The Book of Shadows

by Ruth Hatfield

  Cath scrambled up onto the broad gold back and reached down for Barshin. The hare leapt into her arms. For a second, the old feeling of being astride Zadoc ran through Cath’s blood so strongly that she was certain the world would vanish the moment they started moving. But as she kicked Shimny’s sides, the ground stayed hard and gray beneath them, and the buildings stretched hard and gray on both sides, and Shimny was the only color in all of it—a great shining streak of red and gold, leaping down the bare streets.

  Cath gasped and let go of Barshin to grab at Shimny’s mane with both hands as the ghost sailed over a fallen lamppost. Barshin clung to Cath, cramming his huge hind legs down into the waistband of her jeans.

  Ahead, deserted cars were strewn about the road, and Shimny ran toward them, caught by the brilliance of the sky, her tail a stream of gold fire. Cath tugged desperately, trying to hold her back, to slow her, but the horse plunged on, soaring over hoods and doors. Cath closed her eyes for a second and then forced them open, angry at herself. What was this? Fear? She wasn’t afraid of anything. Cath Carrera didn’t believe in fear.

  Shimny kicked on. Cath began to drum her heels on the horse’s sides, pulling her mane to steer her. What was the answer if you were afraid of going fast?

  Go faster.

  The sky above them darkened as the flashes came faster. They dived under a bridge.

  Flash.

  The tunnel lit up crimson and purple. The sun glowed orange, turning to red. Nearly there now. Nearly there.

  They raced over the main road, normally choked with speeding cars and trucks. Nobody was bothering to drive today. Nobody was going fast.

  And on the other side—the Sawtry, apartment buildings clambering into the sky. The concrete yards and playgrounds spread beneath Shimny’s hooves. There was Cath’s old building, doors standing open. Cath yanked Shimny’s head around and pointed her toward the stairs.

  The ghost horse made nothing of stairs. Cath slid backward onto Shimny’s rump and held on for all her life with both hands twisted around thick bunches of mane. Outside, the sky growled and spat. The light coming in through the scratched panes of window glass was a burning orange, as bright as if a fire had been lit just outside. But the only fire that could be burning up here was the sun.

  Cath urged Shimny up the stairs and to the end of the corridor. The last door on the left, next to another glowing window. The light in the corridor flashed, orange, red, purple—and just once, a white as bright and blinding as the world without shadows had been.

  Outside the door, Cath swung her leg over Shimny’s back and slid to the floor. She didn’t want to go inside the flat. Every nerve in her body screamed against it—bubbles rose in her stomach until she felt so sick that she could barely think. But there was nothing out here that was going to help her.

  She nearly raised her hand to the door, to knock on it. But what was she thinking? If anyone was there, they would hardly just hand over what she wanted.

  They would grab her.

  They would take her into the living room.

  They would use the dogs to guard her.

  They would get Dad.

  And she had promised herself that she would never have to face him again. That was the kind of promise you had to keep if you wanted your life to be worth anything at all.

  So she leaned back, raised her leg, and threw herself against the door, trying to kick it open.

  She was shoved out of the way by a round, soft bulk that shone scarlet and gold as it slammed against the gray-green door. Shimny’s square old rump, thudding backward.

  “Thanks, old lady.” Cath grinned as the door buckled and splintered, falling inward over the piles of rubbish that always littered the hallway of the flat.

  And Dad came roaring out of the living room, with a baseball bat.

  Cath stared, for one terrible second, as Dad raised the bat high and swung it at Shimny. She braced herself for the impact, ready for Shimny to stagger and fall to the ground.

  The bat glanced off Shimny’s solid neck. The horse stood still, unflinching.

  Cath’s heart leapt. Of course! He couldn’t hurt a ghost! He could only hurt living things.

  Like her and Barshin.

  Dad swung the bat around and stood facing her.

  Cath watched the bat for a second. It was shaking slightly. Dad had lost weight. He had always been big and solid: he filled a room whenever he walked into it and took all the light that was trying to filter through to the smaller people. But there was less of him now. She could see past him to the living room door.

