Shadow

by David L Dawson

  She got out of bed and put on her cream dressing gown. It was time to be up anyway. She had a shift in the cafe starting at eight and her mother needed help with some food deliveries. Her mother was a stupendously strong woman but even she had her limits.

  A hand whipped out of the darkness and gripped her by the throat. She tried to scream but felt her lips literally melting together to form one slab of skin that covered her mouth. She was lifted off the floor, her feet struggling, her arms flapping at nothing, at something, at whatever the threat was.

  “I could kill you,” said Phobos.

  She could see him now, faint in the gloom; the shadow of a tall man; a man who was a shadow. Her eyes widened in terror and she could feel his fingers squeezing her throat. Then he threw her against the wall. Her weight punctured the plaster and she tumbled to the floor in a heap.

  “Abercrombie Hayden is an assassin,” said Phobos with vicious glee. “He either murders his victims or turns them to stone. He keeps his human statues in his nest and gets a perverse satisfaction out of knowing they are still alive in there, looking out at him, silently screaming for all eternity.”

  He peered down at her. She could see the hollows of eye sockets in the shadow form of his head but she still couldn’t cry out. Her mouth was still melted shut and she was frozen in fear.

  “He broke into your home and stole your crystal statue.” Phobos pointed at the small table where Grace noticed for the first time what was missing. “He used them to augment a spell that enabled him to murder innocent children.”

  He grinned, imagining her torment; it was a soothing balm to him.

  “He is a monster,” hissed Phobos. “Spend your final days despising and hating him. He deserves it.”

  The shadow whipped away, gone, and Grace found her lips back to normal once again. She screamed.

  Chapter 35 - Camping

  “Modern dragons are supposed to be descended directly from the bloodlines of Frostma and her mate, an actual dragon and not a giant serpent, whose identity nobody actually knows,” Emily was explaining as they slogged through the forest. The girl was a font of information. “When she died all the current species of dragon died too, killed by her world spreading ice. So the only ones left were her several dozen offspring, half ice serpent, half dragon, in hiding in the center of the earth. Explorers found the baby dragons and reared them but soon they left to live in the wild. It’s quite an interesting story. Mom and Dad took me to a dragon sanctuary in New China a few years ago. The oldest dragon there, Feng Li, is actually the only surviving child of Frostma. Poor thing can’t even move he’s so crippled. I have a picture of him at home.”

  “So he’s not…psychotic like his mother?” Abe asked.

  “He’s as gentle as a baby,” said Emily, smiling sweetly. “Frostma was just a one off, although nobody really knows why she frosted the planet. Maybe she was just born defective or maybe she just didn’t like humans. Who knows?”

  “Maybe the Shadow Assemblage made her do it,” said Joe quietly.

  Emily looked at him in admiration. “That’s the most likely explanation.”

  “Except the human and Elf enchanters killed her before she could destroy most of the population,” said Cressida. “The Shadow Assemblage’s plans to become gods again failed. So why didn’t they just control one of her children instead?”

  “She was the last pure giant serpent, and her mate was the last pure dragon,” Emily explained. “All dragons born since then are a hybrid of both of them. I suppose they should really be called dragents or serpons or something, but I think the term dragon just sort of stuck. Anyway, Frostma is pure ice serpent. She could ice the entire planet in a matter of weeks.”

  “There are a lot more enchanters now than then,” said Abe. “We will be able to band together and kill her again even more quickly.”

  “Hmm,” said Emily. “That is the big question. Why does the Shadow Assemblage think they can win now when before they couldn’t?”

  Cressida let the statue of Martin fall softly in a patch of nettles. She couldn’t keep going any more. Her feet were telling her they’d been walking for hours but it was probably only ten minutes. She had to put as much distance as she could between herself and her burning home. Blackberry Forest was one of the biggest forests on the planet, so they could walk for a while and still be safe. Still, the talk of Frostma had been unsettling. There were still a lot of unanswered questions and she wanted to know the answers. She needed to know the answers.

