Between the Shade and the Shadow

by Coleman Alexander

  Everybody ready? Hayvon asked. They nodded again.

  Ahraia reached out carefully; the initial brush of enchantment elicited a shiver, as though she had suddenly slipped into an icy forest pool.

  Wariness ruled the stag; its body was tense and ready to spring. It listened to the soft sounds of the meadow, to the rustle of the grasses and the distant trickle of a slow creek. It turned an ear towards the forest.

  It’s safe, Ahraia thought, feeling the first twinge of regret.

  She deepened the enchantment, turning the bonding to a full binding. Her own surroundings faded. The breeze, with the first hint of autumn, turned across the grasses of the meadow. A squirrel scratched up a tree in the distance. The stag lay perfectly still. Ahraia’s stomach clenched knowing what was about to happen; a fragment of the worry transferred to the deer. An ear turned towards her.

  On my mark, she conveyed to the shades.

  Tev and Shim drew back their arrows. The bowstrings whined quietly. The stag raised its head and peered towards them, both ears turned now.

  Ahraia? Hayvon conveyed, staying perfectly still.

  It’s fine, Ahraia lied. A jolt of fear passed through her, followed closely by cold sweat crawling from her skin. The stag stood up, snorting.

  What’s happening? They’re spooked, Hayvon asked.

  I’ve got it under control, Ahraia conveyed, closing her eyes. But she didn’t. The enchantment was slipping. She didn’t want to be bound to it; her own fear was clouding the link.

  It’s now or never, Hayvon conveyed.

  The stag took a step, nearly wild with alarm. The doe raised her head as well.

  On my mark, Hayvon conveyed to the shades, taking over.

  Ahraia’s lips were numb with dread. She couldn’t keep the binding. She didn’t want to.

  Now! Hayvon thought forcefully. Ahraia flinched and the stag flinched with her. It leapt in the air as the bowstrings twanged and the bond suddenly snapped. Tev’s arrow hit her mark. The doe took one bound and then crumpled. But Shim’s arrow disappeared into the grass. The stag was free. It bolted across the meadow.

  Light take me! Ahraia thought as Losna sprang after the stag. She leapt after them both, frantically attempting to reform her binding.

  In a matter of bounds, the stag reached the far side of the meadow, out of reach. A moment later, it disappeared into the woods, with Losna chasing close at its heel.

  What happened? Bind it! Hayvon conveyed.

  The grasses whipped at the underside of Ahraia’s arms. She sprinted into the woods, spinning ferns and maples out of her path just in time to see Losna’s tail slip out of sight. Ahraia cursed herself for letting the enchantment break.

  She leapt onto a log and rushed down a steep slope, seeking the stag with her mind but feeling only the empty night. The binding was broken. The chance was lost. She searched for Losna but had no sense of her shadow now, either. The hunt was over. She had failed to make a kill—again.

  5

  Singing

  Losna dragged the stag by the neck down the hillside. She wrestled it over a log and proudly dropped it at Ahraia’s feet. It slumped down the slope and its antlers gouged the soft earth. Its black eyes turned upward.

  Any better? Losna asked. She sat back on her haunches, panting lightly, with her ears turning backwards and forwards, her brow raised hopefully.

  Ahraia looked down at the lifeless deer. Blood spilled from its ravaged neck.

  “Dae-Mon above,” she cursed, worried what Hayvon would think. The bite marks were both obvious and unmanageable. A sinking shame settled over her for losing the binding; it mingled with abhorrent relief that she hadn’t been bound when Losna had made the kill.

  Losna cocked her head sideways. No good?

  Ahraia pulled the drain from her hip. “Maybe if I cut its throat here . . . or maybe here . . .” she said, drawing it out. “Maybe then it might look like I killed it?”

  Losna stared back at her, her big golden eyes full of doubt.

  “No? No. I didn’t think so.” Ahraia sighed. She looked down at the bloodied mess. They both knew that it would never pass as her kill.

  Food?

  Ahraia raised an eyebrow at her shadow. “Is that all you think about?”

  Losna yawned wide and licked her lips.