  The flat was very quiet. No TV. No dogs, either. They’d always been the first to rush to the door.

  “Don’t you move,” Dad said. “Don’t you move a finger.”

  “Or what?” said Cath.

  The bat went very still. Dad wasn’t shaking anymore. The cold was coming over his silvery blue eyes, and he was forgetting who she was. It always happened to him before he went wild.

  Cath squared her chin. So this was it. She was shrouded in all the colors of Chromos, except one. So close to the end, so close to stepping out of the world in one direction, and Dad was going to hold her here, and she would step out of it in a completely different direction altogether.

  It wasn’t fair, she thought.

  But then, not much had ever been fair, and she hadn’t minded before. Why should she mind now?

  It was quite funny, if you thought about it. Everything had gone mad. Danny had gone maddest of all. The whole world was about to burn up, as soon as he figured out what insanity to write into the Book of Shadows. Cath regretted that she wouldn’t find out what it was, but it didn’t matter much. Danny’s world was never going to be the kind of world she wanted. She wanted Chromos or nothing.

  Looks like it’s nothing, eh? She grinned to herself.

  And then Barshin moved.

  She’d forgotten the power he had, to leap and kick and fly through the air. He sprang from her arms and hurled himself against Dad, and Dad threw up his arms to defend himself. The bat fell. Shimny’s rump went crashing into the hallway, sending Dad staggering backward, pinning him to the wall, squashing his chest. She might be a ghost, but she seemed solid enough when it counted.

  Cath didn’t hesitate. She squeezed herself between the horse’s cold flank and the wall until she was in the living room doorway.

  She’d never had a bedroom of her own when she’d lived here. She’d slept on the settee in this living room, and hidden anything precious in her locker at school. Anything precious would have disappeared as soon as Dad’s other kids got their hands on it.

  This thing wasn’t precious. It was silly to be sentimental over stuff that meant nothing in itself, and it was even more stupid to be sentimental about things that had been left behind by mothers who’d abandoned you when you were a baby. Cath hardly remembered her mum at all.

  “She was wild” was all Dad had ever said.

  “She didn’t want you,” her stepmum Macy had added, plenty of times.

  Cath went to the far corner of the room, behind the TV, and peeled back a corner of the carpet, fishing underneath it and pulling out a short length of emerald green ribbon. She had found it one day when she’d been about five. Back then, she’d dreamed about her mum most nights, and in every dream, her mum had worn an emerald green dress. She’d realized that the dress must have been real and the ribbon must have belonged to her mum.

  It wasn’t precious. She’d left it under the carpet. So what if one of the other kids found it? But none of them ever had.

  She curled her fingers securely around the ribbon and ran back into the hallway.

  “Come on!” she said to Barshin, leaping up onto Shimny’s red and gold back.

  And something in her couldn’t resist turning back to Dad as he was squashed against the wall, and waving the green ribbon in his face.

  “Remember?” she said. “Remember?”

  Dad’s face was baffled. “What?”

&nb
sp; “Remember her?”

  “Macy?”

  “Mum. My mum.”

  He frowned and then his face spread into a grin, understanding and sly.

  “That? That’s off one of Macy’s tops. Used to wear it all the time, years back. You was too young to remember, I reckon.”

  Cath looked at the ribbon, momentarily uncertain. But then she knew.

  “Who cares? My mum was wild! And I’m wild!”

  She kicked at Shimny’s flanks, and the fiery ghost shot forward, back over the ruined door and out into the hallway. Cath clutched the green ribbon and the bundled-up Chromos cloak, and held the world in her hands. The cloak was the color of all that she was, and the emerald green was the color of the last and most hidden part of her. So what if it wasn’t the color of her missing mother? It was the color of a strong and powerful hope that belonged entirely to her.

  She clattered down the corridor and down the stairs, knowing for absolute certain that this was the last, last, last time she would ever go down them, that her feet would never come this way again. It was over—completely over. This part of her life was gone, and she had escaped it.