  “Has anybody seen any irie?” Joe whispered. He looked around him with a paranoid furtiveness that Cressida found amusing, and made her a little guilty. How had she not noticed that Joe had been possessed? Surely there’d been some sign?

  Bram sighed, putting his statue down. “I think this is good a place as any to settle down for a while. Does everybody else agree?”

  They all agreed. Soon all the statues of their fallen friends were placed safely on the ground and the rest of them collapsed, exhausted. It was tiring work running from your life.

  Cressida began to think about all she’d been through the past few days. She had been a different person earlier in the week; naive and silly and curious and adventurous. She was still all those things but a little more grown up. She now saw the world as a different place; it was scary and hard.

  Joe looked towards Emily, who was looking away into the trees. What was she thinking about? Did she really fancy him? He looked at her in a whole new light. She was beautiful, certainly. She was intelligent and forceful and liked to speak her mind. Her lips were very red, and she was brave, and her hair seemed to glisten with starlight and… I do fancy her, he thought. Only a bit, though.

  Cressida hoped her father was safe, wherever he was. She had to remember he was digging away at his archaeological site in blissful ignorance of what the rest of his family was up to. Should she have told him? She looked over at the statue of her mother and wanted to cry. She really wished her he was here to hold her hand and tell her everything was going to work out fine. It could be she might never see him again.

  Joe started to feel annoyance. He felt guilty, obviously. He should have told Cressida and Ginger the moment the irie had revealed herself. He knew he should have. Yet not once had his friend noticed his body was being controlled by something else. Was he that boring and indistinct that any old thing could use his body as a puppet and nobody would tell the difference? Or maybe they had noticed and had liked the new Joe. Did Cressida like the irie better than the real Joe?

  Cressida picked at the grass that touched her arm, began fiddling with it. It was soft. It would make a good mattress. Then she saw an earwig crawl across her leg. She wanted to squirm and flick it off with her finger but she pretended it wasn’t there and waited until it scuttled away. If she was going to live in the forest she’d have to put up with a lot worse; spiders in her hair and worms slithering into her clothes while she slept. The thought of it made her feel sick. As for the food…could she survive on berries? Maybe there were some wild potatoes or onions, or she could catch a rabbit! Goddess, this is going to suck, she thought miserably. How can I live here?

  She looked at Joe, unhappy. She looked at the statues of Ginger, Miss Weber, Seth and Martin. She felt the texture of the Book of Fire in her hands, source of all that had gone wrong with her life. No matter what the Shadow Assemblage said she still had the power. She still had the book. All was not ever yet. We can find a way out of this, she told herself. I’m not beaten!

  “I didn’t know about Frostma,” said Abe into the silence. He was sitting on a log, staring at his hands. He knew he should leave to try and save Grace but he had to explain first. The girl deserved that much.

  “How could you not know?” Cressida exclaimed.

  “The book belonged to them and you had it so I thought all I had to do was get it back and that was that.” He looked her in the eyes and she believed him. “Then I found out they were going to kill you, and I started to…Yes,
I freely admit to being a killer. I’ve killed people, most of them being enemies of the Shadow Assemblage and all of them as nasty and cruel as they were.”

  “But you couldn’t kill an eleven year old girl,” said Bram.

  “That’s why I healed you,” said Abe. “One of your broken ribs had punctured a lung. It was a simple spell to fix it but…Goddess, they want to resurrect Frostma! I can’t let them do that. We have to stop them.”

  “All we have to do is stay in here,” said Cressida.

  Abe continued. “I’ve been thinking. Why is it that they couldn’t bring Frostma back to life last year, or the year before? It’s quite simple; The Dragon Comet. It comes close to Pangaea’s orbit once every ten thousand years during its tour of the solar system. It’s said that it’s made of the same type of crystal you use to augment your powers, like the very tiny ones I used to help me lift up the house.”

