by Kade Cook
The sound of metal grating across metal signals the lock on the other side being undone. The latch knob wiggles below and the door slowly creaks open but no more than a crack. Behind the opening, a shadowy figure slips into the dim light, peering with one beady eye at the tall dark Shadow Walker before them. There is a low grunt from behind the door as the space in the frame increases and in its birth, stands a crooked-shaped little creature.
“It’s only me, Madorrah.”
The fleshy puff of creased skin around her forehead wrinkles as she strains to look him in the eye as if to measure the level of his honesty. She raises a boney hand to shield her emerald eyes from the light of day and get a clearer look at the visitor. Not able to see him as she would like, she reaches out and grabs hold of his green cotton shirt, balling it tightly in her arthritis-riddled hand, and tugs roughly on it, pulling him down to her level. Nearly two feet below Shane’s height, he bends willingly to meet her physical demand.
Peering deep into his eyes, she studies something within them—a mark, a clue that ensures his identity. Finding what she is looking for, her intense stare softens and a warm, near toothless smile, spreads across her lips. She hobbles backwards into the blind of the door and halls on the latch as she slides sideways to widen the opening to her abode, allowing only enough room for Shane’s large body to slip inside and leave the rest of the world out.
Stepping forward, Shane is surrounded by three walls decorated with gardening tools, planters, and a few watering cans that would deceive any untrained eye into seeing nothing more than a tool shed—everything, except for the fourth wall that is partly hidden by a solar blanket hanging clear from the rafters to the floor. Behind the large shawl are panes of thick glass that line the southern wall. This allows for sunlight to breech the darkened room and fuel warmth into the building—providing food for the overflowing bits of odd vegetation littered along the floor in clay earthen pots.
Now within the reaches of the door, Shane turns and presses against the wooden barrier—dragging it across the scared path as it has so many times before. He slides the large metal bar across the wooden frame, securing it into the reinforced chamber on the other side. Shane chuckles to himself wondering how on earth the little woman manages to do this all by herself after he is gone.
With only mere fragments of light piercing through the darkness of the room from the windows beyond, Shane enters Madorrah’s world of darkness. Catching movement to his right, he steps forward to follow behind his peculiar friend as she descends into the lower level of the workshop. Shane tiptoes past piles of hoarded tools that have probably been collected for centuries by the little soul. His heart aches as he watches her struggle with difficulty to move, but he sucks back his pity quickly, trying to retrieve it before she sees him.
But it is too late. Madorrah glares sharply at him over her shoulder, a warning that her decrepit appearance is not to be pitied. It is to be respected.
Having been alive for more centuries than Shane was aware of, she may wear a disfigured body, but Madorrah’s eyes and mind have survived through the battle-torn years of wars fought long before his existence. She believes that life on earth is too precious to be wasted in the Veil and refuses to go inward long enough to heal—too much time would pass—her heart longs to exist on the cusp of this Earth’s Dimension. So, her seemingly tattered appearance is of her own doing. But in doing so it leaves her a bit vulnerable—an easier target for those who would use her for what she is.
Freedom for Madorrah is a gamble—a gamble she is willing to chance—and she vows to fight until the death if it were ever to be compromised.
Gathering his thoughts and setting his mind back to the task at hand, Shane rubs at his cheek, trying to find the right words to use to ask for what he’s come for.
“You haven’t been by to visit in a spell.”
“I know. I’ve been...”
“Cured?” She snorts at him, picking through the clutter on the wall beside her.
“What?”
“Of your incessant sulking.”
His face twists, trying to figure out the logic in her ramblings.
“The girl, she has cured you.” Madorrah gives him a toothy grin, her smile revealing more hidden lines—the scarred flesh given to her by life. Her green eyes lighten even in the darkness, softening the torn edges of her half-healed wounds.
“I don’t, nor have I ever sulked.”
“Pfft. Uh-huh,” she says, edging to the center of the shed.
“How would you know, crazy old woman?”
She slows her already sloth-like crawl to a dead stop and looks back at him with a raised brow. “Yes, a bit crazy I am. And you might want to keep that in mind the next time you try to use your green-eyed trickery to convince me into doing your bidding.”
“My bidding?”
She motions to a big container filled with oddities, and Shane follows out her intended silent instructions by picking it up and following behind her. “I might secure myself within the walls of my humble life, but lest you forget, young Schaeduwe, I still dwell on the precipice of the Veil walls. And the walls have ears—they whisper things to me about all of the secrets within.”
Shane’s lip curls upward at the old crooked woman’s sharp-tongued wisdom and carries the tools willingly.
“So now shall we play another game or do you want to tell me what you have come for?”
His eyes widen, knowing that Madorrah probably already knows and is just toying with his emotions.
She bends low, slumping onto her knees with a grunt and a huff. Slipping her fingers under a loose floorboard and into a metal ring hidden beneath, Madorrah pulls with both hands. There is a crack and a loud snap, followed by the slow scrape as the trap door obeys, revealing the gap below.
