Kip & Shadow

by David Pietrandrea

  Kip shifted, reached out his hands and found a rocky surface. He knew these stones, knew every crack and imperfection of them. It was the bottom of his well.

  The stones made a wall. He crouched in front of it and found his fists, locked into two white muscles. He beat them against the unforgiving surface. One hit after another, and with each hit a cry. If he could just batter himself against this wall, give himself to it, kill himself with it.

  “If I could just join Enos!” he screamed.

  The words flew upwards, like a bat up a chimney, leaving silence behind.

  Two lights ignited in the blackness, and Kip felt Shadow’s eyes on him; two questioning orbs, and the thought, again, What is this thing? Is it really a childlike shadow, or much more?

  The eyes studied him with deep intensity, assessing, judging maybe.

  “Does Kip want to join Enos?” the creature asked.

  Kip slumped back, resting on his legs. His back felt like it would break, his fists throbbed. He looked down at his knuckles. Blood flowed, seeping from dozens of cuts. It looked black in the half-light of Shadow’s eyes.

  “I don’t know,” Kip whispered. “I don’t know anything. I should kill myself, rather than live alone in that house up there, rather than sleep in an empty bed, and never laugh again.”

  “Blood is traded for death,” Shadow said, “in one way or another. Blood is the coin for the ferryman. Does Kip want to pay the ferryman?”

  Kip thought he could smell the blood on his hands, the coppery scent of life. He started to wipe his hands together, smearing the blood over his knuckles, turning his palms up, blood filling the lines on the white pads of flesh.

  “Just answer this, Shadow,” Kip said softly. “Is there a point to any of it? I don’t pretend I’m asking any questions that haven’t been asked a thousand times by greater minds than mine. But no one’s answered them, have they? Not really. Socrates, Plato, Aquinas. I…I can’t not know anymore.”

  “Alchemy is transmogrification,” Shadow said.

  Kip heard a voice in his head, half-Shadow’s and half-someone else.

  Recall the tria prima. List them for me now.

  “Mercury, sulfur, and salt.”

  And what do they denote?

  “Spirit, soul, and body.”

  Correct.

  Shadow spoke. “Kip looks for death, doesn’t he? Why?”

  “Because…I have to find meaning. I have to find signs and symbols that give life meaning. If a black cat isn't bad luck; if a bird in the house doesn’t mean death…”

  Kip stopped, his eyes finding the ground.

  “What then?” Shadow asked.

  “Then it’s all meaningless, isn’t it? All random. Then there’s no lifeline to the afterworld. No hope of seeing him again. And all of this was for nothing. You find a belief system, thinking it’s done out of wisdom, after careful observation of the world.”

  Shadow made a remote purring sound deep in his throat. Kip had observed it before and knew it to be a sign of the creature’s empathy. It soothed him.

  “We look for meaning to give order.” Kip held up his hand and clenched his fist, blood dripping from the folds of skin. “To hold on tightly to a mad world.”

  Shadow raised his hand to match Kip’s, opening his fist, splaying his short fingers and pushing their palms together.

  “Can you even understand, Shadow? They say if you could teach a lion to speak English, we still wouldn’t understand each other, so different are our experiences. You’re a creature of the underworld, aren’t you?”

  “Shadow’s from behind the veil, yes.”

  “So how can you understand these things?”

  “Does Kip want to join Enos?” Shadow asked again, just as patiently as before.

  Kip nodded.

  “Blood pays for the passage.”

  Kip opened his hands again, marveling at the amount of blood there. There was so much in the human body, and yet so little. So little could be spent and still bring death.

  He could see the red water in the Three Nymphs Fountain. There had been so much blood then, too. So much blood.

  He looked at the curved stone wall of the well, illuminated by Shadow’s eyes. He wondered how he could have willed this thing to exist, what gave him the right?

  “Alchemy is transmogrification,” he whispered, then placed his open palms against the stone. A pulse of light shown around the edges of the rock. It flared and rippled upward. A low rumble filled his ears.