  Cressida carried on the explanation; “The Dragon Comet it about the same size as the university, so it’s very, very big. It’s made up entirely of crystal!”

  Abe thought back to the huge storehouse of magic crystals he’d attempted to ransack. Aubra had stopped him from taking a single one. He told them of this. The Shadow Assemblage would have a lot of power at their command when the time came.

  “Too much,” said Emily. “They’d have enough power to raise her and kill her and raise her again a hundred times over.”

  Cressida said, “Or they could channel all the energy into Frostma, making her almost impossible to defeat. After all, there are a lot more enchanters now than there was before and they managed to kill her last time.”

  Cressida had the feeling they were missing some vital piece of the puzzle, something that would make it all clear. But what could it be? They could speculate forever and they’d probably not even come close to an answer.

  While Cressida was busy learning ancient Elvish she set the others to finding wood for a fire, picking berries, finding soft plants to make for bedding. If they were going to do this they were going to do it properly. They may need to erect a shelter, just in case it rained, and they needed to put up protective spells just in case the irie decided to pay a visit and try and eat them while they slept. She also needed to have Abe turn the statues back to flesh and bone. She felt she could more or less trust him now. He may be a killer but he didn’t want to die any more than she did, and she had a feeling there was a woman he cared about somewhere out there.

  “Abe’s gone!” Joe shouted. She felt stupid, betrayed.

  Emily looked around her, and then said, “He can’t have gone far.”

  “I thought we could sort of trust him now,” said Cressida, feeling like a fool. “I should’ve known.”

  “I don’t expect we’ll see him again,” said Joe, pointedly not looking at the statues.

  “Maybe not,” said Bram. He pointed to something floating in the air, and Cressida realized it was writing, made of mist. It said, “I’ll come back, I promise.”

  None of them actually believed those words. As far as they were concerned Abe was only out for himself. How was she going to get her mother back now?

  For one of the very rare times in his long, awful life Abercrombie Hayden was neither thinking about himself or the next person he had to kill. All he could focus on right now was Grace, and whether he could get to her in time. Phobos would kill her, he knew that, and he couldn’t let her fall. The world would be a much drearier place without her in it.

  The cafe was closed, and an instant panic closed upon him. Then he remembered it wasn’t due to open just yet, so he just knocked on the door. After the fourth knock he’d decided to try the back door when he heard the window in the flat above him open. He looked up to see Grace, perfectly alive and well. He smiled with relief.

  “What do you want?” Grace asked.

  “I wanted to see you were alright,” he said, noting the brusqueness in her voice. “Are you well?”

  “You’re concerned about me now, are you?” she scoffed cruelly. “It’s a pity you didn’t think of that when you got me involved with whatever evil gang you’re mixed up in.”

  “What do you…”

  She stared down at him, daggers in her eyes. “I had a visit not too long ago from a man. Or should I say the shadow of a man. He made it quite clear what a monster you were, a killer, a sadistic assassin with a penchant for capturing his victims in statues. How did I ever think you were a decent person?”

  “I am a decent person!” he called, feeling her slip away from him. “I’m not with them anymore! You have to believe me!”

  “If I ever see you within sight of my family ever again I will set the police on you.” She was crying now, looking over his shoulder. She couldn’t bear to see his eyes. “Just forget I ever existed and go away.”

  She spat at him. He let her saliva land on his forehead.

  “In fact,” said Grace, this time looking deep into his eyes with a hatred that was so powerful it made him step back. “Why don’t you let your statue victims go and then kill yourself? I’m sure the world will be a much better place without scum like you in it.”

  “Please,” he begged. “I can’t let it end like this.”

  “We never had anything,” said Grace, moving away from the window.

  He sagged onto the ground, broken. He felt desolate, like he’d lost the one thing that was keeping him from slipping into the Abyss. Grace was gone; gone forever.

