Chapter Twenty-One

Three howls rebounded across the vale, together so loud that they reverberated in my toes. Even the glassy blue surface of Numia shivered at the sound.

Li helped me to stand, and then we were watching a sleek grey shape streaking toward us from the eastern portion of the valley. With unnerving quickness, the wolf closed the distance between us, growing larger and larger until I could tell it was the size of a healthy pony, flecked with darker streaks in its heavy coat of grey.

"Fletcher," Li whispered to me. The wolf was so close I was afraid it would barrel into us like stray bowling pins. I could see its huge teeth and its panting tongue, and the fluttering sensation in my chest reminded me that humans, in some circles, are considered rather soft and meaty.

A man, the oldest I had seen in Numia, jogged the last few paces to our circle of sand. He was lanky and tightly muscled, moving with an easy grace that suggested he could run for as long as need be, minutes or months. His hair was ashy, with streaks of black, and his dark skin was lined by maturity.

I blinked. Where had the wolf gone? It was like having witnessed a screening error. Frames were missing or two versions of the same film had been spliced together.

"Naiad's blessing," he said, casting a casual glance over our assembly. He didn't look twice at Li or me, but I had seen those eyes before. They were an unusual yellow-green.

Esme responded in kind to his greeting, and Ajax smiled. I was too distracted to say anything. Two more wolves, one brown and one shaded with coal were approaching from the south. They were as large as the first, the dark one a hair larger. They had the same peridot eyes, but these seemed lit from behind, crystals held under a light.

I watched more closely this time, willing myself to focus on their shapes instead of on my instinctual fear of this monstrous, lupine charge. They were nearly on top of us when it happened; when the wolves became men. Again, there was no transition. Two wolves were flying down the hill toward us; two men were striding to meet us. There was no creepy shape change, no painful transformation. They were one and then they were the other. From a special effects budget standpoint, this seemed sensible, but it was also very disorienting.

The brown wolf was the youngest man. He had an open, round-cheeked face and shaggy hair. Though his body was hard and lean, he didn't stand out from the others. He greeted everyone warmly and even patted me on the head. I wasn't hugely pleased with that, but it was better than Casey. The fourth of the totem brothers was all sharp angles and lank, oily hair. His eyes shone the brightest and they glowered at me at every opportunity. He even looked at Li with anger; a far cry from the friendly respect the others gave him. Something else was off about him. I couldn't pin it down until the Numians had gathered from all over the vale. It was not a large tribe, I guessed about forty people in all. But Casey was the only one, besides me, wearing modern store-bought clothes.

Jeans, a cotton tee and a leather jacket might not have stood out too much at a mall, but here, surrounded by a collection of plain, nearly identical wool-like clothing, that for all I knew grew on trees, Casey’s attire bordered on the ridiculous. Where did they get their clothes?

The howls had been a signal for the equivalent of a town hall meeting. When gathered, Esme clapped her hands three times sharply and the congregation sat. Li stopped me from doing the same with a quizzical eyebrow and a finger touch at my elbow. Five remained standing; Esme, Ajax, and Casey, along with us. Our backs were to the water and the Numians formed a crescent about our core. As soon as everyone was settled and the children quiet, Esme began to speak. Her voice was warm and inclusive, practiced and well-measured. It was the voice of her station, First Daughter of the Naiad.

"Sweet days, my children, and sweeter nights. In the heart of twilight we come to talk, as we have in nights before and will in nights to come. The Naiad hears us and she listens, and our home remains green and beautiful.

One evening blends into the next. So it was and so it will be, until all is smooth as Numia’s surface. But this night stands above the rest, a ripple not yet distilled until tomorrow."

She paused here, for it was the end of her preamble, the opening used with mild variation every night by every daughter for as long as Numia was peopled. Next, it was time for new business.

"You all know by now the face of Lialanni, and you all have heard of the girl he brought to us for sanctuary this morning. It is her you see before you. Her name is Abigail."

There were suddenly a great many eyes on me. Maybe they had been watching me before, but Esme’s introduction made me aware of them. Some of those gazes were curious, but most of them looked uneasy. I had intended to wave, but was stifled by embarrassment. They were all just staring. I felt a burning in my cheeks above and beyond my usual fever.

"You do not know that name," Esme intoned, "but you know the name of her mother, Malice."

There was a great deal of uncomfortable shifting on the ground. I was stiller than the Naiad. That was her opening for me? There was no saying what kind of rumors had been circulating while I slept the day away. This might not be new information for anyone, but it didn't exactly put me in a positive light.

All the eyes that were uneasy became more so. A few appeared angry, whether at me or my mother was unsure, but Casey was seething. I felt a gentle pressure on my back, a supporting hand, and I relaxed. Li was here. He would protect me.

"Blood, however," Esme continued, "does not a monster make. She is in need of our help, of our protection. She is a victim and if not for Lialanni, she would be alone in the world."

Okay. That was more endearing.

"They are part of the happenings in the Sorcerer’s Valley last night, and they will tell us their story. Then we will decide what is best for Numia."

There were nods from the crowd. Does that mean they could kick us out if they didn't like what we said? We hadn't discussed this. I wasn't prepared. This was like a surprise project due immediately. Luckily, I wasn't expected to go through the presentation alone.

Li spoke. "Minutes before Malice began to destroy Milton’s ranch, I helped her escape. The Dragon hunts her because she is coming of age, because she is vulnerable, and because she can be used to the Shadow’s ends."

