Between the Shade and the Shadow

by Coleman Alexander

  “It didn’t mean you had to leave.” Ahraia swallowed hard as she struggled to get her emotions under check, fuming at his nerve.

  “I’m a nit-ward, not some nitesse,” he said, his scars flushing with red. “Now, Kren is gone—whether she passes her test or not—it’s one less sibling standing between you and your shadow test. Unlikely as it seems, that could come any day. You must be ready.”

  Ahraia struggled to keep her ears from tucking back.

  “And being ready means that you can’t waste your time on silly adventures such as this one. Watching her shadow test?” He scoffed. “Even if you did, it wouldn’t help you. It doesn’t matter in the least if you can’t perform the basic functions of a sprite. That means your shadow can’t hunt for you anymore, understand? You must make your own kills. You need to be able to bind and hunt as a sprite.” He glared at her malevolently.

  When he finally broke his gaze, he stepped back and nodded to Hayvon, who stood up, with eyes and ears still downcast.

  “You’re supposed to have more prudence than this, Hayvon . . . your only responsibility is to keep her out of trouble.”

  Hayvon stared at his boots and nodded.

  “It’s obviously too great a task for you . . .” their father said. He sighed in irritation and waited for quiet to settle. “Tomorrow night, I want you two to take my oldest shades hunting. Shim and Tev have only just bound their shadows and they need direction. Maybe it will help you both. Take them to the northern woods, and don’t come back until you’ve brought in enough game for the month. Understood?”

  Yes, Nit-Ward, Hayvon answered quietly.

  Ahraia refused to acknowledge him.

  “I can’t promise lenience if this happens again. Now get back inside your nit. Otherwise, it’s a week’s patrol of the Winnowlin for both of you.”

  Ahraia turned away defiantly, her ears straight, and stalked back across the hollow. Her father’s thoughts carried after her.

  No more hunting with your shadow, Ahraia. She won’t always be there for you. Understand?

  3

  The Astra

  Tonight is a dark night. A good night for shades and shadows. A perfect night for hunting, Hayvon conveyed. His blackened pupils were ringed with pale yellow.

  Speak for yourself, Ahraia answered darkly, leading him through a towering grove of firs as the path faded step-by-step into ferns and roots. A thin fog crept through the forest, bleeding through the creases and spreading across the hollows and dells.

  Ahraia glanced at Tev’s and Shim's bows longingly, feeling the paltry hunting blade at her hip. Her father had insisted on replacing her own bow with the small drain in the first turnings of winter. Spring and summer had passed, but she had yet to use it, though soon enough, she would have to.

  What’s wrong with tonight? Hayvon asked.

  The understory was pitch black, without the moons or stars to light their way. But they moved easily through the deep forest, without a single sound of turning leaves or breaking branches.

  Dark nights are a joyless thing, Ahraia conveyed. And Tev and Shim aren’t my idea of company. I’d rather drink from the Winnowlin.

  The bitter taste of the night before lingered, and taking her father and the Astra’s oldest shades hunting was as close to condemnation as she could think. She had half a mind to lead them past the Shadow Woods, just to watch their ears curl.

  All last night you complain of being restless. Now it’s the company you keep? Hayvon shook his head playfully.

  This is your fault, Ahraia conveyed, wanting him to know her mood. If you had just come when I told you, we never would have been caught. She cut in front of him and stepped into the lead, catching the look of surprise on his face. Tev, the smaller of the two shades, hurried after her with her shadow clutched close to her chest.

  We would have been caught either way, Losna thought. She brushed past Ahraia in irritation and loped off ahead. I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with this test, anyway.

  I’m not obsessed, Ahraia projected forward. She clenched her teeth, irritated with her shadow as her tail disappeared through the brush.

  She followed Losna down a narrow ravine covered in ferns and sparse maples. They passed a human head, staked and unrecognizable, placed by the dae-wards as a warning. Wicker blooms burst vibrantly over a stream bank, their fetid odor reflecting Ahraia’s mood. Hayvon brought up the rear in absolute silence, leaving her alone to brood over the night before.

