Shade and Sorceress

by Catherine Egan

  They splashed ashore and ran, dripping and happy, up the sand to where Rom Tok was barbecuing chicken wings. Along with the chicken, they had cold potato salad and fresh mangoes. Nell gossiped about school friends, coming up with hilariously apt nicknames for their teachers as the tide came in. Rom had started reading a book after lunch but went to sleep with the book over his face. His snoring caused the book to vibrate, which set Nell and Eliza off into uncontrollable giggles. They stayed at the beach making elaborate sandcastles and peopling them with hermit crabs until the sun began to set, then made their way slowly home. They all cooked spaghetti for supper together, and when they were thoroughly full Eliza and Nell sat on the little porch and watched the stars come out.

  “Charlie’s glad to have you back, aye,” Nell said pointedly.

  “I’m glad to be back too,” said Eliza. She wanted to ask Nell where she had been, but it seemed such a strange question and somehow she was afraid to ask it. After all, she ought to know. She looked at the dark garden and saw an odd shape in among the beds of radishes.

  “What’s that in the garden?” she asked Nell.

  “There’s nothing in the garden, silly,” said Nell in a bored voice. “Lah, let’s see how many constellations we can name.”

  “It looks like a basket or something,” said Eliza, getting up and walking to the edge of the garden. “We shouldnay leave it out overnight.”

  She crouched to peer at the thing between the radish leaves. It was not a basket. She reached for it but saw what it was just before her fingers touched it and recoiled with a gasp. It was a rib cage, white bone gleaming softly in the dark. She felt a hand in hers.

  “I spec an animal lost its way and died here,” said Charlie softly. “Poor thing.”

  “We should bury it,” said Eliza.

  “Come inside,” said Charlie, pulling her back towards the house. “I’ll take care of it later, aye.”

  Her father and Nell were waiting for them on the porch. Gratefully, Eliza followed Charlie away from the bones, back to the light and the safety of home.

  That night she dreamed that she was riding a white tiger through a cold, barren land. The tiger was telling her something very important but when she woke up she couldn’t remember what it had been saying. She told her father about the dream in the morning, and he laughed and mussed her hair, saying, “What an imagination you have, my daughter!” But later, as they were making pancakes, she thought she caught him looking at her strangely.

  ~

  The day passed in a fluid, sun-drenched half-dream. Rom tended to his garden and his bees, while Charlie, Nell and Eliza set off for the south of the island with tools to build a fort in the Lookout Tree. Rom Tok had even found an old pair of binoculars for them, through which they could easily see the town and all its goings-on. They built a few platforms in the tree and took turns leaping off the cliffs and swimming in the cool, clear water. The day was growing late, the light beginning to fade, and the change, when it came, obliterated in an instant all the joy of her inexplicable return.

  Eliza was poised on the edge of the cliff, ready to follow Nell, who was in mid-air, plunging towards the glittering sea below. Charlie was watching from the Lookout Tree. They were all laughing and yelling when something deep within her stirred and a shattering certainty took hold of Eliza: This isn’t real. At the same moment, the white tiger from her dream surged up from the water, catching Nell in its jaws as she landed and pulling her under. Blood billowed up in great dark ribbons. Eliza remained frozen on the cliff’s edge for several seconds before her screams burst out of her. When she ran for the Lookout Tree she saw that Charlie was being dragged in among the trees by the same creature. Eliza chased them and the tiger turned towards her with a snarl, releasing Charlie. It leaped straight for her and knocked her back onto the grass, threw its head back and roared. Quick as lightning Eliza plunged her arm into its chest and pulled out its crimson, beating heart.

  “There! I did it!” she screamed, the sky spinning overhead, changing colour. “Kyreth! Who am I?”

