Silverworld

by Diana Abu-Jaber

  The gloaming, Ashrafieh finished.

  No analysis or fears now, Flickers, Dorsom put in. Focus on the castle doors.

  By the time they got near the entry, the air was thick as custard and so murky they couldn’t find the grand entrance.

  What is this? Sami wondered, slowing and turning in place beside the others. The Flickers moved their hands through the air, marveling at the gloom.

  Ashrafieh moved closer and silently took Sami’s arm.

  Natala punctuated the silence with a single thought: Look. She was staring straight up.

  It was almost impossible to make out anything in the murkiness, but something was moving on the ceiling, dense and shapeless. Two great red eyes near the center glared down at them, and Sami heard it thinking: You broke my prison!

  It massed like a thunderhead, growing and crackling along the ceiling, filling the high, vaulted spaces.

  “Whoa.” Sami craned back to look. Ashrafieh squeezed Sami’s arm.

  Dorsom took her other hand. Hold still, he thought quietly to the group. All hold.

  For a moment there was no movement, then a loud, red crackle burst from the cloud. A pure white bolt hissed over their heads. The group gasped and for an instant the entire room was lit up. Sami realized the arched doors to the outside world had once again disappeared.

  No, no. The thunderhead rumbled with laughter. You won’t be slithering free this time. The Shadow palace is sealed. I shall take my time deciding how I will dispose of each of you.

  Another bolt sliced through the air, and Natala cried out. The air smelled singed and hot.

  Ashrafieh’s grip tightened, but Sami pulled away from the Flickers, calling out to the dark creature, “I’m the one you want—aren’t I? Let the others go.”

  “Yes,” the Nixie screeched, just as Sami heard No flash through the Flickers’ minds. Then a tiny snippet of light caught her eye. It spun like a pinwheel near a corner of the ceiling and she heard a familiar chittering and flapping. “Bat,” she breathed.

  The Nixie grew thicker and ever more condensed, grumbling angrily. A bolt shot through the room and Sami saw everyone’s face frozen in place, staring up at the beastly Shadow. The creature mounded high, about to strike again, when Sami noticed another thread of light spiral into the dark, followed by another and another. It was the will-o’-the-wisp creatures Sami had drawn out of the Nixie’s pit. Bat was leading them as they bounced and coiled and bounded into the room, igniting the space with sparks and tinselly light. They followed the Shadow bat in brilliant scrolls around the Nixie and filled the space with sparks and gouges of light. Infuriated, the Nixie bellowed wildly, shaking the walls and slashing bolts through the air again and again.

  Sami backed against the wall, the lightning strikes so close, she could smell a dusty char in the air. She tried to search the room with each flash, but they came and went too quickly. Her knees trembled and for a second she felt too frightened to move.

  Sami, Dorsom called to her. Remember the pit. How you clawed your way free.

  She nodded. She was still that person. She was a SilverWalker. The faces of her family returned to her—her wise father and strong mother, there was Tony, laughing and running on the sand, the beautiful beach, and Teta, smiling, telling her: It is within you, everything you need. Then she was seeing the faces of her new Silverworld family as well—Dorsom, Natala, Bat, and Ashrafieh. Both families joined in her, in two sets of memories yet the same self.

  Then she heard Rotifer, its deep current of a voice tolling, saying again: A double-being shall emerge, a child of Actual Nature and Flicker-lit, a child that shall Cross and See, a child named of soil and sand. That is the one who Stands Between and Restores.

  She closed her eyes against the scorching Shadow flashes and felt herself growing inside her skin. Strength and breath rushed like new blood through her body; she grew more alive and more powerful than ever.

  True Silverwalker, Samara Washington, the question is, do you accept your powers—and your fate?

  Her eyes flew open.

  Nixie. Sami stepped in front of the Flickers. Enough.

  Silverwalker! the Nixie shrieked. I shall smash you from the Worlds.

  The floor itself seemed to tilt and shift but Sami never stumbled. Reaching into her right pocket, her fingers ran over the cool surface of the stone. As the long icy strands of the Shadow Nixie began to curve around her legs, Sami closed her eyes, touching the bright place inside herself, and slipped the ring onto her finger. It fit perfectly.

