ARC: Shadowplay

by Laura Lam

  Maske harrumphed in consternation, but he closed his eyes.

  A long moment passed. Cyan grew paler.

  “You’re not imagining your fondest memory at all,” Cyan admonished. “You’re wondering if the screws you bought will fit the mechanism of the–”

  “Enough!” he cried, shaken. “A lucky guess.”

  Cyan smiled weakly. Focusing on Maske, her father, even if he did not know it, seemed to bring her further to herself. “Then try again. Think of your favorite memory.”

  Maske took a deep breath. He closed his eyes.

  “You’re in your workshop. You’re younger. Your hands are unlined, and you don’t have the scar on your left thumb. You’ve created a little automaton. It swings from a little trapeze. Its motley is gold and silver.”

  Maske’s eyes opened, rounded in surprise. Cyan met his eyes, exhaustion in every feature. Drystan and I gawped in amazement as well before exchanging a glance. He made a trapeze artist that wore motley?

  “Will this… kind of vision happen to you if you attempt another séance?” Maske asked, his voice wavering.

  “I don’t know.”

  I was coming back to myself more with each passing minute. Anisa was behind this. She had grown impatient and wanted to speak to me, and to prove her point she had dragged Cyan into it.

  Cyan stared at Maske. She was still pale, her hair matted with sweat against her forehead. But she was desperate to ask him something else, I could tell. What had she seen in his mind?

  Perhaps it was for the best that I could not read minds as she could. I doubted I would be able to show any such restraint.

  “You should rest,” Maske said. You’ve overstressed yourself and we all have… much to think about.”

  Maske helped Cyan stand and totter to bed. She looked back at me. I nodded. I had seen everything she had seen. I had watched her die in another’s body. That tied us together in a way that could not be broken.

  I started shivering and I couldn’t stop.

  “Micah?” Drystan asked.

  I did not answer, my head bowing to my chest. Drystan carried me to the loft. All energy left me, and I still did not feel entirely like myself. I could still sense the phantom wings against my back, and catch the echo of iridescence on the skin of my arms.

  “What’s happening to me?” I moaned.

  “What do you mean, Micah?”

  I tried to answer him, but my tongue was a slug in my mouth and would not move. My eyelids fluttered. Don’t faint, I pleaded with myself. Not again. You’re not a fainting maiden.

  I felt a sudden stirring of dread. I heard the plumbing of the upstairs bathroom rattling the walls.

  “Cyan,” I tried to mutter, and made my uneven way to the door. Drystan helped me, sensing my unease. The door to the washroom was locked. I looked at Drystan mutely. He ran to fetch his lock pick and within a moment the door opened.

  The bath was running. Cyan lay slumped on the floor against the tub, still fully clothed, eyes closed. Drystan turned off the water and I checked her pulse and color.

  “She is not well,” I said, alarmed at how the whites of her eyes were yellow when I pulled back the lids. “She needs a doctor.”

  Drystan nodded and dashed from the room.

  “Cyan,” I said, slapping her cheek gently. “Come on, Cyan.”

  She opened her eyes but they couldn’t focus.

  Maske came and carried her like a child downstairs. She wrapped her arm around him. “Daddy,” she moaned, piteously, and my heart went out to her. She spoke the truth and he did not recognize it.

  “Don’t tell them what happened,” I said to Maske.

  Maske hesitated, but he nodded.

  And then they were gone.

  “So cold…” I muttered, still swaying. Drystan rubbed his hands against mine, but I only shivered all the more.

  “OK,” he said, and threw me over his shoulder, bringing me back to the bathroom. Dimly, a part of me was insulted by this treatment. He turned the water on again, the tub half full of steaming water. He stripped me down to my under-garments, chafing my arms, hands, legs, and feet. Another part of me was touched and embarrassed in equal measure.

  Without ceremony, he placed me into the tub. I gasped with shock, sputtering. My limbs tingled like they were recovering from frostbite.

  I sagged against the tub and rested my hands against my temples.

