by Finn, K. C.
Vera Lynn. The wartime sweetheart’s voice was slower than usual, and all the background music from her song had been removed. As her crackling voice echoed out eerily into the cavernous theatre, Novel stepped out into the spotlight. In one pale hand, he was holding a gun. The gramophone sang out the first strains of its chorus:
‘Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye’
Novel took the gun and crouched at the edge of the stage-stairs, snapping his fingers at the nearest person and beckoning them forward. It was Molly. She went as confidently as she could manage, though after the previous month’s horrific display with Mother Novel, Lily was surprised that anyone would be willing to approach the stage ever again. Novel had a single bullet that he loaded into the barrel. He whispered something to Molly and handed her the gun. Clumsily, she clicked the barrel shut and spun it a few times, her hands shaking around the weapon. She held it up to the crowd triumphantly under Novel’s instruction, thus proving the randomness of the location of the bullet inside it.
Lily knew then what Novel was going to do. The phrase ‘Russian Roulette’ had been circling in her mind, but she hadn’t dared to google it to remind herself of what it might entail. Now, the illusionist shook the gun and listened to it carefully, then put it to his head. The audience gasped, and there were shuffles of winter clothes as some people quickly covered their eyes. Vera was still singing about goodbyes in the background as Novel pulled the trigger. No sound came but an empty click. The first section of the barrel was blank.
Twice more Novel fired blanks into the side of his pale head, and each time his eyes remained open and he stared right ahead at the dress circle of the theatre. His hand did not tremble, and his face remained expressionless as ever throughout the display. Lily had leaned out of Michael’s grip, craning forward in her seat where she could try to assess what was really going on in the illusionist’s mind. Come on, where’s the trick? A pane of glass sat some way behind Novel towards the back of the stage. His long frame and elegant clothes were reflected in it, showing no trickery hid behind his back. There must be something.
After a very long pause and consideration, Novel took the fourth shot against his temple, yet still no bullet fired. He lowered the gun, hanging his head and drooping his dark, painted brow in concentration. Now his fingers trembled as he raised the weapon again. The gramophone needle came off the record, and Vera abruptly stopped singing. Novel glanced briefly at the old machine, then as his eyes swept back to the crowd he caught Lily watching him from the third row. Those eyes, encircled in darkness, widened in clear surprise. Novel put the gun back to his head, his chest heaving out a breath. He forced his tense, trembling finger back against the trigger.
Suddenly, he changed his mind, and aimed the gun behind him. A deafening bang sounded, which shocked the assembled crowd even though they had been waiting for it. The pane of glass cracked into a spiderweb pattern as the shining bullet was lodged within it. The audience stood up and gave raucous applause, but Novel was still shaking when he took his bows, and still casting his eyes back at Lily. He left the stage much more quickly than usual, and Lily was sure that she heard the thump of the gun dropping to the ground the second he was out of sight. She leapt out of her seat and turned to go after him, until Michael grabbed her wrist.
“Hey what’s up?” he pressed.
“I’m just gonna go see if there’s any more work going on the restoration,” Lily stammered. “I won’t be a minute.” She wrenched her arm out of Michael’s grip and gave Jazzy a pleading look. “Wait for me outside?”
Without even waiting to see Jazzy agree, Lily was off up the side stairs of the stage. As she darted back behind the closing curtains, she was sure she heard Bianca making some outraged remark. Backstage was totally empty, a marked difference to the pre-show scene she had once witnessed, so it took several hurried seconds before she reached the dressing room corridor. Racing down to door 14, she didn’t bother to knock, but quickly pushed the handle with all her weight and let the thick wooden door swing open with a bang.
Novel was stripped to the waist. He leaned over the sink, in the process of washing away his make-up, his lean back giving way to strong, pale shoulders that had that starlight blue glow in the dim dressing room. He turned sharply at the intrusion, his face soaking wet, with lines of black dripping from his lips. The illusionist froze, letting the black and white powders drip onto his chest, one half-washed eyebrow rising at the sight of his pursuer.
Lily marched up to him with a furious face.
“Tell me that was a trick,” she demanded. Novel’s face was still a tableau. “Tell me… I don’t know… tell me you could have stopped that bullet if you’d fired the wrong shot.”
Novel blinked some water away from the top of his eyelids.
“There wouldn’t have been time,” he breathed.
Lily felt her heart pounding against her ribs as her breathing shortened.
“Then how,” she said, her voice cracking. “How would you do a trick like that?”
Yet more water pooled across Novel’s bare chest, flecks of black and white smearing onto his skin. He shook his head slowly.
“There’s a certain mathematical formula,” he muttered. “A law of averages that changes with every empty chamber.”
Lily didn’t even know that she’d slapped Novel’s face until after it had happened. She stepped back, shocked with herself as she watched his pale cheek turn pink, but boldness overcame her and she lunged for him again, grabbing his lean shoulders and shaking him just once.
“Are you saying I almost watched you die out there?” she demanded with a shout.
His face was a picture of shock as she let him go, reeling away with clenched fists.
“Do you know I just decided to give this another chance?” she yelled. “I just decided, tonight, that maybe you shades aren’t as morbid and crazy I thought. And then you do this!”
