by B W Powe
B.W. POWE
THESE SHADOWS REMAIN
A FABLE
PROSE SERIES 86
GUERNICA
Toronto – Buffalo – Lancaster (U.K.)
2011
FOR MY MOTHER ALYS MAUDE
AND MY FATHER BRUCE ALLEN
The fire threw up figures . . .
. . . the phantom rulers of humanity
That without being are yet more real than what they
are born of, and without shape, shape that which
makes them:
The nerves and the flesh go by shadowlike, the
limbs and
the lives shadowlike, these shadows remain, these
shadows
To whom temples, to whom churches, to whom
labors
And wars, visions and dreams are dedicate.
Robinson Jeffers, Roan Stallion
Dr. Eldon Tyrell: What seems to be the problem?. . .
Roy Batty: I want more life, f*****.
Human to replicant
in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner
THESE SHADOWS REMAIN
A FABLE
“Where is this?” he murmured.
He thought he sat under an antenna. It was a tree. He thought he was staring at a TV screen. It was the sky. He thought he was in a seat in a theatre. It was the earth. He thought his ears buzzed with static. It was the air.
“Who’s there?” he said, thinking someone or something was close.
He closed his eyes. Images, strange and shadowy, began to appear to him, like projections on the backdrop of his eyelids. Suddenly the shadows were part of him. He felt that he belonged in their dark straying. Then there was nothing.
*
The knight woke up alone in the woods.
He scrambled for his sword and shield, but they were nowhere to be found. He looked for a road, a path, a break in the trees, an overgrown trail, anything that could be a sign. There were no animals lurking near, no sounds of birds or insects, nothing that might have guided his senses about wind currents or ancient trails. The woods were darkened, and there were no sounds or scents coming from the trees or the thin grass that might have told him he was close to a place he could call home. He was utterly lost, and he didn’t know how this had come to be.
*
He looked at one tree then at another. He remembered that he knew how to read trees. He looked hard, thinking that if one rustled or lifted its branches or allowed its leaves to turn and turn, his memory would stir and he could say now I know the trees will guide me again. But they didn’t move. There was no wind. And he felt a sudden tearing isolation, deepening his feeling of being lost.
He realized that he couldn’t recall his name. The world was mute and still. And he had no name. He looked down at what he wore, silver chain mail, and a tunic covering with a bold drawing of a ship’s mast, its sails tightly furled, emblazoned in red. On his hands there was a set of black chain mail gloves. He saw clearly that he was – or once had been – a knight. But he had no sword, no shield, no belt, and no scabbard.
It was as if he had been scrubbed clean of his past. What had done this, and why?
He looked around for clues. There was the mast of the ship on his tunic, the intricately woven chain mail. Surely these were clues, but to help him or hinder him? The world wouldn’t speak. Somehow he expected it to, or had once believed that it would always rise to him with speech. He stood slowly looking first to the left and to the right, then slowly to the front and back, and he felt unsteady and exposed.
A memory came. He had been a help to others. But who was going to help him now? The feelings of confusion were like a wound. He suspected that the feelings were raw because they were new.
*
Children wearing rags wandered into the glade.
They came picking their way through the brush and fallen trees, over the stumps and the twisted branches, and their wandering was slow and careful, like people learning to walk, and hesitant about their unmapped path.
The children were covered in dust. Each child gripped the hand or shoulder of the next child for balance and for direction, and their heads were down, and they stared at the ground and their feet, and they moved with the deliberate steps of ones who knew they must go on, across the branches and stumps which reared up like obstacles meant to stop their trek.
They walked silent and intent. The dust covered each face like a mask but rimmed the eyes in a way that left them strangely bright.
He could see that in their downcast eyes there was this odd but beautiful brightness. They hadn’t seen him yet. But he watched them wander silently towards the place where he stood.
Then the two tallest children, a boy and a girl, at the front, saw him. They stopped, and the others shuffled close and huddled and came to a halt, and glanced up, and saw him too.
The ragged children said nothing. They just gazed, and gazed.
He felt their terror under the rags and dust. It was what had driven them into the woods that refused to speak or reveal a path.
*
The girl spoke first.
“Are you human or image?”
The knight didn’t understand, though the words were on the verge of conjuring memories for him.
“Are you dream or nightmare?” She looked deeply into him.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “What’s your name?” the boy asked. “I don’t know that either.”
“Then we’ll have to name you. I’m Gabrielle. He’s Santiago, my brother. You’re
Tomas.”
“That will do.”
“A good name, if you’re human,” she said. The knight, now Tomas, didn’t understand the importance of what Gabrielle said.
He looked closely at the other silent children. They stood shivering in a long scraggly line. The air in the forest was warm and close, so Tomas guessed the shivers were from the terror he had sensed. It was in them, and it was everywhere.
