Imperiata and Other Stories

by Trevelyan Cooper

  I think the shadows are only in my eyes, but when my companion finds me, she sees them too.

  “Gods,” she says, “Oh gods, they have found you. Run.”

  The shadows move. She moves. They run her down and devour her. They seem to eat some part of her that is not flesh, to suck a lightness from her into themselves. They leave her body unmarked, but dead, and drift back over to me.

  I am not sure how clever they are, or how much they understand of what I do. Cautious, I go over to her body, and look around, and feign puzzlement. After that I never look directly at the shadows, or acknowledge they are there.

  That might have saved me. The shadows go back to their watching, but now I am afraid.

  I have seen nothing like this before. Whatever it is she and I are, these can harm us gravely. I must feel as other men do when death is near, when death is something to fear, not a means of making a journey.

  My companion comes again, this time on a horse, and races past. “Follow me,” she shouts, and the shadows are after her. They can catch her running, but not on a horse. It draws away, seems a little faster.

  One of the shadows stays with me, watching. That troubles me. It implies thought and cunning. I resume my pretend bemusement.

  My companion turns in a long slow circle and rushes past again, shouting, “Stay here, do not die.” And, “They cannot hear.”

  She disappears into the distance, the horse tiring, I assume. In a while the shadows drift back to me.

  She comes back the next day, shouting, “Fire is their bane. Free yourself of them. I will return in a month.”

  She is gone.

  A few days later I block my house door and find my shadows cannot follow me inside. I had thought them ghosts, for no particular reason. It has not occurred to me that they are as substantial as I am. Substantial, and about as strong as their size would suggest, and also lacking hands. They cannot work latches, or open a heavy wooden door.

  They stay closer now, as if wary of another closed door. At night, they follow me into my house, and mill around until I sleep. I think they watch me more closely now. It feels like that, and I certainly watch them.

  Another day I climb a tree and wait up there for half a day, out of sight of the ground. The shadows never appear up the top with me, but are waiting on the ground when I climb down. I take from this that they cannot climb, and also that my antics are a little mysterious, as if what I do is not entirely comprehensible to them. That is useful to know.

  The morning that is a month from my companion’s last visit, I rise at dawn, and check the shadows are still around the bed. Instead of opening the front door, I block it from the inside and climb up and out the chimney hole. It is tight, but I manage. I cover the hole with a tile, then burn the house. A neighbor sees the smoke and comes to make sure I am unharmed, and I thank him and say a pot spilled on the hearth and ashes were knocked about. My neighbor is deeply sympathetic.

  I bid him go, and sit on a log and wait. Eventually my beloved companion arrives.

  She looks at my charred house and says, “Clever.”

  “Thank you. What are those things?”

  She shrugs. “Servants of the enemy.”

  “Not you?”

  “The other enemy. The real enemy. The end of all. Not our little skirmish between friends.”

  “Friends?”

  “We are. We have much in common.”

  I sit and look at her and wait.

  “It is important,” she says. “You and I must ally. Be as we once were.”

  “I do not remember.”

  “I know, so believe me. You and I were once close.”

  “I may,” I say. “Tell me.”

  “Your kind and mine,” she says. “It is not going well. There is a lot of distrust. But if we cannot do this, and stand together, all is lost.”

  “What happened?”

  “We made overtures. My people. We tried to make peace for this. But there is too much suspicion, too much distrust.”

  “So you are acting on your own?”

  “I am acting informally. Hoping you and I can set an example. And we still need to take you to Eden.”

  “How?”

  “I need to tell you where it is.”

  “You know?”

  “I do now.”

  “Why not tell me lifetimes ago?”

  “I said I do now. I did not then. Because we did not want people like you finding it.”

  “So tell me.”

  “First convince me you are sincere,” she says.

  *

  We walk through the grass and talk. She carries a knife with a blade as long as her hand and whips it around, chopping at seed heads, so it hisses like the breeze in the grass. A habit, I think, not meant to intimidate.

  “There was a plan for the world,” my companion says. “I know not if this is true, but they speak of a child-that-is-god. That a thousand years after god came to earth it was supposed to end. Or perhaps two. That another child was to be born. I think it is a metaphor, but it seems to be what is spoken of.”

  This sounds familiar, until I notice what she said. “Was supposed?”

  “The mother drowned. A flooded river, I think. While she was with child. So obviously, the child never came, and since these things take a time to organize, the world was spared.”

  “The mother drowned.”

  “The mother drowned.”

  “And that set aside the end of the world?”

  “For a time.”

  “But… No-one thought to take precautions? To make sure this important thing actually happened?”

  “It is always this way. To you and I, to we out here, these are the greatest plans imaginable, of momentous consequence. In truth, among our masters, very few care. None of this matters, little attention is paid, and things such as this happen.”

  “I see.”

  “And because of these mistakes, dragons awake out of turn.”

  I look at her. “Oh.”

  “Indeed.”

  I decide I believe her, that she seems to speak the truth. “Will you will tell me where this Eden is?”

  “When I trust you.”

  “And what must I do to make you trust me?”

  She chops at the grasses and seed-heads fly. “Love me as you once did.”

  “I have never…”

  “You once did. They took your memory of it.”

  “Who?”

  “Your side. Mine do not do that kind of thing.”

  “Which side is which?”

  She seems confused.

  “We speak of sides,” I say. “But which side is which? I truly do not know.”

  “Neither, I suppose. Not as you mean it. Your side and mine, we are factions. We feel strongly about a disagreement of policy.”

  I look at her.

  “It does not matter what, but it is policy, that’s all. Yours are sanctimonious, and always claim to act for right. Mine are more honest, and admit the possibility of mistakes. Other than this, we all wish the same purpose. This matters to you?”

