Between the Shade and the Shadow

by Coleman Alexander

  “That’s close enough,” the Masai said. Her binding stifled Ahraia, rooting her feet to the ground when her entire being wanted to run to her shadow. Seeing Losna again was the greatest relief Ahraia had ever known. It was like suddenly finding darkness after a whole turning cast in light. The Masai was speaking, but Ahraia only vaguely heard her.

  “I brought you here to see your shadow, Ahraia . . . because I don’t want any more trouble out of you.”

  Are you okay? Are you fed? Ahraia conveyed to Losna. What is that holding you? Is it cord? Thorn-stem?

  I don’t know, it’s metal—a chain? Losna thought. They snapped it on and it won’t come off. I’ve tried everything.

  Metal? Like a drain? Ahraia conveyed. She had a vague sense of Losna tearing and biting at bright, heavy links of metal.

  We need to leave here, Losna thought. These woods are evil. She was disturbed, all the way through to her bones. She was desperate to get away, to break the chain and run. This place is evil.

  Ahraia could feel it as well. The very ground felt tainted. The Masai’s gaze was fixed on her.

  The Masai stepped in front of her, blocking her view. Ahraia tried to see past her but was held firmly by the enchantment.

  “Your shadow test is half a turning from now—” the Masai said loudly, drowning out their conveyance, “—and I don’t want to spend the rest of the nights between now and then chasing you about while you try and find your shadow.”

  Can you get free? Ahraia conveyed subtly, so that only Losna could sense it.

  “So let me be clear”—the Masai’s voice rose slightly, grabbing Ahraia’s attention— “your shadow isn’t going anywhere.”

  The words were lethally clear. Ahraia looked guiltily towards the Masai, who went on, her voice hardly raised above a whisper.

  “You’re not coming back to these woods until your test, unless you both wish to end up dead. These walls are mine. They answer to me, and they’ll alert me the instant you try and come back here, so no, she cannot get free. You are going to finish this test, Ahraia. And surely by now you’ve guessed what that means.”

  The air felt thin, and Ahraia’s skin tingled at the coarseness of the Masai’s words.

  “What must I do?”

  The Masai shook her head, as though she couldn’t believe that Ahraia still didn’t know.

  “You must break the bond—you must cut your shadow from you.”

  Ahraia’s lips were numb. Her face was hot. Losna stared at her, her golden eyes two points of night-gleam on the hilltop.

  How? Ahraia asked.

  The Masai frowned.

  “You must kill your shadow.”

  29

  Discovery

  Ahraia locked her knees, stopping herself from crumpling to the ground. Her breath didn’t fill her lungs. Losna pulled right to the edge of her chain, her foreclaws dancing off the ground.

  What did she say? What’s happening? Ahraia hadn’t mirrored the Masai’s words, but Losna felt her shock.

  Why? Ahraia conveyed in disbelief.

  The Masai’s voice was even as she spoke. “Between the shade and the shadow lies a bond that only death can sever. Both the shade and the shadow will die—and from that darkness, a sprite is born.”

  Losna had gone still. Her eyes shone nervously from the hilltop.

  The Masai stood close to Ahraia. “A sprite must have the will to follow the Masai through harsh winter and bright summer, through bitter loss and better dark. This is the test that all shades must pass.”

  “And every sprite does this?” Ahraia whispered, the breath leaving her chest. They all kill their shadows?

  It suddenly made sense why Kren was a ghost of herself, why half of the darkenings were filled with ghosts who floated aimlessly through the night.

  The Masai held her eye. “It’s what makes us sprites.”

  Ahraia understood how a sister could kill a sister, or how a nit-ward could betray his nitesse. If they could kill their shadow . . .

  “We’re leaving,” the Masai said, jerking her head towards the woods.

  Ahraia’s feet lurched away from Losna as the Masai dragged her down the slope by the enchantment.

  Losna! Ahraia thought, resisting the command to follow. With tremendous effort, she planted her feet in the ground, bracing a hand against a cedar trunk.

