Shadow

by David L Dawson

  “As former gods we carry an inbuilt imperative that stops us from killing a living thing,” Phobos admitted. “That imperative carried over even into our shadow forms. So no, I can’t kill you, but I can break a bone or two. That’s why we have our people to do the dirty work for us.”

  Cressida thought his admission was a very big mistake on his part. Now she knew a major weakness of her enemy and she could use that in the future. Still, he did have a valid point; had they enough food and water to stay in her house until she could learn ancient Elvish? Had they become embroiled in a siege?

  Things were going to be tough, but she had to stick this out. If even one of the Shadow Assemblage itself was paying her a visit then they must be getting worried. Did they need the book for something specific or something time based or were they just getting impatient for whatever lackey they had sent to do his or her job?

  “I take it you do not accept my offer,” said Phobos. It was not a question but Cressida treated it as such.

  “Would anybody really be dumb enough to agree to a deal like that?” Cressida scoffed. “Why did you really come here tonight?”

  “To look into the face of my enemy,” said Phobos. “I have looked into your eyes and seen a scared little girl out of her depth. You have no hope of standing firm against the Shadow Assemblage. Your reactivated dormant magic gene may give you power but you need years of training to do anything fully with it. You will be dead by then.”

  Cressida did not know this. Emily had assumed that the book had given her its own magical energies, but this made a lot more sense. The Book of Fire had actually magically reactivated her dormant magic gene! It had found itself bonded to someone who couldn’t perform magic and had immediately done something about it. This was much better news than Cressida had hoped for. This meant that when the book was destroyed her magic gene should stay activated.

  “Why do you want the book?” she asked.

  “It belongs to us,” replied Phobos.

  “It belongs to me now,” said Cressida. She climbed back in bed and hugged the book so the shadow could see exactly what she was doing. It may be a bad idea to provoke a former god but she couldn’t help it. It was funny.

  “You can’t hope to stand against us,” said Phobos.

  “I’m not listening!” she shouted.

  “Do you want to know what really happened the very last time Rafreya paid us a visit?” he murmured softly, invitingly. “We killed her.”

  It was like a physical blow, but she kept her cool. This shadow must really be desperate if he thought he could spook her with such a lie. As if Rafreya could be killed! Nothing in the universe could so much as scratch her, let alone kill her. Still, his words were disturbing enough for Cressida to think twice; if the story Miss Weber told them was to be believed then gods could kill other gods.

  “That is the most pathetic lie I have ever heard,” she said.

  “You may think a Goddess cannot be harmed, let alone killed, but they can,” said Phobos, warming to his theme. “She was an interfering old busy body and the world should be grateful we took her out of it. It was quite a struggle, actually. She wouldn’t go down without a fight. In the end, though, we proved too much for her. Your Goddess is dead, Cressida Widdershins. What do you have faith in now?”

  He tapped on the window, the protection spell charging pain through his entire form. He let it shudder through him, embracing it, laughing. He could see Cressida putting her hands over her ears to block out his amusement.

  “Emotional pain can be so much more agonizing than actual pain,” said Phobos, still laughing. “Still, it…”

  “I’ve gone to sleep!” Cressida screamed.

  “I have the feeling you won’t be sleeping much tonight.”

  “Maybe I’ll dream about how an idiot like Mr. Blueoak and a little girl could get one over on six former gods!”

  “Whatever happens I shall ruin your life,” said Phobos. “That is a promise.”

  She ignored it, and soon enough Phobos left, more furious than he’d ever been in billions of years. He cursed Abe for fouling up his attempt to get the book, wishing he hadn’t saved him from being turned to crystal, but most of all he cursed Mr. Blueoak. It was his fault that the book was in the hands of Cressida Widdershins. He wished so much Blueoak still lived so he could murder the man himself. Strange how it ended up with her, he mused. Was it just a coincidence? Still, he had left her quite a devastating parting gift. Whether she believed him or not was up to her.

