The Verse of Sibilant Shadows: A set of tales from the Irrational Worlds

by JM Guillen

  Numberless bent, twisted names.

  Pain. I felt where the bear had struck me, felt the gash on my chest. I felt the places in my head where she had attacked me, like white-hot barbs had been dragged through my mind.

  Then I saw the arrowhead, shining with the sun’s flame, and the phantasms fell away.

  Nothing could be false in its light.

  The Herald never sleeps again. He wanders the shadows of the world with a bow that shoots arrows of bitterness and illusion. His eyes burn with the unyielding, dark fire, and he is despair, one of the world’s sorrows—

  “No.” I felt surprisingly calm in the light of the arrow. “That’s not true.”

  I let the arrow fly.

  A thousand-thousand voices screamed in my head at once. My ears and nose bled from the force, from the horror of it. I was knocked backward to the ground, and the darkness crashed upon me. It sought to push its way into me, my ears, my eyes, my nose.

  I clawed at it, blind in its darkness.

  The creature burned like old, dry leaves and reeked of singed down.

  The fire crackled with the monster’s fury and spite. It ate away at the shadowed abomination, catching even on small wisps of it that tried to make flight. The shaediin darkness became a vulture, then a swarm of wasps, then bats. Its form didn’t matter. The sun’s fire leapt from darkness to darkness, burning the shadows even as they tried to escape.

  It screamed again, the horrors of a thousand-thousand darkling dreams tearing at me like tiny razors. The sound carried the force of a mighty river, battering me against the ground, hurling me against stone and tree.

  The sun’s fire still hungered. The shadows weakened. Flung against the ground again, I felt something in my shoulder crack.

  Not my end either, Herald.

  The voice tumbled with thunder and malice and hate, making my every memory quake with terror.

  Burn. A small, vicious smile cut its way across my face. Burn and be silent.

  The cold darkness hurled me into the air as if I were little more than a toy. Darkling shadows tried to squirm their way into my mind, seeking any haven from the flame.

  Yet, even as my body was battered and bruised, I held the darkness away from my heart. My entire will bent toward keeping the writhing mass at bay. Finally, it hurled me, head first, against a large stone.

  Then a new darkness over swept me.

  Not the cold, hollow darkness of the creature, I succumbed to the blessed sweetness where the mind wandered when it could take no more.

  The creature could not touch me. I was alone.

  In that sweetness, I am certain I smiled.

  20

  Under the moon, who sang in the night sky, her silver fingers dancing through the treetops, I awoke with a start and sat up. Instantly I regretted it. Pain lanced through my shoulder like a barbed flame.

  “I’d go easy, if’n ’twere me.” His gravelly voice ricocheted through the shadows.

  My eyes narrowed as I peered around. I couldn’t see him in the darkness.

  “Is it—? Did it—?”

  “Gone, O Herald.” I could hear his grin, his smug satisfaction. “Not even ashes left.”

  I tried to push myself up, but the pain came instant and blinding. I sank back.

  He chuckled. “Yeh won’t be gettin’ up on yer own, boy. Yeh need rest. Yer hurt.”

  I stretched one leg, but it bent against the grain. Damn. The Old Man was right.

  I fell back, breath exploding into cool mist. The moonlight lay across my face.

  “I suppose it’s good you happened along then.” I gazed into the darkness, toward the voice. “Being as you are a man who claims to owe me.”

  “Hap’n’stance.” His word was the epitome of casual.

  “Of course.”

  He leaned forward. Now I could see the outline of his cragged face in the moonlight.

  “Like I said, boy, yer hurt. Thing yeh need most is rest, Tommy.” He grinned. I could see madness dancing in his eyes. “Sleep, Tommy Maple. Rest well and mend up.”

  That was a low blow. Telling and Naming against me while I lay here, again weak as a kitten. I felt slumber crash against me, like the inevitable tides.

  Damn it. I brought my glamour forth, but it was sluggish. Autumn’s gold had turned a sickly yellow.

