SHADOW WEAVER

by Claire Merle

  I hold him close, knowing when I let go, neither of us will be the same people we were that day I lay on a boulder soaking up the first rays of the spring sun, and he speared frozen fish from the river. That disillusioned girl and innocent boy have been left behind in the hushed quiet of winter. In my mind, I say goodbye to them.

  Eventually, I let go of my brother, and unwrap the wooden carving I have made for him on our journey from the Red City.

  “Happy birthday, Bud,” I say. “I'm sorry I missed it.”

  He rips off the twine around the leaves and holds up the wooden figurine. The lizard like creature’s huge wings are spread wide in flight, a rider on its back. Kel turns it in his small fingers. Then he kisses me on the cheek and links his fingers through mine. “Thank you.”

  He looks down, noticing my twisted little finger. Then he notices Tug, and his sunny face darkens.

  “Why is he with you?” he asks.

  “I have things to do,” Tug says. He takes his leave with a small nod.

  “It's going to be hard,” I say, “for you to understand, but Tug is my friend now. He saved my life. Because of him, I came back.”

  Kel's eyes narrow. “It's because of him you were in danger in the first place. And why are you hobbling? What happened to your foot? What happened to your finger?”

  I push away the memories. I don't want Kel to ever find out what happened in the Red City. What I had to do to win both our freedoms and make it back here.

  I envision those memories sinking down to the bottom of a great deep well, submerged beneath beautiful visions of the Ruby Palace. I think of the palace’s sunburnt walls, toppling towers, and winding passages. I remember the lavish interiors, luxurious baths, four-poster beds, ottomans, and rich foods. If I have learned anything from Tug, it is that even the Uru Ana cannot easily penetrate what a person wishes to hide.

  As I am doing this, I remember the way Ma always called up memories from her youth to echo whatever age I was. It suddenly strikes me that maybe Ma was doing what I’m doing now. Maybe her reminiscing wasn’t wishful thinking, but a gift to Kel and me. An antidote to all my bad memories.

  A child who’s been playing with Kel steps closer to see the wooden toy he holds.

  “It's a velaraptor!” she says. “I've seen pictures. But they don't really exist.”

  “Yes, they do,” a smaller boy pipes up.

  “You're five. You believe in monsters and fairies.”

  Kel looks at me and I wink. This is our secret.

  “Are we still playing?”

  He looks at me again. “Go on,” I say. “I have to speak with the lady who's been taking care of you.” His hand tightens around mine. “I won't be long.” He shakes his head. “OK, let's go together.” He nods as though his words have dried up.

  He runs to Deadran. Deadran fastens a blindfold over Kel's eyes, and though he is blind himself, his milky white irises are turned on me as he ties the fabric knot with his frail fingers. He has recognized my voice. He knows I am the captured shadow weaver the Prince took to the Red City to discover who assassinated his escort. And now, if Kel has not let it slip before, the Prince's old tutor must realize that the boy entrusted to his care is my glitter-eyed brother.

  Kel waves goodbye to the other children. As he cannot take my hand, he takes Deadran's. I hobble alongside them through the dim archway.

  “Lady Mirra,” a soldier says, approaching me and bowing. “The Duke welcomes you back to Lyndonia and requests your presence in the great hall.”

  The last time I saw the Duke before the Ruby palace came under attack was the evening we arrived in the Red City and the Queen summoned us to the throne room. Unless the Duchess has told her husband the truth, he still believes I am Lady Mirra Tersil of Delladea, the Prince's secret fiancé.

  Kel is asked to wait outside with Deadran. I enter the enormous stone hall, draped in carnelian curtains. Tug waits before a wide oval in the center of the room. He watches as I hobble up to his side. Then he turns to face the giant doors where the Duke and Duchess will arrive with their entourage, except they are already there. I sense their minds on the other side of the doors and slip into the Duke's.

  He stares at Duchess Elise. She stands before him face turned down, eyes red and puffy.

  “You have made a fool of me. Hidden information that could have got me killed. Could have got our children killed.”

