Shadowsmith

by Ross Mackenzie

  Kirby stared out towards the calm blue sea. After a while he said, “I asked Dad if I could have my own fishing rod.”

  “Well… that’s good.”

  “Yeah. I just thought: you know what, if I can rid the world of an all-consuming evil, then why should I be frightened of a little bit of water?”

  Amelia gave him a bright smile. Her freckles connected. “You’ve seen a few strange things lately.”

  “I’ve seen a lot of strange things,” Kirby corrected her.

  “I guess you might wish you could forget a few of them?”

  Kirby raised an eyebrow. “Oh no. No way! You’re not taking any of my memories!”

  She held up her hands innocently. “Look, I’m just saying. Seeing the things you’ve seen… knowing the secrets you know about the world… it’s a heavy load for a person to carry around.”

  “But I want to carry it. I want to remember.”

  She gave him a doubtful look. “I don’t know.”

  “Well I do,” said Kirby. “I know I’m not scared of everything any more. I know I’ve got my dad back. I know whatever happens to Mum I’m more prepared than before. I don’t want to forget the things that helped me. I want to remember them, and see them whenever I need to.”

  Amelia pursed up her mouth. She folded her arms.

  “And…” Kirby looked at his feet, “I don’t want to forget about you. You don’t forget friends, Amelia. Every time I see a horrible yellow raincoat, no matter where I am, I want it to remind me of you.”

  Amelia put two fingers in her mouth and pretended she was being sick. “Fine,” she said. “You win.”

  Kirby smiled. They sat on the beach for a while, the tide rising and the sound of the gulls in the air.

  At last, she said, “I have to go.”

  “I know.”

  They stood and faced each other, and Amelia reached into her trusty yellow raincoat and pulled out a hazel twig. She held it out. “Just in case.”

  Kirby took it.

  She brushed her hair from her green eyes, and she leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. Kirby felt his face go red.

  “You’re going to do great things, Kirby Simpson. I’ll keep an eye out for you.”

  “Kirby!” Dad was standing on the harbour wall, waving. “Visiting time, pal! Come on.”

  Kirby waved back. When he turned again, the only sign Amelia had ever been there was a message written with a stick in the sand.

  Thanks.

  FIVE

  Life Goes On

  A Familiar Face

  Kirby and Dad sat at a table by the window in Frankie’s Café. It was Saturday morning in Craghaven, and the water was calm and blue.

  “You OK?” Dad asked as he cut into a slice of black pudding and shovelled it into his mouth.

  Kirby looked over his stack of pancakes. “Yeah,” he said. “Why?”

  Dad tilted his head. “You haven’t mentioned your friend lately – the girl. What’s her name? Emily?”

  “Amelia.”

  “Aye, Amelia.” He scooped up a pile of scrambled egg and sausage. “Where is she?”

  Kirby pushed a bit of pancake around his plate. “She had to go.”

  Dad nodded, as if he’d seen this sort of thing a hundred times. “Aye, that’s the thing with living at the seaside,” he said. “People come and go quicker than the tide. You liked her, eh?”

  “Yeah…” Kirby paused then added, “but not like that. She wasn’t my girlfriend or anything.”

  “Whatever you say, pal,” said Dad with a smile. Then the smile faded. “You will tell me, from now on, won’t you? When there’s something wrong? We can do that now, you and me?”

  Kirby nodded. “I will. I promise.”

  ***

  After breakfast Dad had some errands to run around town.

  “Sure you don’t want to come?”

  “Shopping? No thanks. I think I’ll go for a walk.”

  “Suit yourself. Just make sure you’re back in plenty of time for visiting.”

  Kirby went to Ruby Cove first. He’d been there most days since Amelia left. He stood on the spot they’d last spoken and chucked some stones into the water, seeing how far he could throw.

  Typical, he thought, first real friend I ever make and she’s not even human.

  He reached down and rolled up the leg of his jeans. The hazel wand Amelia had given him was safely tucked down his sock. He brought it out and ran his fingers along the rough bark.