  With Kaval and Altah gone to the Stone Tree and Kren gone for good, the nit had seemed deserted. Only five of them remained, and for the first time, more than half of their shade trees lay empty.

  Ahraia had spent the better half of the wasted night trying to teach Alua and Thelon how to properly bind the nit tree, so they could come and go without shaking every leaf from the branches. Being the only remaining spritelings, and without the guidance of her mother or father, they struggled with the simplest bondings and were incapable of true bindings. As such, they didn’t have much luck forming closures.

  But Thelon managed to move a branch with his mind and Alua’s conveyance was improving, so it hadn't been without benefit. At the very least, it had taken Ahraia’s mind off Kren’s test and kept her from wishing the worst for Hayvon, though, at the present she had returned to it with a renewed will.

  Kren, thankfully though, had passed. It had taken the whole night. When she had returned from the Makers, her cheeks had been tear-stained and her eyes puffy and angry—but she was a sprite. The nitesses had ushered her into the small shelter of a nascent nit tree—her nit tree—less than a year old and waiting to be cultivated to her will. She would spend the next several turnings molding it and the rest of her life living under its protection, until one day she became a nitesse with her own spritelings and shades. The mood of the darkening had been jubilant, but Ahraia had merely felt restless. She had wanted out of her nit and out of the darkening. Now she just wanted to know how Kren had managed it.

  Shim’s voice suddenly shattered the silence, breaking the quiet like a branch snapping violently underfoot.

  “Where do shadows go when their shades become sprites?” He was the Astra’s oldest, nearly as old as Alua and Thelon and only just having bound a shadow. As such, his conveyance wasn’t very strong and so he spoke aloud instead.

  “Part of the shadow is said to join the shade,” Hayvon said from behind them, “but the shadow itself goes back to the forest.”

  Ahead, Losna stopped, holding perfectly still with her ears turned back attentively. She didn’t like hearing about the shadow test—and most of all she didn’t like to hear about shadows returning to the forest.

  Is that true? she thought, waiting for Ahraia to catch up.

  More or less, Ahraia answered, slightly unsure herself. The first two tasks were a mystery, but she knew it spanned three turnings of the Bright Moon and had something to do with hunting by bindings, but beyond that, shades weren’t allowed to know anything until they were called to become a sprite. Every time a shade entered a task, the rest of the darkening’s shades were relegated to their nits, hidden away until it was over.

  “So her owl might be out here?” Shim asked, looking up to the forest as though Kren’s owl might be perched, watching them. His shadow, which was smaller and slinkier than Vesta, looked up nervously.

  “Flit’s certainly out here somewhere,” Ahraia said, saddened to think of her being all alone after so long. Flit was motherly, and just as Kren had looked out for the shades, Flit had watched after the shadows. It didn’t seem right, or fair, to expel her back to the woods. The thought left a hollow beneath Ahraia’s throat, an aching in her heart that no amount of reason or reckoning could fill.

  Losna let out a quiet whine. The hollow inside Ahraia deepened. She didn’t want to think about sending Losna back to the plains. She pointed upward at the first chance to change the conversation.

  “Look, a suckle pine,” she said, hoping to distract the younger
shades.

  Hayvon glanced up. “It’s well out of reach,” he said. The lowest branches hung a dozen feet above them. “And there’s a serapin at the trunk.” He gave a half-hearted attempt at reaching one of the lower branches but stayed well away from the coiled stems of the serapin tree—the poison stingers on the bigger ones were enough to kill.

  “Why?” Shim asked. “I mean, why do the shadows go back to the forest.” His own brown ermine crawled about the nape of his neck, its head bobbing and whiskers quivering. A collar of white had already begun to show, even though winter’s chill wouldn’t arrive until the dark moon finally reemerged in the sky.

  “Because,” Hayvon said, brushing his hands clean, “they’re meant for the forest. They aren’t meant to be shadows forever.”

  Losna let out a huff of irritation. She held her tail stiffly behind her, her eyes piercing Ahraia.

  “It’s not too high,” Ahraia said, pointedly ignoring her. I can climb that. She scanned the woods and found a large maple that suited her purpose.