  Where are you going? What’s happening? Losna’s whines turned to yips of distress.

  The Masai stopped.

  “If you don’t come willingly, we will have this done with tonight.”

  Ahraia stared at her shadow, disheartened.

  I have to go, Losna. I’ll come back. Her heart felt like it was being ripped from her chest.

  We have to flee. Don’t leave me, Losna pleaded. Her yips turned to howls.

  Ahraia was forced to follow the Masai, tripping and scratching herself, trying to keep sight of Losna, who howled louder and louder. With a last glimpse, Ahraia turned and stumbled blindly down the hillside, hopeless.

  When they were outside the Makers, the Masai stopped. Losna’s howls tormented Ahraia from above, but the Masai held her gaze.

  “There are wards watching these woods day and night. If you return here before your test, I will know.” She stepped closer, threateningly. “If you do, your shadow will be shown the light and you will be given to the Shad-Mon.”

  Ahraia moved like the wind, running freely from Angolor, checking behind her for wards. She stopped, panting. She scanned the forest.

  Alone.

  She craned her neck skyward.

  The trees around Daispar were unreasonably tall, with hardly any understory covering the ground beneath. It made escaping the wards difficult—and getting into the canopy harrowing. To do it without being seen was even trickier. Ahraia used two different squirrels as scouts and had already doubled back twice. The woods were empty. The wards were lost.

  She got a run and used an alder tree to vault her to the first branches of a fir. It swung inward, too weak to carry her outright, and she hit the trunk heavily. She latched on, scraping her knee. It stung as she scanned the woods below. Still desolate. Empty.

  Turning her eyes upwards, she climbed the broken lower limbs, up and up, until she reached a second spring. It whipped her higher, to a third and then a fourth, until she came to rest upon a tree’s broken top, large enough to lay flat upon and high enough so the ferns above looked like a carpet of fallen leaves. She squatted, once more surveying the forest floor. She saw movement below, and a ward traipsed hurriedly through the woods. He wasn’t even following the path she had taken, and within moments he disappeared, in the wrong direction.

  Ahraia let out a breath before carefully negotiating across the treetop. The splintered wood was slick with rain, and the ground was perilously far below. She used a double binding to swing herself to a monstrous fir, unreachable except by wings or claws.

  Or springs, she thought, glad that no other sprites ever thought to use the forest.

  She stood on a thick branch, at the yawning opening of an abandoned owl’s nest. The night before, she had retrieved her bow and clutch and used an owl to find the hollow. It had taken half the night to find a way up. With the bow, she kept her remaining possessions: the mirror and the tined comb, both wrapped in Hayvon’s veil, tucked inside the quiver beside the odd bits the alp had used for his fire. She reached in and checked them again. They were secure and dry, even with the days of incessant rain. Through the mist and the treetops, she could just make out the rise of Losna’s hill.

  Now I just need a way to break that chain, she thought.

  Breaking wood was one thing, but breaking metal was entirely different. Scabs encrusted her knuckles from her attempts to break her metal drain—she had tried bindings and springs and rocks and anything else she could get her hands on. Nothing worked. It was as dead as a stone and twice as hard.

  Her plan, if she could break the chain, was simple: run. But without the ability to break Losna free, sh
e wasn’t going anywhere. And the Bright Moon was almost turned. The Dark Moon was at its apex. The night of her test was near.

  She eyed the hill and felt something move at her breast. Distracted, she removed a miniature horned owl from her cloak. She had been working on the message to Kyah, and the owl, it seemed, was finally ready.

  “You know what you have to do,” Ahraia said.

  The owl looked at her with enormous, gold-ringed eyes and gave her a reassuring whoo. Its tiny talons pinched against her skin as it leapt away, plummeting downward before spreading its wings and gliding silently away through the understory. It was the seventh bird she had enchanted, the third owl and undoubtedly the smartest of the lot. One of them, she hoped, had the strength to reach Daispar before the enchantment wore off. Kyah had to get the spritelings to safety: first to the plains, then onward, to the mountains of the south, where Ahraia could meet them.

