A Play of Shadow

by Julie E. Czerneda

“The efflet know. And the little cousins.” Her voice became troubled. “All they’ll tell me is that he—they call it ‘he’—was once here and harmed efflet before crossing into the Verge. Like Wainn, they fear this thing, this hunter, wants to return to Marrowdell. That it would use me, somehow, to do so.”

  Dire didn’t come close. “We mustn’t go, then. We can’t!”

  “We must, Dearest Heart.” Jenn’s chin firmed. “And we will. The Verge is full of dangers we don’t know,” she added, being reasonable when Bannan couldn’t imagine reason being part of this. “This one we do. He won’t—” her voice sharpened, “—come back here.”

  There was no faulting her courage. “Where’s the mirror?”

  “Gone.” With finality. “But the darkness—and the eyes—remain in a shard. I have it.” The shoulder supporting her bag lifted and fell. “I couldn’t leave it at the Emms’.”

  “No,” he agreed numbly. “What should we do with it?”

  “I don’t know. If the hunter can use the shard to spy on Marrowdell, on us, shouldn’t we take the shard into the Verge and leave it there?”

  “And if that’s what he wants?” It came out more harshly than Bannan intended and he gentled his tone. “Forgive me, Jenn, but this is—Werfol and Semyn slept over that thing. I brought it here.”

  “I’m not so sure you did,” she said, touching his hand. “I mean, you did, but—what if there was a wishing involved? Some magic to bring the mirror to Marrowdell?”

  Was it possible? Could an object persuade those around it—Great Gran, himself? Bannan shuddered. “Then we can’t leave it here.”

  And hoped he wouldn’t regret leaving the sword.

  The turn touched the Bone Hills, sliding blue down their flanks. While Jenn, if she was like other turn-born, didn’t need the turn to cross unless moving a wagon or other large object, crossing at other times would catch the attention of the turn-born of the Verge. Like a shout, Mistress Sand had warned her, where a soft voice would be more agreeable.

  Good manners were never wrong, in Jenn’s opinion.

  What was? Wisp wasn’t here.

  Not knowing what else to do, she bent to look inside Wisp’s home of crystal and wood. It was empty but for frozen moss. Straightening, she met Bannan’s gaze. “I was sure he’d be waiting for us.”

  The truthseer shrugged. “We hadn’t told him,” he reminded her.

  It shouldn’t have mattered, Jenn wanted to say, but didn’t. The bond between herself and Wisp was something she’d obviously taken too much for granted; she’d assumed he’d know and be here, ready to help. “I was counting on Wisp to guide us. I don’t know the way,” she admitted. “Not to the turn-born.” Certainly not to the crossing into Channen.

  They had a plan, as much as one could plan for the Verge. Wisp would take them to Mistress Sand, where they’d obtain the mask Jenn needed. Oh, and ask directions to the crossing. It seemed simple.

  Not so, lacking the dragon.

  “It’s all right. We’ll come back tomorrow.” Bannan spoke lightly, but she could see it in his eyes. They’d said their farewells. Firmed their resolve and were ready, now.

  Now it would be. “We’ll cross to Wisp’s sanctuary,” Jenn decided. “We can wait for him there as easily as here.”

  “Or—” Bannan began to smile at something behind her. Jenn turned to see Scourge stepping from behind one of the old trees. “Ah! We’ve our guide!”

  A lip curled. The breeze nipped Jenn’s ears. “I’m to stay with the truthseer,” the old kruar reminded them, sounding thoroughly offended and grumpy to boot. “I’m of no use in the Verge.” He prowled forward, head low. “You prefer the dragon.”

  With a snap. Jenn winced but Bannan’s smile only grew. “Testy testy. You know you want to show him up. Here’s your chance. We need to reach the turn-born.” He shrugged his pack into place. “If you’re nervous, you can stay out of sight.”

  The massive head rose in outrage. “I hide from nothing!”

  Which, according to Wisp, wasn’t true; kruar hunted from ambush. In a sense, Jenn thought, it was more accurate to say they hid from everything. Until they attacked without warning.

  Scourge with them might be a very good thing.

