The Shadow of Malabron

by Thomas Wharton

  “The old girl’s pretty dusty,” he said to Will, and held out a plastic bucket. “Why don’t you clean her up while I make dinner, and later I’ll let you take her for a spin around the campground.”

  Will took the bucket, held it at arm’s length for a moment, then let it drop. It hit the ground with a hollow thunk and rolled to Jess’s feet. She bent and picked it up. Dad looked at Will for a long moment without speaking. Then he rubbed his forehead and turned away.

  “Grow up, Will,” he said over his shoulder.

  He climbed back into the camper van and soon could be heard banging around in the cupboards. Will turned and saw Jess, still standing there holding the bucket.

  “What are you looking at?” Will snapped. She stared wide-eyed at him without speaking.

  As Will turned away angrily he caught sight of Dad’s keys on the picnic table next to his jacket. He picked them up and opened the locket that Dad kept on the key ring. In the photograph inside Mum was smiling, holding a sunhat on her head to keep the wind from blowing it away. Will remembered that the picture had been taken at the lake, the summer before she died. He remembered how he and Dad had come back to the log cabin from their canoe trip, joking about something or other, and Dad had snapped the picture just after Mum said what are the pair of you laughing about? She was already sick then but she hadn’t told Will or Jess. She’d wanted them all to have one last happy time together.

  He snapped the locket shut and slid the motorcycle key off the ring.

  “I’m going,” he said quietly.

  “Where?” Jess asked.

  “Nowhere. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Don’t go, Will,” she said.

  He ignored her and went over to the motorcycle. Taking hold of the handlebars he lifted the kickstand, then began to push the bike out of the campsite. When he was on the road he looked back at Jess. She was watching him, the bucket still in her hand. She lifted her other hand and waved.

  Will frowned and gave her a quick wave back. Then he turned, broke into a trot, and hopped onto the bike. He’d only ever been allowed to ride it up and down the street in front of their house, under Dad’s supervision, but he had learned enough to start the engine and ride on his own.

  A moment later he was roaring away from the camp. He heard his father shouting his name, but he didn’t look back.

  As Will rounded a long curve he saw another vehicle approaching in the opposite lane, and with a jolt he realized it was a police car. At that moment it occurred to him that he wasn’t wearing a helmet and that he had no licence. He tried to think of a story that might get him out of this mess, but his frantic thoughts wouldn’t latch onto anything. All he could do was keep riding as if nothing was wrong, and a few moments later the police car shot past him. He started to relax a little, thinking he’d been lucky, and then glanced in the rear view mirror.

  The police car was slowing down to make a turn and its red and blue lights were flashing.

  At the back of his mind a voice told him his little adventure was over. He should pull over, stop, and face what was coming to him. But he kept on riding, as if his hands were frozen to the handlebars.

  Then, out of the rain, there were lights by the side of the road. And there was the huge banner, shining eerily in the twilight. Will squinted into the rain and saw it just ahead, the narrow dirt track leading off from the highway down an embankment.

  There was no time to think. He leant into the turn and dived down the track, his one thought that maybe he could reach the parking lot, ditch the bike and hide among all the other people who were sure to be at the fairground. As he passed under the banner he saw that it was badly tattered, the inscription on it faded and almost unreadable. It hadn’t looked like that when he first saw it. He ignored that and peered into the gloom, hoping to see lights ahead, but the dirt track had plunged into dark woods and only grew bumpier and narrower, so that he had to slow right down to avoid crashing into the trees. There were no lanterns. The trees and tall undergrowth on either side leaned in like the walls of a dimly lit cave.

  Will tried to remember where the switch was to turn on the headlight but he was too busy keeping his eyes on the path to search for it. Then all of a sudden he slammed on the brakes.

  There was no more road.

  Ahead of him loomed a wall of leaves and branches. The bike skidded on the wet ground and with a sickening sense of the inevitable Will felt it slide underneath him. Then the front wheel struck something and the bike flipped violently. Will felt himself lifted from the seat and tossed head over heels through the air. He had time to wonder how much this was going to hurt and then he was crashing into a green darkness that swallowed everything.

  If you ever get lost, remember:

  either your map is wrong,

  or the world is.

  — The Book of Errantry

  WILL CLIMBED TO HIS FEET. He felt dazed, and slightly sick, as if he had just been woken suddenly from a deep sleep. He touched his arms, his head. Nothing hurt. There was no blood. Nothing was broken.

  It was dark here under the trees, darker than it should have been, he thought. The rain had stopped, and the air was full of the pungent scent of wet earth. All was quiet. He could hear the wind in the trees, the distant chirping of birds. There was no sign of the motorcycle, but around him were scattered what looked like the remains of an amusement park: wooden stakes in the ground, and bits of rope and shreds of canvas hanging in the trees. Other than that, there was nothing to tell him that he hadn’t landed right in the middle of nowhere. He turned in a circle, not sure which way he had come from or which way to go.

  Then he saw the red and blue lights flickering through the leaves.