  ~

  The tiger was gone and there was a foul stench all around her. She was lying on her back in a black tar-like substance. It hung off her in stinking globs as she got to her feet. All around, filling the valley, a tangle of thick, coarse tentacles moved slothfully in the tarry swamp. They were wrapped around her legs, her waist. They clung to her clothes and her satchel as she moved, letting go reluctantly as others took their place, and the black swamp sucked at her feet. She was not the only one in the swamp. Close by a heavily armed group of men, each with two undersized heads, were conversing animatedly in a language of clucks and grunts. She saw a man with a dog’s head playing something like a lyre and a woman with a forked tongue and flames flickering all around her hands dancing to his music. A Giant lay back in the swamp as if he were relaxing in a bath, his face beaming with smiles, while a misshapen hairy grey thing covered in tiny toothy mouths chewed on his toes. There were countless others half-sunk and unmoving, some of them fallen face-first into the muck. And there were bones. The swamp was full of them, bones in all shapes and sizes, sometimes whole skeletons of beings Eliza couldn’t recognize. She spotted Nell and her heart contracted with relief.

  “Nell!” she shouted, struggling through the black stuff to get to her friend, avoiding the corpses. “Nell, are you alright?”

  Nell looked straight at Eliza, smiling. Her pupils were so dilated that they filled her irises.

  “Of course I’m alright,” she said loudly, as if they were speaking through a faulty connection. “What a silly question!”

  Eliza gaped at her. “What’s the matter with your eyes?”

  “Nothing!” Nell shook her head slightly and laughed. “Come on, let’s go feed the animals.”

  “What animals? Nell, look around. Dinnay you see it?”

  “See what?” asked Nell, looking around her at the black, writhing swamp.

  “This place,” said Eliza. “It’s horrible! What are we doing here?”

  Nell looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “We live here, aye,” she said. “And it’s not horrible, it’s perfect! What are you talking about? What’s the matter with you?”

  “Where’s Charlie?” demanded Eliza, beginning to panic.

  “Who?” Nell asked incredulously.

  Eliza saw the white horse a ways off grazing contentedly at the muck. He was all covered in the foul substance.

  “Come on,” she said, taking Nell by the hand. “Let’s take that horse for a ride!”

  Nell brightened and followed Eliza through the sludge. The tentacles moved with them as far as they could, reaching and clinging.

  “You ride,” said Eliza when they reached the horse. “I’ll lead you. I have an idea.”

  “You’re acting prize peculiar, Eliza,” said Nell as she climbed up onto Charlie’s back. “Why cannay we both ride?”

  “Just trust me, aye,” said Eliza. “It’ll be fun.”

  Nell giggled. “I hope so! Will you stop being so dour and grouchy now? It’s like playing with...lah, I don’t know anyone dour and grouchy, but it’s like playing with someone who is.”

  Eliza took the horse by his mane and guided him towards the edge of the heaving, writhing mass.

  “Be careful!” Nell squeaked as they neared the end of it.

  Eliza tried to urge the horse on but he resisted, backing up. The tentacles leaped into action, wrapping themselves tightly around the two girls and the horse.

  “What are you doing, Eliza?” cried Nell. “I want to go back!”

  Eliza ignored her. She took hold of the dragon claw around her neck and used it to slash at the tentacles binding them. The horse reared and whinnied, Nell shouted at her incoherently, and the cut tentacles whipped through the air in alarm, but Eliza carried on.

  “Go on, go on!” she shouted, pushing the horse, who very reluctantly stepped out of the swamp onto the grass. Hitting him with her staff she forced him up the hill, a
few tentacles dangling after them. Partway up the hill Nell suddenly stopped screaming and looked around her in slow-dawning horror. The horse became Charlie and Nell fell off his back. The three of them stood together on the hillside, covering their noses and staring down at the seething swamp they had just crawled and slashed their way out of.

  “What...?” began Nell. She looked down at herself, caked with the horrible sludge, and immediately dropped to the grass to try and rub it off. Charlie and Eliza did the same. “Let’s get out of here,” Nell said furiously, once they’d managed to clean themselves somewhat.

  They ran up the hill until they couldn’t smell the swamp anymore. When they turned around next they saw only the shining city Swarn had directed them to.

