These Shadows Remain (8 page)

*

He slipped out in darkness carrying a torch.

The night had come early. It had flowed up from the forest and overrun the castle, thickening the air, crowding out stars, blurring the moon, a night so overpowering that it promised to permanently erode the day. Warm air flowed with the night, and it seemed to all inside the castle that the seasons and the weather and the day and the darkness were out of joint.

They knew that the wizard was mocking them and their expectations of a predictable sequence.

*

People inside the castle, without Tomas now, began to cry out.

“We should give in,” a guard said.

“The Lord is punishing us,” a woman called.

“We should pray to this new power,” a man said, who was a parent of one of the children led out of the forest by Tomas.

“We should offer money, gifts, service, favours,” a woman wept.

“Give the magic something,” another man said.

“Give offerings,” a woman shouted.

“O my,” Gabrielle said. She stood with them, but she was abruptly unimpressed with many of her elders. This talk of sacrifice didn't make her too happy. She remembered from somewhere that it was usually children that were tossed into flames, or tied up on altars, or thrown onto the steps and into the trenches of shrines, or dropped down into a monster's mouth.

“What do you think of this?” Santiago whispered to her.

“They're losing their nerve,” Gabrielle whispered back.

“Not all. Look.”

He pointed to Cyrus and to the guards who stood near the walls, shivering, somewhat hunched, but vigilant. She saw Adina hooded, standing in the midst of a circle of children, near the gate, gazing at the door through which Tomas had quietly left.

“He's gone,” Gabrielle said.

“And without us,” Santiago murmured.

*

Tomas descended into the transfiguring forest. The ground was moist, mulch-like. The air was so close and hot he felt it would smother him. And there was the darkness, uncanny, new. No vault of heaven, no glittering between the clouds, just darkness.

“He's spreading the dream dominion. He's making matter shift in the way he can. Be careful. All you took to be solid will change under your feet.”

He edged into the night. Hesitating, unsure of where he was, he stepped forward, moved on, shifted his torch from hand to hand, and stopped again. This was the forest he had made his way through with the children. Yet it was unrecognizable now. He started up again, and saw tropical creepers dangling from branches. Tree trunks became faces with mouths voicing warnings. The grass wriggled and squirmed becoming a pathway of worms. He stopped completely.

“I'm lost.”

*

“No, you're not,” Gabrielle said.

She took his hand, the one she knew came from the toon world.

“The wizard is overdoing it again,” Santiago said.

He appeared at Tomas's other side.

“It's a big theme-park,” Gabrielle said. 

“And not a very good one,” Santiago said. 

“Where did you come from?” Tomas was uneasy but pleased to find them there.

“We followed your path down through the dark,” Gabrielle said.

“You left a trail of footprints in the muck. We saw your torch.”

“Easy to follow,” Santiago said. “And we brought two more torches.”

“You told us once the universe speaks many languages. If we look hard, and listen hard, we'll be able to figure it out,” Gabrielle said.

“I told you that?” Tomas smiled in spite of his worry that they were with him in this skewing darkness.

“You did,” she said.

“We just followed the signs,” Santiago said. “One way or another we knew we'd find you.”

“This isn't safe.” Tomas knew that was obvious.

“Your journey is ours,” Santiago said.

“We claimed you so we're responsible for you. That's how it goes,” Gabrielle said.

“The wizard could use you both to bait me, if he wants to catch us all,” Tomas said.

“We'll see about that,” Santiago said. 

“Shhh . . . ” Gabrielle whispered. “The forest has ears.”

“And eyes,” Santiago said.

Gabrielle grasped the knight's hand firmly, and led on.

*

More creeping change came to the forest. It looked like a cemetery. Around them the stumps and branches and trunks and exposed roots were sepulchers, mausoleums, phantom angels and quivering crosses.

They inched onward using their torches to light the way.

The trees began to breathe, their breath heavy and intoxicating. The ground was disturbed so that dust drifted upwards in ghostly streams.

“It's not meant for us,” Tomas said. 

“What do you mean?” Santiago asked. 

“He's possessing the world, melting it down into the images and symbols of dreams. He's breaking down the barriers between dream-life and nature.”

“Maybe he should try something a little less corny.”

Santiago saw that his sister was saying this to whistle in the dark.

But he wasn't afraid. Still he felt himself becoming almost drugged. The images were a weight. Too much was being added to the world.

Gabrielle heard the cries of young people discovering their first kisses.

Santiago heard swords clanging, pistols barking.

Gabrielle thought she heard heavy stamping animals in a bizarre dance.

Santiago thought he heard thundering wings rising over them.

Through the blackened backdrop of the trees they thought they heard rituals taking place. Magicians uttered abracadabra from secret ceremonies.

“It's like the soundtrack to
Fantasia.
” 

Tomas heard the distress in Gabrielle's voice. Santiago took her hand and, in spite of the images and echoes in the darkness, led on. The three were in a line. They held the torches like warnings to what impended. Tomas kept his human hand on the hilt of his sword.

*

Trees and leaves reached out with brazen intimacies. “Feel us,” the forest seemed to say.

“Keep going,” Tomas said.

Heat lightning crashed low. The forest became sand sculptures, dunes, pyramids and rows of sphinxes.

“Does he know where we are?” Gabrielle asked.

“If he did, he'd send something more than special effects. He's twisting up nature to cover the path.”

“Clever,” said Santiago.

The air turned foul with the rankness of a primal swamp.

“Alchemy,” Tomas said. “He's using the powers to manipulate nature. That's all it is. It's just manipulation, not a complete transformation. Not yet.”

This was another one of those snap understandings that had started coming to his mind since he found the children and journeyed with them to the castle.