  He wondered, as he’d done so many times, where Amelia was now. What kind of trouble would she find? What sort of adventures was she having? And was she having them with someone else, someone who wasn’t him?

  He walked up the steep series of winding roads through Craghaven and then out of the village, past the field where the carnival had been a few weeks ago. He wasn’t really thinking about where he was going. He just kept walking, along a narrow dirt road between two of Farmer Weir’s fields then through a field of high corn, a golden sea waving in the breeze around him. At last, he came to the point where the farm met the woods. He saw the old farmhouse, boarded up and abandoned, and he realised he’d known where he was going all along.

  A sudden, searing pain engulfed his hand. He grabbed it, and examined it. On the fleshy part of his palm, where the spider had once been, there was a bright pink scar. Kirby looked around, his heartbeat picking up. A voice in his head was telling him to turn around, to run. He didn’t listen.

  The farmhouse door was stiff, as it had been last time, and right before it cracked open a rush of hope bubbled up inside him. Maybe he’d open the door to find Amelia waiting in her impossible kitchen, cooking eggs and yelling at him for tracking her down again.

  But all that waited inside was the empty silence of a lonely old house.

  Kirby entered, looked around.

  A floorboard creaked.

  “You can still feel her here, can’t you?”

  The voice made him jump. He stared hard into the shadows.

  “I can feel her too,” said a voice that was eerily familiar…

  “Who’s there?” Kirby asked.

  A movement in the dark. Bright beams of sunlight pierced through gaps in the boarded-up windows. The person walking towards Kirby stepped into a sunbeam so that Kirby could see his face.

  Kirby took a sharp breath. He stepped back, once, twice, until he hit the wall.

  “This isn’t real.” Beads of cold sweat were forming on his face. His scalp was crawling, and the blood in his veins was tingling with fear. The person who’d come from the shadows, the person standing only a few metres away from him, couldn’t be there, not really.

  When Kirby looked across the kitchen he saw his own features staring back – his eyes and nose and mouth, his hair and clothes, his voice, his face.

  There were two Kirby Simpsons in the farmhouse.

  One More Fight

  Two Kirbys. Impossible.

  And yet, after everything he’d seen, not impossible at all. And that made it all the more frightening. This wasn’t some nightmare he could just wake up from.

  “What are you?” he said, still pressed against the kitchen wall.

  “You know what I am,” said the second Kirby.

  “I don’t. I really, really don’t.”

  The second Kirby smiled, and Kirby noticed for the first time that they were not quite identical; this Kirby, the fake, had a long scar running down the side of his face.

  The second Kirby saw him looking, and ran his finger down the scar. “This?” he said. “You gave me this. Have you forgotten?”

  “I didn’t do that. I wouldn’t.”

  The fake Kirby smiled. There were other differences too. Kirby could see them now, as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. The second Kirby’s eyes were sunken into his head and there were dark rings around them. He was thinner, more angular, slightly stooped.

  “It happened in the fairground.” The second Kirby pointed to his face. “You di
d this – in the haunted house, with a piece of witch-stick. It burned.”

  Kirby stared at his other self, then at the scar on his hand. “You’re the spider?”

  “If that’s what you want to call me.”

  “So how come you look like me?”

  The second Kirby smiled. “When you attacked our nest, I hid in your flesh. You carried me out of danger.”

  Kirby stared at the place on his palm where the spider had burst through his skin.

  “I took a part of you when I left that night,” said the fake Kirby. “It made me stronger, and it let me come out in the sunlight. Let me look like this.”

  “Why?” said Kirby.

  The second Kirby stared hard at him. “You took away my family. All my brothers and sisters died in the cave that night.”

  Kirby edged towards the door. “They didn’t belong here,” he said. “They were going to hurt people.”

  “They’re gone because of you.” The second Kirby smiled crookedly. “But the Shadowsmith isn’t here to protect you this time, is she?” He took another step. “I’ve been to visit your mum, you know.”