  Cressida wept, her emotions getting the better of her; pure, primeval terror at having spoken with such a powerful being and confusion at almost believing that her Goddess was dead. It was too much. Too much…

  Chapter 11 – An Update from Shanks

  Phobos was right. Cressida didn’t sleep much. Every time she did manage to fall asleep she would begin having awful nightmares about seeing the Goddess Rafreya die in all manner of horrific ways. After dreaming the almighty one had been crushed under a collapsing building Cressida decided she didn’t actually want to sleep anymore. The look of sheer panic and terror in Rafreya’s eyes just before every death were unbearable.

  “He’s just an evil liar,” she told herself for the fifth time as she poured herself a glass of orange juice in the kitchen. “He was just trying to unbalance me, that’s all.”

  She sat at the table. The sun was just coming up and she knew that she needed her sleep but she just couldn’t face it. Besides, a few less hours wouldn’t hurt. It would give her time to practice a few more spells, have a very long cold shower and prepare herself for a day of tortuous lessons with Emily.

  There was a portrait of the Goddess Rafreya on the wall near the door. Her parents had bought it from a junk sale. Cressida had always liked it. Rafreya was a very beautiful woman. She had light orange skin, red hair and an oval face with rouge lips and no eyebrows. Behind her head hovered the sun, the symbol of all she was, and her hands were clasped together as if in mourning. She also wore a white gown to cover her modesty, and there was the faint aura of a shining light all around her body. In essence she was light incarnate.

  “You’re not dead,” she told the portrait, hoping the painted lips would move and tell her Phobos was lying. “We’d know if you were dead. There’d be some sign.”

  Tell me he’s wrong, she urged the portrait. Tell me he’s lying!

  The phone rang. Cressida looked around for someone else to answer it. She didn’t feel like talking to a cold caller or anyone else right now. The phone ringing will wake everyone up, she thought. I wanted some time to myself!

  She picked up the phone and said, “The Widdershins house, what do you want?”

  “Cressida?” It was her father, Shanks Widdershins. He was a famous archeologist, currently out of the country. “I’m so glad to hear your voice!”

  “Dad!” Cressida was overjoyed.

  “No, it’s the emperor himself,” said Shanks. “Of course it’s me!”

  “I thought you would’ve phoned earlier.”

  “The deserts of Persiastahn are very dusty. It’s been difficult to get a signal back to Magefield. The line’s a bit crackly on this end.”

  She wanted to tell him to come home. They needed him. Was his career more important to him than his family?

  “How’s the dig going?” Cressida asked. “Have you found the tomb of Golleck the Great yet?”

  “We haven’t gotten to the dig site yet,” Shanks explained. “We had to barter our way past the troll guards and then we had trouble with…well, you don’t need to know the details. I’m fine.”

  “I miss you.”

  Tell him to come home, she urged herself. Tell him!

  “I’ll be home as soon as I can,” said Shanks. “I just wanted to hear your voice.” The phone line crackled. “I have to go now…sand storm…”

  She realized she couldn’t tell him. His career was important to him and she respected that.

  “Be careful,” said Cressida
. “Please, be…”

  The phone line went dead. She missed her father so much.

  Inside Joe’s body the spirit of Joe was in a constant, never-ending dream. He was kept that way by Corona. For his soul to be fully awake would mean he would have a fighting chance to retake his body. Corona didn’t want that. She was enjoying being a human, playing as a human. Her mission was just an added bonus.

  Joe, meanwhile, had no idea what was going on in the waking world. For him life was but a dream. It may have occurred to him every now and then that something was wrong, that he should have woke up by now, but the dream he was embroiled in was too consuming for him to ever dwindle on the strangeness of it all for too long. For Joe often dreamed about his parents, dead for four years now, but the dreams would always be short and they would end just as he was enjoying himself. Not this dream, though. This dream had been going on for twelve hours so far and he loved every minute of it.