Santiago squeezed Gabrielle's hand, and she in turn squeezed her brother's.

*

They edged through a rain forest draped with grotesque vines. And they made their way forward, trying to retrace the path they took days before. They found their way by paying attention through the shape-shifting to the ground and the trees. Every time the shapes changed, a part of the old forest somehow remained. They had to see past the images and see that something surged around the magic.

“My imagination was better at night,” Santiago said, leading the way. “Remember? I told you stories, Gabrielle. I read them out loud to you. Sometimes I made them up. I added things to what was there on the page and made them my own.”

“We grew in the night,” she said.

“We just have to trust that,” Santiago replied.

“The wizard won't be able to follow what we make up ourselves.”

“That's right, yes,” he said.

*

Tomas followed the children through the forest.

Although there wasn't much to smile about, he smiled. Direction always came from unexpected places. If you admitted that you were incomplete then the world spoke and the inventions spoke, and people spoke, and the images and dreams spoke.

In torchlight the pathways dripped with voodoo hangings.

But these displays no longer held a terrifying sway. Slowly they became familiar. If you had never seen such things before, you might have gone mad with the shock of their powerful newness. Slowly it was becoming obvious to Tomas that the wizard's manipulations had their root in the human imagination. Images and shadows had great power, but not quite the final power that the wizard envisioned.

Tomas's thoughts were interrupted by a presence.

“We're being followed.”

“Keep going,” Gabrielle whispered.

Down they went into wooded areas beyond where they had first met. Quietly, steadily, they sorted their steps through dust and fallen branches. They walked, and walked. Deeper into darkness the changes waned.

Tomas broke the silence. 

“We're getting close.”

“How do you know?” Santiago asked.

“He doesn't feel the need to mask his camp. It's only around the castle that he set up the extreme changes and the total darkness.”

“He didn't think anyone would get this far,” Gabrielle said.

*

Rustlings behind.

“Steps,” Gabrielle said.

“Human or toon?” Santiago used the old question that they had directed at all that they met, once the adults had disappeared, after the battle of the shadows in the night.

The forest had resumed some of its original form, though there were still voodoo hangings, vines and creepers, and sand pyramids scattered piecemeal along the pathway they had followed.

The trees were falling away and, ahead of them, in an irradiated valley, spread the toon encampment and its towering screens.

“No reconnaisance, no pickets, no moat, no surveillance devices.” Santiago felt wise in his use of military terms.

“They're safe enough,” Tomas said. 

“There's something behind us,” Gabrielle said.

“Don't look back. Follow the line,” Tomas said.

“What line?” Santiago asked.

“The line from your hearts. The thread we've formed between us. The line that's been leading us from the start. The one that led us to one another and keeps us together, and keeps leading us forward and holds us safe.”

“Something we can't see,” Santiago said. 

“We hold on anyway.” Gabrielle's matter-of-fact tone was back in her voice.

“You see,” the knight said, “we complete each other's sentences too. It's the language we can't see but we know is there.”

“All the same, we need to be careful,” Santiago said. “Their eyes may be out.” He was leading them with his torch, and he felt very much empowered.

Tomas knew the worst was to come.

And the stalking presence hadn't gone away.

*

The forest came to an end. Darkness began to blend into the background behind them. They stepped up to a ledge, and stopped on that brink.

“Look down there. All that light,” Santiago said.

“It's not from the sun or moon,” Gabrielle said.

They stood on the ledge gazing down. Tomas shuddered suddenly, not from

what he saw, but from the presence behind him. He turned and found nothing. At the corner of his eye he thought he glimpsed a shadow and he turned again, but there was no trace of what had been there.

The radiance spread out below them. It looked like the Milky Way inverted, glittering on earth.

“What is this?” Santiago couldn't move. The fleeting thought passed that he didn't want to move, and shouldn't.

“Where are we?” Gabrielle was entranced, swaying slightly. The light was vibrating and beautiful.

“The toon camp.” Tomas had gone still too. They doused their torches. The light before them spread to the horizons in either direction. Tomas thought that if it had been day, this light would have been even more blinding than the sun's. The whirlwind had rerouted all electricity here.

*

“Is this where you came from?” Gabrielle said. 

“It's where I started.”

“Is it the same?” Santiago asked. 

“I recognize it, and yet I don't.”

“Do you know where he is?” Gabrielle asked.

She didn't say the name, but the other two knew who she meant.

“I'll find him.” Tomas stared out over the luminous landscape.

Light seemed to blur the air. Santiago thought, this light is becoming like the traces of rain on a car's windshield at night during a storm.

The moment Santiago thought this, he also felt how protected he was in the company of Tomas and Gabrielle. Their shield hadn't been stripped by fear or by their journey through the changeling forest. If that shield hadn't been there, then would the wizard have seen them by now? Suddenly it dawned on the boy that maybe the whirlwind had detected them and they were being lured on towards absorption.

But he trusted Tomas. There was always this trust, not entirely the result of logic, and he believed that their quest had slipped in under the toons' radar.

*

When their eyes adjusted to the spectral glow, they saw tent walls had been pitched in this valley, and spread up to foothills, to the edge of another forest, to the brink of a sea on one side, and to the cusp of a river system on the other.

The valley of images vibrated with faces and scenes, gestures and movements. Humanity was on the surfaces. Slowly the children could make out the toons in clumps before the screens, packed and rapt, staring up at what unfolded for their pleasure.

A dry-sounding drone rose from the valley. Gabrielle and Santiago listened closely. It was the muttering of the enthralled audience. This was the soundtrack they offered to the simmering scenes of humanity.

“It's like a gigantic drive-in theatre with hundreds of movies playing,” Santiago said.

“No cars. I wonder if the toons get popcorn?” Gabrielle said.