Silverworld

by Diana Abu-Jaber

  Tapping softly on Teta’s closed door, Sami opened it a crack. It was dim in the room, as usual; the daylight filtered through the half-cracked shutters. Her grandmother was lying in bed, but her eyes opened as Sami entered. Over her shoulder, her reading lamp illuminated the silhouette of a row of tiny camels. Teta’s room had a lovely smell of sunlight on sand—a memento, Teta claimed, of years of crossing the desert floor as a Bedouin tribeswoman. Coming closer, Sami was startled by how small her grandmother appeared to be. Her silver necklace looked bigger on her chest and her ring was loose on her finger. Sami crouched by the older woman’s side and took her hand. “Teta? Are you okay? How do you feel?”

  Teta pressed her lips together, moving one hand to wave off Sami’s concerns.

  Sami frowned, but she knew there was no use asking questions when her grandmother was like this. “I have to tell you—ugh—I’ve got so much to tell you!” Unsure of where to begin, she hesitated. Teta had always told tales of other worlds and magical beings, but what Sami had to say felt different: bigger, realer. “The thing is, I found your book of spells….The one you’d hidden under my bed?” she began. Her grandmother nodded slowly. “I was looking for, like, a treatment. For you—I mean, the trouble you have—with talking?”

  Her grandmother shook her head.

  “Well, yeah, then I opened it up.” She stood, stepping back from the bed. Teta placed one hand on the base of her throat. “I know—I know! I’m not supposed to open it till I’m twelve. But I had to. There’s stuff going on with Mom and Ivory. Just, trust me—I had to. The book led me to the right page and I read it and—”

  Sami broke off—was that her mother coming up the steps? Not yet. She swiveled back and whispered, “The mirror opened, Teta! It opened right up and pulled me in, and—and—Wait…wait.” She studied her grandmother’s face for a moment. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”

  Teta lowered her eyes and studied her fingernails. Finally, she looked up at Sami and said, “Ennnh laa basha?”

  Sami shook her head. “No, Teta, it’s me, remember? You talk normally to me.”

  Teta opened out her hands in a kind of hopeless gesture. “Boookh aadoo!”

  Sami’s entire body felt cold and there was a dizzy pressure between her eyes. This was bad. This was very, very bad. Sami was the only one left who could understand Teta—without their link, there would be no hope of saving her from Ivory’s horrible plan. Instead of panicking, though, she nodded and took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay. This is all gonna be fine. I think. But I need to ask you a question. The thing is—when I was there? In that other world? I saw something, like in a dream. I saw a castle, and a—a big blue eye.”

  Teta’s own eyes widened.

  “It sounds weird, I know. But I guess it wasn’t so much a dream, it was more like a—vision, I guess.” She dropped her voice nervously as she said this, though she knew that her grandmother believed more in visions than she did in the evening news. “I’ve got to get straight back to Silverworld, but first I need you to tell me what those things are. The castle and the eye? Are they real? Are they places?”

  Teta shook her head, but Sami couldn’t tell if she was saying no or just saying that she didn’t know. Or that there was no way for her to explain it.

  “Teta, please—this is super important. Isn’t there anything you can tell me?” she begged.

  “SAMARA SERAFINA WASHINGTON.” Her mother was standing in the doorway, hands on her hips, her face like a thundercloud. “I thought I told you to go to your room.”

  Sami dropped her head, deflated. “Sorry, Teta. I gotta go.” As Sami bent to embrace Teta, her grandmother secretly pressed something into Sami’s palm. It felt hard and cool in her hand, and Sami thought she felt a silvery current race up her arm. Something like tiny bells softly tinkled in her ears. Teta turned and gave Sami a single grave nod.

  Back in her own bedroom, Sami closed her door firmly, pressed her back against it, and opened her hand. Her grandmother’s sapphire ring glittered in the middle of her palm. She inhaled sharply. Her grandmother never took her ring off. She marveled over it—why had Teta given this to her? Was it just another sign she was sliding into dementia? Sami thought of the many childhood afternoons she had spent gazing at the ring on Teta’s small hand and admiring the deep blue currents that seemed to wash through that stone. Teta claimed it had been given to their family centuries ago by a genie. Other times she said a mermaid. It was supposed to carry a spell of protection that would defend anyone who wore it. Yet when Sami slid it on, it slid right off again, too big for her finger.