  “Yes. Food,” Ahraia agreed. There was no sense bringing it back to the darkening. Her father would only count it as another mark against her. Losna’s tail thumped against the ground as Hayvon jogged through the woods towards them.

  “Did you bind it?” he called excitedly, seeing Ahraia holding her drain. Did you make the kill? He took one look at the deer and frowned. “No?” Damn.

  Where are the shades? Ahraia conveyed, unable to meet his eye.

  “Back with Tev’s kill,” he said hesitantly. He opened his mouth to speak but stopped. He stepped cautiously closer, peering at the deer with a frown. What happened? he conveyed finally.

  “I lost the binding,” she said, the words tasting bitter.

  “You lost it?” he asked, his eyebrows coming together. “Or you broke it?”

  “I didn’t break it,” Ahraia said quickly, flushing in embarrassment. I just lost it. She turned away, discomfited that he was so close to the truth.

  “This isn’t the first time,” he said.

  Losna lifted her bloody snout, her ears perked attentively.

  Ahraia carefully cleared her mind, but she couldn’t ignore what had happened with the stag. The binding had crumbled, and she wasn’t sure if it had unraveled from her inability or her own volition. She walked away from Losna and the kill, running her hand over the coarse, barbed bark of a fallen dorn tree.

  Losna whimpered, perturbed that Ahraia had left her unguarded while she ate. But Ahraia couldn’t face her brother.

  “It’s all right,” Hayvon said. It’s all right. Alarm, shrouded poorly like the Bright Moon behind a thin wisp of clouds, seeped through his thoughts. Ahraia could feel it ringing in the space between them. She could hear it in the measured calm of his breaths. She clenched her teeth, flushing in embarrassment.

  “No, it’s not all right,” she said. She glanced back to find both Losna and Hayvon staring at her. The silence stretched between them, with Hayvon’s question growing. The weight of the truth crushed inward on her. “I don’t know if I broke it . . .”

  The muscles in Hayvon’s jaw flexed but he didn’t speak. He watched her carefully, as though he couldn’t decide if she was being honest or if she was sick.

  I can’t do it. I just can’t, she conveyed, suddenly desperate for him to understand.

  “Tonight?”

  I never could. She bound a fir and used the lower branches to spring atop of a half-fallen cedar. She landed nimbly, her toes curling inside her boots. The toppled tree jutted out from the hillside, high above the ground where she imagined for a moment that Hayvon’s judgment couldn’t touch her. She walked to the very end of the trunk. The forest spread before her, hundreds of dark pillars glowering back above the colorless underbrush.

  Hayvon stared up blankly. “What do you mean you never could?” His ears batted in disbelief. “You never have? Father was right? You’ve never bound your prey? But how did you . . . how could you make so many kills?”

  “I’m a good shot,” Ahraia said quietly.

  Hayvon had a pained look on his face. “Never?” He ran a scarless hand through his hair. “Not even once?”

  “I’ve tried . . . It’s always been a disaster.”

  “I remember,” he said slowly, walking up the hillside from beneath the log. “That strange deer . . . the one from the plains . . .”

  Ahraia nodded, remembering the terror that had taken her after she made her first kill. She bound a higher branch and propelled herself into the crook of a large maple, putting more distance between herself and Hayvon. She stood, bracing herself between two of the trunks, distressed that she couldn’t do as the rest of the shades did.

  “Maybe
you could start smaller, simpler,” Hayvon suggested. “I could help you.”

  “It’s not like it’s big,” Ahraia said. The stag was a yearling—a small one at that. “Besides, it doesn’t matter. The second I make the bond I can’t go through with it. It’s like I get . . .” she trailed off, leaning between the trunks, too embarrassed to finish the thought.

  “Scared?” Hayvon suggested hesitantly.

  Sick, Ahraia thought only to herself. “No, I just . . .” I can’t kill what I attach myself to, she conveyed, finishing the thought unsaid, aware of how awful it would sound aloud. How un-spritish it would seem. She pulled apart a maple seed, tossing it into the air.

  Hayvon frowned. “You’ve never had trouble hunting before.”

  Ahraia didn’t answer. Enchanting a creature, no matter what her intent, tied her to it. And to get close—close enough to keep it fearless and trusting—and then make a kill was revolting.

