Absence_Mist and Shadow

by J. B. Forsyth

  The cause of The Reader’s reaction was known only to a handful of people, but speculation was rife. A popular theory was that it had become aware of the vice and corruption in some quarters and had decided to show its disapproval. Another theory, much closer to the mark, was that The Reader had been offended by a thought in the mind it was reading, and they reasoned that in ignorance of that thought, the next hopeful risked triggering a similar reaction.

  The people of Irongate looked up at The Reader more so than ever, but now they eyed it with fear and suspicion. Throughout the whole of recorded history, the government of the Westland had been built on Reader Ceremonies and king selection. But people had lost faith in these ideas now and as yet there was no appetite for another ceremony. Some were already espousing new ways to choose a king. But until anything was decided, the city was to remain under the control of Marshal Beredrim.

  Ormis had spent most of the last month in the Caliste, under the care of a young woman called Hishlee – a skilled mindsetter Hayhas recruited from the asylum. He had submitted to her soothing scour-like treatments and later to a therapeutic dialogue through which he had come to terms with his true identity. He confessed all to Hayhas, first in the ramblings of delirium and later in earnest conversation: his years of fraudulent posturing in the Caliste; the stabbing of his faithful tracker and his intention to kill Kye and Della during the ceremony. To his own ears it was damning; but when it was out Hayhas had smiled sadly and surprised him by offering sympathy instead of condemnation. ‘None of it was your doing,’ he told him. ‘You were doomed the moment Izle set foot in the orphanage.’

  He was visited on a number of occasions by Lord Beredrim, who confessed to have been held under a similar subjugation by Raphe Dilhone – the man Izle sent to infiltrate the tower, who had been going under the name Ri Paldren. He had allowed himself to be subjected to a scour – a procedure Raphe convinced him was necessary after his close contact with the spirit at the old barracks. Raphe’s voice jumped into his head, influencing him right up until Izle’s death. By the time he recovered he was too late to stop him leaving the tower and despite an extensive search they had yet to find him. Lord Beredrim was tormented by the way he had been used and appalled by his susceptibility to mind techniques – torments Ormis could well understand. Their talks were a catharsis of mutual benefit, helping him to solidify the foundations of his new personality.

  Last week Suula appeared in his dormitory, fresh from the infirmary with a thick bandage on her side. Her visit was unexpected – sprung on him by Hayhas, who knew he would never agree to it. He had supervised her recovery in the infirmary, explaining to her how Izle compelled him to stab her. She listened intently and forgave him - just like that. But when she appeared in his doorway he was struck by a feverish shame, collapsing to his knees and sobbing like a baby. She visited daily after that - inexplicably content to sit in a corner and watch him with her unfathomable eyes.

  The Caliste lost ten exorcists - over a third of their number: Kass Riole, Djin and Altho perished at the hand of the spirit demon and Solwin, along with another six who answered the recall were murdered in the Caliste. Vish Pashgar was now the highest ranking exorcist and was expected to take the position of High Exorcist as soon as he took leave of the toruck king. Until then, Hayhas was in charge of the Caliste.

  Hayhas had expressed his concern that if Vish Pashgar ever learnt of Della’s secret, he would subject her to endless tests and experiments. They agreed such a fate would be a terrible injustice given that the entire Westland was in her debt. So with Marshal Beredrim’s cooperation they decided to get Della and Kye out of the city long before he returned, and to resettle them in Kambry. It was the right thing to do, but it would be hard to keep her a secret forever. Word was circulating of a mystery girl who walked up to The Reader after its destructive Wakening. The Royal Artist had even done a sketch of her. Beredrim had forbidden the enclosure guards to speak about it and had destroyed the sketch. But there were many who witnessed what Della had done and whose talk he couldn’t control. It wouldn’t be long before the rumours reached Vish Pashgar and when they did, Hayhas would have some difficult questions to answer.

  Ormis volunteered to manage Della and Kye’s resettlement; to do everything from drawing up the official papers to the acquisition of the wagon that would take them there. He felt a strong obligation to see them right – something his new nature demanded. But all his presumption had died with his old self and before committing to it, he sought their consent. They agreed without hesitation and he was touched when Kye said he wouldn’t have it any other way.

  But they had each made one request: Kye to see his sister one last time and Della to visit her uncle’s grave. The man he had once been would never have entertained Kye’s request, but he agreed to both without reservation.

  He kept his word and was pulled up now on a sunny lane outside Agelrish, awaiting their return. When they got back they would head north for Kambry –the town the exorcists had made for those with Membrane sensitivity. It was a peaceful place close to a picturesque river and he planned to stay with them for a while.

