Shadowshaper Legacy

by Daniel José Older

  Who are you? she said, with some growl in her voice. And why do you know my true name?

  They call me Aguacero, he said, but his lips didn’t move. He was speaking as Death did, directly into her mind. But once I was known as El Tuerco.

  She knew the name. The flayed spirit had said he was sent by him. And her mother had spoken of this man, but more than that, her old grandfather, Santo Colibrí, used to sing songs around the bonfire that told tales of their love for each other, and the spirits would bring the songs to life. He had been one of La Contessa’s elite guards, but he’d remained loyal to Santo Colibrí and María Cantara throughout, passing along information about La Contessa’s nefarious dealings when he could.

  What manner of being are you, Aguacero? Because a natural human does not stand before me.

  One edge of his mouth quirked upward. I am a Hierophant. A creation of La Contessa. I am one of five — well, four really, because she has yet to find who will fill the role of the fifth. The other three have escaped your wrath, along with the Sorrows, and they’ve taken La Contessa’s most powerful work of sorcery yet — a foul implement of manipulation she calls the Deck of Worlds. There is much to discuss.

  And La Contessa?

  The old warrior shook his head. Holed up within. That is all I know. But you won’t be able to get her out, I can promise. Her sorceries there are too powerful, even for you, Lucera.

  Cantara Cebilín made a noise in the back of her throat and was about to argue when a yell came from the woods.

  ¡Puñeta, no puede ser! her abuelo chortled, stepping over bodies gingerly and opening his arms wide as he broke into a run. ¡El Tuerco! The two men met amidst all that carnage and death, in the stillness of a brand-new day. They embraced, and then their lips found each other, and they fell into a long, passionate kiss. It’s been so long, my love, Santo Colibrí sang in a melodious whisper.

  Cantara Cebilín smiled, her first smile since everything had gone to hell just a few hours ago. She felt Death nearby, his immense and calming presence. She wondered when he would come to collect her for good; the thought made her feel peaceful somehow, like the faraway song of a very beautiful bird.

  The surviving shadowshapers began gathering around her as Santo and the Hierophant Aguacero continued their embrace. What will we do? they asked, glancing at the palace ruins, the bloodied bodies. What happens now?

  She looked at her father, whose eyes still gleamed with the sudden loss of his wife. He stared back at her, and he understood, she knew he understood what had happened. Lucera, he whispered. She loved him for understanding, for not being someone she had to explain things to.

  The enemy has dispersed into the world, she said, addressing, for the first time, her people. And we must too. All except for a select few, who will stay behind to keep this monster contained in her palace.

  That falls to us, Santo Colibrí said, stepping forward, hand in hand with Aguacero. And your male lineage going forward. Send them to us, and we will raise them in this tradition, and teach them how to keep this sacred ground safe. We will fight the empire from our seat of power as you fight it out in the world, and together, we will survive, and one day thrive.

  And so it was decided. There were tearful good-byes, and then, as the sun rose into the sky, the shadowshapers left their ancestral home, the land their tradition had risen up within, and made their way toward San Juan, even as news of a treaty with the Americans and the end of one war was announced amidst the birth of another, much, much longer one.

  “Bridge!” Juan yelled, and Culebra revved up as one and then burst forward into the new section they’d been practicing. Juan allowed a slight smile as his fingers danced up and down the fretboard through a frantic progression of harmonies. Sure, some evil young neo-fascist bag of dicks with superpowers was trying to kill all their loved ones, but hey, at least there was music.

  “Harder,” Juan called, and Kaz doubled down on the drums as Pulpo’s bass line fell into a mean trilling rumble. There was music to make sense of this mess, and maybe it couldn’t solve anything per se, or wipe out the new house of nazi bros, but it could help Juan broker some kind of peace with his own rage and fear. He stepped on his overdrive effects pedal and added a glimmering ninth note to each chord, crunching into an ever-rawer thrash, and immediately shadows flickered into existence at the edges of his vision. He blinked at them without losing hold of this new riff.

  Maybe music could solve something.