  “I did it for our son.” The Duchess looks up, defiance burning in her gaze, but her hands are trembling. He takes hold of her hand.

  “What else haven't you told me?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What else!”

  “Tug.”

  The Duke releases her suddenly. “What about him?”

  “He is my brother, Tye Keylore.”

  I withdraw from the Duke's mind, open my eyes and swallow hard.

  “What?” Tug asks.

  “Elise has told the Duke who you are.”

  Tug flexes his shoulders and glares at the doors. They open a moment later. But only the Duke enters. His face is as stony and impenetrable as Tug's. I lower my gaze and bend my injured leg to curtsey, supporting myself with the crutches.

  From the tension in the air I'm convinced deep down the Duke has known all along who broke the Duchess’s heart before she became his wife. Which means he must have suspected for years that Elise was not Tug's flesh and blood, but adopted by their father. Not even a lady.

  His guards fan out around him as he comes to stand before us. He looks warily from Tug to me, and back again. Tug clears his throat and raises his eyes to meet the Duke. A storm of recognition swirls across the Duke’s face. He sees it now. The man he had known twelve years ago, Baron Tye Keylore, transformed into a beast-face with his tattoos, his long tangled hair, his broad frame, and scars from combat and drinking.

  The Duke’s expression grows icy. “My brother, the King, is dead,” he says. “The Carucan army is weak and the Etean army pushes back our borders daily. These are times of distrust, when friends are hard to distinguish from enemies. Until I hear word from the Ruby Court, I will not decide whether we accept your presence in Lyndonia. For now, you are my wife’s guests. She is responsible for you and will be held accountable for your actions. During your stay here, I do not wish to see either of you again.”

  He turns his back on us, and strides towards the doors followed by his entourage. A minute later, the giant doors close. Tug and I are alone in the grand hall’s silence.

  “Well,” Tug says. “There’s nothing like a hero’s welcome.”

  I smile and jog my arm against his. “Lets not forget, everything we did was just to save our own skins. Oh, and Kel.”

  “Course it was,” he says, cocking an eyebrow at me. Then he looks back at the doors where we last saw the Duke and shakes his head. Perhaps, at last, he realizes that Duchess Elise doesn’t deserve his undying devotion. Perhaps, at last, his heart can move on.

  Fifty-Three

  Several days later, news comes from the Ruby Court that Prince Jakut is engaged to the Etean King’s eldest daughter. They are to be married the following spring. The wedding is part of a negotiated truce, though it is Queen Usas who remains on the throne and Jakut will not be crowned. War on the Etean border has come to an end.

  I try to avoid thinking about the Prince. When I am not resting, I spend all my time with Kel and his friends, basking in my brother’s happiness. Sometimes, I catch myself remembering times the Prince and I were together, and wondering how different things would have been if I had known all along I could trust him. But it is foolish to ruminate about what cannot be changed. No matter what, I was always going to leave the Red City, and he would still have been obligated to marry the Etean Princess to end the war.

  On our tenth day in Lyndonia, Kel wakes with eyes like any other six-year-old child. The last flecks of gold have faded. It is time for us to find our parents.

  The sun is a low disk on the horizon as we clop under the arche
d entrance and across the drawbridge, the fort of Lyndonia receding behind us. Kel’s friends come to wave us off. The Duke and the Duchess do not.

  We camp in forests, remaining hidden from the roads, hiding our horses behind shelters of pine leaves, and lighting few fires. News of the King’s death has spread and the north is more restless than ever. We are safest avoiding people.

  Tug suggests leaving Kel with a friend at a place he calls the meadow, while we search the far north for my parents. He says Kel will be safer there from looters and mercenaries. He has even suggested I stay with my brother, and he journeys alone. I am tempted to accept his offer. I am tired and cannot imagine leaving Kel again. But assuming Pa is in good health, he will be looking for us. If somehow he recognizes Tug before Tug sees him, there is a chance the outcome will be ugly.

