Knight and Shadow

by Flint Maxwell

  That’s weird… he thought.

  It was well after sundown. Usually, an old cow like Carmen would be sleeping at this time. She had never made a sound at night before, not as long as Isaac could remember.

  “You hear that too?” Ma asked. “I’m not just imagining it?”

  Isaac nodded, still holding the rifle.

  “I’m gonna go take a look,” she said. “Grab those bottles off the counter and take them out back. Get ‘em set up on the fence post. I’ll teach you a thing or two.”

  Isaac nodded again.

  His mother went through the front door. Faintly, he heard her clicking her tongue and calling to Carmen, “What’s wrong, girl? You all right?”

  He slung the squirrel shooter over his shoulder and grabbed the glass bottles from the counter. There were four in all, and as he held them, he could already picture how they would look exploded and shot, just a bunch of glittering shards in the grass, illuminated by the moonlight.

  He went out the back. The night was now cold, but his excitement kept the chill away. He walked down the dirt path, toward the fence where the horse used to graze. Louis had gone lame two months back and had to be put down. Ma did it, not with the squirrel shooter that was now his, but with one of her handguns. The pen sat empty, the grass overgrown.

  Ever since Louis went lame, Mr. Fednir a neighbor a few miles down the road, would take Mom into the city when she needed. There was talk of buying a horse when winter was up. Isaac hoped they could. He had really liked Louis and he knew he could like another horse just as well.

  He hopped the fence to the pen and went toward the back, to the tree line. He set the bottles up next to each other with about a foot of space in between. Then he raised the gun, squinted one eye, and made a noise like an explosion as he pulled a phantom trigger. It was times like these he thought of the Knights of the Gun, the Old Protectors of the Realm, the legends. But they were gone, if they had ever been here in the first place; Isaac would never get to meet one.

  Or become one.

  Which he secretly hoped to, like all boys with their noses stuck in the words of action-adventure accounts.

  Sitting on a rock, his back against a post, he waited for his mother. Clouds whirled overhead, the moon dipping in and out. A cold wind blew the skeletal branches of the forest behind him, and rustled the few stubborn leaves hanging on for dear life.

  Minutes passed. Isaac stood up, dusting the dirt from the seat of his breeches. What is taking Ma so long? he wondered.

  He climbed the fence and looked out to the barn. A single flame burned from his mother’s lantern, which was set on the gate, meagerly lighting the inside.

  As he watched, the lantern fell over, and the glass broke, the shattering sound carried on the wind. Almost instantaneously, the hay below the gate erupted in fire. Isaac could do nothing but stand on the fence post and look on, not believing his eyes.

  His throat closed and contracted, words trying to escape his lips.

  “M-Mom?”

  That was when he heard her screaming.

  Chapter 3

  The Shadowman

  Isaac did not get to her in time.

  In his mad scramble over the fence, he had fallen and landed on his knees, the rifle skittering away. His right knee found a stone, and the pain was tremendous as the jagged edge bit into his skin and chipped the bone. For a moment, he was sure he wouldn’t be able to get up, that he’d have to crawl to the barn, and by that time, it would be burned to the ground, his mother dead inside.

  But, despite all the pain coursing through his body, he stood up, grabbed the rifle—mostly without thinking, because certainly nothing could’ve caused the fire but pure accident, right?—and limped toward the building.

  Carmen was still mooing. It sounded more like a scream of pain than anything. He didn’t hear his mother again, and that scared him all the more.

  Hobbling, he reached the barn. The walls burning, inky black smoke billowing from the old wooden structure, and the hay carpeting the floor blazing. The heat from within was too much; Isaac felt his lungs shrink, shy away from the increased temperature, and his eyes stung.

  “Mom!” he called.

  No answer came from within, and he didn’t see her, though seeing anything was not easy.

  Fear and trepidation tried seizing him, their great, dark fingers clamping around his muscles, not allowing him to move, but Isaac forced those emotions down and out. He pulled his shirt over his mouth and plunged inside of the blazing barn.