  At the moment, though, she had a more pressing problem than figuring out the ring: Sami couldn’t find the spell book. She needed its instructions on how to get back to Silverworld. Had Teta taken it? Had it fallen through the mirror when she first entered? She rummaged through her bedroom, hunting under blankets and furniture and pillows, begging, calling to it under her breath: Where are you? Where did you even go?

  Slowly, the reality of her situation became clear: she was going to have to get back to the other World on her own.

  She took a deep breath, stood tall, and studied her whole mirrored reflection. I can do this. She did feel different—straighter, more herself. She had a clearer, truer sense of things, which seemed to have traveled back with her from Silverworld. This wasn’t a game any longer—Teta really was failing, and Sami would have to act quickly. Time to get serious. Flicker? Whoever you are…if you’re even there…I need you now. She tried to send her hope, gratitude, and desperation through the glass. If Dorsom was right, she thought perhaps her own Flicker had been the one who first helped her pass through the mirror into Silverworld—and would, she prayed, help her do so once again.

  “I need to get back,” Sami whispered to the mirror. She tapped lightly on the cool surface with the sapphire ring. “Knock, knock, let me in! I thought this ring was supposed to be magic,” she said, indignant. Letting her fingertips trace the glass surface, she tried to remember what Teta had told her about communicating with the reflecting beings: dreams, prayers, visions, spells, rituals….The sorts of things that were all described inside the missing spell book.

  “I was supposed to be a Silverwalker!” she cried in frustration. She remembered her mother saying the only way out was through. “How can I go through if the door won’t open?” Her arms fell against her sides and she felt something rustle in the pocket of her jeans. She reached in, then drew out a sheet of golden paper folded into the shape of a star. It was beautiful and featherlight and she’d never laid eyes on it before in her life.

  She turned the paper over and over: it was clearly some sort of magical token. She held it up before the mirror. “Is this what you’re looking for?” The mirror remained still and silent.

  Perhaps something was written on it? Carefully, with trembling fingers, she unfolded the bright paper. With the last delicate fold, a stream of brilliant blue powder spilled through the air, a sky-blue plume glistening in the air before the mirror. On an impulse, Sami reached out, waved her hands through the plume, and the jeweled blue dust clung to her skin like sleeves, tingling up and down her arms. This was clearly some kind of magic—but was it the right kind? “All right.” She turned back to the silver surface of the mirror and lifted her arms. “What do you say? Let me in!”

  Her eyes widened as the center of the mirror began to glow.

  Quickly, a half-familiar feeling stole over her—that sensation of her center of gravity shifting. She leaned closer to the mirror, the way a person might peer over a diving board. After one more breath, Sami closed her eyes, put out her hands, and let herself keep going. She fell forward toward the mirror, swiftly at first, with a gasp, and then it felt as if the air thickened and she was passing, gently, through the silky Silverskinned, the sparkling blue sleeves parting the glass, then peeling away from her arms. And it seemed in that instant that sh
e had dreamed of that very same sensation many times in the past.

  Once again, she was tumbling.

  Clouds hurtled toward her in a blur of turquoise and lavender and birds spun away chattering and treetops appeared, and all she had time to think was, Too fast!

  Sami woke with her arms out, her head rocking back and forth. She was lying down, covered with a loose, soft blanket. She moaned and squinted, looking around, but wherever she was was dim, with a few slivers of light that hurt to look at directly. She closed her eyes: the place smelled powerfully of bark and dirt—a good smell, in fact, and she relaxed into it. The scent reminded her of her old neighborhood in Central New York, the fields across the street where she went looking for frogs, and tiny crickets sprang through the air like musical notes, and she collected pussy willows and cattails and brought them home in a bouquet for her mom. Back when her mom still smiled a lot, and she’d bend over Sami, touching her head and saying…

  “You awaken, Sami! Oh, thank Rotifer!”