  Despite my unwillingness to commit to a decision, one afternoon I find us all sitting on our horses facing down a hillside. The valley is a wide stretch of grassland, uncultivated, wild. Part of it is scattered with flowers, another part appears to be bog.

  A memory flutters to the surface of the mind-world.

  She holds a purse of leather heavy with coin. Behind her the scraggly, undulating grassland still covered in snow. Long curls of hair drape around her slim face. Her skin is pale in the blue winter half-light. When she looks up there is pain in her eyes.

  “You're not coming back.”

  “It is just for safe keeping,” Tug replies.

  I gaze at the wilderness, trying to give Tug the privacy of his own thoughts, when it suddenly comes back to me. I remember the day in Blackfoot Forest when I shot Tug’s dog and he and Brin snatched Kel. Kel and I were by the frozen river, looking at the fish he’d dug up, when a memory grazed the mind-world, like a whisper on the wind. The first sign that we were not alone.

  Ruffled blankets. Wreaths of curly brown hair. Twilight glowing on wooden tumbledown walls.

  It was the same woman as the woman in Tug’s thoughts now.

  “This is your meadow,” I say, the realization dawning on me.

  Tug gives a short nod, and gets down from his horse. Kel dismounts and comes to help me down, as I mentally piece together these fragmented memories of Tug’s complex world.

  The last time Tug was here, he had given the woman with auburn hair a purse with five times more coin than he could have earned in a season hunting with Brin. She had believed he would not come back. What unknown path had he designed for himself before he crossed Kel and me in Blackfoot Forest, and why had it meant not returning?

  In the open valley there doesn’t seem to be anywhere you could conceal living quarters. A few scraggly, wind bent trees, and in the far, far distance, forest. There is no sign of human life. I turn to Tug, perplexed, and for a brief instant catch a look in his eye I've never seen before. Doubt.

  “I see it!” Kel whispers, voice full of awe and wonder. A soft cloud has blown across the sun, throwing shadow on the great patch of wilderness. I squint in the direction Kel is gazing, study a mound, longer, and perhaps more regular than others. There is a dip in the ground on the far side, hidden by another sharp rise in the earth. The dip is possibly large enough to hide a river or path.

  The wind carries a dog bark.

  Tug grabs his bow and arrows, and I fumble for my knives. Far off, a shape waggles through the long grass. The hound grows closer, shaggy gray and white fur disappears and reappears.

  I frown. The dog’s movements are restricted.

  You stay here, while I take care of the dog.

  The wolf dog reaches Tug and jumps up as best it can to lick him. Tug lowers to one knee and strokes her.

  “How did you get back here, Trix?” he murmurs.

  Two children appear in the grassland, heads bobbing up from the hidden dip. Then they are running at full speed, their shouts over their shoulders lost on the wind.

  Tug sets down his bow and arrow, lifts the dog easily in his broad arms and watches the children. They're older than Kel, and if they were Tug's children I imagine he'd be throwing himself down the hill to meet them, but you never know with Tug.

  Suddenly, Kel grips my arm. His face turns pale. I look out to where he's staring. A blonde head of hair has appeared. A man limps slowly towards us, one arm raised against his head to block the sun so he can see in our direction.

  Kel pulls away and bounds down the hill at full speed. It is Pa's mind, as clear as a boulder in a steam of pure crystal waters. Pa's mind, as deep and silent as the endless tundra in the spring.

  I collapse onto my knees, the taut strings of tension that have kept me going for weeks, vanishing and leaving me weak, exhausted.

  Pa is alive! He's found us. Tears roll down my cheeks, dropping into the sleeves of my worn shirt.

  A hand squeezes the back of my neck. I twist around and look up through blurry eyes. Tug looks back, fully understanding. I let out a choked sob. The emotion is a broken dam rushing over me. It knocks me down. I am relieved Pa is alive, relieved I have finally achieved what once seemed impossible, returned my brother to the safety of my parents. My shoulders shake as I cry.

  Tug crouches beside me. I lean into him. Like the time in the palace gardens before I was captured by Commander Linx and became Lord Strik's pet prisoner, Tug's strength bleeds into me, seems to mould to my soul, so that I don't feel quite so alone.