  Losna huffed again.

  Ahraia focused on forming her bonding. First, she linked her mind to the tree, taking a moment to acquaint herself before she turned it to a true binding. She sensed deep roots and limber branches.

  Come here, she thought, forming the movement of the branches in her mind. They responded by stretching towards her.

  “What’s happening?” Tev asked fearfully. “Why is the tree moving?”

  “Shade Ahraia is binding it,” Hayvon reassured her.

  The tree’s resistance revealed itself through the faintest creak of its trunk, forcing Ahraia to move the branches more willfully. They strained, the leaves shuddering right to their tips.

  Tev looked even more frightened at this. “Like a shadow?”

  “Subtler than that—more like the darkening wall.” Hayvon’s eyebrows drew in skeptically as he looked between Ahraia and the maple. “Will those hold you?”

  Ahraia grabbed the outstretched branches, persuading the wood to twist about her wrist and grip her firmly.

  “Of course they will,” she said, trying to inflict confidence into the tree.

  Just like last time? Losna thought.

  Ahraia grimaced. The scabs still traced across her shin and elbow from when the last spring tree had broken halfway up its lift, dropping Ahraia square in the middle of the nettle she had been trying to avoid. That was my fault, she conveyed. This is a young maple, supple and strong. She let the thought carry, making sure the tree heard the compliment.

  The leaves preened themselves, whispering without the wind to blow them.

  “Besides,” Ahraia said, grinning, “I’m as light as a feather.”

  Shim looked to Hayvon again, confusion on his brow. “I thought the wall only responds because it’s awake, like our shade trees.”

  “In a manner,” Hayvon explained. “The wall and the shade trees are awake, and they’re used to us—they expect to move because they’ve been conditioned to it. But everything is awake if you’re strong enough with your binding and willful enough. Every living tree and creature is awake—you couldn’t bind a log any more than you could bind water or fog. But most shades and sprites don’t take to such bondings easily. Shade Ahraia just happens to think herself a bit of an expert,” he said. “And one of these days it's going to get her into trouble.”

  “One of these days . . .” Ahraia said. She flexed her arms and bent her elbows slightly. She took a deep breath and then released the enchantment holding the doubled over branches.

  Whoosh.

  The boughs ripped her from the ground in a rush of leaves and hair and fog. Her arms strained and she focused firmly on her intended endpoint. The branches twisted accordingly, slowing, losing power. Her feet came to rest twenty feet above the ground. She released her hold along with the enchantment and the branches swung back freely over the forest in a tempest of leaves. She stood on the first large branch of the suckle pine with the serapin branches slithering hungrily below.

  She picked a maple leaf from her hair, letting it fall to where the shades stood, staring up, with mouths agape.

  Show off, Hayvon conveyed, but even he looked impressed.

  A smile tugged at the corner of Ahraia’s mouth. She made her way nimbly to the trunk.

  “How did she do that?” Shim said in awe. “I’ve never seen anyone do that.”

  “That’s because no one is stupid enough to try,” Hayvon said disapprovingly.

  “Why not?” Tev asked. Her bushy-tailed shadow watched Ahraia with beady eyes.

  “Look around us,” Hayvon said, gesturing to the canopy. “How many branches could you reach if they bent the proper way? Not many. And of those, how many could support you?”

  Tev shrugged. Shim searched the woods with his mouth hanging open and his eyes wide. Hayvon went on.

  “Most of the branches near enough to the ground wouldn't support you and the rest are half-dead. What happens if the one you bind breaks? Are you going to be ten feet off the ground? Twenty? Higher? And which trees should you bind? Some are stiffer than others. Some are more stubborn. Firs have strong branches but they’re too high. Maples are okay—but not if they’re wet. Oaks—if you’re foolish enough to bind—are mean and gnarled and would be glad to break beneath you.”

  “They would?” Tev said.

  Hayvon nodded. “And that doesn’t figure in each tree’s manner. Some are old and slow, some are young and wild, some are brittle and others are just plain mean. Which ones should you trust?”