  “NO,” the Nixie roared, releasing Sami. Frenzied, it clawed at the air. “Remove it. Remove the stone!”

  Now a tremendous white, opaline bolt cracked through the room, lashing the stone hilt of the mermaid’s dagger.

  The enormous sculpture began to shake seismically, shattering sheets of concrete, marble exploding like panes of glass. The air filled with dust; rocks rained against the walls and burst the windows. A sound like the earth itself was turning and groaning rose into a bellow, wild, infuriated, mad, and terrifying.

  Sami and the Flickers ducked just as some vast green gleam swooped overhead. For a moment, all she could see was the flaming green light, green scales, a wilderness of tangling blue and sea-green color, like living water rapids, which Sami finally understood was hair. She looked up, the room illuminated by the wash of green and blue and silver. She saw two powerful arms, a mouth like a red gash; a being rising thirty feet tall, the top of its great head nearly brushing the vaulted ceiling, its grand shoulders and torso wrapped in golden silks, its hips tapering into a glowing fish tail that slammed and pounded the floor, rocking the foundations of the castle. The great thing twisted, screeched and wailed horrifically, writhing as if it believed it was tangled in nets, its eyes shut tight.

  Ashrafieh seized Sami’s arm, squeezing. She’s entranced. Her mind is ensnared in a state of capture.

  Another deep tremor like that of an earthquake ran the length of the castle, sending vibrations up the walls and across the floor. Now Sami felt more than power; she felt rage. She was enraged for the mermaid imprisoned in stone, for the creatures large and small who had been tormented by this horrid being, and she saw all of this imprisonment in her own grandmother, broken and failing, and bound to her own form of prison in the Actual World.

  Sami turned back to the Nixie and watched it seething and bubbling like a burned syrup, covering the ceiling and back walls. It is over, Sami thought to the creature.

  You are over, the thing hissed, and sent out bolt after bolt of hot white lightning.

  In the past, Sami might have cowered or hid in fear, but now she walked closer, the sapphire stone burning on her finger. With each step, she felt herself growing in height and dimension. The ring began to hum, the vibrations once again singing in a high, singular voice. Removing it, Sami discovered the stone turned in its setting. Moving it carefully with her fingertips, Sami found the back of the gemstone that had faced the inside of the setting was cut and colored with the image of a wide blue eye. She rolled it until a round pupil and blue iris stared directly out of its gold setting. The Genie’s Eye.

  It shone, a golden beam cutting through the Nixie’s murk. In response, the Nixie deepened; it spat out flames and seething bolts. They lashed Sami’s body yet no longer held any heat or substance. She closed her fingers around the ring and felt the Nixie’s frozen misery and hatred encircling her skin, then shattering into fragments. The creature’s madness, greed, and fury scattered like drops of mercury.

  You’re reflecting the Nixie! Dorsom thought-cried.

  Rebalancing her! Natala joined in.

  The Nixie intensified its electrical strikes, throwing out stronger and louder bolts, its center even denser, but along its edges, the immense cloud trail was growing translucent and pale. “No,” the Nixie roared in an ice-cold voice, thundering against the walls.
“You will never destroy me.”

  A shuddering moan rose up from the mermaid. Sami whirled around and without thinking tossed her ring to the creature. Though the Ifrit’s eyes were still shut tight, she caught the ring, then popped it into her mouth and swallowed.

  The mermaid awoke. She sucked in a whooshing breath and opened her eyes: one was diamond bright, the other was sky blue. The Nixie’s thunderhead contracted and balled against the ceiling, a tight, curdled cloud, crackling with sparks of lightning, shrieking. Sami walked right up to it, batting at it with her hands—it was nothing more than smoke and noise. She waved her fingers through its substance, fanning it away.

  Mine. It was not so much a word as an instinct that rumbled from the mermaid. Sami nodded and stepped aside. Now the mermaid swept a webbed hand through the air, snatching the cloud—tiny gusts of shadow puffing out between her fingers.

  “RELEASE ME,” the Nixie shrieked. “RELEEEEASE.”

  Instead, the mermaid opened her crimson mouth so Sami spied a row of pearlescent, pointed blue-white teeth, and poured the Nixie down her throat.

