path’s opening, he stopped again.

  Were there eyes floating in the tangles of branches down in the forest?

  Maybe it was merely the animals returning: deer and foxes, birds and squirrels.

  He saw trees vibrating like waves. The trees rippled, and a great stillness came over him, a quiet he identified with the night. It was the stillness that settled over people at midnight when the world turned to shadows. In a meditative serenity he saw the tangles of branches moving.

  The trees were aerials. They were like antennae. He recognized them from his dream. The antenna that formed from the mast of his ship was like the trees. These trees glistened like aerials glazed with sheets of dew.

  Tomas saw the world’s communications. Everything was pressing to be perceived, to be told.

  He turned towards what he had been offered, this path, away from the trees and the castle, and what had been the valley of images and the tent of the wind, and the war that was in the past, and any war that was to come.

  *

  People would keep rallying to the castle. They would arrive excited by their receptivity to its amplified halo. And in part because their tan from their time on the screens was fading, they would want to come here rather than return to their homes. They wanted to be close to the radiance.

  They knew this light, though it was certainly mysterious. It reminded them of the period they had spent captive on the screens. The castle would glow for a long time in what those who studied it under the guidance of Cyrus would observe was a curious but no doubt harmless radioactivity.

  *

  Tomas found the house at the forest’s edge. Its windows were open towards the castle, and the back porch was open towards the trees. The house was painted white outside, and inside the walls appeared blank. It looked untouched, gleaming new.

  At first he saw no one. He wondered if Cyrus had given him the wrong directions. One thing he had learned. Everyone got things wrong.

  “Tomas . . . ” The voice was clear, and recognizable.

  “Tomas!” Two voices called from the house.

  Gabrielle and Santiago tumbled out the front door, and rushed down the short steps to the grass.

  “It’s a gift,” Gabrielle said.

  “This?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Well, we asked for something on your behalf,” Santiago said.

  “We thought you’d like it. We do. It’s rilly large.”

  “Lots of rooms. Lots of space. And no fences,” Santiago said.

  Then Santiago presented the sword back to him.

  “It belongs to you. Heart rage, and courage.”

  Tomas took hold of the sword. He had never used it in violence, but he had made it his symbol, and he had passed that symbol on to the children.

  *

  Again he glanced back.

  “What’s wrong?” Gabrielle asked.

  “I keep seeing trees sway. Air agitated in the distance. Something wants to come through.”

  He flashed on an image. There was a shadow at the door of a glass house. All the entrances bolted shut. There was no way in. Yet the shadow hovered, moving back and forth at the door. It didn’t knock or try the bell. It simply wavered, appearing in silhouette, hovering and willing to wait.

  He’d known things. There was something else, here.

  He was envisioning scenes, his eyes wide. He stood, bowing slightly, accepting.

  Were knowledge and vision the same?

  More, more: that’s what the toons had called for, that’s what Pluta had demanded. More than this, there had to be – was there? – more. It was the urge that brought the people to the castle. It drove the children through the dust. It took Adina into the forest where she’d risked being absorbed into the whirlwind’s obsession. It followed Tomas across the screens. What couldn’t be said. It was this, fracturing and yet framing, that had impelled him away from the wizard. It had made him come to the crossing where he’d met the children and cross down into the valley of images. It had crossed his tunic, and it had made him cross into the human.

  *

  “There are other images.”

  “What’s with that, Tomas?” Gabrielle asked.

  “I see them.” Santiago looked serious.

  “Tell me,” Tomas said.

  “There were the toons. But there’s another generation. Older. More like people and yet not like people. They never made it to the toons’ world. They were on the screens too but we never saw them in any battles. They weren’t part of the circus and I didn’t sense they were anywhere at the camp. They came from the deepest dreams.”

  “San
tiago please, like you’re totally scaring me.”

  “Gabrielle, let your brother go on. What’s beyond the toons?”

  “Vampires, werewolves. Underworld demons. Ghouls and devils, banshees and gargoyles. Worse than toons. Things people are afraid of in the dark. And in the light, when you think about it.”

  Tomas remembered he’d had glimpses of these beasts long ago, at the edge of images, before he’d turned. They were coming back to him.

  “Oooooo now I’m going to have nightmares for sure. Thanks loads, bro. I mean rilly, what are we talking about here, like some sort of sequel? Like, I mean please.”

  *

  The image flashed into Tomas’s mind.

  The thing lurked at the door.

  It wanted inside but it didn’t know how to smash through.

  Was this another of the whirlwind’s mockeries?

  “Well they’re not here now.” Gabrielle found again the matter-of-factness that had held her powerfully in the midst of crisis. “Best not to worry too much until they’re like actually around. But hey bro let’s not start on anything else.”

  “Whatever you speak becomes a possibility,” Tomas said.

  “Now don’t you start, Tomas! Honestly. Look at your new home. And look who’s here.”

  *

  Adina came out of the house, refreshed in a white dress, her long hair rich and curly, and she was smiling, a smile that seemed to say: put all that aside and enter.

  Tomas walked with the children towards her.

  “Adina.” It seemed to be enough to say this.

  He lifted the sword and handed it up the steps to her.

  “For you. To take or break, if you wish.”

  She took hold of the sword.

  “It’s not to be broken. Not this one. You may need it again someday.”

  “Or we will, right?” Gabrielle said.

  “Here.” Adina stood the sword by the door. “It’ll be where we can find it.”

  From the foot of the steps Tomas looked back again, standing with the three.