  On his left, Carmen’s eyes were wide. Streams of tears ran from them. The cow’s mooing was even more like screaming this close. She moved back and forth, back and forth, trying to get out.

  “Hold on, girl!” Isaac shouted over the roar of the flames.

  He danced over the burning hay, which was on its way to igniting the hay inside the cow’s pen, reached out, and grabbed the latch. The metal burned his hand. He pulled away, grimacing in pain, but the latch came free.

  He led Carmen out of the pen and then gave her behind a hearty thump.

  “Go on!” he urged, and she did. “Mom!” he continued calling. “Mom!”

  Again, no answer. He turned around and scanned the burning barn. It was nearly impossible to see through all of the smoke. He felt like his eyes were melting in his head, and that the tears rolling down his face weren’t tears at all, but his melted corneas.

  Then something moved in the corner, in the back of the barn—a place that had been almost magically untouched by the fire. It was as if some kind of repelling spell had prevented the flames from passing a certain point.

  Isaac stumbled forward, ignoring the pain he felt in his knee.

  Suddenly, the very air of the burning barn grew ice cold.

  Standing within the untouched part of the barn was a figure made of shadow. Tall and as black as the witching hour; below him, on the floor, was his mother. She held a bloody hand up in defense against this creature.

  Isaac’s first thought was, Is that a ghoul? An apparition? Have I gone crazy?

  A whisper escaped his throat, his voice barely audible over the crackling, burning wood. “M-Mom?”

  Her eyes found his. There was pain in them, a great pain, but worst of all, there was defeat.

  In all his years, Isaac had never seen his mother look that way. She was a headstrong person, a competitive person. Growing up, there had been no letting him win at anything; not horses, Fade, or even gin rummy. She didn’t believe in it, she said. The world wouldn’t relent, so why should she? Because of this, Isaac had grown up hard, competitive in his own way. He, too, didn’t believe in defeat.

  Yet, standing there, looking at his mom, her face dirty with soot and smeared with blood, he had forgotten about this unrelenting attitude that had been instilled in him by Cora Bleake.

  He saw defeat right before him.

  The shadow creature raised its arm. Its fingers elongated and sharpened to fine points, to claws. Then it spoke in a language Isaac had never heard in his lifetime. The sound of the syllables, the enunciation, was enough to make his flesh break out in goosebumps. He felt cold all over.

  His mother, still looking at him, said words of her own. These, he could understand.

  “Isaac, run—”

  Chapter 4

  Death Come

  Isaac did not run.

  Behind him, the roof fell in and hit the burning floor with a roaring crash. Sparks lit on his breeches, his skin.

  Instead of running, Isaac raised the rifle he’d been gifted only moments before. He raised it and he aimed right at the shadow creature standing over his mother. He pulled the lever back, squinted one eye, and then squeezed the trigger.

  The sound of the shot was lost among the chaos, but the bullet exploded from the muzzle, on line to cut down this creature before him.

  The projectile seemingly hit some invisible forcefield protecting both his mother and the creature from the flames. The air shimmered, and the bullet
crunched flat, falling into the hay three feet short of its target.

  What? Isaac’s mind bellowed. It didn’t make any sense.

  He pulled the lever and shot again.

  Same result.

  The shadow creature turned and faced him, its empty eye sockets finding his. They were terrible. Within that blackness, an evil that Isaac had never seen simmered. The creature grinned, showcasing razor sharp teeth. Then it turned back to his mother and spoke in that same whispering language that chilled Isaac’s blood.

  “You’ll have to kill me,” his mother replied to the creature. “I’ll never tell.”

  “No!” Isaac yelled.

  He bounded the rest of the way toward the shimmering forcefield. He hammered the stock of the gun against it over and over again.

  “Kane’s not worth your life,” the shadow creature whispered in the common tongue. “Is he?”

  “Mom! Mom! No!”