  “Catch the ball, son!” Sarah Griffin yelled, far too late as it happened. Joe had been distracted by something over the garden wall and so the ball had hit him in the face. He yelled in surprise as his mother ran over to apologize.

  “Are you alright?” she asked.

  “Sorry, it wasn’t your fault,” said Joe. He pointed over the fence. “I thought I saw something flying over there. It might have been a fairy.”

  Sarah, excited, went to have a look herself. Joe followed. Fairies fascinated Sarah Griffin. She had studied them at university and for some reason Joe felt he liked them too. They may be dumb creatures but they were pretty, and he liked seeing such happiness on his mother’s face.

  They climbed over the wall and had a search around. Joe was starting to feel a little silly now. Maybe he hadn’t seen a fairy at all. It could have been a trick of the light or a leaf being carried by the wind or any number of things. There hadn’t been a fairy in their garden for years. They were supposed to be quite rare these days.

  Yet there sat a fairy on the pavement by the road. She was just like a butterfly but instead of an insect body she had that of a young woman. The fairy looked up at them in wonder as they approached the tiny creature. Her hair was as yellow as hay and she had eyes that were pure emerald green. She bared her teeth at them; or tooth, as this fairy was all gums and one tiny canine sticking out from the top left of her mouth. She growled.

  “What do you think happened to her teeth?” Joe asked.

  “Gum disease is a very serious problem in fairies,” his mom explained as the fairy ignored them to watch and laugh at a slow moving car going past. “They eat a lot of sugary things like fruit and, if they can get it, chocolate. Unlike us humans they don’t brush their teeth, so their teeth fall out. It’s a pity, really.”

  “Someone could make a fortune in selling toothpaste to fairies,” said Joe.

  “If fairies had any money I’m sure you could,” said Sarah.

  There was a definite sense of déjà vu here that Joe couldn’t shake from his mind. The joke about fairy toothpaste and the fairy with only one tooth; hadn’t all this happened before but when he was much younger? Then again, if all fairies had teeth problems, then he was bound to run into another one with similar problems sooner or later.

  The fairy flew away before he could stop it. He admired its beauty and the way its wings flapped just fast enough for him to see their color; a patchwork of blues, from light to dark. He called her Blue. Then a car hit her, becoming just a smudge on the windscreen. He grimaced and looked away.

  “Fairies are really dumb, mom,” he muttered.

  “They sure are,” said Sarah.

  Chapter 12 – Tea for Abe

  A mile away Abe was starting to come awake. The last thing he remembered was a rush of wind to his face and then he was flying in the air. He could see the ground, a field of grass, moving fast towards his face and he had screamed, thinking he would die, and then…then he was here, wrapped up in a nice cozy bed, alive. He didn’t believe in miracles. He’d had far too awful a life to believe in those. Yet for some reason he knew that somebody was looking out for him.

  He was in an unfamiliar room. It wasn’t his nest and he couldn’t see a single web anywhere. The bed was a normal human bed and there were posters on the walls of various musicals from “Elverica: The Musical” to “My Life as a Queen.” For a second he thought maybe Miss Weber had kidnapped him. He had misjudged her badly. He had thought she was weak. She was every bit as powerful as he was. As for her crystal spell…the mere thought of it made him shudder. Miss Weber to kill him, so that meant…that meant it wasn’t her who had taken him. It was someone else. Someone unknown.

  The door opened and a small girl entered with a cup in her hands. She resembled Grace, only much younger. It must be her little sister, Chandra.

  “I’ve brought you a cup of tea,” she said. “Do you like tea? Grace said you liked tea. I can get you coffee.”

  “I like tea,” he told her. He yawned. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” mumbled Chandra, looking at him strangely. She gave him the tea and, before he could stop her, she held out her hand to his face.

  “Why are you hiding your face?” Chandra asked him.

  “I’m feeling strange,” he said.