  “Well, then. We’d best get going,” Bannan said cheerfully. “Mustn’t miss the turn.”

  A snort. Then another. Finally, Scourge lowered his head and spun away. Just as Jenn and Bannan exchanged disappointed looks, they heard, “MOVE! We won’t cross here.”

  The truthseer laughed and took her hand, pulling her with him. “You heard the idiot beast!”

  Scourge let himself sink, breaking a trail. They stumbled and ran behind him, Jenn gasping and laughing with Bannan. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed so easily. It should have made it impossible to move faster.

  But once they went between the old trees and found themselves back on the Tinkers Road, she grasped where Scourge led them, and wished to be there.

  And they were.

  Where the road ended at the forest beneath the Bone Hills.

  The turn-borns’ crossing.

  Where the dragon, indeed, waited.

  Scourge stamped snow and glared. “Where have you been, old fool? I had to do your duty.”

  “Hunting.” Something passed between the dragon and the kruar then, something not shared with those on two feet. Jenn knew, because Scourge stilled, muscles tense along the curve of his neck.

  Wisp must have been here awhile. Steam from his breath had melted snow, leaving an adorable but surely uncomfortable icicle on the tip of his snout. She resisted the temptation to run up and hug him. He was a dragon after all, and no less prickly about his dignity than a toad. But she could smile at him, with all her heart, and did.

  Wild eyes regarded her. “You, they will fear,” the breeze said with decided anticipation. The eyes turned to Bannan. “You, they might eat.”

  “No, they won’t,” Jenn countered. “I won’t let them.” She regretted the chill in the air, but on this she was utterly determined. “Bannan will be safe with me.”

  Wisp snapped his jaws, whether in agreement or dispute she couldn’t tell and didn’t care. The icicle broke off, dropping into the snow. “And what Bannan carries?”

  “What I—?” The truthseer took off his pack, resting it on a bent knee. “It seemed heavy, but I thought Tir put in extra food.” He undid the flap and lifted it.

  A house toad blinked at the light, then squirmed with remarkable quickness deeper into the pack, long legs flailing.

  The dragon pounced!

  Bannan shouted as he was knocked aside, snow flying. The pack flew the other way, and the toad, neatly plucked, soared high in the air, then down again, to be caught in Wisp’s jaws.

  Jaws that didn’t close, Jenn saw with relief, but held the toad firmly.

  Bannan, snowier than ever, grimaced as he retrieved his pack. He made a show of looking inside. “Anyone else?”

  “This little cousin was alone,” the dragon told them. He tossed his head to the side and the toad into the snow. “And foolish.”

  Having spread its legs wide before landing, the house toad managed to stay on top of the drift. ~Take me with you, elder sister. I will be useful. I will guard your camp. I will make eggs—~

  Jenn was given no chance to answer. Wisp interrupted, “What of your duty?”

  The toad puffed itself into a joyous ball. ~I was of the homeless, elder brother. I have been gifted with duty to our elder sister. I matter to Jenn Nalynn!~

  She’d her own toad? “I’m—I’m honored,” she told it, though in truth her feelings on the subject were mixed. The little cousins were underfoot and opinionated at the best of times. To have one pay her special attention? Let alone one clever enough to hide in Bannan’s pack? “You aren’t riding in my hair,” Jenn said
hastily, to get that out of the way. There’d have to be more rules. Many.

  Bannan had waited patiently through all this, privy to half of the conversation. “Jenn?”

  “It seems I have my own guardian.” Jenn did her best to look stern. “Who will be staying in Marrowdell.”

  Not happy now. ~Elder sister!~

  “Stay!”

  Scourge snorted. “It’s time to cross.”

  And didn’t that tingle in her very core agree? Wisp disappeared, Bannan, having shouldered his pack, began to walk with Scourge, who headed for the thick mass of tree trunk in front of them as if a door would open.

  One would, Jenn knew.

  ~I . . . will . . . wait . . . ~

  She looked back at the house toad. Having curled in its limbs, it sank in the snow. A thin line of white marked its lips and—were its dark eyes beginning to film over?

  “Leave it,” her dragon whispered in her ear.

  But Wisp liked the cold no better.