  “Micah, what is going on?” Drystan asked, stroking my hair back from my face.

  “I don’t know.”

  He perched on the edge of the tub. “You do know.”

  He was right. I did. Well, almost everything. I left out the previous visions with Anisa. I intended to tell him. The words were in my head, but when I told the story, the tale slipped past those visions. I frowned and tried again, but the same thing happened. Drystan held the back of his hand against my cheek, checking to see if I was fevered.

  So I told him only of the most recent vision, skimming over some of the details, and made it seem as though it was the first time it had happened. Drystan put together a few of the pieces on his own.

  “The dragonfly woman… was she like the Phantom Damselfly from the circus?”

  “It was her.”

  “And you and Cyan both had the vision?”

  “Yes.” I hoped she was alright.

  “Lord and Lady,” he breathed.

  We stared at each other in silence. “Come on, help me out. I’m warm enough, now.”

  He did, and we both paused when I was out of the tub. His eyes were on my face, but I knew he sensed my body so close to his. Still, I hesitated. My mother had made so many comments about how no one could see my body, no one could know…

  His arms slid around me, even though I was slippery. He drew me close and I clutched him, comforted by his solid presence. Through his damp white shirt, I could see the outline of his muscles and the pink blush of his nipples. With a burst of bravery I did not know I had, I pulled his shirt off, gasping at the feel of his skin on mine, only the Lindean corset separating us.

  My lips left his and worked their way to the soft skin of his neck and he gasped. We were frightened, me by what I had seen and Drystan by what he had watched me go through. We kissed and touched each other, exploring a little more than we had before, but both of us kept our trousers on. As I ran my fingertips over his skin, I felt the last tatters of Micah Grey come back to me. Drystan centered me. No matter how much we scrabbled for purchase, our world continued to crumble about us. So we held onto each other and let the world fade away.

  21

  CONFRONTING THE CHIMAERA

  “In all these many years, we have found no archaeological evidence of either Alder or Chimaera bodies. No graveyards. No mummies found in ice. No bones. Only Vestige, as if one day they all left. It is a small wonder that many believe the Chimaera never existed at all. Sometimes, in a darker mood, I wonder that, myself.”

  Unpublished article by Professor Caed Cedar.

  Cyan returned from the doctor’s a few hours later, pale as milk, and went straight to bed.

  “How is she?” I asked Maske.

  “Faint, but she should be fine within a day or two.” Outside her door, he held up a hand. “Come. Time you told me what’s going on under my roof.”

  Nerves sent a shiver down my spine. He led us to the library. I curled against the seat cushions gratefully, for I still felt as weak as a newborn kitten. Maske folded his fingers in front of his face, his eyes piercing and unreadable.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  I took a breath. We hadn’t told him initially, and I still didn’t really want to tell him now. It made it feel too real.

  “Cyan and I had a shared vision. We don’t know how or why.” Though I had my suspicions.

  “What did you see?”

  I told him the tale. As with Drystan, I made no mention of the earlier visions. I couldn’t.

  “As well as reading minds, Cyan has a sort of prescience, then
? But of the past?” He was animated, but not as surprised as I would have thought. I peered at him. Here was a man who had seen much that could not be explained.

  “We don’t know. Have you ever known anything like this?”

  “I met a woman once, who seemed as if she could read my mind. I volunteered for a mentalist show. You already know that, for mentalist shows, a magician phrases a question a certain way, giving hints. This mentalist guessed without the magician asking her a single question. Could be they had an advanced system or a hidden earpiece, but part of me wanted to believe that it was… magic. Funny, isn’t it? I’m a magician, and I know the secrets to almost every trick ever performed. But I’m always hoping to stumble upon a little bit of real magic. And magic was right under my nose. In both of you.”

  “It’s not Micah,” Drystan said. “Just Cyan.” He gave me a warning look. I looked away, guilty.

  “Micah saw the vision, too.”