  Kirby stopped moving towards the door. “You what?”

  “Oh yes, we’ve had a few chats, her and I. Well, when I say chats… she’s not really much of a talker at the moment, is she?”

  “You stay away!” Kirby shook his fists. “Leave her!”

  “You cleaned this town up. Got rid of all the darkness. Except me.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to take away your mother, like you took away mine.”

  “Your mother?”

  “In the nest in the cave. You sent her to a watery grave.”

  In his head, Kirby saw the spider’s nest again, saw the huge thing squirming inside.

  “I’m going to wrap you up in a web,” said the fake, “and leave you with just enough strength to watch your mum lose her battle.”

  They stood perfectly still, staring at each other, waiting to see who would be the first to make a move.

  Kirby reached down for the hazel wand in his sock, quick as he could. He had it in his fingers, but before he could use it, the second Kirby leapt across the room and knocked him to the ground. He landed with a heavy thud on the wooden floor, and the hazel fell out of his grasp.

  “Where’s your friend now, eh? Where’s the Shadowsmith?”

  Then the second Kirby’s hands were pulling him up so they were eye to eye. Kirby pushed him away as hard as he could, and made a run for the wand, but the fake Kirby tripped him. He grabbed Kirby’s leg and dragged him out of the kitchen, through the hallway to another room, where the skeleton of a burned-out armchair sat in one corner and a shattered mirror stood leaning against the wall.

  Kirby kicked and scratched and fought. He broke free and scrambled across the room, crouching under the boarded-up window. The fake Kirby edged closer, his fingers twitching. In the fragments of the shattered mirror, Kirby saw the fake’s reflection, and it was not the reflection of a boy. It was a midnight-black spider, the size of a large rat.

  “You frightened, Kirby?” said the spider-boy. “I can smell it. I can hear your heart.”

  Kirby stood up, and they circled each other until Kirby was sure the broken mirror was directly behind him. Then he said, “Come on then.”

  The second Kirby yelled and charged at him, but Kirby was waiting. He dodged out of the way, sending the fake through what was left of the broken mirror. He yelled out in shock and pain as the ragged glass cut him.

  Kirby was out of the room in a flash, into the kitchen, grabbing the hazel wand, and then out the door of the old farmhouse, back into the warm golden sunshine.

  An idea struck him then. He did not have Amelia by his side. He couldn’t use magic to beat this thing. So he’d have to use cunning instead. But he’d have to be quick if it was to work. He hid the real hazel wand in his sock then he ran to the nearest tree and snapped off a branch. Clutching the new stick in his hand, he hurried through the field of high, swaying corn, the brightness of the world stinging his eyes.

  “You can’t get away!” came the second Kirby’s voice from somewhere back in the field. “Not ever!”

  Out of the field Kirby ran, across the main road and into a second field where the corn was even taller. The stalks whipped his face as he ran, each breath filling his lungs with warm summer air that tasted of the farm and the sea. He could hear the fake Kirby brushing through the corn behind him.

  And then there was no more corn. He was out in the open and just ahead was the very edge of the land. The cliffs. He turned, his pulse pounding in his ears, and waited.

  The fake Kirby stepped from the cornfield like a ghost. “Nowhere to run.” He took a step forward.

  Kirby held out the branch he’d just taken from the tree. The fake Kirby stopped.

  “I’ll tell you what,” said Kirby, “I’ll fight you, fair and square. No spidery stuff from you. No webs. No venom. No fangs. And no wand for me.”

  “I don’t need tricks to beat you.” The second Kirby smiled. “I was forged in endless darkness. I am a living shadow, a nightmare.”

  Kirby faked a yawn. “Yeah, so you keep telling me.” He drew his arm back and threw the twig away, over the edge of the cliff to the sea far, far below. Then he turned back to the spider-boy. “Now prove it.”

  The second Kirby was in no great rush. He sauntered up, so that they stood face to face. Then he looked at his hand as if it was something foreign to him, which of course it was, and he curled his fingers into a fist. He swung.