  Ahraia listened vaguely as Hayvon listed all the reasons the shades shouldn’t do as she had. To her, it seemed easy: some trees could, and some couldn’t, some trees would and some wouldn’t. That came naturally. And to worry about it was why there were three shades on the ground and only one in the tree. Still grinning, she began to climb.

  Be careful, Losna thought distantly. Their bond twanged with worry.

  Ahraia climbed higher until the warnings buzzed distantly, keeping her from doing anything extraordinarily foolish. The trunk narrowed and the branches and cones grew thinner. She grabbed one of the slender cones. Still soft.

  She climbed higher still, above the fog of the forest, delighting in the exhilaration of being so high, so free. The fog lay below and the clouds above, but between, the trees swayed like the grasses of the endless plain, dancing and whispering and playing together. She could almost forget the conversations below; she could almost forget that shadows were returned to their place in the woods.

  Almost.

  She checked another cone.

  Firmer. Good.

  She bound the tree, a tall and proud sentinel. A binding here wouldn’t do; if she took without asking, the tree might get angry. It might throw her to the ground or break a branch beneath her.

  May I have some of your cones? she asked, rousing it to wakefulness. The words didn’t matter, they just helped form her intention. And the tree didn’t answer, of course, but the connection from the stem to the cone softened. She pulled the first prize loose. She smiled.

  Thank you.

  She quickly rearranged the eaves-web of her cloak, re-weaving it with her mind and hands to form pockets. Then she went about gathering more cones, leaving the softer ones to harden, taking only the ones the tree parted with easily.

  Once her pockets brimmed with the long, slender cones, she climbed back down to the lowest branches. She linked the maple, bringing the boughs towards her once more. They twisted around her wrists. She grabbed hold, stepped into the air and swung back to the ground with the fog curling after her. She landed with a flourish.

  Tev gasped and Shim’s mouth hung open. Hayvon hid half a smile while Vesta peaked out from his pocket.

  Losna sniffed at Ahraia’s pockets and then turned about. Waste of time, she thought, her tail bouncing after her as she jogged off to scout the woods. Show off . . .

  Ahraia grinned. She offered each of the younger shades a cone after snapping the tip o
ff to reveal the sweet sap beneath. She split her own and tipped it up to her lips.

  Hayvon held out his hand. Ahraia raised the cone above her mouth, letting every drop of the sweet juice drain before she tossed it to the ground, smacking her lips like Losna sometimes did.

  Hayvon waited expectantly.

  Ahraia frowned. “This is for Vesta,” she said, holding out a cone halfway. A pair of slender paws emerged from his pocket and greedily snatched it away from her. The cone, which dwarfed Vesta, somehow disappeared easily back into Hayvon’s pocket. He was still looking at Ahraia. She grabbed another cone but held it out of reach.

  You don’t deserve this after last night.

  I’m sorry, he conveyed, only to her. She considered him for a moment. He was hopelessly wardish sometimes, and terrible at conveyance. But with Kren gone, Hayvon was her closest sibling, and he looked out for the others as well as any. I am sorry, he conveyed again, skillfully keeping the thoughts to a whisper.

  That’s better, she conveyed, her ears flickering impishly. She handed him the cone but nearly dropped it when Tev let out a terrified squeak.

  “Shade Ahraia! Something’s coming!” She pointed through the fog.

  Ahraia spun about to find Losna bounding back through the woods, their bond reverberating with fear.

  Alp! Losna thought, terrified. Alp!

  An alp? Here? Ahraia thought doubtfully. She touched Losna’s memory with her mind, and her shadow showed her what she had seen. A lightwalker, sharp-eared with a wicked face, ran through the woods. She saw a silver-tipped spear disappearing, and then the memory faded, ending with Losna standing before her. The hair on Ahraia’s neck stood on end, mimicking Losna’s bristling fur.

  It passed there. That way. Losna pointed her body to the north, towards where she had just come.

  What is it? Hayvon asked, sensing their shared vigilance.

  The younger shades flinched skittishly as a branch broke somewhere in the woods. Ahraia dropped the cone she held.