  “She let go of our hands, but not Micah’s,” Drystan said. I bit my lip, feeling like we were spilling Cyan’s secrets without her permission.

  “When you came back, you said something about Chimaera. You said “we”.” He missed nothing, the old card sharp.

  “I was… confused. From the vision,” I said, hoping I sounded convincing.

  He let the subject drop. A gleam came into his eyes. “Is there a danger of such a thing happening again, or can we harness it? Think of it, for both our séances and the magic show. There is a way to use this to beat Taliesin.” He rose and paced, his eyes alight with planning and cunning.

  “Wouldn’t that be cheating?”

  “Pah!” he laughed. “If it takes a little cheating to beat him, then so be it. I doubt he’ll be so scrupulous.”

  “Do you really want to beat him by cheating?” At the look on my face, his pacing slowed.

  “No.” He sighed. “Not at all.”

  “Right.” My eyes narrowed. “Cyan nearly died tonight. Do keep that in mind.”

  His chest puffed in rage. And then, he deflated. “You’re right, you’re right.” He rubbed his face with his hands.

  Maske left, his footsteps heavy in the foyer. Drystan stared into the banked coals of the fire, looking almost as tired as I felt. His hair fell into his face.

  It was late and I wanted to sleep. But I feared the dreams I might have.

  Neither of us spoke, each with our own thoughts. When we went to bed, I stared at the ceiling until Drystan’s breathing evened in sleep.

  I crept down to Cyan’s room, the Phantom Damselfly disc in the pocket of my coat.

  She opened the door before I could knock, motioning me inside. Dark circles bruised under her eyes. I had not been in Cyan’s room before. She had pinned Temnian wax-dyed cloth on all the walls and the ceiling, which made the room feel like a circus tent. From the light fixture in the center of the room she had hung prayer scrolls – ribbons printed with prayers in Temri script. The room smelled of orange oil and incense.

  I sat on the rickety rocking chair by her bed.

  “You saw everything that I did, didn’t you?” Cyan asked me without preamble.

  “You know I did.”

  “What does it mean? Was it real?”

  “I think it was an echo, or an old recording played. I think it happened, but long, long ago.”

  “I remember dying.” Her voice collapsed.

  “I know,” I said. “I don’t think you’d ever forget something like that.”

  She took a shaky breath. “Why are you here?”

  “To give you answers. I don’t have them all, but I have a few.”

  She covered her mouth with her hand. “Will the answers frighten me?”

  “Probably.”

  She put her head in her hands. “I don’t want this. I just want to be normal.”

  I drew the Phantom Damselfly disc from my pocket.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  The disc warmed in my hands. “Anisa,” I said.

  Cyan’s mouth dropped open as she recognized the name. I pressed the button and set the disc down, and the tower of smoke swirled in the middle of Cyan’s room.

  The smoke cleared and Anisa materialized, her wings flickering to life. Cyan cried out in fear, looking between us. She recognized the damselfly – how could she not? Those hands had cupped her cheek as she died on the floor of Penglass in another land and another time.

  I should have warned her, but I did not know how. I should have tried though – it was cruel to shock her so. I was unnerved to see Anisa again as well. I had been her three times now, in visions so clear they felt almost more real than my actual life.

  “Anisa,” I said again.

  “Little Kedi,” she greeted me. She never called me Micah Grey, or any of my other names. Her gaze fell upon Cyan. “The one who was Matla.”

  Cyan stood and backed away until she reached the wall.

  “I am not Matla,” she gasped.

  “This I know. But you saw what she saw.” Her eyes fell back to me. “Just as you have seen through my own eyes, little Kedi.”

  I took a shaking breath. “Why did you show us this?”

  “There is no one else to show you. Almost all of us are gone now. Some return. Here and there, scattered among the Archipelago.” Did she speak of people who could do the things that Cyan and I could, or did she mean more discs that contained ancient Chimaera?

  “Why?” I repeated.

  “So that you would learn what happened to your kind. And so you might learn what could happen again, if a certain man has his way. All is at stake. All might be lost.”