  Grace thankfully took that moment to bustle in. She told her sister to go back to bed and Chandra left, but not before giving him a conspiratorial wink.

  “Now I want some answers,” Grace demanded.

  He thought she looked even more beautiful when angry.

  He came up with a lie on the spot. “The last thing I remember was…out walking to the shops to buy a bottle of milk and someone was robbing me and they used this levitation spell on me and then I was here. I honestly thought I’d been kidnapped.”

  “Maybe you have,” said Grace with a sly wink.

  Abe sat on the edge of the bed, his brain going through all the variations on how he could have survived being flung through the air like a cannonball and surviving it without even so much as a twisted ankle. The most likely answer was that the Shadow Assemblage had saved him. That still didn’t explain why he was with Grace, though.

  “How did I get here?” he wondered.

  “I heard someone crying out and so I looked outside of my window and found you unconscious at the door to the cafe,” Grace explained. “I thought I’d bring you in and see if you were okay. Are you okay?”

  “I don’t understand how I could have survived,” he admitted.

  “I’m glad that you did.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

  He pulled away from her, frightened she could feel what his real skin felt like under the spell he maintained to look fully human. The last thing he wanted was for Grace to find out what he really looked like.

  “I have to go,” he said, rushing for the door. He turned back to her. “I’ll never forget what you did for me. Thank you.”

  “Thank me by buying me dinner,” she said. Her eyes were daring him to agree, and he so loved that about her. She had asked him out!

  “I’d like that,” he said. “Can I call in later with the details? I should really be getting back to what I should be doing. Bye.”

  He rushed off, finding the front door to her flat opened for him by her mother, who gave him a wide, ugly goblin smile. He smiled back, asked if she was alright, and found himself walking down a set of stairs and out through another door into a back alley. He couldn’t breathe properly, he felt like he had run a marathon. He was going on a date with Grace! He felt wonderful! The world was wonderful! Everything was wonderful!

  “I saved you for a reason,” something whispered in his ear. He turned to see Phobos rising up out of the ground like a black mist.

  “Thank you,” Abe stammered. “I owe you my life.”

  “Romantic entanglements will have to wait until your job is finished,” said Phobos. “If you allow this woman to take up any more of your valuable time I will have no choice but to take her away from you. Get me Cressida Widders
hins and then I will allow you to see this woman, Grace.”

  Abe sighed. “I understand.”

  “I’m so glad,” said Phobos, before melting away into nothingness again.

  Abe punched the wall in fury. How dare he threaten Grace like that! How dare he threaten the one he loved! He now knew he had no choice. Any reservations he may have had at handing Cressida over to be killed had completely gone. He had to do it, not only to save his own life but that of Grace’s as well. The question now was; how was he going to get the girl out of the house?

  He grinned. No, he thought. I should be thinking; how do I get the house away from the girl?

  Chapter 13 – Pronunciation is the Key

  The cold shower had been a revelation. Not only had it washed away all her worries but it made her completely forget that maybe her Goddess was dead. She came down the stairs, fully dressed, feeling refreshed and ready to start a brand new day. Rafreya wasn’t dead, she knew that now. Phobos had just been messing with her head. His scheme hadn’t worked.

  Emily was setting up a blackboard in front of the fireplace. She was having trouble as it was heavy so Joe was helping her. A packet of chalk was open on the floor and the cat was playing with it. Martin was sat in a chair, watching all this with his usual canine detachment. Suddenly the cold shower seemed so very far away.

  “Good morning,” greeted Emily, righting the blackboard and smiling in triumph. “I hope you had a good night’s sleep.”

  “It’s not even eight yet,” said Cressida. Emily didn’t need to know she’s already been up for hours. “What are you setting up now for?”

  “Since you decided to wake everyone up early I thought we’d start our lessons early,” said Emily. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Why would I mind?” said Cressida, sarcasm mode in overdrive.