  And for a moment after that, there was nothing but silence.

  “She…ate it.” Ashrafieh gasped. “The Ifrit—she…incorporated…the Nixie.”

  “Marvelous marvels,” Dorsom said, his eyes round. Then, after a stunned moment, he threw his arms around Sami and Ashrafieh both. “Nixie is done. Do you understand? Silverworld herself is free.”

  Natala ran to them, laughing. “Freed we are! The old proportions will be restored. We shall be Flicker and Shadow in balance—in the way it’s meant to be. And no more dread of the Nixie and her soldiers.”

  Ashrafieh squeezed Sami so tightly the breath left her chest. You did this, Silverwalker. The Remaking of Worlds.

  “Me? Ha!” Sami shook her head. “It was all of us. And…” She straightened and approached the mermaid. The entity towered over her, bigger than two Rotifers. “You did it as well,” she said directly to the mermaid.

  The grand creature smiled, her diamond eyes burning ever more brightly. Sami trembled to stand alone like this in her presence.

  A soft, creamy light laced with baby blues and lavenders was starting to glow in the room, lighting up its corners and edges. In the distance, they could see a sliver of the crowning Silverworld sun. The mermaid lowered her face till Sami was looking into two brilliant irises. Gently, the being reached over and stroked her hair with one webbed index finger, as if Sami were a pet sparrow. Brightness comes, the mermaid thought-hummed. Like dawn.

  The mermaid’s thought-voice was deep and bell-like, tolling in Sami’s mind so richly that it seemed to echo. But her language, if you could call it that, was hard for Sami to grasp and difficult for the mermaid to translate—set more into feelings than words. Ashrafieh stood beside the enormous one and interpreted for her, thinking: After years of entombment in these walls, she says she will once again swim the airs and breathe the waters.

  The Ifrit’s grand tail swept powerfully over the floor, the flukes flexing and stretching. The Flickers gathered around her, respectfully quiet and slightly awestruck.

  “How did it ever happen?” Sami asked Ashrafieh. “I mean, how did the Nixie ever capture her?”

  Evidently the mermaid understood, because her laughter was tremendous, sounding through the corridors like a whale’s song.

  Ashrafieh smiled sadly: Eons ago, the Nixie and mermaid were friends—but that was in the days when all beings were Ifrit—changeable, magical, and fluid. When the Worlds split apart, dividing up creatures and kingdoms, Nixie’s mind altered. She grew too dark. The mermaid was her first victim. While she slept on her rocks, Nixie cast a spell and seized her in molten rock. She would never die, Nixie said, not realizing—or caring—that she would stop living as well.

  “Nixie’s victims lived in similar sorts of captivity,” Ashrafieh added softly. “Your teta as well.”

  “What?” Sami craned to face the mermaid, her heart turning over in her chest. “What about Teta?”

  Shall we tell her? Ashrafieh looked up, and the mermaid nodded. The Flicker lowered her lilac eyelids and clasped her hands loosely. “For more than a year—an Actual year—your teta has garbled both her words and thoughts.” She looked again at the mermaid. “She did it deliberately. To protect us. So the Nixie couldn’t know what we’d planned.”

  The mermaid swept one sea-green arm through the air, indicating all the creatures that Teta had protected.

  So Teta had been doing it on purpose, Sami realized. Then something else occurred to her—it was just a year ago that Sami’s mother sold the house and the family moved to Florida. Sami remembered her old mirror had been packed and sealed inside a moving box—and her grandmother started fretting and pacing, repeatedly asking why they couldn’t just carry it by hand, like the old movers had.

  Ashrafieh nodded. “Serafina and I were uniquely connected through the mirror. Nixie feared your grandmother might be a Silverwalker and wanted desperately to destroy anything that might pose a threat to her power. When the mirror was covered, it weakened our connection—just for a short while—but it gave the Nixie an opportunity to seize me. She brought me here and threw me into the void.”

  The mermaid rumbled something, and Ashrafieh translated: Through the void, our minds traveled to each other like sea vines. Our bodies were captive, but our minds roamed silently, carefully—always carefully—to evade her detection.

  “We could risk only a rare few words, every few days, to make our plans,” Ashrafieh added aloud.