  If I can even break that fiendish chain, she thought. She wanted to bind a dozen more owls to send to Losna, but she knew the messages would be lost on her shadow: Losna couldn’t bind them, and would be driven mad by their circling. If anything, she would end up trying to eat them.

  At least Kyah will be warned, she thought, swinging back to the forest floor by a series of drop branches. She landed softly and turned for Angolor.

  Besides the chain, there was still the wall of the Makers to contend with. It answered to the Masai, and only the Masai. If Ahraia couldn’t manage to break the spell, she would be trapped as soon as she entered the woods, waiting for a death too easy to imagine.

  Her lungs didn’t seem to fill properly. Gray light swelled in the east; the morning was coming and she had no choice but to return to the darkening.

  Another fruitless night, she thought as she passed the outer halls. Leaves tumbled down, the life drawn from them as they passed to the forest floor, where the musty rot of them covered the deep hollows.

  The Bright and Dark Moons were nearly full, setting together before the dawn.

  She returned to the central hollow. Shalih stood across the streams, watching Ahraia with a heavy scowl. Her white hair was tucked behind her downturned ears. The scab on her cheek was bright and the welt dark. Kren stood next to her, like a nit-ward to a nitesse. Ahraia ignored them, blood suddenly ticking in her own ears, causing them to bat against her will.

  Both had kept their distance after trying to kill her, but they watched her, like glowering vultures just waiting for her to show weakness. Angry as she was at Kren, in a way she was glad they had attacked her—it had at least given her warning of her test. Even so, the cloud of foreboding was growing.

  There were three nights until she would be forced into the Shadow Woods. She couldn’t sleep.

  Then there were two. She couldn’t eat.

  Then one. She couldn’t breathe.

  The dawn was coming. In no time, the Dae-Mon would rise and her last day would arrive.

  She took a shuddering breath.

  She lay down under the foreign nit tree, knowing she needed rest, knowing that when night came again, she would be forced onto the hill, without even the thinnest thread of hope. Losna was fixed to the very ground. The wall of Sprite Makers would give her no quarter. And the woods would be filled with every ward and sprite the Masai had.

  She couldn’t close her eyes. How many shades before her had known their fate? How many had tried to break the chain or escape the confines of the hilltop? And all of them failed—it was no wonder so many ended up condemned.

  She lay in motionless agony, time neither passing nor staying. She wasn’t even sure if day had broken yet when a voice came to her.

  “Ahraia? Are you in there?”

  A sprite, Ahraia realized, was standing just outside of the shade tree.

  It was Kren. She sounded tense.

  Go away, Ahraia conveyed, her blood surging through her suddenly tightened chest.

  “The Masai is calling for you.”

  Don’t you have something better—

  Get out here!

  Ahraia rose instinctively. Something about Kren’s voice sent lightning through her skin. It carried a hint of concern, a touch of worry that had been hollowed out of Kren after her shadow test. Had the Masai found the bow? Or the clutch? Did she know Ahraia planned on trying to escape?

  The shade tree moved by her mind’s direction, and she stepped outside. Her hand went to her hip, but stopped. Kren looked gaunt, her hollow features twisted in what almost looked like regret.

  “Come on,” she said, without explanation.

  Ahraia followed with a dozen questions springing to mind. But she bit her tongue, still furious with Kren.

  A few sprites were still awake, moving between the stream and their nits. Small groups gathered in close whispers. They glanced at Ahraia, their faces narrow and wicked, dropping all but their barest conveyances. She followed Kren past the falls, back towards the outer hall where she had first entered.

  “Do you know what the Masai wants?” Ahraia said at last, not wanting to touch Kren’s mind.

  Kren didn’t answer. She kept walking.

  Ahraia looked up and saw the Astra waiting for them, standing at the closure of the darkening, her ears turned down in irritation or fear, Ahraia couldn’t tell which, but she felt her feet slowing.

  “What is this about?”

  “You tell me,” the Astra said, glowering towards the forest.