  The more she considered the situation, the more she realized there was really no choice at all.

  “Jenn?”

  “Coming!” She snatched up the toad, alarmed to find it felt more like a ball of ice than a living thing, and ran after the others.

  She’d figure out what to do with her newfound “guardian” in the Verge.

  Old trees filled the shadow of the Bone Hill, their thick trunks and intertwined branches forming a wall through which only a bird or squirrel could pass, a wall at which the Tinkers Road came to its abrupt end.

  Bannan waited, hardly breathing, as the shadow lengthened around them, tinted blue over the snow. Small things stirred in the branches high above their heads, like dried winter leaves twisting on twigs. Ylings, curious perhaps, or wary. He hoped they’d show themselves to the boys while he was gone, the dance of the ylings, with their starry hair, being one of Marrowdell’s best secrets.

  Jenn stood beside him, her arms filled with toad. Scourge had given it a disdainful look, but Bannan felt better for the small creature’s company. Homely things, toads, concerned with comfort and safety.

  He watched the turn wash away her rosy cheeks and nose, and take the color from her lovely lips. Watched as her head lifted, hearing or feeling what he could neither hear nor feel.

  She freed a hand as hard as ice within its mitten and he took it without hesitation. “For Lila,” he said huskily.

  The turn-born nodded, and they stepped forward as one.

  Something landed on his head.

  About to strike it away, Bannan felt the pat of tiny hands on his cheek and held still. The yling—for it could be nothing else—slipped inside his hood and settled somewhere in his hair.

  He’d no more time to consider what that meant for the road became silver and soared up into the sky, or did the sky fold itself to meet them? What had been snow, between thuds of his heart, became warm and liquid. Not water, not this.

  Mimrol.

  He stood again within the Verge.

  Silver flowed from his feet, for Bannan stood in the shallows of a lake that caught the colors of the sky and stroked them into long slow waves. To his right, forests of gold and purple rose taller than any trees he’d seen, their uppermost branches bending sharply as if to an endless wind.

  Though the air was still and tasted sour, or was it sweet and did he—? The Verge played with the senses of those not born here. Bannan closed his eyes for an instant, then opened them again, looking deeper.

  Three buildings stood on the shore to the left of the lake, their rooftops sparkling like gems. Around them was a wall of forbidding stone, but no gate barred the wide opening and a road led inside without sentry or watch.

  Turn-born needed none.

  “Warm, isn’t it?” Jenn, already out on shore, was busy removing her winter clothes, rolling them into a tidy bundle. The toad sat nearby, its eyes barely open as if squinting. “Perhaps we can leave all this with Mistress Sand.”

  Bannan found her calm acceptance more startling than the strange world around them. He roused himself to move, stepping cautiously through the mimrol then out on what should have been sand.

  Except that some of it blinked and slid away from his feet, so he moved with extra care. Jenn noticed and a dimple appeared in one cheek. “I do believe they brought me some of that,” she commented. Ah, yes. The turn-born had provided boxes containing bits of the Verge, in hopes one would prove right for Jenn Nalynn.

  Instead, she’d been filled by the sei’s tears. “Do you know what it is?” he asked, curious.

  She shook her head. A single lock slipped out of the tight coils of braids binding her golden hair; presumably Peggs’ best guess at what would pass in Channen.

  Bannan tenderly tucked it behind her ear. “We’re here,” he said with quiet awe.

  “The first step,” she cautioned, but looked pleased.

  His pack safely free of toads, Bannan cheerfully stuffed his coat and other cold weather gear inside. Warm it was, like a summer evening.

  And no brighter. “Is it almost night?” The sky itself had a glow, as if the sun of the Verge hid behind it. As for hiding, there was no sign of either kruar or dragon. Scourge was doubtless close by. Wisp? There was a busy splashing in the lake that could well be an invisible dragon taking a bath.

  While the yling had made itself a nest in his hair.

  ~Marrowdell has night, truthseer, as does the outer world. The Verge dims but never darkens.~

  The voice, more felt than heard, was unfamiliar. Smaller, somehow, than either kruar or dragon, whom he had heard this way before. Bannan paused midway through shedding his vest. “Who’s that?”