  Isaac felt like he was in the throes of a nightmare, trying to run, trying to demonstrate some control, but ultimately failing. He raised the rifle again, aiming to bash the forcefield one last time, when the shadow creature whirled on him and pointed a single wispy claw in his direction.

  It was as if Isaac had been hit by a cannonball.

  He flew backward, passing through flame and smoke, and landed with a bone-rattling thump in the hard dirt of the barnyard.

  He remembered lifting his head one last time, seeing the blurry building burning, wavering, shimmering, and then he didn’t remember anything after. Just the darkness.

  * * *

  A rough, wet tongue licked the side of his face. He pushed it away. It licked again. He opened his eyes. Carmen the cow stood over him.

  Slowly, he sat up, pain seizing his muscles and joints.

  Her duty done, Carmen turned away and began grazing off to the left.

  Isaac looked at the barn to find it was nothing but a heap of wood and rubble. From behind him came a great wave of heat.

  He turned around, his neck crackling with the movement, and saw the house up the path—my house, he thought bitterly—up in flames. Pain wracked through the entirety of his body, all the way down to his very soul. Not just physical pain, either. But that was the least of his worries.

  As he came back to reality, realizing that this wasn’t all just a terrible nightmare, he thought of his mother, and of the shadow creature that seemed like it had come out of one of the nightmare fables he might buy in town, complete with sketches and all. He remembered the shadow creature speaking in an ancient and evil tongue, and his mother replying in the common speech.

  He stood up, though it was no easy task. He limped toward the ruined barn, ready to sift through the hundreds of pounds of burned wood, until he heard a voice behind him, coming from up near the house.

  “Isaac,” this voice croaked, the tone thick with pain.

  He broke into a run toward his mother’s voice, ignoring all the hurt in his body.

  Cora Bleake lay at the foot of the porch on her stomach, her legs raised behind her on the steps, as if she’d just crawled out of the house.

  “Mom? Oh, God, Mom.”

  She looked up at him. He saw the smear of blood on her neck and the material of her shirt soaked through with red. He went to her and lifted her up, straining under her dead weight. He pulled her away from the roaring flames, the drifting black smoke.

  It wasn’t until he set her down that he saw she held something in the crook of her arm, a wooden box with a heavy lock hanging from the clasp in the middle.

  His eyes only lingered here for a moment, because he also saw, beneath the blood, the extent of her wounds. Five holes were in her chest, evenly spaced and arranged in a semicircle. He knew that these had been made by the shadow creature’s claws; he also knew that his mother was dying. How she had managed this long, though, he didn’t know.

  “T-Take this,” she said. “Take it.”

  With one weak push, the wooden box slid along the dewy grass.

  Isaac looked down at it, confused. Then he put the box to the back of his mind. He knelt next to his mother, helped ease her up into his lap, her head resting against his chest. She felt very light now, lighter than she had been in a long time. It was as if the muscle coating her arms and legs had deflated, had already gone on to the Beyond.

  Tears stung his eyes. He wiped them away with the back of one hand covered in soot and his mother’s blood. Crying was a kid thing, and he was no longer that. He was a man…but he couldn’t help himself.

  His voice shaky and weak, he said, “Mom?”

  She looked up at him. A slight smile crossed her face, and the simple act looked as if it pained her greatly. She looked again at the box.

  “T-t-take it.”

  “Mom, you’re gonna be all right. You’re gonna be okay. I can help you, get you to Mr. Fednir’s. He has a horse. He’ll take you into the city, and you can see a medicine man.”

  With that pained smile on her face, she shook her head.

  She was right… Deep down inside of himself, Isaac knew she was right, he just didn’t want to admit it. His mother was all he had, and though, according to the Long Ago, he was a man, he felt nothing like one. He felt like a petrified child.

  So much of what happened didn’t make sense. The shadow creature, his mother’s injuries, the magic, the burned house, the name that the creature had asked about…

  Kane.

  Who is that?