  “I hate you.” I slurred the words, fighting to keep my eyes open and on him. “You really are—”

  I never finished telling him.

  Sleep hit me harder than the bear ever had.

  21

  It was after the fiercest battle of my life. The Romans had surged like a never-ending sea of men and swords, and they brought stories with them, strange, deceptive things. Hraefn and I had stood, and we had won.

  For now.

  Both exhausted, she lay with her head on my chest. It was good, however. Sweet. I could smell her musk on my face and hands as we dozed off.

  “No sleep. Not for my Herald.” She nibbled at my chin. “What makes you believe I’m sated?”

  I traced a finger along her soft curves. “I doubt any five men could sate you. You are ever-hungry, my Whisperwing.”

  She giggled. “It’s because I have to await you for so long. Three months of the year you are mine and then what? Cold. Ice.” She kissed me, her lips like roses. “It’s hardly fair.”

  I ran my fingers through her tresses, dark as night, and she snuggled back into me.

  It didn’t matter that I ever wandered.

  She was my home.

  22

  I stirred, squinting against the sun in my eyes.

  It was morning. I was in a bed. Resting on my chest was beautiful, dark hair and skin like the moon.

  I ran my fingers through sweet-lavender scented hair and tried to remember how I had gotten back to Molly’s.

  I couldn’t. The past blurred. The last thing I remembered was the not-bear and then a great shadow. After that was the Old Man…

  “You really are a bastard.” I finished saying what I had been thinking as he Named me.

  Molly stirred in her sleep and then blinked up toward me. A sleepy smile crossed her face.

  “Timothy!” She kissed my cheek. “I almost worried you weren’t going to wake up for me.”

  I stretched my legs out. No pain. I moved my shoulder and felt no barbed fire where it had broken. I thought on the words of Coyote’s Telling:

  “Rest well and mend up.”

  I had done exactly that.

  “How long have I been asleep?” I caressed her back, smiling at her happiness.

  “This would be the third morning. An old man brought you. He toted you like a sack of rocks.”

  That was interesting. How had Coyote known where I had been staying?

  “Did he say anything or just drop me on your stoop?”

  She nuzzled into my neck. “He had quite a bit to say, Timothy. He left you this.” She reached for her nightstand, for a folded piece of paper. She handed it to me.

  Coyote’s writing scrawled like a child’s. It was little more than random scratches. In the center of the paper, hardly legible, it read:

  One more boon.

  “Not even a thank you.” I mumbled wryly, as I set the paper back on her stand.

  “Where did you go? I woke up, and you were—”

  I shook my head. “Boring, dull story. You don’t want that one.”

  She grinned impishly. “You have a better one to offer?”

  I did.

  I told this story with my body and with hers. I told it well into the late morning and early afternoon, amidst whimpering and sweet cries.

  I told it with the desperation of a story that was coming to an end.

  23

  The western sky had turned sweetly golden when I awoke yet again. Molly and I had loved fiercely, but she was mortal and still aloft on dreams of midnight fires and September breezes. I slipped from her bed, and she scarcely murmured.

  Quietly, I slipped on the clothin
g I had taken from Eddie’s station. I moved with whispers and silence. The entire time, my aspen-gold eyes rested upon her, memorizing every curve, every sweet blush of her skin.

  It was time to go. The autumn wind called.

  I had to leave before she became trapped in my glamour, fey-touched and lost to the world of men.

  Yet leaving was never what I wanted to do.

  I stood over her, pushing her hair from her eyes. Everything about her was lovely. Not just beautiful, but lovely too.

  There were no far shores for Molly and me.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the folded maple leaf. It all but glowed with the secret light of my Name. Gently, I set my token on the pillow by her head.

  I could leave now. She would not hurt. She would not yearn or want. Whenever she held my token, her heart and body would remember what she could never know again.

  Our parting would never pain her. No, the parting was my pain to bear, not hers. My token would ever stay warm, and the smallest whisper of my glamour would keep her.