  Sami looked up: it was Natala, bending down, her purple eyes filled with concern, her hand brushing over Sami’s forehead. “What a fall you had! It was extraordinary-spectacular.”

  Sami eased onto her elbows slowly, blinking. She felt achy and bruised, but nothing seemed to be broken. “I hardly remember—”

  She could just make out Natala’s subtle smile in the shadow-light. “We saw you struggling, those birds taking you up, up, then all of a sudden flying off you, one by one. You fell upward, straight skyward, into the portal. It was quite something. We’ve watched the skies ever since you Crossed back, hoping for your return. Fortunately, when you fell back to us, you didn’t have near the weight here that you did in the Actual World.”

  Now Sami sat up and stretched out, then bent her legs and her arms, groaning and surprised that she was still in one piece. “I remember…those birds—I think they were Shadows! I fought them off and landed back in the Actual World. But the birds were trying to take me somewhere else—I can’t remember exactly.” Sami shivered and hugged her knees.

  “We were afraid of such.” Natala nodded grimly. “Shadows are shape-shifters—they take on the form that serves them. And Shadow soldiers will shift to hide their dark purposes.”

  “Where are we now? What is this place?” Sami reached out to one side and touched an arching, braided surface. It felt like the inside of a large basket, about six feet high, and not much wider across.

  Natala looked around, her face wary. “This is a ground hut.”

  “A ground what?”

  “A sort of abandoned warren. The Shadows, they used to dig them out and use them to nap and get away from the light.” Natala swiped a ringlet of purple hair behind one ear. “More and more, the Shadows must hide from Nixie or be imprisoned by her. All their old relaxing places, like these ground huts, or the wells, or the caves—the places they once liked to gather—have been mostly emptied. These days, there are far, far fewer good Shadows about than there ever used to be. Now they are soldiers. Or they are prisoners.”

  Sami leaned back again on her elbows. Her body ached and her head felt heavy. “So Nixie steals her own creatures? There’s got to be some way we can help those Shadows.”

  “No light being—Shadow nor Flicker—has ever been reclaimed from Nixie, I’m afraid. No one dares make the journey to the Bare Isles.” Natala smoothed her hand over Sami’s forehead. “Oh, once Silverworld was filled with marvels—fairies and fauns, flying horses and griffins—all manner of between-creatures, Ifrit, which are part Flicker, part Shadow. But no more. All stolen by the Nixie.”

  There was such a gentle, familiar lilt to Natala’s voice that Sami couldn’t help giving in to its music. Sinking back sleepily, she noticed streaks of hazel in the Flicker’s dark purple eyes. “Are you my mother’s Flicker?” she asked, half drowsing as the Flicker stroked her head.

  Natala laughed softly. “Oh no, my dear. I’m like Dorsom—a rebalancer. When Rotifer selects the child-Flickers who will become rebalancers, we sacrifice our lives of reflection.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “It can be a rather lonely life for a Flicker. Light beings take much joy and satisfaction from the relationship with their Actual.”

  Sami could feel the emotion in Natala’s eyes as if it were a real weight pressing down on her chest. She thought again of her mother, her wistful expression when she talked about Lebanon.

  Natala’s eyes sparkled. “Don’t fret, Sami! It’s amazing, a great honor, to be a rebalancer. Never would I trade.”

  Something scuffled over their heads and both Sami and Natala froze. A bolt of light opened at the top of the hut, and Dorsom jumped in, pulling the hatch shut behind him.

  Dorsom crouched beside her, a large canvas sack slung over his shoulder. “Sami! You are whole! Those birds—”

  “Shadows. She knows,” Natala said.

  “I snuck into our headquarters for supplies,” Dorsom said. “But we shouldn’t go back there anymore. The whole place is Shadow-swamped—they’re watching every door and window. This is a safe place for Sami until we can decide on our next move.”

  Sami shook her head. “I saw something—when I was up—above—with the Shadow birds? I saw things right in the clouds! First I saw my teta’s face. It was like watching a movie in the sky….”

  “You saw through the portal!” Dorsom exclaimed.