  Will turned and ran the other way as fast as he could. It was not easy. The undergrowth grew thick and tangled around him. He was scratched and clawed at by thorns and branches. After struggling for as long as he could he had no choice but to stop and catch his breath. At least the lights of the police car had vanished, but there was still no sign of the fairground. Where were the lights, the tents, the noise and the crowds of people…?

  As he stood there, breathing heavily, he became aware of a faint, far-off sound, a delicate musical ringing like that made by bells or wind chimes. The wind rose and stirred the leaves, drowning out the sound, and Will waited, straining to hear. As the wind fell the sound returned. It was louder now, and it had a tune, Will realized. A slow, enticing melody that rang softly in his ears like a vague memory.

  It had to be the Perilous Realm. He was close. He was almost there.

  He plunged on in what he thought was the right direction, eagerly pushing tall stems and twining branches out of his path. And then in front of his reaching hands there was nothing but empty air. He stumbled forward, nearly falling.

  A wide clearing lay before him, dotted with white flowers that glowed in the fading light of dusk and gave off a sweet, familiar scent. Like the ringing sounds, he knew this scent from somewhere just out of reach of his memory.

  In the middle of the clearing, on a rise, stood a huge tree.

  The tree was cloven almost in two down the middle, as if it had once been struck by lightning. One half was dead, its bare black limbs tangled and twined together like a withered nest. The other half was topped by a vast canopy of bright green leaves stirred by a faint cool breeze and winking in the last golden light of the vanishing sun. Only the lower trunk was whole, its bark thickly gnarled and cloaked in moss.

  Will approached the great tree and stood beneath it. He had found the source of the mysterious chimes. Small shards of glass or metal hung by silver threads from the branches, like strange fruit. As they stirred in the evening wind they jostled one another and were set ringing.

  The world seemed half asleep, as dazed as he felt.

  “I’m dead,” Will said out loud. He wasn’t sure why he said it, or even if he believed it, but the thought gave him a strange feeling of calm.

  As the shards bobbed and
turned he saw his own reflection flit brokenly across their surfaces.

  Mirrors, he realized. There were dozens of them, hanging high and low all over the tree. Some of the pieces of mirror were large and jagged, some slender and delicate, others dark and smoky like volcanic glass.

  He reached out and nudged the three nearest mirror shards in front of him, setting them softly ringing again. The sound they made was beautiful, even more so than he had thought before, but still he felt an uneasy prickling along the back of his neck. Who had hung the mirrors here, and why? He had the urge to turn round and find his way back to the bike, if he could, even if that meant facing up to what he had done. But then he would be leaving the mirrors and their music behind. All at once the temptation came to slip one of the shards off the branch and take it with him.

  He stepped closer and peered at the shards as they turned upon their threads, catching glimpses of his own face. In each shard what he saw was blurred or distorted, like the images in a hall of mirrors. In one his face was long and thin, as though he had been stretched like a rubber band. In another his image was blurred and indistinct, as though he was looking at it underwater. The third mirror made him recoil and then laugh: in it his face had been squashed and warped almost beyond recognition as a face. He looked like some sort of misshapen goblin out of a book of fairy tales.

  Eagerly Will moved away from the first group of mirrors towards the others. He went from shard to shard with the same result, always hazy or ridiculous, until he came to the largest one yet, revolving slowly by itself on its string, untouched by any of the others. Will reached up and took this mirror shard in his hand. This time he did not laugh.

  The face in the mirror was his own, but it had changed in a way unlike the other shards. The hair was longer and wilder than his, the skin was deeply tanned, the mouth set and determined. It was him, but not him. It was a Will Lightfoot who had seen more than he had. More of the world. He had the odd thought that he would like to know this Will Lightfoot.

  The mirror caught a beam of sunlight slanting through the leaves. For an instant Will was blinded by the flash, and when he could see again, what he beheld in the mirror froze him in horror.

  The eyes in his reflected face were someone else’s eyes. Lightless, unwavering eyes that peered at him through the mask that his own face had become. Someone was watching him through his own reflection. And with a terrible certainty he knew that the mind behind the eyes was cold and pitiless, that it had read his thoughts and learnt his name and where he had come from, and knew where he was right now.

  Will struggled to look away, but found himself unable to move, or even shut his eyes. He felt the grip of an iron will that sought to hold him for its own purpose. And yet, even as he fought with it, he was also aware of what was happening around him in the clearing. The sunlight had dimmed and there were sounds now, faint murmurings and whisperings not made by the wind in the trees.

  With a last desperate effort, Will tore his gaze away from the shard and stumbled backwards. He regained his balance, his breath coming in gasps. When he looked round he was startled to see that while he had been standing in front of the mirror – hadn’t it only been a few moments? – twilight had fallen. The clearing was cloaked in blue shadows.

  Will turned in circles, no longer knowing which way he had come. In every direction the woods were dark and uninviting.

  Then he saw the lights. Cold white beams were bobbing and weaving through the trees. It had to be the police, searching for him in the woods with torches. He had no thought of running from them now.

  “I’m here!” he shouted, and started towards them, but halted when he noticed that the lights were acting strangely. They seemed to be moving together, merging, into larger, glowing shapes.