  It was all I had to give.

  I turned from Molly. Outside her room, I slowly closed her old, pine door, taking care to keep it silent. I kept my eyes on her as long as I could.

  This was not the first door I had closed.

  No, I had done it a thousand times before. A thousand thousand.

  24

  My next beginning found me along an old road, lost in the reds and the yellows of the wood. rain fell, the first cold rain of the season. My every step rippled autumn into the world.

  Mount Chase stood behind me, lost in the cascade of water.

  I walked along the road. My thick, down hunting jacket and indigo canvas pants were scorched and torn from a battle in a dismal, gray wood.

  I had no boots.

  The small red car came along soon. It was perfect, almost as if I had drawn it in a Telling.

  “God above, boy, get in!” said the man with gray-streaked hair.

  The woman unlocked the back door.

  I climbed in, shivering, with rivulets of September running from my hair.

  “Thank you.” I smiled. “I wasn’t looking forward to a long walk in the rain.”

  The man eyed me strangely.

  “There’s nothing around here for miles, son. How did you find your way this far out in the dark and cold?”

  I smiled to myself.

  That was once.

  ###

  Notes on the work

  This is the second cornerstone of the Irrational Worlds. It is difficult to imagine creatures that are more Irrational than the Talebourne, but they do exist.

  Of course, Michael Bishop would consider Tommy Maple to be in “astral aberration”and would find it his duty to destroy him as an Irrational creature. However, their stories do in fact cross: Coyote and Michael Bishop have both faced off against a “Wendigo.”

  Thus they exist in the same world. The fact that Old Man Coyote was almost laid low by the creature, but that Michael Bishop defeated it is not indicative of their levels of skill as much as it shows their different strengths.

  Watch for the syllable “shae” or lookalikes. Thanks to the “shaediin darkness,” Tommy (who is a story) mentally cascades through the Paean.

  My favorite of the myriad hints is:

  I saw a man in a plague-mask, working strange alchemies lost to the world. He could make potions that would cause one to see the truth but cry blood as they did.

  This is a vision of the world of Cæstre, where a sorcerer stands against a judicar.

  Also we see the Guant Man again.:

  In some alleyways, there is a gaunt man, who is always hungry. He has no eyes, in truth, although none who see him ever remember that fact—

  There are others, but If I tell all, there will be no joy found in the hunt.

  It’s all right there.

  Collateral Damage

  June 22, 1998

  “Exquisite.” The older man’s deep, melodic voice behind me was soft, sweeter than sun tea in Georgia, almost like syrup on the tongue.

  I opened my eyes and blinked fuzzily. Sunlight streamed through a leaded glass ceiling and illuminated each and every leaf on the heavily laden branches swaying above my head. A thousand shades of green glowed in the warm, gentle breeze. The scent of exotic flowers hung in the stillness. I took a deep breath in through my nose, though my lungs seemed to take forever to fill. The air itself felt thick, somehow denser than regular air. It made every movement take longer than it should and limned the well-manicured plants in a rainbow sheen that made it hard to focus on any one thing for long.

  “What?” I asked woozily.

  Above the sound of water trickling over a rock bed, faint, bluesy music, a scratchy recording of some depression-era song, warbled in the air, weaving drunkenly in my ears.

  Sitting alone, sad, all alone,

  Sitting in my cell all alone;

  A-thinking of those good times gone by me,

  Knowing that I once had a home.

  My head lolled to the side, and I watched the incredibly gaunt man stroll languidly along a flower-lined garden path on skeletal, bare feet.

  “You have no idea of your quality, do you?” murmured the southern gentleman in a Savannah drawl as he paced slowly around to my left. “That makes such an acquisition even more rare.”

  He settled into a white, cane-bottom garden chair, twin to my own and crossed his legs.

  “Tea?” He smiled broadly and gestured grandly at the dainty bone china cups and saucers delicately arranged on the glass-topped garden table between us. A phonograph sat off to the side, its crank slowly rotating as 1920s blues music vacillated its way out of the brass horn.