  “Ancients, I think I’ve heard of this thing,” said Charlie. “I should have known. It’s called the waka...something. I forget. Lah, if I ever see that witch again...actually, I hope I nary see that witch again.”

  “What is it?” asked Eliza.

  “Monster of some kind,” said Charlie. “It feeds on joy, makes you see things, aye. There’s another one that feeds on sorrow somewhere.”

  “It was like a happy dream,” Nell said sadly to Eliza. “We were trapeze artists in the circus, aye, and we traveled all over the world. We had our own trailer to sleep in.”

  “I lived in a beautiful field with all the oats and apples I could eat,” said Charlie dryly.

  “What did you see, Eliza?” Nell asked.

  “We were back in Holburg,” said Eliza. “All of us, aye. My da, too.”

  “I was there?” asked Charlie, surprised. He looked at her questioningly.

  Eliza was flustered and changed the subject. “Lah, all those beings trapped down there are imagining their perfect lives, then?”

  “That was Swarn’s plan,” said Nell. “She brought us here so we’d nary make it to the Hall of the Ancients! But how did you figure it out, Eliza? I still thought I was in the circus, but then when you were leading the horse...I didnay know why, but I kept getting more and more scared.”

  “Everything went bad suddenly,” said Eliza in a low voice. Somehow she couldn’t bring herself to tell Nell and Charlie about the tiger.

  “Ugh, we all stink of that place,” said Nell. “Where to now?”

  Eliza took a deep breath. Charlie was still looking at her with an odd expression she couldn’t decipher.

  “To the Hall of the Ancients,” she said.

  ~

  They flew north, leaving the illusory city behind them. Troll villages humped in dark, smoky clusters in the foothills, and the hills gradually grew into mountains. In the great mountain plains they saw galloping herds of centaurs and Nell grabbed Eliza’s arm on the back of the gryphon, pointing and shouting with delight. Eliza could not bring herself to share in her friend’s excitement, however. Holburg still tugged at her heart, and she felt oppressed by the harsh, unfriendly sky and the sheer scale of everything in this world, so clearly not a place for humans. Soon they were flying over jagged icy peaks devoid of life, crumpled ridges of rock like islands in a whorled sea of cloud. Eliza and Nell pressed themselves flat on the gryphon’s back to protect themselves from the cold bite of the air. Their eyes watered in the ice-clad wind and the stinging tears froze on their eyelashes. The gryphon was flying up, higher and higher over those peaks and into a swirling whiteness that may have been cloud or snow, they could not tell. Eliza shut her eyes and pressed her face into the gryphon’s fur, but her face was numb with the cold and she could not feel anything. There was a clanging sound all around them, as if the sky was clapping great iron hands, and her breath entered her like a flutter of snowy wings. Up and down had no meaning. They floated briefly in a cold haze, apart from the world, and the deafening clanging sounded deep in their bones. Then they emerged. Ahead of them one mountain peak loomed over the others, white snow against a blistering red sky. On the peak of this mountain stood a circular tower.

  Eliza knew this must be the Hall of the Ancients, but in fact she had expected something rather grander. It was a dark stone monolith, inscribed all around with ancient symbols like those she had seen on the cliffs of the Crossing. It was tall, but no taller than the temples of the Faithful. The gryphon circled the tower a few times, but there was no entrance.

  “How do we get in?” Nell shouted.

  “I dinnay know,” Eliza called back. As soon as she spoke, a space opened between the rocks near the top of the tower. Without hesitating, the gryphon flew straight through it, into darkness. The air in the black tunnel was cold and dry. It moved in a spiral, downwards. Charlie did not need to beat his wings here but soared along a wind that sucked them deep towards the heart of the tower. They coasted fast, circling down, until they struck something elastic that brought them to a sudden halt, stretching forward with their momentum and then springing back. Eliza and Nell tumbled from the gryphon’s back and were caught fast in something sticky. Eliza landed facing forwards, Nell and Charlie on their sides, and all of them were suspended vertically.

  “It’s some kind of web, aye,” gasped Nell.