  The shaking stops but I can’t move. This is it. When Tug lets me go, our journey will have ended. I will be free.

  “Someone still has to save the Rudeashan princess,” I whisper, sobbing, and sniffling, and only half-joking.

  “Your body and mind need rest, Mirra. You have been through an ordeal. It hasn’t caught up with you yet, but when it does—”

  “I wasn’t talking about me,” I say, nudging his shoulder.

  He snorts and shakes his head. I allow him to help me to my feet. Pa and Kel are coming up the hill.

  Tug passes me my crutches. I assemble them under my arms, avoiding Pa's eyes, avoiding Tug's. We both seem to still at my father's approach.

  The children reach Tug and throw arms around his waist.

  “I knew you'd come back!” the girl says. She's ten or eleven.

  “I caught a hundred rabbits!” the boy says. “I made four new snares just like you showed me.”

  “Not a hundred.”

  “Almost a hundred.”

  Their chatting vanishes into the background. I finally force myself to raise my eyes, and find Pa's blue gaze levelled at me from a few feet away.

  I hobble forward to meet him. At first it is awkward. I can tell by the way he's looking at me that I seem as much a stranger to him, as he seems to me. Then he steps forward. His arms rise and he pulls me into a tight hug. At the same time, I am enveloped by his beautiful, desolate mind, and a feeling of security and safety rouse within, not gone forever, after all.

  “Mirra,” he murmurs.

  He draws back and we stare at each other. My eyes burn with tears, reflecting his own.

  “Where's Ma? Is she OK?”

  “She's fine. She's fine.” Pa's gaze flicks over to Tug, questioning, guarded.

  Tug takes up the reins of his horse. “Let's go and find Sarah,” he says to the children. He strides past us down the hill, the boy and girl running ahead calling for their mother.

  Pa's confusion is even greater than Kel's at seeing me with Tug. He came here hunting the man who destroyed his family, only to find Kel and me both safe and under the mercenary's protection.

  “How bad is your foot?” he asks.

  A healer in Lyndonia had helped set the bones, and the pain, while not altogether gone, is bearable.

  “It’s getting better. How did you get here? How did you find us?”

  “Once my injury had healed enough to let me move around, I went straight to the Hybourg. Just as well your mother wasn't with me. After what I saw there, I imagined the worst.”

  I could imagine the glacial fear Pa must have experienced entering the dark P
it where glitter-eyed children were put into cages and sold like farm animals. Not knowing if Kel had been held in those cages. Not knowing what terrible things had become of his children.

  “Then you found Tug's wolf dog.”

  “Not the first time. But I kept searching. And eventually, I found a woman who had been paid to care for Trix.” His eyes dig into me like fishhooks. “I will not ask for explanations now, Mirra. I have no idea how you have managed to bring your brother back to us against all odds. But when you are ready to talk, I am here.”

  I nod. Pa takes my face in his hands and kisses my forehead.

  “Thank you,” he says. “Thank you, my brave girl.” The he helps me back onto my mare, and we walk downhill to the longhouse.

  I cry tears of joy, tears of heartache, tears of exhaustion. Tears for the suffering that the greed of a few can cause to so many others.

  But in the deep caverns of my heart, I’m standing on the crystal cliffs of my people’s island. I feel the strength of those rushing winds, and know, unlike the mind, which can be shaped and distorted by pain, the light inside each of us can never be dulled. Our memories sculpt the story we tell about our lives, but they do not decide who we are.

  THE END

  Note from the Author

  Thank you so much for coming on Mirra’s journey. If you would like to be notified when the Shadow Weaver sequel is available please follow me at: bookbub

  Book reviews are a wonderful way of receiving feedback from readers. If you have the time, I hope you’ll consider leaving a review here. Thank you!

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to all my wonderful Wattpad readers and friends whose enthusiasm and support for Shadow Weaver encouraged me to complete this. You guys rock!

  Thanks to my editor Lynda Floyd.

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