  The house toad claiming to be Jenn Nalynn’s opened its eyes. ~It has been long since I’ve been here, truthseer, but I haven’t forgotten.~

  “I can hear you!” Bannan grinned. “Greetings, friend toad.”

  It gave a delicate shudder. ~Little cousin, if you please.~ Within the Verge, the house toad showed its true nature, one he’d only glimpsed in Marrowdell. What had seemed warts were rich gems, wrinkled skin now the finest of mail. Only the eyes remained the same, limpid, dark brown, and huge.

  No, they weren’t the same. Now those eyes held an ageless wisdom, a quiet confidence he’d not noticed before. This was, Bannan decided, no ordinary toad.

  If any were.

  “We should go,” Jenn said. She pointed at the small settlement. “Wisp?”

  Something erupted from the lake, sending droplets of liquid silver glinting into the air. ~I will bring your mask.~

  Her nose wrinkled. “Please ask nicely, Wisp.” She glanced at Bannan. “Mistress Sand couldn’t promise they’d make one for me. I hope so. If not, I’ll simply stay like this.”

  ~Tasty and fragile!~ Scathing that was. ~Would you be bait?~

  “Scourge!”

  “Don’t pay attention,” Jenn said and didn’t appear overly concerned, finding a spot in the sand to sit that neither blinked nor moved. Bannan joined her. After a moment, her hand slipped into his. “It is beautiful here,” she murmured.

  “When things aren’t trying to eat you.”

  “You,” she pointed out. “If anything tries to bite me, I’ll change. But I think we’re both safe here.”

  True, they seemed in no immediate danger. Bannan did what he suspected Jenn was doing, and took a moment to simply realize where they were.

  Not that the Verge made it easy. He could have sworn the sky across the lake had been open. Now, a valley hung over them, a lake at its rocky heart. It was like being in the middle of dueling reflections.

  Or inside a mirror.

  “What is it?” Jenn asked, her fingers tightening.

  “The hunter in the mirror. You haven’t told me what he looks like.”

  “You’ve seen the eyes—” she began.
/>   ~He may not look the same here, elder sister.~ The toad yawned toothily. ~Or may. It’s up to the Verge.~

  How singularly unhelpful. Bannan frowned. “Then how do we watch for him?”

  ~I stand guard.~ The kruar, harsh and determined. ~I will know his stench. It will be of your world and not belong.~

  He’d thought to coax Scourge to return to the boys. This seemed an excellent reason, Bannan realized, to change his mind. Though, “stench?” “Do we—do I—”

  With dark humor. ~I’m used to it.~

  Jenn leaned into his shoulder. Bannan looked down quizzically and she gave him a rueful smile. “Ancestors Blessed and Beloved. When I imagined coming here with you, it was more romantic.”

  He smiled back. “When I’m with you, everywhere is romantic, Dearest Heart.” Then bent to kiss her.

  ~Move! NOW!~

  Bannan scrambled to his feet, Jenn coming with him, and they bolted back to the sand.

  Which blinked in offense and slid away, tipping them together.

  Recovering his balance, holding Jenn, Bannan looked around, heart pounding. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  The toad hadn’t budged.

  Scourge’s ugly head appeared beside a purple tree trunk. ~Practice,~ the kruar announced slyly, then disappeared.

  Heart’s Blood. The truthseer glared where he thought the kruar likely was, not that glaring would bother the creature. After a moment, he shook his head. “We deserved that,” he admitted. “This is no place to let down our guard, Dearest Heart.”

  Nor would Channen be any safer.

  ~They are not allowed!~

  Wisp narrowed his eyes as grit blew around the turn-borns’ courtyard and waited for the source of the little storm to subside. Riverstone stood with his arms crossed, Sand next to him, looking no less furious. Her little dog Kaj ran around barking while the turn-born known as Flint and Clay watched from a doorway.

  There were three missing: Tooth, Fieldstone, and Chalk. The terst turn-born took their names from what filled their hollow bodies, materials taken from the girl’s world. By that, she could be called “A Sei’s Tears,” a name sure to terrify.