  The tears streaming down Isaac’s face were only a precursor. He let loose deep, chest-hitching sobs. As he cried, he closed his eyes, willing all of the bad to go away, hoping for a do-over, a fresh start.

  His mother’s cold hand brushed his cheek, wiped his tears away.

  “The box. O-oh-pen it.”

  Isaac looked at the strange box once more. As he did so, the world seemed to slow, so much so that he could feel it spinning on its axis, could feel the pull of gravity tugging at his bones.

  His mother nodded.

  More blood leaked from her wounds, flowing like some dark river.

  Isaac picked up the box. It was so heavy, he could hardly lift it with one hand, but as he did, a strange feeling came over him, a feeling of great importance.

  Isaac opened it. The inside was lined with velvet, and a small, dark cloth lay atop whatever was the cause of the box’s weight. A smell of cedar and oil wafted from within.

  He removed the cloth.

  Beneath it was a gun, but it was no squirrel shooter; it was not even a pistol or revolver from the Long Ago.

  This weapon, he had seen in sketches in the few history books he had on the realm, the kind banned and punishable by death if found on your person, these that that had the audacity to mention the Knights of the Gun. This weapon was a holy weapon, forged in the fires of the Wolfscar Volcano on the other side of the world. Or so it was said.

  Isaac lifted the gun from the box. Beneath it were two folded bandoliers loaded with shells. The weight of the weapon felt nice in his hand, like it belonged there. A great, thrumming power pulsed through his palm and fingers. He ran his shaking thumb along the barrel of the weapon, brushed the cylinder. He left no prints or smudges on the metal, for this metal was infallible. He touched the handle. The white wood on the grip was smooth to the touch, yet when held in hand, it had no chance of slipping. If the legends were true, Isaac Bleake had just touched history; the wood of this handle had come from the Tree of Truth.

  He looked from the revolver to his mom. She had the same painful smile on his face.

  “Ansen Kane,” she said, her voice holding steady for the first time since she’d been injured. “You have to take it to him. A settlement just near the Infected Lands.”

  “What? Mom, how’d you get this?”

  Her hand came up and brushed his cheek again. She felt colder than before, and she didn’t answer his question.

  “You’re such a good boy. I’m p-proud to be your mother.”

  “Mom,” he replied, figh
ting back more tears.

  “Man,” she corrected.

  This was it, he knew it. He could no longer sit around and wait for her to get better. That wouldn’t happen. The gruesome reality of the situation was that she was dying, and if he didn’t get a move on, she would be gone forever.

  “We have to go,” he told her. “I’m going to lift you.”

  Her hand closed around his wrist. “You t-take it to him. A-Ansen Kane, the last gun knight. You h-have to.”

  Isaac lowered her head to the ground and then stood up on shaky legs. The last gun knight? No, that’s impossible.

  According to the histories the gun knights had been wiped out a long time ago.

  Behind him, the walls of the farmhouse caved in, shooting sparks into the dark sky and lighting up the night. The whoosh of heat was nearly enough to knock him down, but he stood strong.

  The revolver was still in his hands. He lowered it to the box carefully, as if it was a priceless vase from the Long Ago, then he closed the lid.

  His mother watched him do this, but her eyes were slowly glazing over, her face was going slack.

  When he bent down to lift her up, the pain in his own body almost too much to bear, she spoke.

  “Isaac, I l-love you. Know that. You will f-find out a lot about me. Good stuff. Bad stuff. J-just know that I love you…no matter what.”

  All Isaac could do was make her comfortable.

  He knelt next to her again and held her cold hands. They didn’t seem to have any strength left within them, until she was passing through the threshold of the Beyond, leaving this world, this life, and heading into the next one…only then did she squeeze his hands fiercely.

  He held her increasingly lifeless gaze, tears blurring his vision, and then his mother was gone.

  He sat there a long time, cradling her dead body and crying.

  On his seventeenth birthday, Isaac’s mother, Cora Bleake, passed away.

  Isaac Bleake passed, too—from childhood into adulthood.