Kip & Shadow

by David Pietrandrea

  “Kip,” he whispered.

  It was his last word.

  There was nothing grand that took Enos from him. There was no epic meaning, no import. It was a pedestrian death, if a death could be called that. It was as common as any other violence, and just as final.

  Kip watched all this again with horror. It was so familiar now that it felt like a part of him. It might have been tattooed on his flesh for all to see.

  He watched himself cradle Enos’s dead body. His lifeblood spilled into the fountain and swirled with the water creating small whirlpools of red.

  Then something else came forward.

  A thin stream of watery light flowed from Enos’s cracked skull, like a piece of liquid silver. It shimmered in the water, changing from blue to white, its refractions like small spider webs knitting together below the surface. The fountain was illuminated as the light filled it.

  Kip stepped forward. They were the most difficult steps he’d ever taken, returning to the scene that had torn down all the structures of his life; having to be a witness to violence once again, and his part in it. He’d returned to the looping horror that had cycled in his memory for every second of every day.

  Kip’s shade looked up, still cradling Enos’s head. His love’s eyes were still open, two glassy orbs looking up to the sky.

  Kip and his shade perceived one another. Kip felt like he was seeing himself in a dream. He knew it wasn’t real even though it felt so vital, so tangible. And, just like a dream, it broke the order of reality.

  “You’re all right,” Kip said. “Somehow you’re going to be all right.”

  He looked down at the silver strands stirring in the water, and then stepped into the fountain. Kip knelt beside his own shade, helping to hold Enos’s body. They remained there in silence for a moment, as if saying a prayer.

  Is this the moment of significance? Kip found it impossible to think clearly, his mind as muddled as the fountain water; his thoughts swirling in disparate patterns, disturbed like still water being broken by a stone.

  Kip reached into his jacket and pulled out the vial. The small orbs of light still danced behind the glass, their constant movement sometimes joining them together and then pulling them apart again. He shook the vial and watched the elements combine once again. They flashed and sparkled, happy to be mixed.

  He brought the vial to Enos’s lips, marveling how quickly flesh could be deadened, how it could change to a lifeless thing. Tilting the vial, he watched the liquid slide into his mouth, illuminating it from the inside like a fire in a cave.

  Surely this was the moment. He’d mined this dark world for its materials and brought something forth. He’d suffered for this. If there was meaning to anything he would find it here.

  He waited for the light to flow back into Enos’s skull, for the ragged bones of the fracture to heal, and for his eyes to fill with life again. A gasp of breath and then a joyful reunion. Flowing tears, and declarations and apologies made. Then the work of building a new life could begin, together.

  Nothing.

  The liquid disappeared from Enos’s lips and slipped down his throat. It was inert, just another useless parlor trick with no magic behind it.

  Kip thought of Blackmoor. Never had he wished so intensely to have his powers. Magic instead of reason.

  I’ve failed completely then, Kip thought. Mercury, salt, and sulfur; he’d collected the three essences and it had made nothing.

  The Kip shade had backed away, moving to the ledge of the fountain where he sat with his head in his hands. His form flickered as if his body couldn’t contain his sorrow and it threatened to snuff him out.

  Kip lowered Enos’s body into the water gently and let him float there. He too, had started to fade. Pale London couldn’t sustain the memory. It needed to purge all reality.

  Kip eyed the silver streaks in the water. It was the last bit of Enos he might ever see. A sudden greed for the silver overcame him, a need to have it as keepsake, safe behind glass.

  He dipped the vial into the water, careful not to spill out any more of the contents. The strands of light were drawn to it immediately. They spiraled towards the glass and mingled with the glowing liquid that remained. What this new element added to the mix, Kip couldn’t be sure, but it had excited the other materials. The glass vibrated faintly as he quickly corked it.

  Was it the life-entire of his beloved? What stories were imprinted in this substance?

  Enos’s body was transparent now. It merged with the water and then vanished completely, taking the light from the fountain with it.