  The shadow spirits strutted along the walls in long rhythmic stomps, their tall torsos dipping low as their arms bent and straightened in time to the bass drum.

  “Back to the head,” Juan called, “but fiercer.”

  Heh. Telling Culebra to go fiercer was like unleashing a pit bull into a chicken pen. Kaz hammered down an epic GUNG GUNG GUNG gung gung GUNG–type riff that sounded like some giant kaiju was about to crush an entire city. Pulpo responded in kind, mirroring the drums and adding in vicious side riffs and slides. Juan nodded, keeping his own chords to just a few trebly long notes so he could get a feel for the new mood. At the edges of the room, the spirits strengthened, their dance grew wilder. Could they make moves in the physical world? That’s what ’shaping was, wasn’t it? Giving some kind of form to an otherwise ethereal being. Grandpa Lázaro had been a storyshaper, which meant that as he spoke, the spirits would give the stories life in the air around them. He used to regale little Juan with animal tales and sometimes tidbits from his childhood, and Juan would watch in awe as each scene would unfold like a floating 3-D movie.

  And Izzy could ’shape with her raps, which was the most badass thing Juan had ever seen.

  What if he could music ’shape? It only made sense: The spirits had always shown up when he performed; he’d just never known what to do with them. Or maybe that wasn’t the problem. Maybe it was just that he’d never tried.

  “Vamp on this,” Juan said. Kaz and Anthony fell into a steady holding pattern, flavored with occasional cymbal crashes and bass runs. The spirits found their way to the far side of the wide-open practice area, directly across from Juan. “Just like that.” There were four of them. They held the rhythm; their dance had fallen into its own kind of vamp, the way backup singers did that little two-step over and over sometimes as the band heated up around them.

  Juan kept hitting long noted jangly chords and letting them ring out for a bar or two until the change, nodding his head in time, watching the shadows gather, move.

  It was time to step up. It was time to ’shape. As jacked up as his grandfather had been, Juan still missed Lázaro, missed his sparkling stories and quick smile, even missed his calm ferocity and stern warnings. All he’d wanted was for Juan to carry on the shadowshaping legacy, but Juan had pretty much slacked, and then Sierra had picked it up, and it had turned out to be more her legacy to carry on anyway. But the truth was, it was part of both of them.

  He’d been watching his own fingers again, but now he looked up, stared directly at the shadows. It was time. He nodded and hit the chord he’d just switched to with a single fierce downstroke, then raised his right hand over his head.

  The spirits broke into a run toward him. The vamp gathered momentum. The first tall, loping shadow leapt forward toward Juan, and then the door of the rehearsal spot flew open, letting a surge of bright winter daylight in, and Izzy stepped out of the cold and waved with a big, goofy grin on her face.

  “Whoa!” Kaz and Anthony both yelled, the song grinding to a halt. “The King has come!”

  Juan just stood there, panting.

  “Why’d you guys stop?” Izzy demanded, taking off her jacket. “That shit was bananas.”

  The spirits were gone. He had to remind himself that they’d really been there. They’d definitely really been there.

  “You okay, Iz?” Kaz asked. “We missed you!”

  “Man … never go to prison,” Izzy said. “It’s the devil’s dickhole for real. I’d say I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but honestly af
ter yesterday that’s not true, so, you know …”

  “Whoa, what happened yesterday?” Kaz sat back down and fell into an easy kind of blues walkabout on his high hat.

  “Long story,” Izzy said, shaking her head. “Bottom line is, yeah, I’m okay. It’s a lot going on. I’m just glad to be free and out in the world again and ready to rip shit to shreds on the mic. I wasn’t just chilling there in lockup, you know, I was writing.”

  She made the rounds, giving everyone hugs and pounds, and then glanced at Juan.

  “Look, y’all: I came by to run some raps with ya, but Sierra just called an emergency meeting. Got the text as I was coming in. Figured everyone’s phone would prolly be on silent.”

  “Oh, damn,” Anthony said, pulling out his. “Yep.”

  “We can walk over together,” Izzy said. “Sorry, Kaz.”