  They had read the world, and they had read images. They had read inventions, and they had read dreams. They had read the paths and read the transformations. They had read everything, from trees to towers.

  “Look,” Adina said.

  He turned to her.

  “Not at me. Look up.”

  Tomas turned to the sky.

  “That’s the future,” she said.

  Soon there would be stars. Tomas smiled thinking of how much there would be to read in those depths. He stepped into the house that belonged to him, and the children burst indoors, and scampered through, suddenly younger than they had seemed outside, pausing to take in this place, then running and exploring again, then pausing and musing, then scampering, their calls to one another like subtle signals and waves of permission to grow, their shadows through the white rooms like delighted claims upon the house.

  *

  Through the windows Tomas saw the wind whip up around the trees at the edge of the porch and lawn.

  The trees were rolling like tides after a great flood. It appeared to him that the world was coming back. The trees looked warmed by the wind, and he felt warmth in himself, imprinted by the release and spring of the moment.

  Why didn’t anyone else see the wind through the windows?

  Then he heard it – the thundering wind. He knew that it was wrestling up around the towers, mastering them with its sound. He suddenly saw in his mind that the people who had come to the castle were momentarily silenced by the pulsing wind.

  But it wasn’t a stormy whirlwind, not this time.

  Tomas imagined that the castle’s glow had flickered in the wind, in the way that sunlight quivered when you saw it between the leaves of trees in a forest. He saw people silenced staring, trying to see and listen.

  *

  “They’ll turn the castle into a tourist attraction,” Tomas said.

  “More people will come. Hundreds maybe thousands,” Adina said. “They’ll all want to see you. You’re the one who came between the realms.”

  “Many people can do that.” Tomas spoke almost to himself. It was something he knew again. Adina had the power, so did Santiago and Gabrielle. People would want to see them too.

  They walked through their house. The rooms were empty and large. When they talked whatever they said to one another became an echo.

  “Some people have been moving between realms for years,” Tomas said. He didn’t know how he knew this either. But he knew it was true. “They see many sides to things. They can travel between planes. Maybe I’ll meet them someday. Maybe we’ll meet them.”

  “In the meantime, we need a rest,” she said.

  *

  He saw Adina smile, its spreading radiance, the light coming up from within her. It came to him. He knew where he’d seen her before. It was her smile. It was like the light that could be in everything.

  The many languages of the world could come together and sing in that instant of recognition. But he still had a lot to learn, in reading her, or any person. He didn’t want to spend any more time in the shadow realm.

  “You belong to them. They’ve adopted you.” She pointed to Gabrielle and Santiago, still moving through their new home, gazing at its many spaces.

  “No TV,” Gabrielle said.

  “Not yet.” Santiago was staring, his eyes wide, at one of the blank walls.

  “But that would be nice place right there for a big flat screen,” he said enthusiastically.

  “Yeah, awesome,” she said.

  “What about here?” He pointed to another large bare wall.

  The white walls were so luminous they could see their own forms in benign silhouettes.

  “Yeah,” Gabrielle said passionately. “There, there.”

  *

  Tomas turned to Adina and looked into her eyes. He was startled to see how her eyes were dark and bright. In that intense focus the white rooms, the echoes, the wind in the trees, and the chatter of the children, faded away from him. He looked deeper into her and immediately thought of a question. It was a question about connection. It seemed like the essential one.

  “If I kiss you, what happens?”

  “Then I owe you a kiss too,” she said.

  “That sounds like a promise.”

  Slowly she came towards him and took hold of what had once been his image hand and pressed it open on her heart. Then she moved closer to him, and pressed her hand open on his heart, and leaned towards his cheek, and whispered,

  “It is.”

  *

  Gabrielle stood in the centre of the room dreaming awake.

  She saw images returning, different in their shapes, in their stories.

  Overcome by this sudden flow of pictures, she asked herself, what realms have we visited? Gabrielle swayed and leaned towards a dance. Where have we been? She was murmuring in her mind and swaying, looking into the white spaces.

  She spun serenely, happily. There would be visits and visitations. It would be wonderful not to live terrified or in shock. She spun hearing a music that would come with the returning images. She saw children in towers, sleeping and awake, in forests, under the sea, on waves, on clouds in the wind.

  And she was dancing, happily, serenely.

  Images and dreams would come again and would live in another way in their minds, with the guidance they’d never had. They would flow from heart to heart, so she thought and wished, and said again in her mind, and she danced, and danced faster.

  “Gabrielle, stop that. You’re making me dizzy,” Santiago said. He smiled in awe at his sister who was spinning in the room.

  “Umbrellas and umbilical cords,” she said.

  “What’re you saying?” Santiago watched, listening, continuing to smile.

  Now Tomas and Adina were watching her dance too, caught up in the energy of the whirl – amazed by her delight.

  “Umbrellas and umbilical cords.” She was almost breathless.
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  “What does that mean?” Santiago asked.

  “I don’t know.” She laughed, and danced.

  Publisher Information

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  Copyright © 2011, B.W. Powe and Guernica Editions Inc.

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  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2010931134

  Powe, B. W. (Bruce W.), 1955These shadows remain / B.W. Powe. (Prose series ; 86)

  ISBN

  978-1-55071-314-5 Paper

  9781550715262 Epub

  9781550715279 Mobi

  I. Title. II. Series: Prose series ; 86. PS8581.O879T44 2010 C813'.54 C2010-904502-5

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