  He looked at the pale band of skin where his mist stone ring used to be and wondered how long it would take to tan over. He had renounced his oath to the Caliste and was no longer an exorcist. Hayhas had tried to persuade him against it, but he was resolute in his decision. The personality Izle constructed for him had collapsed and the dust needed to settle before he decided what he wanted to do with his life. He was thinking about finding a remote place and starting over with some honest work. He tipped his head back and for the first time in many years, welcomed the sun on his face.

  A Last Hug Goodbye

  Kye folded his arms and gripped himself. He stood on a strip of boggy grass next to a clog of fireweed. Their orange flowers were in full bloom; resplendent in the afternoon sunshine. Further back and all around the lake the trees wore their most vibrant green. It was summer to the eye, but it felt like winter in his bones. Something about the lake was leeching the warmth from the air and he wasn’t alone in sensing it. He hadn’t seen or heard a single bird since leaving the woods and stepping onto the water’s edge.

  He was about to call his sister for the fifth time when she rose from the lake like an ice sculpture snapping free of the bottom. She caused no ripples he could see, but he felt some nevertheless - ripples of cold that dropped the temperature even further, confirming his suspicion that she was the source of the unseasonable climate.

  ‘Emilie!’

  ‘You shouldn’t have come.’

  Her voice was a frigid monotone, spoken right into his head. For the last week he had thought about little else besides seeing his sister again, but the chill in her voice almost undid his preparations.

  ‘I came back to help you… To set you free.’

  ‘Go now, while you still can. I am not the person you remember. It’s not safe for you here anymore.’

  ‘Just hear me out Emilie.’

  ‘No you hear me out!’ she said in a blizzard of voice. ‘Your warmth calls to me. It’s an unbearable torture and if I come any closer I won’t be able to stop myself stealing it from you.’

  Kye studied her, fearing he was too late. She had changed a lot in the time he had been away and was nothing more than a grey sketch of herself. Malnourished was the word that came to mind, but it was an absurd description of a ghost. ‘I know and I understand… But it doesn’t matter. I’ve come to help you pass.’

  Her eyes widened and she recoiled. ‘Why would you say such a thing? Have you come here just to torment me?’

  ‘I can help you. The day you died, I nearly drowned and it changed me. I didn’t understand what it all meant at the time – but I do now. I’ve helped two spirits to pass already and I can do the same for you.’

  There was a change in her then – a melting of her glacial eyes and a thawing of her voice. ‘Is that true Kye? Is that really true? If this is a joke, it is the cruellest one you
’ve ever told.’

  Kye smiled. ‘It is true. You have to believe me. Today could be your last day in this icy prison. Just let me help you.’

  She drifted closer and he could see tiny flickers of light in her eyes - the last embers of her soul glowing under a breath of hope. He wasn’t too late. Those embers might go out in a few day or even a few hours, but they were there now.

  ‘How would you do it?’

  ‘You just have to come to me. Think of it as a last hug goodbye.’

  ‘What if it goes wrong and I hurt you.’

  ‘It won’t.’ He took a step forward and held his arms wide to receive her. ‘Don’t think about it Emilie. Just come.’

  ‘I’m frightened.’

  ‘Don’t be.’

  She hesitated for just a moment then came, lifting her arms for an embrace that could never be. As his arms closed around her, she melted into him. He gasped and shivered as if he had just dived into the cold waters of the lake. But after a few deep breaths he relaxed, closing his eyes and welcoming her into his mind. He took her down, immersing her in his most treasured memories of their time together: selling their mum’s gingerbread from a makeshift stall outside their house; making a den in Agelrish Wood and playing hide and seek in rows of ripe corn - a series of sunny days that still warmed his heart. It triggered her memories too, so they experienced a composite of what was in their shared minds, bolstered and enhanced by details the other had retained. And through his body he allowed her to taste and smell the gingerbread; to feel the webbed shade of their den and to hear the rustle of the corn as they brushed through it.

  It wrenched his heart to feel Emilie try to step into each memory, as though they were some real world she could belong to again. He felt the moment she realised it wasn’t so - when her joy turned to terrible yearning. He felt her distress as his own and the weight of it brought him to his knees. He felt her need to vent her pain and gave his body over to her, allowing her to wail with his throat, cry with his eyes and beat the ground with his fists. Her anguish had been building from the day she died and the release of it was enormous – almost too much for his body to bear. He fell forward onto his hands and almost blacked out. But somehow Emilie sensed the danger to him and wound herself down to a hollow sob.