  I blinked at the emaciated man in his dusty, gray suit.

  “Am I dreaming?” The words felt clumsy on my tongue. That, more than anything, convinced me that I must be. I often dreamt that everything was slowed, that I could hardly move.

  “You are not.” The man’s grin grew, reminding me of the Cheshire Cat as it widened and widened and widened into a macabre caricature of a welcoming smile.

  “I think I must be.” I breathed the words.

  “Let’s not dally, shall we, Ms. Shepherd? I imagine this is the only conversation we’ll have just between the two of us.” That smile grew impossibly larger as he reached into a pocket and pulled out a gold watch. With a flick, he opened the case and closed it again, one smooth motion. “We don’t have long.” His tone chided faintly as he picked up a tea cup.

  “By all means, let’s have tea,” I managed faintly. I glanced down to the tea set, but my own knee caught my gaze. My own bare knee. I frowned, and my gaze drew up my thigh.

  So it’s this dream, the back of my mind mused.

  “Why am I naked?!” I tried to cover myself with my arms, scrunching up in my chair. It took far longer than I wished. Every movement was as slow as if I were underwater.

  The man’s head tilted, and his smile faltered for the briefest instant.

  “Are you not comfortable?”

  Was he kidding?

  “No! No, I am not comfortable!” I looked wildly around as if I’d find my clothes lying on the manicured lawn.

  They weren’t there.

  This is a dream. This is a dream, and that means I can fix this! I squeezed my eyes shut. As hard as I could, I pictured myself wearing clothing. Concentrate! I pictured my favored tennis shoes, those soft-blue shorts with the white trim, and the comfy, matching t-shirt, the lightest I owned. It’s just a lousy dream. Clothes, clothes, clothes! I’m wearing clothes!

  I opened my eyes.

  Still naked.

  Dammit.

  “I hate this dream!”

  “I apologize for your discomfort, Ms. Shepherd.” The man’s smile didn’t budge. But neither did his kindly, black eyes, which remained locked on mine. “However, this is not a dream.”

  I found something almost insectine in the proprietorial way he stared at me. Th
e song continued to warble in the air, an eerie, haunting sound.

  For seven long years I've been in prison,

  For seven long more I have to stay;

  Just for knocking a man down in the alley

  Taking his gold watch away.

  I shouldn’t have worried about not wearing anything, for just then my skin tried to crawl off my body.

  I grinned weakly and tried to laugh. It came out anemic and forced.

  “Wh—what do you mean? This has got to be a dream! I’m naked!” I gestured to myself, huddled around my knees. “I’m naked in this—this garden that I don’t remember coming to…” As I said it, I realized the truth of the statement. I didn’t remember arriving here. In fact, I didn’t remember where I’d been before here. “I was… There was a…”

  I was in a vat that was filling with a thick, nauseous liquid. It was warm on my feet, and I looked down at them, dumbfounded. Tubes were plugged into my body, three of them on one arm, two in my chest, and one large feeding tube filling my mouth. Everything felt wispy, as if I could only see the world through gauze.

  “No.” I shook my head. I’d been with Rehl and Baxter and Jax. I knew that. We’d been practicing wallruns while debating Dark Thunder as our group name.

  I watched Jax as he ran up the brick wall of the parking garage. He was good, almost preternaturally good, but still pretty new. He would hurt himself if he didn’t watch his technique.

  “I got it! We’re Dark Thunder!” Rehl couldn’t contain his excitement.

  “Really?” Jax asked as he executed a perfect landing. He seemed uncertain.

  “Oh, come off it, Rehl! You’re kidding, right? It’s about as good as ‘Blockheads,’ and nobody liked that one.” I gave him a sarcastic smile. ‘Blockheads’ had been my joking suggestion. We regularly threw ourselves headfirst into cinder block or brick walls as we bounded through the city blocks.