Kip & Shadow

by David Pietrandrea

  The eerie silence stretched out.

  “You may speak,” Blackmoor said, but it was a command not an offer.

  Whatever had frozen Kip in place released him.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be this way!” he yelled.

  And it wasn’t.

  “I was supposed to be in love and safe, and have adventures with someone; to see new things and feel new things. I was going to defy odds, and break rules, and be rebellious, and push outward.” A vision of the well reared up in his mind, a black hole tunneling into the earth. “Not be drawn by darkness and follow it down every path. I listened to all the wrong voices, little whispering demons; stupid fucking chattering that won’t leave my head. I was going to feel young. I was going to feel young forever.”

  Kip could have kept going. What reason was there to stop now? He could have let his tirade flow out in an endless sentence, finding every hurt and amplifying it. There was too much to say and he’d run out of words to say it. They cluttered his head, unable to come out.

  Blackmoor’s face was unreadable.

  “Cast off this sorrow, boy! You’re in the middle of a wondrous story and you’re missing it. Look where we are, what we could learn!”

  Kip’s mind swirled. He was looking at man who had tried to kill him, a man who had killed others. A man who couldn’t be trusted.

  And yet.

  “Why would you help me?”

  Blackmoor smiled.

  “I’m not helping you. I’m helping us. The Soul of All Things is the potion that will save us. Leave behind these petty grievances. You think Columbus griped when he discovered the new world? We are fashioned by adversity, sharpened to a point. That’s where we realize our potential. This is greater than you and me, greater than our squabbles, greater than our houses.

  “You want to defy odds, break rules, be rebellious? You want to push outward? Well, do it now, Kip. Do it now.”

  His mind was fractured, competing ideas threatening to pull him apart.

  What if Blackmoor is right? What if it is by working together that we can find the answers?

  “We’re not partners. I won’t trust you.”

  “I don’t want your trust, dear boy. I want your help. And you need mine.”

  They left the cabin and walked onto the deck as Blackmoor lowered the ship back into the water. Kip could see the purple cloud on the horizon, still churning. The Frigatebird dipped as it caught a wave and moved forward again, finding its own course.

  Behind him, the captain’s quarters knitted back together, wood locking into place piece by piece like a puzzle.

  Shadow was silent. He looked up at Kip, stealing glances and then looking away.

  Kip wanted to explain, to soften the moment, but he couldn’t think of what to say. His final objective was all that mattered. Feeling Enos’s warm skin again and hearing the sound of his voice was all that mattered.

  The Soul of All Things was all that mattered.

  The door to the hold opened and Britten and Fairfield climbed onto the deck. Their faces were drawn and they blinked even in the fading light.

  “Have…have we left Surrey?” Fairfield asked.

  “We have a ship to catch,” Britten added.

  It was a loop. An endless loop, Kip thought.

  Blackmoor laughed.

  “Ah, gentle travelers, why don’t you stay a while. Join me and my young companion while we talk.”

  The two nodded like docile animals. They were a small band of adventurers now, Blackmoor’s dinner party on an expedition.

  A chill fell on the ship, coming down in waves as stars appeared. Amelia Britten wrapped her arms around herself as she looked up at the sky.

  “Can’t we go below deck? The world is too big and cold.”

  They sat in a tight circle surrounded by crates and swaths of canvas. Rotting hammocks swayed back and forth. An open trapdoor above them contained the stars in a tight square.

  Lord Blackmoor reached out a cupped hand and made a scooping motion. A ball of flame rolled out from his palm and hung in mid-air. It bobbed lazily, its light coloring their faces. A thin stream of smoke moved upwards and through the trapdoor.

  Kip imagined the sea at night, unseen things moving in the water, driven by primitive impulses, waves tumbling in a pitch black world as the stars wheeled overhead. It felt like the ship was static as the world passed by.

  He looked into one of the crates next to him, digging through chips of sawdust, hoping to find some treasure. Nestled in the bottom was a bottle filled with a cloudy white liquid. He read the label curiously.