  “But there was more. I kept getting, like…flashes of something—like pictures hidden behind my grandmother’s face. I saw something—a gray castle, I think. And a weird blue eye.” She shivered.

  “The eye is mysterious-strange.” Dorsom shook his head. “And there’s only one remaining castle I know of in all Silverworld.”

  “That of the Nixie, the Castle Shadow,” Natala agreed.

  “Also, Teta gave this ring to me—right before I came back.” She pulled it out of her pocket. Both Flickers bent over her fingers. “She snuck it to me, but I don’t know why.”

  “Very lovely indeed,” Natala said, studying it closely.

  “An old stone,” Dorsom observed. “Possibly a powerful one.”

  Sami rubbed the gem’s facets. It seemed to whisper to her; she felt odd longings and emotions rising from its surface. And yet she knew this was all in her imagination. She’d hoped the ring would somehow show her more or explain something, perhaps release more of that blue magical powder, but mostly it just looked pretty. She tucked it back into her pocket with a shrug. “I think—I think…maybe I have to go to that Castle Shadow and confront this Nixie,” she said to the Flickers. “If I’m ever going to help my grandmother—I have this idea—it’s something to do with the Nixie.”

  “Oh no! No, no.” Natala shook her head. “That would be a disaster. She would capture you—or worse….”

  “Nixie has what the Actual needs.” This comment came from a new voice—soft yet piercing, like a scratch on the air. Sami peered through the gloom until she saw the outline of a small pointed snout and a pair of wings, hovering near her feet.

  “I saw what you did—with the bird flock,” the tiny shriek continued. “ ’Twas lovely to me. And surprising—which I like.”

  Sami kept searching the thatched hut. “Who are you?”

  “Shadow bats,” Dorsom murmured.

  Natala scanned the darkness. “I thought they’d all retreated to lower caves.”

  “Bats are the eyes and ears of Silverworld.” Dorsom turned to the small animal. “Please tell us—what do you know of the Nixie and her castle?”

  Sami had a weird feeling that the Shadow bat was smiling. Its scratching voice said, “Not for you will I say, but for her.”

  She flinched as a whisper of wings fluttered past her hair and seemed to alight somewhere behind her right ear. “You are a Silverwalker, Samara, Rejoining and Righting One,” it creaked. “There is tale upon tale of Nixie’s powers and w
ays. And prisoners. Many, many Night Creatures have been taken. And Flickers, too. One in particular—a powerful, old Flicker. When it comes time of the gloaming, when the strength of night is at its fullest, Nixie will be at the height of her power. She will range and hunt and absorb magic, as she absorbs all within her territory.”

  We’ll go nowhere near the Castle Shadow. Natala shuddered. Especially at gloaming.

  “Nixie knows the Silverwalker is here,” whispered the scraping voice. “She plans to lure Samara into her kingdom. She means to trap and imprison her—just as she brought her here, through the Silverskinned.”

  Treachery, Natala thought.

  We won’t be lured by Nixie or her Shadow tricks, Dorsom added.

  The Shadow bat snapped its wings. “Listen to me, Flickers! The Shadow realm is your only hope if you dream of vanquishing the Dark One.”

  Dorsom started to object, but Sami broke in. “No, I think the little bat is right,” she said. “If I want to help my grandmother—and you want to save your world—we’ve got to go after the Nixie.”

  After a long moment, Dorsom nodded. “I agree. If we are to do it, we needs must work with Shadow beings—they know Nixie’s ways far better than any Flicker does.”

  “Flickers never like to look in Shadow corners, in cracks and under rocks, but that is how you will find your way,” the bat voice scraped. “You must travel and cross the Darkling Straits, enter the Bare Isles, and make the journey to Castle Shadow.”

  Natala began to protest. That’s impossible. It isn’t safe. If we’re anywhere close to the Bare Isles, Nixie will surely discover us.

  The Shadow bat’s laughter sounded like pebbles raking over pebbles. “Foolish one—Shadows can spot Flicker light from great distances. You Flickers strut around and never think about what the Shadows observe. There is no ‘safe’ if Nixie is hunting for you.”