“There’s a war going on, isn’t there?”
“Of course, didn’t you know?” Gabrielle said.
The war came back to him. He had fought in it.
Was he lost because of this?
*
He remembered battles and a broken sword. Shadows seethed on a field. He heard howls, cries of shock.
“Who’s at war?”
“Our dreams turned on us,” the girl said. “The toons. We thought they were our friends. Our company. The ones who made us laugh. They gave us stories and helped us to sleep at night. The ones who showed us that everything, all animals, creatures, flowers, things, could speak. They became nightmares.”
“And they’ve captured our parents. They’ve turned on the world. They’re hunting for humans. They hate anything made of flesh and blood,” Santiago said.
The children moaned and looked down at the earth. They shuffled their feet. Dust motes shook off from their rags, floating down to the ground. The motes looked like tiny creatures trying to escape from beings more massive than they. The trees swayed for the first time, though no one could have detected a wind.
*
Tomas flinched. He gazed down at his gloves. They were remnants of his fighter’s livery. But he knew that they were hiding something too. He suddenly knew that he had been told – by whom? – not to remove his gloves. The boy and girl often stared at them. Their stares were wary. Was he friend or foe?
He flinched again, because for an awful instant he wasn’t sure himself.
Whom did he serve?
He felt lost again.
But he saw that the children, especially Gabrielle and Santiago, were more curious about him than terrified. They stared at his gloves, and they were cautious, and yet they remained, and didn’t
show any sign of preparing to run. The children, with slow shuffles, came closer to him.
He sensed that their need was more important than their terror.
When Tomas thought this, and the words “the terror” ran through his mind, he shuddered. Then he thought this isn’t right: a knight shouldn’t shudder. A knight mustered courage, and stood bravely in the storm. But he felt fear in the children. And his body carried invisible scars that edged into his feelings whenever the terror came to him.
“Tell me about this terror,” he said.
The children came closer.
“How did you know,” Gabrielle whispered, “this is what the toons have become? How did you know that’s what we call them?”
“Tell me about the toons.” Already Tomas sensed that he knew more than his mind allowed him to see. A flash came. Across the plain the shadows chased the children. The shadows had set out to absorb humanity. He saw in pieces.
*
Gabrielle and Santiago turned telling the others to circle around the knight.
“They were real only in our imaginations,” Gabrielle began. “Then they wanted more reality. First they were jealous of us. Then they came to hate us.”
“They were changed,” Santiago said. “A great magic changed them.”
“Wait,” Tomas said. “You’re jumping ahead. I must know the whole story. Tell me.”
The children sighed and shivered. This time Tomas thought they were feeling a cold blast from some place.
Instinctively he stepped closer to them. He put his arms out in a wide embrace then gently rested one arm on the shoulders of Gabrielle who stood close to one side, then the other arm on the shoulders of Santiago, who stood close on the opposite side.
“Tell me,” he said softly.
His glance was kind on the children, and they found that they trusted him.
*
“The toons,” Gabrielle said. “That’s where it began. All the creatures we’d dreamed. We’d watched them on screens since we were babies, we’d heard the stories. We’d seen them in pictures. They were the pictures our families made for us.”
A little boy in the circle whimpered. The knight lifted a solacing hand from Gabriele’s shoulder and patted him on his cheek. Tomas was deeply surprised to feel protective tenderness, but he accepted the feeling. It seemed important to do so.
“Go on.”
The images had become real. They had penetrated into this realm of things. The images were no longer elsewhere, on a structure which conveyed them, screen or page. They were here. They had obliterated human history. Their time was now.
Tomas realized that he would know things about the story before Gabrielle said anything more. This was another surprise.
“Let me,” Santiago said. “I’ll tell you.”
*
“Batman, Spiderman, Superman, the Fantastic Four, the dinosaurs in Fantasia, the animals, the singing cups, the lions, Aladdin, the talking cats and dogs, the angels who’d once helped, the ghosts who had been everyone’s friends in the world, spiders and tin soldiers, ballerinas and beasts, the talking horses and singing birds, the ones that made you laugh, and the ones that scared you but turned out to be alright in the end. They came into the world suddenly. So suddenly they took our parents. We don’t know where the grownups have gone. All we saw was their fading out like a trail into darkness. You know what I mean. When the screen loses its colour and images and movements and voices and just goes black. Then they came for us. And they came for the grownups they hadn’t captured. We called them the toons. That’s what we’d always called them. They overran the world, full of anger and hate. And they were scary spreading like that. They seemed . . . hungry.”
*
Gabrielle said, “Let me continue: so we ran. And when we ran others joined us. Our friends, our neighbours. Other children. Running into the woods and from there we looked back and we saw a great battle in the night. Only sil o sil o sil o sil o.”
“Silhouettes,” Tomas said with precision. He knew what she meant.