  Kirby had been counting on that. The force of the blow hit him square on the side of the head. He fell to the ground, his ear ringing. Then he took his chance.

  He reached down into his sock, and pulled out the real hazel wand. Quick as he could, he drew a circle on the ground, around himself and the spider.

  As soon as the circle was complete, the second Kirby began to scream. He tried to move out of it, but Kirby jumped to his feet and grabbed him, holding him as tight and as close as he could. The fake Kirby squealed and kicked and thrashed. His skin began to bubble. His hair burned. Kirby clung on with everything he had, every muscle straining to keep the melting creature inside the circle.

  The fake Kirby looked him in the eye, fury and pain etched on his face, and he said, “You tricked me.”

  “You threatened my family.”

  The fake Kirby stopped fighting. He shrunk in Kirby’s arms, and his body began to twist and transform until a spider the size of a large rat was writhing and spitting on the ground, its legs twitching madly.

  When the spider finally stopped moving, it turned slowly to ash, and Kirby watched the warm breeze lifting it, scattering the ash far and wide, over the edge of the cliff to the sky and the sea.

  Kirby dropped to his knees, struggling to catch his breath. He lay flat out on the ground, the sound of the waves in his head. He held the hazel stick up and stared at it. Amelia’s words echoed in his mind.

  “Just in case.”

  ***

  The walk home took him longer than usual because his leg was stiff from the fight. Along the way, his mind raced. He realised he was being selfish, wishing Amelia would come back, because he was strong enough to do without her now. There were other people who needed her. And he wondered, now that the last connection to Swan and Swift and the storm was gone… would it change anything?

  He reached the front door of his house, unlocked it, and was about to step inside when he heard Mrs Coppershot’s voice.

  “Kirby! Kirby, thank goodness!”

  She was moving up the street as quickly as she could, which wasn’t very quick at all. When she reached him she grabbed him by the shoulders.

  “Where’ve you been? Your dad was in a frenzy!”

  “Frenzy? Why?”

  “He had to go to the hospital. They phoned him in. I’ve to take you there straight away!”

  Sickness rose in Kirby’s throat. “Why? Mrs Coppersh
ot, what’s happened?”

  “I don’t know. All he told me was he had to go right away and we were to follow as soon as I found you.”

  Kirby shook his head. “No.” Tears began to come. “No.”

  Mrs Coppershot hugged him. “We don’t know anything yet. Until we do there’ll be none of that, thank you.”

  “Why else would Dad rush off without me?”

  “Come on,” said Mrs Coppershot. “In the car.”

  Family

  Mrs Coppershot’s car was a Mini. Not one of the fancy new ones, but an original Mini. It was mustard yellow, with shiny little hubcaps and cream-leather seats. Any other time Kirby had been in the car with her, Mrs Coppershot had driven slowly and with great care. Today, she drove like she’d been possessed by a demon.

  The little car flew along the country roads, round twists and turns and over hills with the tyres barely staying on the tarmac. They screeched into a parking space at the hospital and burst through the doors, Mrs Coppershot hobbling to keep up.

  The lift seemed to take an age to climb to the right floor. When the doors began to open, Kirby squeezed through, sprinting along the corridor to the room Mum was in. He stopped dead, his trainers squeaking on the polished floor, the clean, cold smell of bleach and chemicals everywhere.

  The door to Mum’s room was shut. The curtains were drawn.

  Mrs Coppershot put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll wait here, love. You go.”

  Kirby nodded absently. He walked forward, feeling like this was happening to someone else. He stopped at the door, put his hand on the handle, and took a deep breath.

  He opened the door.

  The room was bright with sunshine.

  Dad was sitting by the side of Mum’s bed, holding her hand.

  She was still. She looked peaceful.

  Dad looked up, met Kirby’s gaze. He smiled, and wiped the tears from his eyes. “I was looking for you.”

  “Yeah,” said Kirby. “I went for a wander. Sorry.”

  He walked around to the side of the bed, and he took Mum’s hand.