  Outside, she looked for the last time around the yard. It wasn’t gray anymore—the sun was spreading to fill the sky, and the concrete had cracked into a dried-up riverbed. The sky was flashing every second now—yellow, crimson, purple, black—

  Cath flung the cloak over her head, blocking out the rays of the fierce sun. It was a thick cloak, but the light still found its way through some of the holes. To Cath, underneath it, the cloak began to blaze in a tapestry of color.

  It was a stained-glass window. Only instead of a dozen or so colors, it had a hundred, and she was standing on one side of it, looking out at the burning world through all the shades of her own heart.

  There were the greens of joy. The blues of wonder. The browns of stubbornness and determination. The reds of fear and hope. The purples of scorn and bravery. The yellows of frustration and excitement. They were all there—everything that lay inside her, pushing her feet forward. They were all there, except one.

  And there was a space between pale yellow and pale green—a small gap and a loop of blue string.

  She pushed the ribbon through the hole, tying it into a knot, and the cloak was complete.

  The colors mixed together, falling on her. She had made a window that showed exactly what it was like to be Cath Carrera. Probably nobody but herself could ever really understand it, but that didn’t matter. She understood it.

  And Chromos would understand.

  “I can’t tell you to go to Chromos,” shouted Cath to Shimny as she wrapped the cloak around herself and Barshin, draping it over the horse’s flanks. “You can’t understand me. But you know stuff, don’t you? You know what needs to happen!”

  And she drummed her heels into the flanks of the red and gold ghost, urging Shimny forward. Dry shrubs, drained of their sap, began to catch fire around them. Under the cloak, Cath heard the crackle of flames and felt the powerful kick of the horse as Shimny leapt into top speed. When she looked down at the ground beside Shimny’s shoulder, Cath saw that they were galloping over flames, and that Shimny’s hooves weren’t beating so hard against the concrete. They were melting away, as Zadoc’s hooves had once done, and they were dissolving into an air that was clear and cool and gentle as it rolled over a vast expanse of green grass and colored flowers and wandering animals of every kind.

  Shimny was running into Chromos, with Cath and Barshin on her back. Cath was guiding them, and Chromos was no longer gray.

  “Don’t stop,” urged Barshin. “Don’t slow down. Take us through it, all the way to the ether. There’s no time to waste anymore.”

  “She can’t go to the ether, can she? We’ll have to stop and work out another way.”

  “She couldn’t go before, but look at her now, red and gold—she’s a horse of fire! Something’s changed her—I bet she can get there now. Try it!”

  Cath flung back the cloak, so that it hung over her shoulders and draped itself over Shimny’s rump. She gazed around at the great plain as they swept over it, Shimny’s head thrusting forward to the rhythm of her gallop.

  Chromos was paradise. Why should they go to the ether just to try to put things right for Danny? The ether was white and airless. Cath never wanted to go back to Earth anyway—what did it matter what happened to it?

  Cath tugged at the horse’s gold mane. Shimny’s pace slackened to a gentle canter.

  “I’m not going!” Cath said as the detail of Chromos began springing to life around her. “I’m staying here. You can try getting her to go up to the ether, and you can sort things out if you want—I don’t care about the world anymore!”

  And she went to swing her leg off Shimny, to slide down to the ground.

  “What are you doing?” squeaked Barshin. “You can’t get down!”

  “I’ve got the cloak. I’ll be safe. I belong here now.”

  “No!” Barshin wriggled frantically against her belly, as if trying to push her back onto the horse. “You need to come to the ether! You need to help me!”

  “I said, I don’t care about the world,” said Cath. “I’m never going back. I’ll live here!”

  “But I can’t live here!” Barshin pushed his face into her armpit.

  “Yeah, you can. As long as you’re under the cloak, you’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t want to!” hissed the hare, his face creeping up toward Cath’s ear. “I am earth, remember? If you make me stay here, I’ll die. If you let Earth be killed, you’ll kill me.”