  Goodbye again, Kip thought.

  He stood up and filled his lungs with the chilly air. The fireworks were silenced, the vision had ended.

  He turned to face his shade. The poor weeping thing was nearly bent in half, as if he were trying to hide himself from himself. His body flickered and prepared to vanish.

  “Wait!” Kip commanded. “I’m not done with you yet.”

  He looked at his weeping shade and remembered all his nights bent over in sorrow, unable to move or to think. He looked at the fountain, the well; the wide circle of its mouth so familiar. He thought of the one place that had given him solace, wrapped in stone and timber. The place where it had all begun.

  22

  The door swung open, spilling dull light into darkness.

  The Shadows had done their work, making the Alchemy House of Pale London identical to the real thing. It was just as dead as the rest of the city, but not for lack of details.

  Kip climbed the two steps to the foyer and looked through the forest of branches that created a tunnel to the living room. He’d almost missed seeing them, even after all that had happened. The bizarre seed that he’d planted that had grown into a monster.

  I cracked the edges of the world somehow.

  The Kip shade followed as he walked through his home, now silent as a mausoleum. His books were all there, no doubt filled with empty pages. The baubles and trinkets that one collected during a lifetime were sat on their shelves, peering out from the nooks and corners they’d been placed in. A thin layer of dust covered them like settled ash after a fire.

  His eyes moved over all the objects that made a home; the things that planted him to one spot in the world, saying, this is my place. Whatever comes, I will face it here.

  The hearth was a dark hole. Kip went to it hoping to feel some invisible warmth and the memories that came with it; nights spent peering into flames and trying to read their messages.

  He crawled forward, towards the one place that called to him like a beacon. The stone back of the hearth pushed aside with a heavy scrapping sound, and he continued to crawl, inching his way through the darkness. His shade followed, the scuffling sounds of his movements muted and distant.

  Stand up, his mind barked, and he obeyed. He got to his feet and walked without needing a prop. What room did he know better in the entire world than this basement and the things in it?

  A glowing light appeared. Rippling patterns flooded the wall as he moved forward. He came to the wooden staircase. It had been restored by the Shadows, a balcony to peer down into his laboratory and its secrets.

  His heart raced when he saw the well. It was still there waiting for him with all its whispered secrets hidden in its dark center. But it too had changed.

  A golden light filled the room, its soft glow illuminating the bedrock of the walls and ceiling and the dirt of the floor. Its light tangled in the branches, casting shadows that looked like dark veins.

  I wished for this well back in London, I willed it to be. And now I’ve wished again and I’ve got an answer. But what had he wished for?

  Kip descended the steps, their wood creaking under his weight. His feet hit the dirt floor and again he wanted to feel the earth between his toes, to be anchored to this place, to plant himself here like one of the branches.

  His shade stayed behind, watching cautiously from the steps as Kip approached the well. His hand touched the
stone. Instead of the dull coldness he’d expected, he was met with warmth.

  I poured my soul into this well, bit by bit. I drained my lifeblood, spilled it into this memory hole, and here it is, preserved in amber. Look how it glows and moves. It was here all along, wrapped in memory, and almost forgotten.

  How greedy to want anything else, how vain; given the greatest gift of creation and shunning it because it doesn’t last forever.

  Kip felt a force move in him with something close to euphoria. A golden hue tinted his sight, like looking at a sunrise. Beams of yellow light rippled across a landscape he didn’t recognize.

  The landscape faded and new visions appeared. They moved in a flurry, streaming by like water beneath a bridge. There were moments of intense joy and sorrow and every gradation in-between.

  The visions triggered emotions in Kip that he thought had been deadened or had never existed. They moved so quickly that he couldn’t identify them. Perhaps to name them would only diminish them. Names were static things. They didn’t account for change, for evolution. Simply calling the substance in the well “light,” was an insult to something so moving.