  Kaz shrugged. “It’s cool, I’ll just get some practice in, since I’m not invited to y’all’s little secret clubhouse meeting. Just don’t hurt nobody while you plot to take over the world or whatever.”

  Juan laughed and packed up his gear. “Man … no promises.”

  “Soooo, I almost shadowshaped,” Juan said as he, Izzy, and Anthony crunched through the newly fallen snow on Bedford Avenue, hands in pockets, breath rising in steamy gasps through scarves and up into the pale sky.

  He’d been trying to say it for like five minutes while Anthony and Izzy rambled back and forth to each other about how trash Dake was. The words had been right there waiting for them, but somehow they wouldn’t come out, and he was pretty sure whenever they did, Izzy would guffaw and Anthony would shake his head and Juan would probably crawl back into his little non-shadowshaping pit and disappear.

  Instead, Izzy nodded approvingly and said, “Oh, cool, that’s whassup.”

  “Nice,” Anthony added.

  “It’s just, you know.” Juan waved his hands in circles in front of him to indicate that he of all people should probably be, like, one of the greatest shadowshapers of them all, considering he’d had access to the ability and an amazing mentor for basically his whole life, yet he’d squandered it completely and ignored the spirits and their obvious overtures to get his attention, and so he was really going to have to deal with the shame of not knowing his own heritage that well, but he was definitely gonna get good at it this year, he swore.

  Izzy nodded. “Makes sense.”

  “I feel you,” Anthony added.

  And that’s what good friends were for, Juan reflected — understanding you without you really having to bother explaining yourself too clearly.

  “Thing is,” Izzy put in, somewhat ominously, “we really about to need your help for real, as you may have noticed. So you might wanna get on that.”

  “Yeah …” Juan said glumly. “I know.”

  They walked for a while with just the crinkly splortch beneath their boots as a soundtrack, past the horseman statue and the creepy men’s shelter fortress, across Atlantic Avenue and into Bed-Stuy. “So what …” Juan said, nudging Izzy. “You’re like a Hierophant now or something?”

  “Bah.” She shrugged him off. “I mean, yeah. But I’m still Izzy, y’all. Still the King.”

  “Can you still ’shape?”

  She spat a cackle. “Shit, I hope so. Nah, I’m playin’. I definitely can. Tried this morning to make sure. I can just do … uh, other stuff too.”

  “Like what?” Anthony asked.

  “Erm, I’m not sure if I’m supposed to say, exactly.”

  “You are like …” Juan bounced his head from side to side, trying to figure out how to phrase it. “You’re still on our side, right?”

  Izzy stopped in her tracks, forcing some hipsters who’d been too damn close on their heels anyway to dodge to either side and then look back with passive-aggressive grimaces. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re excused!” one of the hipsters yelled over their shoulder.

  “No one was talking to you, Susan! Come back here!”

  “Iz,” Juan said. “Stay focused.”

  She rounded on him. “Right! It was you I was about to ream out, thanks for the reminder.”

  “Erm.”

  “Listen to me carefully, both of you clowns.”

  “Hey!” Anthony said.

  “Who I am and what I seen —” She had some growl in her voice now. Juan had seen Izzy fussy and vexed, and for real mad a few times, but this … this was something different. That weird light flickered through her eyes, and her whole body moved like some kind of giant Izzy-shaped snake as she accentuated each point with her hands. “It’s not just that I want those dirty motherless bags of trash to pay for what they’ve done and how they’ve done it. It’s that they’re going to, and we’re going to see personally to it, and when I say we, I mean Tee and me, and that’s just plain facts right there. But also, I’m a shadowshaper till I die, kid. That’s who I am and who Imma always be, no matter what. These houses are all some old heffa’s playthings as far as I’m concerned, but shadow-shaping is who we is, you and me. It’s in your blood through heritage, Juan, but it’s in mine too now, and me and my spirits, we roll deep. So you can bet ya pint-sized guitar-hero ass we gonna turn their whole trash world on its head. Only question I have is how many of our guys are they gonna be able to take out before we end them.” She paused, the mist of her breath rising and rising around them. “Feel me?”

  They blinked and nodded. Izzy walked off.