  A section of the wall moved away, each stone separating until they floated into a void beyond. There was a dizzying order to it, like watching a puzzle fly into place, each stone moving with purpose. Piece by piece they formed a bridge. It hovered over a blue-black chasm. The new construction snaked out of sight, wrapped in fog.

  The path called to Kip, begging him to put one foot in front of the other; to cross into the unknown world beyond. He felt Shadow behind him, gently nudging the back of his leg. Kip placed a bloodied hand on the newly-made archway, and patted the stone gently.

  Maybe I’m saying goodbye to Alchemy House, to the well, to London.

  Maybe.

  He crouched and grabbed the leather straps of his green bag, then slipped an arm inside each loop so that it hung from his back.

  Kip took a tentative step forward.

  He passed through a film of blue light hanging in the air. He could feel it pass through him, feel it touch every bit of him. It ran through his blood, snaking along veins, climbing inside bones, and invading every cell.

  He had the sense that he was floating above himself, watching his entrance into this new world. Shadow pattered at his side, his smoky tail wagging back and forth.

  The bridge stretched into the shadows, hovering over the blue-black chasm. The darkness was so vast that it overwhelmed the mind. It was too big to be afraid of. Still, it drew his attention with every step, and he wondered what it would be like to simply fall and meet it. Were there stars trying to break through that abyss, pinpoints of light trying to escape its gravity?

  Shadow, maybe sensing the pull of the chasm, nudged Kip again.

  “Don’t look down,” he whispered.

  Kip risked a look behind and saw the column of the well, now broken at the bottom, stretching up into a gray sky, like a chimney. He thought of the voice and their hours of conversation and it seemed like a dream from another life.

  The voice stood where I’m now standing, sharing its bizarre thoughts and questions. And now it’s waiting for me, somewhere in this strange land.

  The bridge began to merge with the land beyond, blending the well-stones into darker earth. They were on solid ground now, leaving the floating stones behind. The texture felt odd. It had an uneasy give to it as if even the ground were not fully-formed.

  Images flashed beneath his feet; signs of life trapped in obsidian, blinking in and out of existence.

  Their path sloped down into a shallow valley, surrounded by giant stones on either side. They reached up like massive ribs only half-excavated from the ground, some slumbering stone beast left under the earth. They moved between the shadows the stones cast.

  Crossing a shadow was like entering a small patch of night. Kip thought he saw pale stars in the brief darkness, twinkling as part of some alien constellation.

  “Something’s wrong done here,” Shadow said. “Can Kip feel it? Something’s been agitated.”

  “I…I don’t know. I don’t what it’s supposed to feel like.”

  “This place should be calm and quiet. But the energy here…”

  Shadow stopped and placed an open palm on the nearest rock. Kip was sure he saw a blue pulse shoot away from the creature’s hand, a small tongue of lightning rippling away.

  “…it’s all wrong. It’s conflicted. Angry.”

  It was ‘angry’ in London too, angry outside Alchemy House. Blackmoor has done something. I’ve done something.

  The path began to rise again, lifting to a flattene
d plain. The ground turned to crude stairs that looked like they were newly formed, pushed up by the shifting of the earth.

  Their way was blocked by a wall of gray cloud. It was a silent hurricane. Lightning moved inside it but with no sounds of thunder. Darkness rolled and crashed.

  The beating of drums.

  The clouds gathered like black cloth, weaving layer after layer into a new shape. Kip caught a glimpse of a figure in the eye of the storm, arms outstretched. It was quickly obscured as a new shape took form.

  At first only a silhouette, a perfect black cut-out. Then features began to appear. Two large blue eyes shone from its head. They swirled with thought, the threads of a mind weaving together.

  I can finally see you, human boy. I can see you with human eyes.

  Black horns emerged from its forehead, poking through the dark skin. There was a wisp of smoky white on its crown. It wavered like the trail of an extinguished candle.

  A piece of Blackmoor.