  So moving it was perilous.

  Was it the past, present, or future? He didn’t know. Perhaps it was this moment, begging to be appreciated, begging for him to open his eyes once and for all.

  The light grew as if in response. It spilled over the lip of the well, dancing over his hands and down to the floor. He thought he could see through the bedrock, to some infinite depth below.

  In his London, the well had been a passageway to death; here it was the opposite. Here it wanted to sing, and celebrate, and heal, and recover lost things.

  Kip had the one ingredient that would let it do that.

  He held the vial in his hand and watched it catch the light. Mercury, salt, and sulfur mixed with the soul of Enos.

  He held the glass tube up and then tipped it over the well. The thin spindles of light moved down, half-falling, half-floating.

  The well took it. Not with greed or hunger.

  The light rallied, like a choir of voices. The gold wove together and punched upwards. It pierced the bones of the house, a spotlight that carved through matter. It shed the dead skin of Alchemy House, boring a hole through its center.

  Kip saw the outline of floorboards, branches, and timbers, and then straight to a sky above. The light moved up through the tower of Alchemy House, shattering each of its four windows. He heard the crispness of the breaking glass, tiny bells on the wind.

  “The Soul of all Things,” he said.

  His shade watched from the stairs, clutching the wooden bannister. He looked horrified.

  But Kip wasn’t afraid. The broken frame of the house let the air in. It was the crisp smell of autumn that brought hope and nostalgia, tangled together. He looked down into the well again and saw things that the mind couldn’t articulate or comprehend.

  He thought, all beauty is melancholy. All of life is autumn.

  And he saw a deeper truth. Beneath all the wonderment, beneath the glowing light and visions, at a depth greater than the spectacle of this world, there was a truth. It was uncompromising but not stern, just a simple fact that he had chosen to ignore again and again.

  The dead stayed dead.

  The universe had its alchemy, too. It was the alchemy of all creation and, just like a matchstick, it could flare to life, burning brightly before burning out. Did that lessen its warmth? Did that diminish its power?

  Kip looked up at his shade, still crouched on the stairs.

  “It’s what I suspected all along,” he said. “It’s what I knew in my heart.”

  His shade nodded, almost imperceptibly.

  Kip held the now empty vial in his hand and looked back to the golden light in the well. He dipped the glass tube into the gold, its viscous liquid filled the vial. A small universe hung suspended in the light. It shown through his hand. He saw the network of veins there, the blood pumping, the bones moving. He saw the elongated cells that made his muscles and the delicate folds of skin that made his fingerprints.

  He corked the vial and slipped it into his breast pocket.

  It was nearly impossible to turn away from the well, but Kip did. He felt its warmth on his back as he walked to the stairs. His shade stood to follow him. Together they left the basement.

  The hearth seemed colder than before and the room less real. Whatever magic sold the illusion of this world had faded. There was a snaking crack in the wall from the explosion of light. Pieces of sky were visible between the broken chunks of plaster and wood.

  The two Kips stood silently, both in thought.

  Kip faced his shade.

  “It’s time to end this, time to go home.”

  He turned to the front door.

  An envelope sat on the doorstep, the wind through the open door tugging at its edges. Kip walked over and picked it up, turned it in his hands, felt the echo of the past. He had done this before in another lifetime.

  A thick black seal of messy wax sealed the envelope. He broke it with his thumb and pulled out a piece of crisp parchment. Scanning the words, he wanted to laugh over the mock politeness. Vorax believed in decorum, if nothing else; even if it was playacting, even if he was an ape that had learned to talk.

  “It’s an invitation,” Kip said, “from Dark House.”

  23

  Kip and his shade stepped outside into a world that seemed brighter than before. He looked up, squinting at the ruined tower of Alchemy House with its shattered roof and walls and the fading glow of the light that had gutted the structure.

  The tower lingered in the atmosphere above, slowly absorbed by the gray that covered Pale London.