  “It’s a lot different,” she said finally.

  “It’s not supposed to be. It’s the way we . . .” Hayvon stopped short. “It’s how we . . .” he trailed off, his face twisting, the words escaping him.

  Ahraia didn’t have to hear anymore to know his thoughts. To be a sprite was to bind, enchant, and kill; it was the only way their people managed in this light-strewn world. She couldn’t meet Hayvon’s eyes. She grabbed another handful of seeds, flicking them one by one into the air as she spoke.

  “You know what a binding is like, it’s a connection—” she stopped, searching for the words, “No, it’s more than that. It’s an attachment that stitches me to whatever I bind, and when I sever that, a part of me is torn with it. It’s a betrayal—an ache that settles like a mara in my chest. But it doesn’t go away when I awake. It becomes a part of me: a terrible blackness in my heart.”

  She looked up. Hayvon stared at her, stricken.

  “That’s what it is to be a sprite!”

  The condemnation in his voice was too much. She tossed the remaining seeds away and bound a limb, twisting it towards herself before swinging to the forest floor, away from Losna and Hayvon, not wanting either to know the helpless fear that gripped her heart. She flitted down the hillside, using springs and shifts to take her farther away. Hot tears of embarrassment ran down her cheeks and her vision blurred but still she ran.

  When she finally stopped, her failure pierced her like a shaft of unhindered light. She sat down and dug her nails into her palms. She had always known her faults—always kept them close and secret—but now they were spilling out, unchecked.

  She wiped her eyes, running her fingers over the dry earth and leaves, soaking in the silence and relishing the separation from Hayvon’s questions and judgment, wondering why things had to change, wondering why she would have to become a sprite one day.

  Blissful quiet draped the night. No leaves turned on the wind. Not a branch stirred. The clouds and the canopy hid the stars and held the dark motionless.

  For a moment, Ahraia hoped it would last forever. But of course, it didn’t. Her ears twitched, hearing a sound.

  A soft sound.

  Ahraia held her hand above the ground, perfectly still. Her ears curled towards it.

  The sound drifted through the woods, subtle and subdued. It rose and fell like the wind, so faint that she wondered if she imagined it.

  Did you hear that? Losna thought from afar.

  Ahraia stood up, listening. She leaned forward against the trunk of an ancient fir tree, turning her ear towards the east. Was it coming from the plains? She strained to hear a hint of it. A voice? The shades? No, it couldn’t be. The shades were still in the meadow, in the deeper folds of the forest. The noise caressed her ears again, strange and beautiful, unlike anything she had ever heard—and now louder than before.

  What was that? Hayvon and Losna thought together.

  Quietly, Ahraia stalked towards the noise, trying to get a better sense of it. Her ears twitched as the sound grew. The louder it got, the stranger and more haunting it became. Ahraia had never been so enchanted and enthralled with a noise in her life.

  What are you doing? We’re almost on the plains, Hayvon conveyed, catching up.

  It’s a voice, she conveyed, unsure if Losna or Hayvon had truly heard it yet.

  Losna hurried from behind her, sniffing at the night. Her thoughts suddenly constricted to a single point, her instincts rising. That smell.

  Ahraia stopped and sniffed. She smelled it too. The sweet scent of woodsmoke and something else . . . something pungent and unnatural . . .

  Humans, Losna thought, bristling.

  The voice rose, accompanied by a strange strumming that stirred Ahraia’s heart and straightened her ears.

  Hayvon had caught up. There’s something out there. I see light.

  Ahraia ignored him. They were approaching the edge of the forest, the trees growing sparser and the plains suddenly spreading out before them as a dim and undifferentiated mass. The wind smelled familiar, dry and unhindered by the tangled turnings of the forest, but it was tinged with something foreign, something that didn’t belong. Then she saw what Hayvon had mentioned—a light that caught her eye. At first it, it glowed, faint and flickering. With every step closer it swelled like the noise, until it reverberated as a bright, unsheltered radiance reflecting upon the eaves of the forest. The air stung with smoke.