“Lily,” Novel said in sharp interruption.
She had turned her back to him in her tirade. Lily was about to turn and shout ‘What?’ at the top of her lungs, when she realised the veins in her arms were rising and tingling again. She snapped her head round before her body followed, watching all the water from Novel’s body and his sink gathering in a solid wall between them. It flowed like an endless waterfall in that same frosty blue shade, some six feet high, and Lily could see Novel’s outline through it.
“Oh yeah,” she said breathlessly, throwing a casual hand at the waterwall. “I can do water now. I was going to tell you before you tried to kill yourself.”
The Book Of Shade
Lily sat in the rehearsal space at 7p.m. waiting for Novel. When she’d eventually calmed down, and his face had stopped stinging, the pair had simply decided to meet again before the month was out and discuss things properly. It was a Thursday night, the first evening that Lily hadn’t spent with Michael in almost a month, but she didn’t find herself remorseful for cancelling their cinema date. She had stopped very briefly to take in a lungful of starlight on the way, and now her body was humming with the possibilities of the encounter that lay ahead. She heard the illusionist coming up the stairs for what seemed like an eon before the door gave a creak.
Novel was dressed in one of his usual suits, minus his jacket despite the frozen air filling the room. In one hand he carried the large crimson book with the cracked leather cover that Lily had seen once before in this room. With a wave of his hand, a two-seat sofa scraped its way along the floor to the centre of the room. Novel seated himself at one end of it, resting the book on his knee. He looked up expectantly and Lily approached, taking the other space beside him. He silently handed her the ancient tome.
“What is it?” she asked, the heavy weight now resting on her open palms.
“Everything,” Novel replied. “It is everything you could ever want to know about the shadeborn.”
As she gazed upon it, the book flipped open in Lily’s hands and started flicking its pages, just as it ha
d the first time she’d encountered it. Eventually, it settled on a blank double page somewhere in the middle. Lily waited, watching the blank, brown page with great impatience. She was about to ask another question when curling black words began to emerge within the leaves. Text and diagrams appeared all over the place, eventually joined by a great sprawling title across the top of the section.
“Dynamics of Water Casting?” Lily read. She eyed a step-by-step illustration of someone creating the waterwall she had accidentally manifested. “Is this like an instruction manual?” she said, lifting the pages for Novel to see.
He didn’t even glance at them.
“Don’t bother showing me,” he replied, “I can’t see that particular page.”
Lily gave him a funny look. He sucked in his cheeks a moment before he replied.
“The book only shows you what you’re ready to learn. Everything else is locked until your spirit is capable of it.”
Lily flicked through a few more pages full of water casts until the rest of the book became blank again.
“You can’t do water?” she asked.
“It’s the single most difficult element to master,” he replied. “Not many shades can do what I saw from you on Saturday night.”
There was no hiding the bitter jealousy in his tone. Lily tried not to smile or show her pride.
“I guess everybody’s got to be good at something,” she mused.
“We can practise your other elements together,” Novel offered, “but you’ll need the book for water. There’s nothing I can teach you about it. It’s quite safe to leave the book around mortals too: the pages all stay blank for them.”
Lily marvelled at the incredible shapes and formations on the ancient leaves before her, but she was a little sad that she could share them with no-one else.
“Where does something like this even come from?” she said.
“A booksmith,” Novel answered simply. “When shadechildren are deemed ready by their parents to learn proper casts, they take them to a booksmith. This is a Book of Shade. Each one is crafted to match the personality of its owner. Everything about it – the colour, the texture, even the shape of the words – is suited perfectly to them. It is theirs for their lifetime and no-one else’s.”
Lily frowned. “Then why aren’t I getting one of my own?”
“Because my book opened for you,” Novel said, looking deep into the pages he couldn’t read, “You shouldn’t be able to interact with it. I only know of one other pair of people it’s ever happened to. If something like this happens, one tends to take it as a sign not to interfere.”
Lily felt the weight of the book in a whole new way as Novel spoke. This was his, over two centuries old, and it contained everything he had ever managed to learn within these darkened pages. And he was willing to give it to her.
“I guess this means we’re back on training together?” she asked, trying not to sound too hopeful.
“It would seem so,” Novel replied.
“Your mother won’t be happy,” Lily added, wishing she hadn’t after she saw the sour look that overcame Novel’s pale features.
“I didn’t dare tell her about the book,” he breathed. “She thought it was bad enough I’d even approached you without knowing your bloodline.”
“And yet, here we are again,” Lily remarked.
“No shade should be left to fend for themselves.” Novel spoke towards the floor, and Lily got the impression he was talking about something more than just her circumstances. “Your father has a lot to answer for.”
“You sound like my mother,” Lily added, realising in the same moment that she hadn’t even texted her mum since New Year’s Day.
Novel stood up suddenly, dusting his waistcoat off and offering Lily a hand to help her to her feet. She took it, leaning on his strong palm and leaving the book on the sofa.
“I should like to ask you to become my apprentice,” Novel said with a stiff lip, “officially this time.”
Lily felt a tingle of pride spreading warmly into her chest as she let go of his hand.