  The thing was wrapped in a cloak, more shadow than fabric. It pooled on the stone ground, moving with its own life, losing focus as it faded and reappeared.

  This was his voice in the well, the ear that he’d poured his sorrows into night after night. The thing that knew all the intimate parts of him and had listened so greedily.

  The thing that wanted to be alive.

  It had taken Lord Blackmoor and wrapped him in a shroud.

  “You’ve come,” the thing said, a paper cut of a smile on its face. “You’ve transcended worlds to be here.”

  10

  Kip climbed the last steps and stood on the landing before the creature. Shadow stayed a few paces back, peering at the apparition from behind Kip, his head popping out and back as if he couldn’t bear to look.

  The thing towered over them, smiling and smiling.

  “Call me…Vorax,” it said, as if the thought had just occurred to him.

  Kip remembered Lord Blackmoor using the word.

  “Latin?”

  “Yes, Latin. It means to be ‘gluttonous, voracious.’ To eat greedily, swallow up, consume, gorge oneself. That is my aim and desire.”

  Still the smile.

  Its voice moved in and out of Kip’s head, half-spoken and half-thought.

  To unhinge my jaw and consume every bit of the world, to feel its life running through me, over me.

  “But come, this is not the place for such talk.”

  Vorax gestured, a wide sweep of his arm. Kip followed his direction and saw, for the first time, a full table setting. It had appeared under the gray sky, fully-formed, and all of it a mockery of Lord Blackmoor’s dinner.

  “Is this acceptable?”

  Is this how it’s done, Kip?

  Everything was obsidian. A jet black table with ornate legs anchored to the ground, or absorbed by it; ebony-colored plates and dinnerware on its surface. The Plateau de Délices was made of thorny vines, tamed to hold the various foods on offer, all of them as black as the rest of the setting.

  Kip approached the table.

  He wants me to play his little game, he thought. He wants to talk, to do what he thinks humans do.

  Kip took a seat in a thorn-backed chair at one end of the table as Vorax mirrored him, sitting at the opposite end. There were three goblets, their glass etched with a smoky blackness. They filled themselves as liquid flowed from the bottom of the glass.

  Kip looked at the third place-setting to his right and knew it wasn’t meant for Shadow, but for some new surprise, some new thing to endure. Shadow sensed the tension and gave a weak moan from his place at Kip’s feet.

  “Are we expecting another guest?”

  Vorax smiled a head-splitting grin; black teeth in a black head.

  “Only honored guests, my friend. Someone who has earned a place among us, someone who binds us together.”

  A shape appeared on the horizon, a simple hazy blotch. It moved with a steady but flat gate as if it struggled to find life. Step by step it came, and Kip felt his heart quicken. He wanted to escape. He would have given anything to run from the table and back to his well, to climb its stones and be safe again. This world was too big.

  The form approached, birthed from the haze and shadows.

  Enos stepped up to the table.

  Kip’s vision blurred. The world was a tunnel now and Enos was at the end of it. Everything else was a fog. He could hear the blood pulse through his head as it made its way to his eyes, enriching this vision before him.

  Enos was robbed of all color. No red blush under his tanned cheeks, no glint of green in his eye. His hair, once like a raven’s wings, was the color of ash.

  This place has burned him out. Is this what death is? Kip thought.

  “You may sit,” Vorax said to the apparition.

  Enos didn’t sit so much as vaporize into his chair, standing one moment, then, in a swirl of shadow, sitting the next. He stared straight ahead, unseeing, unmoving, his hands folded in his lap.

  There was so much for Kip to say. The words stacked one on top of the other until they crashed together, leaving him speechless. He settled on the simplest thing he could find.

  “Hello, Enos.”

  But there was no response, just a silent gaze.

  Vorax cleared his throat. Kip could be on him in a second, his hands around his neck. He hated how intimately this shade knew him, how naked he was under his stare.

  Vorax sensed the threat and smiled.

  “I know every piece of you, Master Kip. There’s no need for such anger, such fanciful notions as revenge.”