  Ahraia peered carefully from behind a thicket of saplings. She squinted. A fire blazed upward, surrounded by humans, all sitting or standing in a circle unabashed, all looking inward. The voice carried clear and true now and she realized that one of the humans was singing.

  Singing, she thought in disbelief.

  Its voice mixed and twined with a sound it spun from its hands. Ahraia held her breath, staring at the humans and listening to the song. Humans were said to be a rough and destructive type of people, scraping and turning the earth to their hands, but this was different . . . this was wonderful.

  Ahraia! Get back here, Hayvon conveyed. If they catch you, they’re going to torture you to death! He made a stronger bonding and forced a thousand thoughts of lightwalkers’ destruction into Ahraia’s head: burning and hacking, blazing fires and cold stone, strong hands, sharp steel, and pits beneath the ground. She closed her mind to his enchantment.

  It’s singing, she thought in disbelief.

  Even worse. Get back here. Hayvon’s ears were bent almost flat.

  Ahraia . . . Be careful, Losna thought in distress. Her fear ran even deeper than Hayvon’s.

  The human who sang was a he, Ahraia decided. Hair grew about his face like wired nettle, of a color she had only ever imagined in the embers of a nearly dead fire. His voice rang out, rough and full. The others humans sat in absolute stillness, as though they too were enchanted, enraptured by his hands spinning violently across the strange object, which sang out a second sound that filled the air, intertwining and mixing with the rise and fall of his voice like a tempest. His hair shook with his movement, then he slowed and brought his voice down, looking intently at his hands.

  Ahraia ducked closer, until only a few trees stood between herself and the plains, between herself and the fire. She sensed a binding around her—Hayvon was furious.

  What are you doing! Your skin is going to burn. He stood twenty yards behind her, still in the deep folds of the woods. What if we’re seen?

  She ignored him, moving branches and leaves to dampen her steps.

  They’ll hunt us. They’ll come looking for the darkening, Hayvon continued to fret. I—

  Shhh, she said, blocking out his conveyance. She hadn’t yet dared to bond the human, but her curiosity overcame her caution. She cast a mirroring enchantment, revealing the words through the bond. Her ears turned towards the singer, now entirely spellbound.

  The words ground against her ears, made of a substance Ahraia had never heard before, a coarse and tumbled language that ran against itself in its haste. And yet, a cadence and a rhythm coursed through it.

  H
e’s telling a story, Ahraia realized, just getting a sense of the language.

  You aren’t actually listening, are you? Hayvon conveyed, aghast that she had bonded the human.

  Ahraia stepped forward, but paused.

  The human’s voice was quieting. His hands were slowing. She kept her foot just above the ground, holding her breath while she waited for him to continue.

  But the song ended and the last note of his voice went quiet, like a sudden still within a storm. The night seemed to hang silently from the tip of his fingers and the curve of his mouth.

  The singer looked up, and his spell suddenly broke. The other humans shifted, as though roused from sleep, and some clapped their hands together. Ahraia’s ears tucked back in fear and she instinctively stepped behind a thicket of fern and elderberry, peering out, unsure what the clapping sound meant.

  Losna tensed, ready to leap to Ahraia’s aid. It’s a threat. They’ve seen us!

  But the humans weren’t looking towards the forest; their small, gleamless eyes were focused towards the singer.

  Ahraia let Hayvon loose from her binding, too distracted by the scene before her to hold him still and silent. Immediately, he started where he had left off.

  They’ve spotted you! Get away from there, he conveyed desperately.

  Go back to the shades. I’ll meet you there. She peered from behind the bushes, gawking at the humans.

  And let father condemn me when you return light-seared and reeking of humans?

  Ahraia ignored him. She had never seen humans so close before—not any that were alive, anyway. Once in a Dark Moon, a human would roam too close to the darkening and end up on the end of a dae-wards stake, but that was different.

  These humans looked peculiar and brutish, taller and broader than sprites with skin and hair both burnt by the Dae-Mon. They wore coarse clothes and stunk of earth and sweat and woodsmoke. The men had hair growing from their face, like the beards on the bison and keress of the plains. All of them had small, round eyes with too much white, and no gleam, and all of them had small, motionless ears, without any point in the least. She wondered how they could see or hear anything at all.