“I accept,” she answered, “on the condition that you’re going to behave yourself this time. No more blowing up light fixtures and stuff.”
“Agreed, so long as you don’t slap me in the face again,” he retorted.
Lily grinned and let out a little laugh at Novel’s propriety. There was something shining in his eyes that could almost have been a smile, longing to escape.
The Element Of Water
Despite telling Jazzy several hundred times that she would not be able to read the pages of the Book of Shade, she still insisted on being there to watch Lily study its contents and attempt to practice her skills alone. Lily consulted the water pages again, reading them much more carefully, the same way she should have been reading the sources for the paper she was supposed to be writing for Professor Havers at that very moment. Jazzy rocked on her bed as she waited to hear what she called ‘the magic words’ come out of Lily’s mouth.
“The element of water,” Lily read in a fake Olde-English voice, “is expressed through the emancipation from one’s inhibitions.” She looked up at Jazzy with a pout. “You’re the English undergrad – translation?”
“It means you’ve got to be all wibbly and free-spirited.”
“Wibbly?” Lily repeated.
“You know,” Jazzy said, swaying her arms about like a jellyfish.
“Please tell me that’s not what I look like when I’m casting,” Lily groaned. She turned her gaze back to the book. “Ooh, this looks cool. A waterwhip.”
Laying the book down on her desk, Lily stood up and conjured her starting point: the waterball. The book told her to imagine a snakelike shape, and it had instructions on how to move her hands to elongate the ball into the whip’s proper form. The cast got stuck as a worm for quite a long time, wriggling in mid-air lamely until Jazzy was crying with laughter. With her rage slowly bubbling, Lily forced the worm towards Jazzy and let it go, soaking the legs of her pyjamas and the bottom of her duvet with a dull splash.
“Not… exactly… a whip-crack!” Jazzy said, still in breathless giggles.
“You’ll be sorry when it is!” Lily promised with a wicked grin.
FEBRUARY
Tricks Of The Trade
A proper training schedule had been arranged and Michael wasn’t happy about it. He was disappointed not to have Lily to himself any more, but she reasoned with him about the money that she so badly needed, until he cracked and starting making dates with her around her ‘job’ at the Imaginique. It was true enough that she was short on cash, only having her student loan and her hardship grant to help her survive the gauntlet of books, food and bills that stretched before her to the end of term in June. Mum had sent fifty quid at Christmas, but Lily, in her infinite wisdom, had transformed that into Pimm’s after Pimm’s on New Year’s Eve, and now she was struggling a little again.
Thanks to Jazzy and her seemingly infinite supply of groceries, Lily would never actually starve, but she felt guilty from time to time that her friend was footing the food bill all too often. Jazzy didn’t seem to mind, since her credit card statement was paid off in India each month, but Lily was pretty sure Mr and Mrs Dama wouldn’t be impressed if they knew they were feeding two starving students instead of one. That was the reason that Lily could never deny Jazzy a favour, so when she asked if she could come along to one of Lily’s training sessions with Novel, Lily had no way of refusing her.
It was very dark for 5p.m. as the two girls walked arm in arm through the park, shivering together against the biting wind that still hadn’t left Piketon’s streets. When they reached the theatre, Jazzy hung back, anticipating the horrific sight of Belnerg answering the door, only to be disappointed that she wasn’t first in line as Baptiste stuck his head out into the night. His teeth glittered in the early moonlight.
“Aha, bonsoir ladies,” crooned the elegant man. “I was just heading out. You want to get in?”
> “Please,” Lily answered.
They passed him and Lily caught a strange metallic smell in her nose as he went by. She and Jazzy stood in the doorway as Baptiste stalked out into the night, his long coat wavering against the icy wind that he didn’t seem the least bit disturbed by.
“God, he’s gorgeous,” Jazzy said with a swoon.
“Hmm,” Lily answered, closing the door.
“You don’t think so?” her friend asked in disbelief.
Lily tipped her head to and fro for a moment. She liked Baptiste. He made her feel relaxed, with his lazy accent and effortless grace, but some deep instinct within her prevented her from seeing him as anything but an acquaintance.
“Not really,” she replied.
“Oh I get it,” Jazzy said with a grin. “You like them, ahem… pale and interesting, do you?”
Lily realised what her friend was getting at, and slapped her hard on the arm.
“I have a boyfriend you know!” she cried.
“That’s avoiding the question if ever I heard it,” Jazzy snapped back with a laugh.
“I could hear you two three floors up,” Novel said suddenly as he emerged from the dark corridor.
Lily was instantly horrified, hoping he hadn’t heard Jazzy’s jokes. If he had, then nothing showed on his face as he nodded politely to Jazzy and held out his hand for her to shake.
“I assume you’re Miss Dama?” he asked.
Jazzy took his hand and gave it an awkward wiggle. “Just call me Jazzy, really,” she mumbled in reply.
Something about the way Novel spoke suggested that he probably never would.
“Might I ask what brings you here with Lily?” Novel added, giving his trainee a curious look.
She bit her lip and screwed her face into an apologetic look.
“Jazzy knows everything,” she said quickly.