  Ahraia followed the Astra’s gaze towards the outer halls. A group of sprites and wards had gathered at the edge of the darkness, towards the direction she had hidden her bow. Fear flushed through her.

  The Astra’s ears twitched for obedience and Ahraia followed nervously. Far away through the trunks, she could see where the woods weren’t light, but they weren’t dark, either. She swallowed, hoping desperately her bow hadn’t been discovered.

  The Masai had her back turned, but in front of her, Ahraia caught sight of golden hair—golden hair and bright, green, alpish eyes. She stopped.

  It was the alp: the same one she had seen in Daispar, the same one who had killed the human, the alp who had murdered Kaval and Altah.

  What is she doing here? Ahraia conveyed.

  The Astra frowned but didn’t answer.

  The Masai’s ear twitched beneath her repulsive black cloak and she turned, a placid look of contentment spreading across her face. Her eyes gleamed brighter, her brow turning inward like an imp. She leaned in and spoke to the alp, never letting her gaze leave Ahraia.

  The alp’s white teeth showed in a half smirk and she nodded with the Masai.

  “Welcome, Shade Ahraia, Astra,” the Masai said, nodding in greeting, the black fur wreathing her head.

  The Astra gave a deferential bow to the Masai. Surprisingly enough, she did the same to the alp and said nothing, though her face was rigid and her ears back.

  “What fortuitous circumstance smiles upon us. Do you know who this is, Shade Ahraia?” the Masai said, nodding towards the alp.

  Ahraia hesitated, fearing why she had been summoned. She wondered if the alp had seen the head. Angry as she was that the Astra had used the alp to kill Kaval and Altah, she thought it better she played dumb. She shook her head.

  I don’t, she conveyed.

  A smile spread across the Masai’s face, one that mirrored the alp’s and showed in bright, sinuous contrast to the grim lips of the Astra.

  “Please speak—” The Masai’s ears twitched. “We have an esteemed guest. She is Anasazi of the Cirice. Do you know that name?”

  Ahraia shook her head again, this time not having to feign ignorance.

  “You should. The name of the Cirice was once as important as the name of the Masah,”—she gestured to where the two moons had just set—“all sprites and shades knew it, and they will remember it soon enough. Anasazi has come to us for help in a matter of some importance; the same matter she came to your Astra for, I believe, some turnings ago.” The Masai nodded to the Astra, who was still watching in
rigid uncertainty.

  “A war is coming in the world of light. The Cirice has been set to rid the world of humans and other graceless creatures since before Angolor even existed. Soon, they will finish it. It is a noble cause. And one that I mean to help her with.”

  Ahraia’s eyes darted between the sharp-eared alp and the long-eared Masai. She said nothing, still hoping the alp hadn’t seen the head. The Masai seemed too pleased. Was this important if she became a sprite? Did the Masai think she was beginning her tutelage now? Ahraia assumed she didn’t. The alp was too smug. More sprites gathered, with word of the strange meeting having already spread through the darkening.

  The Masai’s eyes narrowed dangerously.

  “And while her task is important, it is of no importance to you. She told me something tonight, however, that does concern you. Do you have any idea what that could be?”

  Ahraia felt dread sweeping through her. The head. She had to act normal. She tried to clear her mind. She shook her head.

  The Astra still looked confused. The alp’s icy smile was like the winter-wind blowing from the north. Her teeth looked almost human, and the whites of her eyes shown unusually large, in an unnerving way.

  “She told me the most extraordinary tale when she arrived,” the Masai went on. “Something that she saw, that she didn’t expect to see. Can you guess what?”

  Ahraia’s heart had taken root in her stomach; she fought to keep her ears from betraying her, though she was sure the flush of her scars would. The Masai nodded to the alp, who met and held Ahraia’s gaze. She could see the Masai leering triumphantly from the corner of her eye.

  “Where did you kill that human?” the alp asked with terrible calm. Her voice was soft and musical.

  “What human?” Ahraia said, trying to stall, trying anything to find a way out.

  The alp pointed through the hall to where the light dimmed and the head from her second task rested, still rotting without peace.