  He rolled onto his back and felt her grief like a weight on his chest. He began to see and feel how her disconnection from the physical world had bred an obsessive desire of it; and how it drove her to the brink of a moral cliff. He saw these things, felt her pain and understood – his empathy pouring into her like warmth broth. Through it all he became aware of the Membrane, stretching out in all directions from the centre of him – becoming thinner and thinner until it ripped open, revealing the void behind it.

  Emilie stopped sobbing.

  The forever nothingness she had longed for was right before her. All she needed to do was to give herself to it. But she didn’t go straight away. She resisted long enough to whisper through his soul: Thank you Kye. I love you.

  ‘I love you too.’

  Then she was gone.

  He curled up in the grass, crying bittersweet tears into his hands. When he finished he sat up and noticed a starling, perched on a lump of deadwood. It was the first of many birds to return to the lake that day.

  Oxeye Daisies

  Laurena climbed over the fence, clutching a fist full of Oxeye daisies. She looked up at the sky as she walked out into the field. It was bright and clear - a day her uncle would have said he could see his reflection in. A day to seize or surrender to. She walked to the rectangle of turned earth that was his grave. The villagers had taken his body from their burnt house and buried him in this remote field, miles from the village graveyard. If nothing else, it was fitting. They had never belonged, wherever they went. But she looked around and knew he would have liked it here. There was a fine view across the Vale of Agelrish and birds were singing summer melodies in the hedgerow.

  She had been preparing for today for the last week. She had attempted to write a poem to read - to set in words all he had meant to her, still meant to her. But she couldn’t get more than a few lines down before scrunching it up - the words on the paper too flat and sterile to express what was in her heart. In the end she decided not to plan anything - to just come and let the closeness of him direct her.

  She looked down at his grave.

  There was an old saying that you didn’t go to look at a grave, you went to look through it. And she experienced the truth of it now. The turned earth became a window to their past: walking wild country between new lives, foraging berries and sitting around a campfire beneath the stars. Days without distraction that seemed to go on forever. She felt a mighty rending in her heart and felt the truth of another of his sayings: Good memories always come with a price - for to recall them is also to mourn them.

  She thought about how time had cheated them, sprinting the good days and crawling the bad. And then all of a sudden it ran out altogether. It was as if the tide had come in while they were playing in the sun, washing over everything they built together and taking him away.

  She tossed the flowers aside and dropped to her knees, burying her nine fingers in the cold earth and reaching for him with streaming eyes. Oh uncle.

  For five centuries he had been her companion, provider, carer and friend. And now he was gone. She felt her grief unfolding; something so huge her body had no hope of containing it. She gripped the dirt and held on, freezing in place like a dreadful headstone – head tipped back and eyes clenched and dripping. She broke form with a mournful cry that cut through the ambience, setting a pair of hares to flight and silencing the birds.

  For a time, she remained in place, watering his grave with her tears. In the end she sat back on her heels and sagged. The grief she suffered over the last few weeks was a false summit and in coming here she had glimpsed its true peak – a terrible ridgeline she would toil on for many years to come. And she had yet to visit the hideaway and read the book he wrote for her. That would be much harder than today, but she wouldn’t go for a while. His memory was soaked into every beam and plank and going there would finish her.

  She looked into the dirt, thinking about the changes she was beginning to feel. With the Uhuru poison gone she was starting to mature - a process in stasis for so long she could feel its resurgence. She wondered if he would recognise her in a few years and the thought choked her up again. She promised herself to come back one day, to talk to him as a woman and show him what she had become.

  She fanned the oxeye daisies over his grave. It was her favourite flower, but one she had never used to help remember someone. Now she knew why: she had saved her favourite flower for her favourite person and for the rest of her life she would see his face in their little yellow hearts.

  She climbed back over the fence and returned to the wagon. Kye was already there and she could tell by his face it had gone well with his sister. He had been so anxious about seeing her again, barely speaking a word on their trip from Irongate. But he looked at peace now, staring out over the fields in calm reflexion. Ormis smiled when she jumped up and with a flick of the reins he set the wagon rolling. Such an expression would have been out of place on his face a month ago, but he had changed a lot since then and it suited him.

  As the wagon picked up speed, Kye turned to her and held out a closed fist. She frowned in puzzlement, but he just nodded at his hand to suggest he had something for her. She put her hand under his and her mother’s necklace dropped into it. ‘You said you lost it running from the house, remember? I thought I’d have a look for it while I was up at the lake. The bag and your diary were ruined, but I thought you’d want this.’

  She stared at the animal carvings with wonder. She had never expected to see them again. As her eyes welled up he squeezed her arm and went back to looking over the fields. Kye – her new friend and companion. She had already decided to take him with her to the hideaway and teach him Absence if he had the patience. Her uncle never m
et him, but she knew he would have approved.

  The End