  “Just imagine your own Earth,” tried Cath. “It’ll be here, exactly as you want it.”

  “I want the Earth I can’t imagine,” said Barshin. “I want the real Earth, full of things I don’t know and haven’t had time to dream of yet. Let me have it.”

  “You sort it out, then,” said Cath. “I’ll leave you on Shimny. You do it, if that’s what you want.”

  She pulled the hare away from her. He screwed up his eyes and covered them with his forepaws.

  “Please,” he said, so quietly that Cath couldn’t tell if he was actually speaking, or if she was just putting words into his mouth. “Please, if you have any heart left at all, help me.”

  Cath’s chest tightened. Of course she had a heart. But it was her heart, to keep her alive and protect her. Barshin was her friend, but if she cared for him, he would only betray her and hurt her. He’d betrayed her already, in fact.

  Barshin dangled in the air, blind and helpless.

  For a terrifying moment, she wanted to drop him. Then she would be alone, free to live in Chromos without any small voices suggesting it wasn’t the right thing to do.

  Chromos boiled. The land rose up under her feet into hills and mountains, pushing Cath, Shimny, and Barshin high into the sky. Cracks ran through the earth as it dried. Shimny snorted and stepped sideways, and suddenly they were standing on the edge of a black abyss. Far below in the distant depths, molten lava steamed and bubbled.

  If she dropped Barshin now …

  The lava rose in a single, surging wave. It reached out to Shimny’s hooves, to Cath’s feet, and Chromos was hotter than the burning earth, and Cath’s skin was screaming.

  And she knew where she had to go.

  She kicked Shimny as the lava reached the golden hooves. The horse reared, spinning around on her hind legs and leaping up into the air. Instead of sinking back down onto the floor of Chromos, her hooves found purchase on the currents of wind, and Cath tucked Barshin against her chest and held on to the horse’s mane. The hare was right. Shimny had changed. She would run with them all the way up to the stars, if needed.

  Barshin was warm, alive, and trembling. His pulse was much faster than Cath’s own, but for a single beat, their hearts pounded together.

  Cath felt the hare falling. She gripped him with a savage anger that stopped a millimeter short of squeezing his life to a standstill, and knew that parting from Barshi
n was impossible now. She would never escape him. She would never be alone again, until the day that one or other of them died.

  For a second, she felt Barshin’s terrible blunt claws digging into her chest—right into her heart.

  And then she kicked Shimny on, and the red and gold horse galloped into the sky.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE BATTLE

  The desert was wide and bare. As Danny stood facing it, he felt good.

  Taller. Stronger. More certain.

  The air was clean and new, with the dampness that comes after a summer rainstorm. The sun’s rays warmed the sand, coloring it a gentle rust-brown. This was a desert now, but everything was about to grow.

  For a second, he closed his eyes, imagining it. He’d build cities, oceans, deep dark forests, and towering mountains. He’d make new animals and birds and fish. He’d pull in the tides, make rivers to sail down and lakes to swim in. He’d bring all the people from the old Earth, except for a few, perhaps. No Paul. Only a few of the teachers. No one from the Sawtry estate. But good people should come. The Book of Shadows would understand what Danny meant by “good.” And he’d be sure to be specific about the ones he really didn’t want, just in case it had any doubts.

  The desert was quiet, waiting for his command. What should he begin with? Water? Mountains? Did he want it to look much like the old Earth, or could he change it all around a bit? Have some new places to explore, some uncharted territories? Yes, he liked the idea of that. He could spend his life being an explorer, like Shackleton or Scott, and show the world how brave he really was. He gripped the pencil and tried to think of how he might phrase it, preparing himself to open his eyes and write.

  The sand trembled beneath his feet.

  An earthquake? Surely nothing was supposed to happen that he hadn’t written down?

  The ground shook again.

  And again.

  Danny opened his eyes.

  On the horizon, a black mass was spreading slowly toward him. The trembling was the sound of marching feet.