  Eliza could feel the dragon claw hanging loosely from her neck. If only she could move one of her arms she would be able grab it and cut them free. But it was no good; she could not free her arm, and she was not strong enough to bend the web more than a few inches.

  “Charlie, can you become something heavy enough to break it?” asked Eliza. The gryphon merely struggled against the web and did not reply.

  “Talk to us!” Nell shouted at him. “You have to do something!”

  “The web must be enchanted,” said Eliza. “I dinnay think he can change.”

  “Lah, he’s got a sharp beak. Try tearing through the web, Charlie,” Nell pressed him.

  Eliza had stopped paying attention to them. Something or someone was coming. She felt the growl of the white tiger rising up within, as if it were pacing to and fro inside her chest. She could feel its hackles rising between her shoulderblades. The darkness blazed with light suddenly, though its source was unclear. They were indeed caught in a web, facing into an austere, vaulted hall of dark stone. The walls were pocked with grottoes housing worn statues of ancient beasts and beings. All the stone eyes were fixed on the intruders, and across the Hall, something was moving towards them.

  Her upper body was that of a sylphlike young woman and her skin rippled with tattooed script, the Language of First Days. Long shining black hair fell down her back and she wore a gold band around her head. Her face could not be called beautiful; it was too sharp, too steely in its perfect symmetry, for beauty. But her face was not what drew the eye. Her slim, tattooed torso emerged from the giant body and legs of a golden-haired spider. Those eight swift, bright legs carried her to them quickly, and when she was so close that she could reach out and touch them if she wanted to, she paused to inspect the two children and the gryphon caught in her web.

  Her clear cut-crystal eyes passed over Nell and the gryphon with disinterest, resting finally on Eliza. She pointed at the dragon claw with a slender, tattooed arm and said something Eliza did not understand.

  “We dinnay mean any harm,” Eliza began. The strange being made an impatient gesture. Her throat convulsed and she spat something black into her palm. It looked like a lump of oil, but then Eliza saw it shift, as if it were alive. The being rubbed her palms together and then closed her right fist over her left index finger, pulling her finger out of the fist coated in the shifting black substance. She did the same with her other hand.

  “What’s going on?” asked Nell, trying to move her head. “Who’s there?”

  “I dinnay know,” said Eliza tremulously. The being came closer and stuck her fingers in Eliza’s ears. Eliza screamed and screamed. It felt as if a billion tiny insects were crawling deep in her ears, and through her ears into her brain, chewing and tearing. Pockets of her mind burned and opened and the little things crawled and scattered and chattered. She could hear Nell shouting something over her own
screams, and the web swayed as the gryphon struggled mightily. The being watched them with glittering eyes and spoke again. This time, with a sickening feeling of miniscule scampering legs through her mind, Eliza understood her. Her screams died in her throat. It was not that she understood the words. They were as unfamiliar as ever. Somehow she just knew what the being was saying. It was a little like the Deep Listening Foss had taught her, except with a brain full of tiny insects.

  “Where did you get that?” The being was pointing at the dragon claw again.

  “It was a gift,” stammered Eliza. “I’ve come here for help...”

  “I know why you are here,” the being said scornfully, cutting her off. “I have been waiting. I have called the others. But you are not what I had expected. You smell bad. You are the Shang Sorceress and yet you have no power. How can this be?”

  “Are you the Oracle of the Ancients?” Eliza asked, hope surging up in her in spite of the awful crawling feeling inside her ears and head. Here was the being she had sought, no summoning required. “I waited for you in the Temples.”

  “Of course you did,” said the Oracle. Eliza could see the points of her teeth glinting between thin black lips. “You are being lured, kitten. You understand nothing.”

  “I cannay see!” squeaked Nell, frustrated. “Do you understand her, Eliza?”

  The Oracle moved farther back, towards the centre of the hall. Eliza felt again, unmistakably, the tiger stirring.

  “Someone is coming,” she said.

  “Yes,” said the Oracle, eyeing her. “Yes.”