Madorrah’s eyes dart toward her young friend while he watches in disbelief as she slides forward and disappears into the hole without a sound. Shane edges closer and sets the box upon the earthen floor, looking down into the darkness that swallowed her up.
“Are you coming or are you just going to stand there all day holding that box?”
Lowering his body and slipping his legs down into the hole, Shane chuckles, hesitating for a moment, and follows the voice below, hoping he doesn’t get stuck this time.
12
DOWN, DOWN WE GO
WITHIN THE WARM HOLDS of Madorrah’s underground home, Shane smells the undeniable scent of fresh baked stone bread and root soup—her specialty—awakening a growl of wanting beneath his ribs with the hope she may offer to share. Adjusting quickly to the dimly lit room, he slips his foot forward, trying not to step on anything important. With the box of tools his host insists he carry still safely tucked under his arm, he begins to wander deeper into her world.
Each step takes him past hand-carved furniture—chairs made of willow branches, twisted meticulously around each other to support pressure against the bends and a table of stone jutted out and upward from the ground beneath, worn down at the sides from years of constant use. The walls are peppered with strange yet abstract drawings from a time when her hands were not so damaged. Staring at the art, his foot catches on a loose stone in the floor—one of many that had been collected, shaped, then leveled into the earthen path to form a mural of what Shane assumes is part of a vision she interprets the outside world as. The stones had crept their way partly up the wall to complete the picture’s flow.
He has been to see Madorrah many times but it never ceases to capture his curiosity to think of how she did all of this. He stands open-jawed, taking it all in, and wonders how such beauty can come from such a simplistic soul. It makes him adore the old crooked woman even more—especially with her straight to the point, no nonsense attitude and gruff ways.
“Well, I ain’t got all day, ya know.”
He lets out a chuckle and trudges forward, following the sound of her voice through the archway ahead. Shane peeks his head into the opening, searching the hollowed-out spac
e split into three different rooms—left, right, and center...kind of. Not seeing her in any of them, he listens for a cue of noise before deciding which to enter. A shuffle and a scrape of heavy objects being pushed and drug around echoes to his left so with that, his decision is made.
He has never ventured far past the main room—there was never any need. But today, things are different. Today is important.
He enters the small room he assumes is a storage facility. More wooden boxes, like the one he holds in his arms, line the walls, filled with trinkets of sorts—all in place and in an orderly fashion. A makeshift closet holds garments of colourless fabric, toughened and weathered by their constant wear due to her limited collection. Once in a while, Shane made it a point to stop by with a gift she would accept with a curt grumble but Shane knew she was secretly delighted with.
Along the side of the far wall is another opening—a flickering of light gives away its secluded position. Still no sign of her, he edges begrudgingly toward the opening in the floor—another level down is where she is, waiting for him to find her.
It is down there that Madorrah spends most of her time, doing what she does best—wielding her gift for those whom she chooses to bestow it upon. It is in this space she works with her stones, a collection of pebbles collected over centuries in her explorations underground. Stones filled with earth magic, some so precious she keeps them hidden away from the world, and securely placed within her special case—a box she has spent her whole life vowing to protect.
Madorrah’s gift is much like her stones, bits and baubles of other things all combined into one. She is indeed of Schaeduwe blood just like Shane himself, and fully accepted as one of them, but in the eyes of the people she is that, and just a little bit more. She is a Reaper—the only known one to the Realm. Her existence is merely a whispered rumor. Legend has it she passed many years back—her body claimed and absorbed back into the earth’s magic with her soul living within each and every stone. But the legends are wrong and she likes it that way. She has fought enough battles, surviving them all, and now all she wants is peace and to protect her treasure of rocks.
Madorrah remained underground in her hovel for a long time until Shane bought up the property above her abode. She watched as he built his little sanctuary from the shadows. It chiseled down her armor and defused some of her fears about the world, or maybe it was because she had spent enough time in hiding so to the new world she was invisible—a long forgotten ghost. Studying him made her think that maybe it was time to re-surface and give the world another chance, or at least give him one.
So, she made her presence known.
At first, he had been taken back by the little hobbit-like creature. Her rough exterior melted his calloused heart in no time, and Shane gave her back that chance—welcoming her humble existence to be part of his world. Once Madorrah let him in on who and what she truly was, he reveled in the remembrance of growing up and admiring the legends of this once regal and striking Shadow Walker, therefore taking it upon himself to be the guardian of her ghost.
Shane slouches as he treks down the narrow stairwell to keep from rubbing his head on the sod ceiling above him. Hearing her call for him below, he squeezes his full arms inward—holding the box out in front of him as he descends. A tricky chore but he does it happily, barely fitting into the contracted stairwell.
Reaching the bottom, his footing is secured upon a softer surface—compacted earth. No large stones to step on, no wooded planks wedged together for a path, just soft earth mixed with sand and pebbles pressed tightly together to halt his heavy frame from sinking through.
The warm glow of a flickering flame plays with his sight, but his Schaeduwe eyes are quick to absorb the reflective particles in the room and the dimensions of the walls around him form. He searches the space for his tiny little friend, and with no other exit points in sight, he knows where she is.
“Madorrah,” Shane whispers, setting the wooden box of tools down neatly against the wall.