“Like shadows,” a girl in the circle offered. “All shadows now. Even most of our parents.”
“There was a battle in the dark,” Gabrielle said, “between the grownups that hadn’t been turned and the toons. The noise was terrible. It went on and on. And we hid. We covered ourselves in branches and earth. But the toons won and they sent the grownups running. All we could hear were the toons calling us in the night. They said, ‘Come here little ones, come here. Don’t try to run. Come here, come here.’ Their voices were so sweet, and that made it worse.”
“That’s why you call it the terror.”
Tomas felt the children’s eyes on him. Gabrielle nodded.
“You know,” she said.
“Yes.” He gazed away from the circle for the first time, into the distance beyond the trees.
*
The boy said, “We think the grownups who survived went north. There’s a castle in the hills. It belonged to the toons. But they don’t live in castles anymore. They don’t live in our dreams. They live with us. The castle is set over a valley, not far. We’re orphans. But we need a place to go.”
“It’s the last castle. The castle of the human beings,” Tomas said.
Again every child stared at him. He knew where they were going, he knew more than he said. They should have been afraid of him, but they didn’t feel any fear when they were close to him. His way with them was warm and protective.
“That’s its name,” Gabrielle said. “We’re making our way through a forest we don’t know. We don’t have a path. But we know we must go north. When we stop just to rest or find berries and water, we hear the howling. It never ends. The toons no longer sing or say funny things. They howl and howl.”
“The night is terrible,” said a boy.
“The forest is scary,” said a girl.
“I miss my bed,” said a boy.
“I miss my mommy and daddy,” said a girl.
*
“What turned the dreams into nightmares?” Tomas asked.
Gabrielle answered: “All we know is suddenly the toons started to talk to us and they asked for more life. I heard one toon say he wasn’t real enough. He wanted to be real.”
“The wizard . . . ” Tomas said.
The children gasped together. But instead of shying away from him, they gathered towards him, seeking the strength they sensed in his words. They also saw the furrow in his brow. He wasn’t sure how he knew about the wizard. The words came from an unknown place. Though he was surprised by this outburst, he trusted what he said. He also sensed that when he spoke, the world began to speak again.
He looked over his shoulder to the north, into the woods.
“The castle is that way. We have to go through the forest, along the paths we won’t see clearly. The paths have never been clear. We can travel them anyway, because they’ll take us where we have to go eventually. Remember, look closely at the ground and the trees, and trace the path by your feelings. We have to move soon because night is coming.”
“And the toons love the night,” Santiago said.
Tomas thought that the boy meant the toons held the knight, himself, in a special place. He could endanger the children. He was silent for a moment.
Then he said, “How do you know this?” “It’s easier to be a shadow when every-
thing’s a shadow,” Santiago said.
Tomas was impressed. The children had travelled a long way within themselves.
*
Who turned the toons? Instantly spreading across his mind like a screen filling with images, Tomas saw the wizard. The picture was unstable. The form dissolved, reformed, dissolved and whisked away. Every time he concentrated to make the image clear, the dark shape evaded him.
Around the shape-shifter there was an army of legendary knights. Their names came to him: Prince Valiant, Prince Charming, the Caped Crusader, Buck Rogers, and the twelve knights who had sat around a gleaming silver
table. They were warriors who had been swayed. All had once been honourable and courageous. Why did they hate so much?
Swarming knights roared towards him, brandishing swords. He couldn’t see the shape-shifter, not even a cloud or a wisp. The warriors protected the wizard. They had become his guardian agents, the ones who had helped to turn the other toons.
He snapped out of his trance with a quick gasp, and he found the children anxiously though still trustingly clinging to him. Gabrielle and Santiago appeared bravest, nestled closely under his arms. But he guessed they had seen the terror in his face, and they must have guessed he was being hounded too.
“How do you know so much?” Gabrielle’s voice was pleading, filled with the hope that she wouldn’t be terrified more by his answer.
“We’re all orphans now. And we don’t have time to waste.”
He took Gabrielle and Santiago by the hand, and looked out over the frightened children.
“This way.”
They moved north through the trees.
*
They had been watched in the forest.
The wizard’s eyes infiltrated the trees, collecting data.
“See them for me,” he had whispered to the floating eyes.
“I know you,” he said when the eyes carried back images of the knight and the children. The eyes hovered in the smoky air and burned their images on the screens that the wizard and his guards used for their tent. Hundreds of tent screens had been set up in the great encampment.
“You thought you could get away from me.” The wizard slowly changed from black smoke to a grey fog to a mist then to a black revolving cloud. He had no face.
“You’ve led me to the children. You’ll lead me to where the last battle will take place. You’re the guide for the end. You’ve already betrayed everyone. You believe you’re doing the right thing. You who think you can live beyond images. You who think you can become something they call human.”