  Will stood transfixed. The lights had merged into three pale figures moving among the trees, slowly approaching the clearing. He stared harder, unsure of what he was seeing. They were people, as far as he could tell, but there was something strange about the way they moved, as if their feet were not touching the earth but flowing over it, like water or smoke. As they approached they became clearer to him, their outlines sharper.

  One was a tall, stern-looking man in a long coat. Another was a girl about Jess’s age, wearing a white dress, her long flowing hair streaming slowly about her, as though she were walking underwater.

  A glad shout of recognition died in his throat. It must be them, but it couldn’t be… He shuddered, without knowing why.

  The third shape remained hazy and difficult to see. It seemed to be a woman in a long cloak or nightgown, but it lingered further away from him than the other two, and he could not make out its features. He was suddenly the most afraid of this figure, and turned away from it.

  There was little doubt now about the other two. Will blinked and stared.

  “Dad?” he said, stepping forward. “Jess?”

  They kept approaching slowly, never taking their eyes off him, though they did not speak. He called their names again with growing unease. As the man and the girl drew closer, he saw that their eyes were fixed on him not with love or even recognition, but with cold watchfulness, like the eyes he had seen in the mirror.

  “Who are you?” he shouted, and fear slid through him like icy water. All at once he knew that these things were not like him, that they were not even beings of flesh and blood. His one thought now was escape, but a strange feeling, like a cold electric charge, was flooding through his limbs. When he tried to move he felt something hindering him, holding him rooted where he was, just as it had been when the eyes had watched him from the mirror shard. He felt a numb paralysis rising through his limbs and he cried out.

  The pale shapes came to a halt. At first Will thought his cry had stopped them, but then he heard another sound, faint but growing louder. A chorus of many voices, high and low, raised in an eerie, ululating shriek.

  The three figures turned in search of the source of the sound, and as they did their bodies and faces seemed to waver, quivering like reflections on water. Swiftly all three began to retreat as one, receding until once more they became dim, smoky shadows and then vanished altogether.

  Whatever power had held Will now let him go, and he sank to his knees, trembling. The unearthly chorus grew louder and seemed to be coming from all directions at once. Will stared wildly around. There was no telling what was about to appear out of the trees. He climbed shakily to his feet, turned and ran heedlessly, thinking only to get away from the tree, the clearing and the impossible things he had seen there. He stumbled headlong through the undergrowth, slapping blindly at the clutching branches in his path.

  When he came out into a more open space he bolted forward, tripped over an exposed tree root and fell heavily to the earth. He lay stunned for a moment, and then as he scrambled to his feet a hand gripped his arm.

  “No!” he shouted, pulling away violently. He twisted round and saw that it was a girl, about his age, in a long, dark red cloak. Under the shade of her hood her eyes glittered like pale green stones. Her hand gripped the handle of a knife that hung in a leather sheath from her belt.

  “Follow me,” she whispered. “Now.”

  “I have to get out of here,” Will said. “I have to—”

  The girl began to speak and then broke off. She raised her head and her eyes darted around, as though she saw or heard something that Will could not. When she turned to him again there was fear in her voice.

  “If you want to live, follow me.”

  With that she turned and started off at a run through the trees. Will hesitated, his thoughts whirling madly, and then he followed.

  Here’s a house with good eating,

  No beating, no meeting

  With enemy’s blade.

  Daylight conceals it, midnight reveals it,

  If you’ve been there, you wish you had stayed.

  — The Quips and Quiddities of Sir Dagonet

  THE GIRL RAN SO SWIFTLY through the shadows that Will began to
wonder if she could see like a cat in the dark. He followed, but it was all he could do just to keep her in sight. The wind strengthened and the air grew sharper. When the clouds parted, stars appeared, more numerous and much brighter than Will had ever seen them at home. After a time he felt a cool breeze on his face, and looked up to see that they had come out of the trees into a wide glade of tall reeds that bowed and whispered in the wind. He could hear the sound of water near by, and soon they came to the bank of a narrow stream that shimmered like a vein of silver in the moonlight.

  The girl found a track beside the water, and they followed it to a narrow stone bridge. Once on the other side they plunged again into deep woods. Here the ground was bare, but rockier, so that Will stumbled several times on protruding stones.

  Finally he could go no further and sagged against a mossy boulder. The girl stopped and came back to him.

  “I just need to catch my breath,” he said sheepishly.

  The girl tossed back her hood and gazed out into the shadows. She stood motionless for a long moment and Will noticed that her clothes looked like the sort of thing people wore in the old olden days. Her long red hair was tied back and held with a silver ring. She took a bulging leather bag from inside her red cloak and handed it to him. He examined it, then glanced questioningly at her.

  “It’s water,” she said. “That’s all.”

  Will pulled out the cork plug, tilted the bag, and drank. The water was ice cold and delicious. He took a longer, gulping swig and then handed the bag back. The girl took a brief sip, wiped her mouth, then looked warily around them.

  “Can you go on?” she asked Will.

  He nodded.

  “I’m fine.”

  From the weathered pack slung over her shoulder the girl produced an object wrapped in a black cloth. She unwound the cloth, revealing a small lantern with diamond-shaped glass panes. She held the lantern up, unlit, and started off again. Will waited a moment and then followed.