  “Coconut wine. Tagaytay, Phillipines. 1865.”

  The space they were in suddenly felt lived-in. This ship has seen other shores and had other adventures. Other passengers have walked its deck and sat in this hold. What did they say to each other then?

  The writing faded, leaving a blank label.

  “Should we offer it to the sea as a libation?” Blackmoor asked.

  Kip thought of the last time they’d shared a drink and the horrible turns that had unspooled from that event. He raised the bottle and tilted it towards the fire, letting the light illuminate it. The milky-white drink came to life, a cloudy living gem. The cork came off with a sharp pop, and he raised the bottle to his lips. The sweet liquid filled his mouth.

  Kip passed the bottle, each person taking it in turn.

  This is an intermission, he thought, the held breath of the Pale World. A ceasefire.

  He caught the way Fairfield and Britten looked at Lord Blackmoor, their faces teetering between distrust and hatred and then melting to a kind of forgetting.

  Shadow had found a bit of canvas and made a small divot in it. He was curled in a ball watching them, Blackmoor’s fire flickering in his eyes.

  They continued passing the bottle long into the night, and with each pass there came a story.

  “I’m here and I’m there,” Fairfield said. “I feel the warmth of the fire and yet part of me drifts in the cosmos, never to come back.”

  Blackmoor watched him as he spoke, his expression unreadable.

  “I was once summoned by the Queen,” Britten said. “They brought me to the Blue Room of Windsor Castle, the very room where her beloved Albert had died. They’d already started calling her ‘The Widow of Windsor’ by then.

  “We tried to contact Prince Albert. I promised her I could peek behind the veil, that there would be some connection. I remember nothing from the incident, but the Queen told me I spoke with Albert’s voice, I moved with Albert’s movements. They say this went on for nearly six hours.

  “I channeled the Prince at different ages, from childhood to his deathbed. They all converged at once. Maybe there are variants of us, all living at once, all moving through time, following our own paths.”

  “Victoria Rex,” Fairfield said, raising the bottle.

  “I hate that idea,” Kip said, sullenly. “I want there to be just one me, one unique incarnation. I want all the joy and pain, tears and laughter to be mine alone.”

  He felt a covetous need to have it all to himself. It was unimaginable to think there were versions of him living more perfect lives. If he let his imagination wander, he could almost feel the imprint of all those Kips, as if their lives transcended universes and he was competing against each one.

  What if they got to keep their Enoses?

  The thought made him sick. There was a Kip waking up next to his lover, breathing in the smell of his skin, planning the day ahead, then the weeks, months, and years to follow.

  “No,” Blackmoor said. “If you’re one of many, or rather, one of an infinite amount, than surely you’re an average. Yes, some Kips may have climbed to greater heights, known more dizzying happiness, but then, by that same measure, some have known more pain, more loneliness, more sorrow. Fear not, you’re merely an average.”

  Kip refused to believe that. His pain was too personal to be shared.

  “You’re Master of Alchemy House, after
all. How badly could you be doing?”

  He wanted to jump across the fire and slip his hands around the magician’s neck, to explain it all to him as he squeezed the life from his body. Instead, he took another swig from the bottle before passing it on.

  “I believed it then and I still do,” Britten said. “The dead never leave us.”

  Blackmoor chuckled. “Maybe they don’t leave. Maybe they’re doomed to live as shades, trapped in some other world. Maybe they repeat the same patterns of their death over and over again until time fades them to nothing.”

  The magician smiled with his mouth and nothing else. His eyes remained two stern glints.

  The bottle came to Kip again and he saw that it was still full. No matter how much they drank, its contents never changed. Maybe we’ll sit here and drink forever.

  His eyes unfocused. Everything was feeling now, feeling and memory. He remembered late nights in London as alcohol amplified everything. Sights, sounds, and emotions all turned up by chemicals. It was an alchemist’s dream, to give over to it.