  “You want my word. That I shall keep the secret of your Eden if you take me there?”

  She thinks, then nods. “I suppose your word would do.”

  “Then it matters.”

  She thinks again. “There is an old, old story. That when the first two souls lived upon this earth, your master and mine came to them. Your master claimed to be god himself, and commanded those people to do as he wished. No choice, no discussion, he simply pretended to have created them and gave his orders. Mine came as a snake and spoke the truth.”

  “I know the story,” I say. “I remember it differently. That the snake was the deceiver.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  She is so calm, so sure of herself, that it gives me pause.

  “Think. He who walked in that garden, who claimed to be god, he lied. He said that eating the forbidden fruit would mean certain death. It did not. My master told them
that eating would make them like god, which it did.”

  “It did not. They perished.”

  “Immortality is the least important of the attributes of god. Look at yourself. Eating gave them minds. It gave them will, and made them more than manufactured playthings. Before, they were as children. Less than children. They ate, and were fully human.”

  “The consequences were severe.”

  “Your master’s doing, not mine’s. It was he who drove them into the world before they were ready.”

  I still have trouble following all this. “You say your master is the right one, but he is the serpent.”

  “It is an old, confused story,” she says. “I only pointed out your master was the liar, not mine.”

  I think for a while. “This garden… is it the same one?”

  “The garden where our masters spoke to humans?”

  I nod.

  “That isn’t Eden. It was in Eden, and east of Eden, but yes, that garden is still there, I believe.”

  “And is both in Eden and east of it?”

  “Indeed.”

  “How?”

  “A mystical hidden valley, you fool. What do you think?”

  I look at her and shrug, wishing not to remind her again that I do not know.

  “Sometimes you see so much and think so little,” she says, apparently close to anger. “How many times have you lived among these steppes and hills and you have never wondered why?” She looks around. “This. Here. Central Eurasia. Humanity was born in Africa, but everything else that has ever mattered has happened here, in these mountains and steppes. Half your lives you live here, and you never wonder why?”

  “It has been settled a long time, I supposed.”

  She shakes her head.

  “All this time, and I have never found a hidden magical wonderland,” I say.

  “Yes,” she says, as if I am a fool again. “Because it is still hidden.”

  I think. I try to remember the story of Eden. “Can someone not just follow one of the rivers to find it?”

  “Of course. But that a thousand miles separate them, and Eden does not exist in the actual world as mortals see it. Other than that, of course.”

  I look at her for a time.

  “I said both in and east of,” she says.

  “And we cannot? Follow a river.”

  “We may. Perhaps. Should we wish to. But I already know where it is.”

  “You trust me?”

  “I trust you. If you give me your word.”

  I think of the lives I have lived among people who would take a promise as that, an oath that bound to the grave and beyond. I thought of how I lived among people, but was always different, and she was the only constant I had.

  “I will keep it,” I say.

  “Do you speak as a man like all these you have lived among? Or as the creature of your masters you now know you are?”

  “The first. I will keep your secret. Even if I die forever. Even if my masters take me home and restore my mind.”

  She nods, and seems satisfied.

  “That is enough?”

  “That is.”

  “So. Let us go to Eden.”

  She looks around. At the sun, some mountains blue and low in the distance. She starts to walk. “This way,” she says.

  I am surprised. “We walk?”

  “Of course. We cannot travel together. Not our way. So we walk.”

  “And you know where to go.”

  “As I say, I can feel where it is.” She points. “That way.”

  “How far?”

  She shrugs.

  “Tell me. We may need supplies.”

  “I do not know. Only that it is that way.”

  “It may take months.”

  “It may take years. But that is not really of importance to our kind, is it?”

  I think, and say yes, and fetch a bow and what food I have. We start to walk.

  It takes us lifetimes. A freezing winter storm a month into our journey kills us both. I hold her in my arms in a freezing hide shelter and watch her bluing lips take their last breath. I die a little later. She finds me again and says she thinks we are closer this time, and a few days later we are both slain in our sleep, unknowing. That is always a surprise, to wake up suddenly in a different time, as if still dreaming. When we rejoin one another, we decide we were most likely assassinated by agents of our enemy, and after this we take more care. She finds me again, but so do the shadows, and this time there are no chimneys to climb up. The shadows devour us both, and our journey starts over. I find her, and she kills me, oblivious to our pact. Then she finds me, and we are chased up a tree by the shadows, and in the end both became impatient and let ourselves drop, rather than die up there of hunger. Once I am among a warrior band and have horses to my name, and we move faster. Once I am a prince among a people who live in the forests of the Baltic Sea, and command my men to guard us. We walk, and take more care, and travel further.

  We fail often, but each time, as we walk, we become more used to what we have to do. What to be cautious of, and what precautions to take. She finds me again each time, over and over, because I still cannot find her, even when she wishes me to. This seems to surprise her, but she cannot explain why, and just says it was something she believed that turns out was wrong.

  In time, we succeed. One life, one day, it is a year later and we are still walking west. We see the shadows, and lose them by setting a grass fire. We see them again, and light another, and then see them no more. They may be biding their time, but they no longer worry me. We know the trick of it, now. We hunt as we ride, so make only a few miles a week, but we trade our meat for grains and other food, and once for steel weapons better than those we have. I think it is a little after the year 1200, for armies are loose in the world and cities are falling, and men speak of devil horsemen from the east, and I wonder if this is something of our enemies, but decide not. I have marched with the Mongol hordes before, and recall their ways, and could think of no unusual influence among their leaders.

  In time we will find Eden. Perhaps not in this lifetime, but we are making a good way, and we will in the end. For such as us, all is possible with enough time. We will find Eden, and put an end to this war, and then I will ask, of those who I had thought masters, why they did what they did to me and my memories of she who I once loved.

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