With no answer, he sighs and steps to his left to inspect a worn wooden crate that looks to be used as a stool. From the root-webbed wall beside it, a large smooth piece of marble hangs in midair, jutting outward and floating above the floor. It reminds him of the stone partitions within the Covenant of Shadows but this rock is cut smooth from hard work, not altered by magic. Lowering on his haunches, he settles himself down upon the crate and awaits the crooked little woman’s return from the Veil.
13
MADORRAH’S BOX
FROM WITHIN THE DARKNESS, Madorrah returns clasping something tightly within her hands. It is a long tubular metal contraption that Shane has never laid his eyes on before, but he has a hunch about what it is and what it may contain—her treasure box, the mystical holding device that she stores her most precious stones in.
Madorrah’s cloudy eyes reach his and her twisted smile flattens into a beautiful sweet curve of her lips.
“Do you want to take a peek?” She giggles girlishly as she moves toward him, dragging her right foot a step behind.
Her handsome guest grins at her invite but then growls at her playfully when she waves her arm at him, shooing him out of her seat. He pushes with his legs to the side, exiting his position and she scoots in as quickly as a rabbit with her prize in front of her, giving him a shove with her free hand to help him with his relocation.
Cupping the wooden box that Shane carried down into the bowels of her home, he picks it up and sets it at the stone table, just to the right of her. Then he lowers his body once again to perch on the edge of his wooden seat, mindful not to pierce himself with the tools inside.
Madorrah rubs her hands along the sides of the tube. Her delight of touching it shows vividly across her face. The bits of green still left visible in her eyes sparkle even in the dimly lit room as she gazes upon the vessel. The old woman abandons her fixation for a moment and her focus jumps to her guest. She watches in silence as he inspects the apparatus and rocks his head from side to side like a dog trying to figure out the mechanics of it.
“It doesn’t look like much,” he says, rubbing his thumb across his plump lower lip in a meditative way. His eyebrow lifts as he glances at her briefly. “This is the impenetrable safe that is whispered about throughout the Realm?”
His snarky comment doesn’t seem to jar her confidence any, in fact it makes Madorrah squirm on her wooden crate with delight. Her lips grow thin across her mouth into an impish grin. “All right, hot shot, do you want to give it a go and open it up then?”
Shane snorts at the old woman and sits up straighter. A shrill scraping sound cuts through the silence as she slides her treasure across the stone table, resting it in front of him with the consent to touch it. His mouth curves into a crooked smile as he picks up the vessel and inspects it more closely than he had earlier. Melds of crude metals curve and twist, interlocked together in a way that looks brittle and weak to the eye.
“Piece of cake, old girl,” he says and begins to twist the tube. The smirk he had worn on his plump lips is quickly replaced by teeth that threaten to tear into his bottom lip. He furrows his brow, straining the muscles in his forearms as they tense in his struggle to release the precious stones from their encasement.
Madorrah leans back against the wall behind—settling in for the show—and crosses her arms across her chest. Her eyes twinkle, the crow’s feet at their edges growing more defined, and her mouth wears a confident grin of knowing.
Refusing to give up, Shane tucks the tube between his rib cage and his bicep and wrenches on it with his right hand until he manages to tear the skin off the underside of the fleshy part of his thumb. Seeing the crimson tell of his futile efforts, she straightens on her stool. If she doesn’t stop him, knowing his stubbornness, he will continue until he does more damage than a simple band-aid can fix. She has had her fun. It is time to get down to business.
“Okay, hand it over before you rip yourself apart.” Madorrah reaches her hand toward him.
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Shane pulls one more time on the metal anomaly before he concedes to her request, abandoning his efforts and his pride. Madorrah’s fingers wriggle with excitement as he relinquishes his hold on the object and hands it back to her.
“You see, even if someone manages to find the vessel, which would be a miracle in itself, and should it fall into the wrong hands, they still need to be able to open it in order to use the powers within.” She sets the tube down in front of her. Turning her tiny twisted body to the side, she presses her hands against her thigh and leans forward, grunting in an effort to rise. She leaves her crate and waddles to the other side of the room, retrieving a folded cream-coloured cloth from the small hollowed-out shelf in the wall. Scuffing her feet, she returns to where she began with a breathy huff.
Standing to the side of him, she reaches out and clasps hold of Shane’s torn hand. Not resisting, he allows his arm to follow her gentle but demanding tug. Laying his injured hand upturned and flat against the table in front of them, she tucks the cloth underneath his tanned knuckles, pulling it tight around his skin and swaddles it, covering the ripped flesh within his palm. Having secured the other end of the cloth, snug beneath the fold, she takes his hand and raises it to her mouth for a gentle kiss and pats it with her contorted hand, releasing it to it is owner.
“To protect something well from those who mean to abuse. It is not the brawn that worries me, dear boy, but the brains that seek it.”
Shane tucks his wounded hand into his lap but then the statement catches and he shoots her an impish glare as the words sink in. “Hey now, are you calling me stupid?”
She gives him a playful clout upside the head, tousling his chaotic curls.