  And that’s what he did.

  The space between words stretched out until all conversation ended. Britten and Fairfield nodded off. Shadow was breathing heavily.

  The magician studied Kip, his cold eyes catching the dim firelight that lit the hold. The shadows changed his emotions as they moved in and out of the contours of his face, now forming a smile, then a frown, then no emotion at all.

  Trusting him will end in ruin, but if I get just enough of what I want…

  Shadow stirred, opening one eye. He scanned the room, stopped on Kip, then went back to snoozing. Kip, too, was overcome. The bottle of coconut wine rolled gently from his hand as he leaned back on a bit of crumpled canvas, his eyes heavy.

  The ball of fire bobbed as he fell asleep.

  Kip woke to darkness as a voice spoke.

  “Why don’t we go deeper?”

  He rubbed his eyes.

  “Deeper?”

  The silhouette of Lord Blackmoor rose, blocking the square of stars as he climbed the ladder and rose out of sight.

  17

  The wind was biting. It howled over the deck, its sound filling Kip’s ears. The dome of stars overhead looked vast and alien.

  Blackmoor stood at the prow, a darker cut in a dark sky. He spoke slowly, finding his way through some difficult thought.

  “Vorax took something from me, something I can’t quantify. But I also took something from him. I carry your conversations with him in my head. All those hours you spent at the well, pouring your secrets into it. I siphoned off some part of it, some essence. The memories have mixed with mine. It’s an intrusion, an infiltration into my head. I thought it might drive me mad but then I chose to let it in.

  “And Enos, I know him now too.”

  “I wish you didn’t,” Kip snapped. “Those are my memories.”

  “Oh, I didn’t ask for them. My head was crowded enough already. But it’s taught me one thing; this is your world. Or, at least, it’s linked to your unconscious mind. You’re manifesting this.”

  The old man pointed to the horizon.

  “And I have no doubt that whatever lies in that purple light is yours as well.”

  “I would never create this horrible place. I would have filled it with—“

  “Your dreams?”

  “Yes.” My dreams. Every inch of it would be fantasy and visions and life.

  “A world made entirely of dreams is a nightmare.”

  The magician reached out his hand and Kip flinched, pulling away.

  “Let me show you what this world is.”

  He brought a finger to Kip’s temple. A red ember jumped, accompanied by an electric spark. It warmed the side of his head and then sunk beneath the flesh before fading away.

  “You described something to Vorax, something adrift in the ocean.”

  Kip felt a touch of shame as Blackmoor laid bare his thoughts.

  “The Floating Library of Antilla.”

  “Yes, that was it.”

  Tears stung Kip’s eyes. “It was our spot on the map, an imaginary place we were trying to get to. We made it all up.”

  “Let’s go there now,” Blackmoor said.

  Kip looked out over the water. Black waves moved like streams of oil, shining under the stars.

  A tower of fog rose in the distance. It moved in a clockwise spiral, rising slowly upwards as it masked a giant shape. The sky bent around it, making room for this new thing in the world.

  Blackmoor went to the railing. He slipped over the side and into the dinghy, then gestured for Kip to do the same. Kip followed him into the boat, looking down at the black water below. The old man waved a hand at the ropes and pulleys and they moved for him, lowering the boat. The dinghy beat against the side of the ship, keeping a steady drumbeat.

  They hit the water and the magician raised a single hand to take control of the boat. It matched his movements as it flowed through the water, buffeted by magic, and cut a straight line for the tower of fog.

  A glow was trapped inside it, its light catching in the points of the waves and making a great blue column. Something wanted to be revealed, something wanted to struggle out of its cocoon. As the fog cleared, it revealed its secrets.

  The Floating Library of Antilia.

  The sight overwhelmed Kip. His imagination had always been a source of pain for him, delivering images of such beauty that he knew reality could never live up to. But this was different. It was a structure pulled from his fantasy world, fully intact, and somehow exceeding it.