  He didn’t blame her, not really. He was a man who didn’t deserve to be loved. It was just like he’d always believed; he was a repulsive, ugly wretch who should have been drowned at birth. Yet now he had a mission. He could prove to himself, and to Grace, that he was worth it, despite being the despicable creature he was. He would help Cressida destroy the Shadow Assemblage. After all, he was one of few people who knew where they lived.

  Chandra peeked out of the cafe window, watching Abe stride determinedly away. She felt sadness for him and prayed to Rafreya that he would be all right. He may look like a monster but in her heart she knew he wasn’t like that. The darkness in him was receding, and that was a good thing.

  Chapter 36 – An Irie Encounter

  The morning wore on in Blackberry forest. The sun was low in the sky, making their work cool and comfortable. No wild animals made their job any more difficult and there was a sense of purpose to what they were doing. They needed to survive now. If they could make it past the real Snow Day then they knew they could make it for longer.

  Joe had been on berry duty. He’d managed to fill some of his pockets up with blackberries and cranberries but a lot of the bushes that they were growing on scared him. He knew iries liked to live in them. He wondered how his grandpa was doing searching for large leaves to make a roof for their shelter. This is going to be so hard on him, he thought. He’s an old man! Can he survive out here?

  He’d had several chances to confess to Cressida about how long the irie had actually been with them but had been too frightened. He couldn’t gauge her reaction. Sure she’d be mad, but how mad? Then he would accuse her of being stupid for not noticing he’d been possessed and the argument would rage for ages. He still needed to unburden his troubles to Cressida though. Something was wrong with his powers, and if it wasn’t due to Ginger siphoning off his magic then what was it? Could he have magical dyslexia? Surely his teachers, Ginger especially, would have recognized the signs by now?

  An irie slammed into his face. Corona had been flying at high speeds, weaving through the forest, looking for Cressida. She’d found the house, now all but cinders, but no bodies, and had concluded logically that they must have fled into the forest. She refused to think they’d been captured as she so needed her help.

  Joe peeled the irie off his face and, holding her up to his eyes, shouted, “It’s you!”

  “I really miss your brain,” cooed Corona.

  “If you’re thinking about trying to possess me again then you’ve got another thing coming,” said Joe, fig
hting the urge to squash her with his bare hands. “If you so much as flick a feeler anywhere near my ear I’ll…”

  “I need your help!” she cried, still out of breath.

  He paused, looked at her like she was a disease with skin. This thing was born to manipulate and he didn’t trust it one bit. He should fling her on her backside and stomp off and forget she even existed. Then he saw she’d been crying and he suddenly felt a smidgen, a tiny, tiny smidgen, of pity.

  “Why do you need my help?” he asked.

  “I told my father, the leader of the irie, that Frostma was going to come back and ice the world and he wants to evacuate all the irie of the world to the Wild Realm!” she babbled.

  “What’s the Wild Realm?” he wondered.

  She sighed. “That’s a secret. Anyway, we need to convince him that we should stay and fight. I like this world! I don’t want to leave it to be destroyed.”

  “What could we possibly do?” he asked. “It’s not as if the irie and the human world have ever been friends.”

  She said angrily, “Listen. Forget what went on between us. The thing we have to worry about now is saving the world. If you don’t get the irie on side I suppose that’s fine, although I don’t think they’d be too pleased to find you and your friends camping out in their forest. They might decide to kill you all and save you as a snack on the journey to the Wild Realm. Secondly, do you imagine one million irie might come in a little handy were you to take the fight directly to the Shadow Assemblage?”

  “Well, you are quite irritating,” said Joe, smirking.

  “The irie love a good battle, and this would be the battle of the millennium, the battle to end all battles, the battle to save the very planet we live on!” She smiled and said, “I liked being in your head. For a while I totally forgot about my mission and saw what it felt like to have friends, to have fun. I’d never experienced that before. I envy you so much.”