  “I do not see what this has to do with us,” Cyan spoke, her voice high but steady.

  “In all the many years I have waited, you two are the only ones I have sensed that could hear me that could also help me.”

  My breath caught. “But… there must be others. There has to be.”

  “None that I would trust.” She held her arms out to us. “You two are children almost grown. Your hearts have not hardened to the realities of the world. Your dreams have not fallen through your fingers. You still know hope.”

  “We are not children,” I said, my voice shaking with a sudden anger. “We have both left everything we’ve ever known. My parents lied to me and Cyan’s fear her.” Cyan flinched, and I felt a stab of guilt at my words. But anger spurred me on. “My first love is dead because of me. Cyan has seen horrible things in people’s minds. Don’t call us children.”

  She held her hands up in amused supplication, the ghost of a smile playing about her lips. “To me, you are children, and you would be if you were wrinkled as grandparents. I have lived a hundred lives. I have lost my love many, many times, and sometimes in ways far worse than either of you could ever imagine.”

  “Please.” The word tore from my mouth, ragged as a shard of glass. “What do you want from us?”

  “We have to stop the man who wants to take away what has begun to flourish again. To kill the Alder’s dreams.”

  “Not the dreams of all the Alder,” I muttered.

  “No. Not all of them,” she agreed. “Not the Kashura. They considered the Chimaera an abomination. A man is forming his plan. And he will eradicate the new Chimaera. Like you,” Anisa said.

  “Who is this man?” I asked.

  “I do not know. He hides from me.”

  “We’re not Chimaera,” Cyan said, gesturing to her body. “We’re human. We have no horns like that creature in your vision.”

  “You know little of how the world was.” She held out her hand and created an illusion. An image of an Alder appeared, hovering over her hand. Long limbs, large eyes, no hair. “The Alder made humans first.” A little human appeared over her other hand.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “As slaves.”

  My breath hitched in my throat.

  “But humans were weak. They lived a few scant years, succumbed to illness. Some Alder decided to make beings that were more like themse
lves. And so they created Chimaera. But what has been lost to history is that there were two strains of Chimaera.” She balled her hands into fists and the little Alder and human disappeared. She held open her palms again. A creature who looked not quite human and not quite Alder appeared on one hand. The proportions were almost human, but the eyes too big, the cheekbones too high, the lips too small. On the other hand was a damselfly, a self-portrait in miniature.

  “They made Chimaera who looked human, the Anthi, and who looked hybrid, the Theri. The Anthi came first, and in them the Alder instilled abilities like they had. Now, when your historians study ancient statues and see one with no scales, no wings, no horns, they think, ‘they must be human, and not Chimaera,’ but there were Anthi with abilities and power, and the odd Theri with none.”

  “So I’m not human?” Cyan gasped.

  “I do not know,” she said gently. “You two are different. The Anthi looked similar to me.” She gestured to the little illusion hovering over her palm and then at her longer neck, her high cheekbones. “But I was not privy to the Alder’s secrets. None of the Chimaera or humans were.

  “And so you will help me stop him, for there is not much I can do.” She indicated at her insubstantial body.

  “And why should we?” I asked.

  “Why, I should think that would be obvious. For he will come for you, too.”

  I swallowed. Cyan turned gray.

  “So what should we do?”

  “For now, nothing. He has not started yet. But when the time is right, you will know. And I can only hope you fare better than Matla and I, all those years ago. I am glad I called to you.” She nodded. “You will help me. And all will be well.”

  “Called to us?” I asked, dread like a stone in my stomach.

  “Surely you guessed, little Kedi?”

  The air left my lungs. “Guessed?”

  “Do you know why you went down to the beach that night, the night you found the circus?”

  “Because… I love the ocean,” I said, faltering.

  “I called to you and you heard me. It was soft as a whisper, but you felt it. I thought you would come to me, that first night in the circus, but you came to me the next night. You were so frightened.”