  “Damn,” Anthony whispered as he and Juan hurried to catch up. “I wanna be a shadowshaper too.”

  “So, we hit him hard and hit ’em where it hurts, and then we hit ’em again before they have a chance to respond. And then we fall all the way back and see what’s what,” Robbie said, and then he nodded at Caleb, who stood on the other side of a very scratched-over sheet of butcher paper from him.

  “And that’s when we make an overture to the other two Hierophants in play, the River and Fortress,” Caleb said. “They got no allegiance to this new house or Dake, not really. They got no allegiance to anything. So they’ll flip once they see the wind is blowing another direction.”

  “Theoretically,” Tee said.

  “Theoretically,” Caleb allowed. “And then they’ll tip the balance back our way.”

  “And we’re still the Dominant house,” Robbie added. “Which is why they have shied away from a direct confrontation so far and why they will keep shying away from it. They know they can’t win.”

  There was a pause and some shuffling as the House of Shadow and Light (minus María Santiago, who had more meetings) adjusted themselves and looked around uncomfortably.

  “What?” Robbie asked.

  “No, it’s fine,” Bennie said. “It’s just …”

  “It doesn’t protect our people,” Sierra said.

  “We put a detail on ’em,” Robbie said. “Just like we did on the Bloodhaüs, but for their protection. Ghost security.”

  “But they ain’t ’shapers,” Bennie said. “Without a shape, those spirits won’t be able to do much to prevent an attack.”

  “We assign a ’shaper to each of ’em,” Caleb said.

  Sierra shook her head. “And they just follow ’em twenty-four-seven? For how long? This plan goes on for weeks, at least.”

  Caleb and Robbie both just smoldered for a few moments. Then Caleb said, “We don’t have much of a choice,” in that quiet way of his that meant he was actually really riled.

  “I know,” Sierra said. “I’m not trying to shoot y’all down, I just … I don’t know what to do either.” The panic that had been threatening to rise in her and come gushing out for the past twenty-four hours made another go at it. She forced it away. “Tee? Izzy?”

  The two new Hierophants stood next to each other in the far corner, both with their arms crossed over their chests, both frowning severely. “We don’t like it either,” Tee said. “But we also don’t know another way. Giving them the Deck is … not a good idea.”

  “I know,” Sierra sa
id quietly. “I know.”

  “Any word on Mina?” Robbie asked.

  “Desmond Pocket and his crack team of young street lawyers are on it,” Sierra said. “Says the charges are bullshit, of course, and should have her out soon. And Neville has cats on the inside looking out for her.”

  “Why don’t we just make everyone a Shadow and Lighter?” Jerome said.

  “Huh?” Juan asked.

  “No, he’s right,” Bennie said. “Dake’s whole thing is that he’s being vile but still playing by the rules. That’s why he can get away with it and still have those two Hierophants on his side, technically. So if Sierra or Caleb just initiates all the people into our house, they won’t be nonparticipants anymore.”

  “I mean, we’ll do your boys, Nydia, and whoever else wants it, but then he just goes to the next person down on the list,” Sierra said. “And then what? We just keep initiating people? And who knows if they even want to be brought into this mess?”

  “And what happens when he decides not to play by the rules anymore and takes them out anyway?” Robbie added. “And if he’s really just throwing our folks’ personal info to random online scumbags, he might be able to slide by on the technicality of it not being his people doing the deed.”

  Everyone got glum again.

  “I mean … I hate to say this, but any chance he’s bluffing?” Jerome asked.

  The whole room said no at the same time.

  “I just think, we gotta ask ourselves,” Sierra said. “Are we really willing to lose a loved one over this? Are we prepared to go through what that’s gonna mean — the sorrow, first of all, but also the guilt of knowing that we’re partly responsible for their death.”

  “We’re not,” Bennie said. “None of us are. That’s not right. You can’t take that on and you can’t put it on yourself either.”

  “No,” Sierra said, pushing away the panic once again. And then again. “But our actions can still cause it, even if it’s not our choice.”

  “Are you saying you want to hand over the Deck?” Caleb asked. He said it sincerely, not a challenge.