  Dorsom’s face was furrowed with thought. “Ashrafieh—was it you who brought Sami to Silverworld? Not Nixie?”

  “I didn’t have the ability to bring her through the Silverskinned myself.” The Flicker’s round, eggplant-dark eyes lit up. “But I knew who did. I sent Sami dreams about her grandmother’s spell book. And the mermaid whispered to Nixie of the Genie’s Eye, which she coveted for its pure energies. She believed that anyone who owned it possessed the ability to control both Worlds. Together, the mermaid and I fed Nixie enough bits of insight to grasp who the real Silverwalker was. It was a grave risk, but it had to be done.”

  “So Nixie was the one who opened the mirror, but it was your idea that she do it,” Sami marveled. “And Teta? She knew your plan, but couldn’t risk talking about it at all.”

  “She hid both her thoughts and words,” Ashrafieh confirmed. Shadows can move into any corner and listen through any Silverskinned. If Nixie had sniffed even a hint of our plan—if she’d had even the slightest sense—all would’ve been destroyed.

  Those scrambled words and that silence and strangeness—Teta had done it to save her friends, Sami thought. She felt grief for her grandmother’s pain but also deep pride at her loyalty.

  And even through all that, your connection with your teta was close enough that you still understood each other, Ashrafieh said gently.

  Until she wasn’t strong enough even for you to follow her thoughts, Dorsom added. Her signal grew too weak.

  Once again, sounds of singing and celebration reached them from beyond the castle walls, and brilliant lilac- and rose-filtered lights began to fill the room. Dorsom put an arm around Sami’s shoulder. “Day breaks. The gloaming is coming to an end. We’d best leave the castle while it still stands.”

  The mermaid nodded, but Sami saw a trace of melancholy in her smile. Once upon a day the Nixie was my truest heart, Ashrafieh translated for the great creature. I’m sorry I had to envelop her.

  Outside, the periwinkle lawns glistened in the rising sunlight as all shapes and sizes of Flickers and Shadows sprang in and out of the bushes, breaking free of columns and sculptures, jumping out of the paintings, tile work, and carpets. The castle itself began to dissolve away down to the simplest framework, as almost all had been constructed—walls, gardens, art, and windows—of stolen and enchanted creatur
es. A white tiger soared over the grass while a griffin shrieked and stretched its pink wings.

  Using her powerful tail, the mermaid bashed down three of the remaining castle walls to free herself, as it seemed the entryway had been constructed around her. They crumpled easily as the vaulted ceiling dissolved away into clouds. Working together, Sami and the Flickers and dozens of Shadow and light beings all helped to carry the mermaid outside, and place her on the lawn beside a sky-blue fountain.

  “You have the weight of an Actual being!” Dorsom laughed, shaking out his arms.

  “She has the weight of the Nixie inside her now,” Natala said. “That of a thousand stolen souls.”

  The mermaid closed her eyes. She stretched and arched on the velvety grass, drinking in the Silverworld sunlight.

  Admiring her glowing form, Sami asked, “How will we get her all the way to the beach? It’ll take days for us to carry her, at this rate.”

  Ashrafieh tapped the tiled side of the fountain. One of the few remaining castle structures, it was big and round as a gazing pool, bordered by a low wall covered in blue-and-white mosaic tiles. “All waterways on the Bare Isles lead to Mother Ocean.”

  “The fountains are spring-fed!” Natala exclaimed.

  “How brilliant,” Dorsom said. “And great good fortune for us. No more carrying!”

  There was a rattling sound in the bushes and a small pink light being—a sort of cat-dog—came through the shrubbery holding something gently in its jaws.

  “Ah.” Dorsom crouched and put a hand on the being’s neck, removing the object from its mouth. “There she is….”

  “Oh. Oh my,” Natala said softly.

  It was a lifeless amber-colored bat. “No! It can’t be.” Sami gulped, crouching. “Oh, Bat!” She picked its limp form up carefully. “Maybe she’s just knocked out? She survived the first time the Nixie struck her down. Maybe she’s still…”

  But Dorsom was shaking his head. “She darted straight into Nixie’s face, when we were embattled—to distract and turn her eyes.”