  His smile faltered as something crept over his face. His hands gripped the table, black claws digging into the surface. His features boiled as he lost control.

  Something lurked just beneath the surface. Kip caught a glimpse of it before Vorax buried it again. It was like looking through black ice; Lord Blackmoor incased in the dark folds of Vorax’s body.

  The creature composed himself.

  “You don’t approve?” he asked. “Hades was a gentleman, to be sure, but he lacked barbarism; he lacked the brutality of death. You don’t let Persephone get away. You grab her by the throat and you squeeze.”

  “Winter all year long,” Shadow whined quietly.

  “Lord Blackmoor is the coal that will drive my engine. I’ve learned so much from him already. He feels different from you. Are you all so different? He wants to hurt people.”

  “And so do you.”

  The smile again. The black teeth and gray mouth.

  “The Gods of Death are long since gone. I’ll take my piece of it while I may. Death used to mean something, Master Kip. It used to have an agenda. It shaped the fortunes of man, directed the arc of history. What would Isolde have been without the death of Tristan, or Arthur without Mordred’s embrace? What are men without death to smash themselves against?

  “Now death is the stuff of blind chance, a gutter that consumes the living without purpose. A hero may die with the same carelessness as a serving wench. A child dies of plague; an infant of typhoid. These deaths mean nothing, they don’t move the world, they don’t incite great deeds or a noble history. In the coming century, do you know how many will be pulped meat, dragged beneath the wheels of death’s handiwork?

  “If I could walk with humans for a while, learn their wants, see the structure of your new world, I could see my place in it again. I could give meaning to all this.”

  “We both know what you want.” Kip spit the words out. “You’re no different than Lord Blackmoor. All the thought and eloquence, when all you really want is dominion, to leave this place and take your corruption to my world.”

  What does it feel like to be alive?

  Vorax’s eyes blazed, the blue burning so brightly that it turned to a hot white. Something that looked like pain filled the two orbs. There was a quick stabbing motion as his body mutated again, pushing out in all directions. The layers of Vorax peeled away like a desiccated cocoon to reveal the shape of Lord Blackmoor.
>
  Was he trying to speak? His mouth moved feebly, the skin pulling oddly away from bone. Any words that would have come were quickly cut off as Vorax snapped back to life, encasing Blackmoor again. His mouth yawned as blackness filled it. The magician’s eyes were masked by pools of blue.

  Kip gave a sideways glance towards Enos. Did any of this affect him? His beautiful eyes, once so full of life, were dimmed to nothing; two black peach pit eyes. Kip thought he could hear a constant murmuring, almost mantra-like, coming from his lover, but he couldn’t be sure.

  He wanted to reach out his hand and feel the familiar folds of his palm, to hold him even if just for a second.

  “There is only one thing to want,” Vorax said. “One thing that I desire: the antidote for death, the elixir of life. The Soul of All Things.

  “We’re both children of the in-between now, Master Kip. If I’m to transcend this world I’ll need more than just shadows, I’ll need flesh and bone. I’ll need a vessel.

  “You will stay here. You will make this liquid gold for me and I will transcend this place. It’s what you’ve always wanted. You wished for this place, whether you knew what you wished for or not. This is the laboratory you dreamed of; a world of elements, of raw material to work with.

  “Take your longing, all your pain, and spin it into reality.”

  Kip stared out at the horizon and saw a shard of silent lightning strike in the distance. He imagined the threads of light it would send across the ground and the scar it would leave. The way it would transform sand to glass, nature’s own alchemy.

  Vorax knew the map of his heart, who better? He’d communed with this thing and spilled all of his secrets.

  “And why would I do this?” Kip asked.

  “It’s been the driving force of your life. To bring back your beloved.” He gestured towards Enos who was sitting with his same eerie silence. “This is your moment. Blackmoor gets his wish, to know the secrets of death. I get to know the secrets of life. I get to wrap myself in the organic forms that you prize so highly. And you, you get your Enos. Raise the dead, Kip, raise the dead and realize your purpose.”