  A tapping sound on the cobblestones made Kip look down. There was an old man hunched against the outside wall of Alchemy House. He drew the darkness around him, calling it from every angle until it pooled at his feet.

  The tapping came from a smooth piece of driftwood that he used as a prop. He clutched it in a white hand, more bone than flesh. Arthritic knuckles held it awkwardly. The darkness fled as the old man stood up, his back hunched as he rose to unsteady feet.

  “I thought I’d find you here, boy,” Lord Blackmoor said in a rasping whisper. “I knew you’d come eventually, back to your cave. I searched this entire city for answers. It’s a hollow replica with no meaning, nothing but mockery, and no sign of the only place I want to get to.”

  Dark House.

  The old man was ruined. In the short time since they’d been on the ship, he’d been stripped of whatever life he’d had left. His body looked like it was pulling into itself, taking away every bit of vitality.

  Still, Kip could see the fury behind his eyes.

  “You brought it to life, boy. I saw it in your eyes. You went blind staring at Dark House. It’s the hub of the world, don’t you see? Find it and we could kill Vorax. We could control everything.”

  “That’s your dream, not mine.”

  “Why does this world not affect you?” Blackmoor asked, half-sneering, half in desperation. “What wretched alchemy did you use?”

  He saw the shade at his side, Kip’s twin, taking in this new oddity without comment.

  “You said it yourself, Blackmoor. I made this place. I willed this dead world to life.”

  Lord Blackmoor’s fury consumed him, rippling over his face in waves. He no longer looked like a lord, but a beggar.

  Voices echoed down the street. Kip turned to see Britten and Fairfield coming towards them. They chattered nervously as they came, lost in some argument.

  They stopped short as they saw the gathering outside of Alchemy House: Kip, his shade, and an old man.

  “We…we need to get to Surrey,” Fairfield said.

  “A ship is waiting for us there,” Britten added. “I don’t know where it’s going, but it calls to us.”

  The Pale World was a loop. Kip wanted to stop them, feeling a sudden swell of pity.

  “You don�
��t have to go,” he said. “Lord Blackmoor set this in motion. He sent your shades to die on the bottom of the ocean.”

  “Did he?” Fairfield asked. “I don’t remember.”

  Then he turned to the old man. At first he took him in without recognition, his face neutral as he greeted a stranger, then his eyes widened. Amelia Britten let out a pained gasp.

  “You,” she muttered. “You did this to us.”

  Words spilled from her like water coming from a drain spout.

  “I had a life; passions, loves, hatreds. I had a child waiting for me in Somerset, waiting for her grandmother to return. You had no right!”

  The spiritualist raged and her body flickered like a candle. The threads that tied the Pale World together were coming undone.

  Fairfield joined in, adding to her diatribe.

  “Arrogant old man. You sit at the head of a house and think it means you run the world. I had a life I don’t even remember, except in shades. It’s madness to feel only loss and not know why.”

  Lord Blackmoor just smiled. His mouth split to show missing and dead teeth.

  “Small people with small ideas. I told you this at our last meeting. I told you the arc of the world and the direction it would bend. I told you I could tame the stars themselves; call them down to consume you. And I will do it again.”

  Blackmoor’s eyes turned to red ember as Britten and Fairfield lunged forward. They grabbed the old man, pushing him backwards. His driftwood cane clattered to the ground and skidded across cobblestones. They tore at his body, rending clothes and scratching flesh. The old man didn’t seem to notice as he spoke.

  “Primum Dominum!”

  A cracking sound filled the sky above, the air breaking like glass. He was using the last bit of his power, the power he didn’t dare use on the ship. Shards of stars descended. They struck what remained of the Alchemy House tower, cutting through it like paper. The structure moaned and then rolled to one side before falling.

  The tower fell on Blackmoor, Britten and Fairfield like a hammer striking. The ground shook, sending out waves of energy as a ruin of wood and stone entombed them.