  The Library was made entirely of wood, richly lacquered to prevent water from destroying it. It looked untamed, not shaved down or cut so that you forgot it ever came from a tree. It could have been a Bonsai from the Orient, carefully tended. Kip imagined it being pruned and grown, taking the saltwater it needed to grow its body from the sea. Salt – the essence of the body.

  Thin windows moved in a spiral around it, blue light glowing from each one.

  It is too fanciful, Kip thought. Even for me.

  As they drew closer something knocked the side of the boat, at first a gentle nudge then a more forceful push.

  “What is it, Kip?” Blackmoor whispered.

  Kip ignored Blackmoor as his fear grew. How much of my fantasy has been brought to life? How much of my fantasy can we survive?

  A shape broke the surface, black and oily with pinpricks of glowing light along its surface. It appeared on their right side and then their left. It moved warily, testing this new thing in its grasp.

  “Enos and I imagined a guardian for the library, something to protect all this knowledge.”

  “What did you imagine?”

  “We…we called it the Dark Leviathan of Antilia.”

  “Of course you did,” the magician sighed. “And, in these imaginings, how did you defeat it?”

  “We didn’t. We skipped over that part.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me, either.” Blackmoor brought his fists together and closed his eyes. There was a crackling sound as if something were tearing at the space between his fists, then a burst of hot blue light. It moved like lightning over his flesh, flaring and then retreating again and again.

  He raised his hands in the air, casting the light over the water. The dark shapes retreated, churning in the water as they dove out of sight.

  A moment passed before they came back, now more curious.

  Black tentacles latched onto the stern of the boat. One slid over Kip’s hand. He heard the wood creak under their grip. Water flooded the bottom of the boat, running through cracks in the wood.

  The ocean boiled as a rounded head emerged from the darkness. A row of eyes blinked to life. They were eight black marbles hidden behind blinking gray membranes. The eyes dilated as they took in the curious new thing they’d found.

  Then it opened its mouth.

  It was something born from a nightmare, all its pointy edges intact.

  A horrible shr
ieking came from the open mouth, sending waves up through its flesh. It entranced Kip, like looking into some unending depth. Deeper and deeper it went, past circular rows of teeth. Some inner light glowed through the flesh, moving out of the mouth and then speeding over the body, past black eyes and over gray skin.

  The ship jolted as more tentacles found the boat, locking to its sides with a suctioned grip. The thing lifted them out of the water and tilted the boat towards its mouth.

  The mouth spoke to Kip.

  Come closer, it said. Come closer and stay for a while. There are no problems past these teeth. A mere prick and then blackness; stillness.

  The call of the creature filled one ear, while a screaming voice filled the other.

  Lord Blackmoor.

  “Get down, Kip!” his voice echoed.

  A blast of lightning sped over Kip’s head, making his hair stand on end. It shot into the beast’s mouth. Its eyes widened as it took in the energy. Horrible choking sounds rose up through its gullet, as if the creature were torn between gorging itself or escaping.

  It dove beneath the water to avoid the lightning blast. Its tentacles let go of their hold on the boat. Kip looked over the side to see a thousand glowing spots moving in the water and then spiral out of sight.

  Blackmoor busied himself with some new spell. He bowed his head as the red light burned beneath his eyelids. He grabbed the sides of the boat, his hands looking skeletal and weak. The boat reacted to his touch. It lurched forward and then sped across the water, kicking up sea foam.

  The creature followed their wake. The water swelled to a mound as its massive form broke the surface. Its tentacles pushed it in the water like a great serpent. It’s horrible mouth gaped wide open.

  The Library’s tower swayed overhead as they sped closer. Kip spied an intricate wooden staircase at its base. The tangle of stairs led to a massive wooden door that had a single brass horn in the center of it, in place of a doorknob.

  Blackmoor didn’t slow down. Their boat crashed into the stairs, splinters of wood filling the air. Kip was thrown forward, off the boat, and onto the pier. He flew across its slick surface and crashed into the bottom stair.