"Wyrm blood is the Shadow," a man said, not standing or even looking up. He didn't say it as a challenge, but diffidently, as if it were a simple truth that others were afraid to speak. There were more than a few nods in agreement.

Esme spoke, her expression surprisingly furious. "We do not hold anyone responsible for the crimes of others. We judge soul by soul."

"Abigail does not belong to them. Without her, the Fae that Milton kept captive would not have been freed." Li’s defense of me gave me strength.

Casey's spun on them then, speaking to Li. "The Dragon and the sorcerers were allies. Why did she turn on them? Was it over this girl? If Malice hunts her, is the same in store for us?"

They were talking about me like I wasn't even there, but I didn't know whether to be angry or relieved. Casey was plainly furious, his jaw clenched and his eyes feral, but worse than that was the fact that he was right. Malice had attacked because of me, and if she could, I'm sure she would make as much of a ruin out of Numia as she had Milton's house. I was a threat to them just by being in the valley, and if Casey had looked at me the way he was glaring at Li, I might have burst out in tears.

"What happened was due to their disobedience. The sorcerers own actions brought about their fate," Li said truthfully, but it was not a very honest truth. Were we going to try to hide the extent of the danger I put them in? I couldn’t do that.

"It was me." My eyes were studiously focused on my shoes, and my voice wasn't at its strongest, but I spoke to all of them. "They were trying to keep me from her, for their own reasons. They lied to her and probably tried to fight her--over me." Timothy was dead because they hadn't given me up. I only escaped because he put me in a place where Li could find me, though I can't be sure if that was intentional. But he hadn't deserved to die. I hadn't wished that on him, even knowing what their garden was. It was my fault that both of them were probably dead.

In the silence that follows this announcement, Casey gave his verdict.

"She admits it, admits how badly the Shadow wants her. We cannot allow them to remain here. We cannot let her bring that evil into Numia."

"This is not your choice to make, little brother." It was the first Ajax had spoken since the meeting began. It could have been the mountains speaking. "Tell us what you found in the low lands. Then we will begin to think about making decisions."

Casey flinched. Although his anger didn't diminish, he drew it down into a deeper level of himself. His face was as calm as the face of the earth, but it hid a molten core. "I left shortly after dawn," he said, "tracking down the mountains. These two took a roundabout route in coming here, but there is no reason Malice couldn't follow once she scented the starting point."

"And the valley?" Ajax rumbled.

"The ranch was destroyed. Only a bit of fencing escaped the Shadow’s anger. The wards were no more, no thread of enchantment remained. I found the dust of shattered golems scattered in messy heaps. There was no hint that the sorcerers survived and every trace of magic was stale. What Malice could not gobble up returned to the world soul. That place was dead as a lumpen city."

Casey was trying to use his narrative as a bludgeon. If the Numians were not frightened before, he would beat them with his conclusions until they agreed with him. I couldn't blame him. I could see he was afraid and he had every right to be so.

"What of Malice," Ajax guided him. "Could you follow her trail?"

Casey twisted his head to the side, as if unwilling to answer, but Ajax’s stare drew it out of him. "I could not follow her. I caught no scent of Wyrmkin anywhere in range of Numia," he smirked, "except what Lialanni carried with him, of course."

"She took the Mirror Roads," Esme suggested. "She went away."

The lean man shrugged, but his eyes were anything but noncommittal. "Probably. I doubt I could miss her if she had remained close. Even on the wing, she leaves behind an unmistakable odor." He wrinkled his nose in distaste. "Her going says nothing as to whether she will return. The Shadow would not need to track Li to find us. She already knows we are here." He gathered his will, glaring at Esme and Ajax both. "She will come. If she truly hunts as you say she does, you cannot deny that she will come here long before the seasons change."

Esme’s face was marble smooth. "Is that all you have for us tonight?"

Surprisingly, Casey wavered. "There was something else I scented." He looked confused. "Not the Shadow. A predator though. It almost smelled like one of us." He glanced at Ajax. "It came close, and then circled around, heading north. I didn't have time to trace it further."

Ajax looked thoughtful, but Esme wasn't willing to be diverted. "A nomad, it would not be the first such to have passed this way. The point is that, for now at least, we seem to be safe from Malice."

"For how long?" The voice could have been anyone’s. There were murmurs rushing like mice among the gathered. They would be worried whatever Esme said, and the whispers were building as they passed from one side to the other.

Ajax frowned, but it was Li who silenced them all. "We will ask for three days. No more. Would any of you deny us that?"

Esme looked relieved. Even Casey seemed partially mollified. Not all of the families looked happy to be sure, but not one gave a word in protest.

My mind was elsewhere, working over what Casey had mentioned about following a strange scent. That would be the Pard, it had to be. She had been starving and now she was circling Numia. If she snuck into the vale, if she hurt one of these people, that would be my fault, too. But I couldn't have left her to die, I couldn't have. It would not have been right.

The meeting came to an end after a few more comments and a rote closing by Esme. It was clear that this had been the most stressful gathering in recent memory. Afterward, both Li and I seemed to be accepted as guests. We had to go through a score of separate greetings, meeting more men and women than I could possibly keep track of, even if they hadn’t all looked like they came from a single family. The Totem brothers were the only ones who really stood out, all four because of their eyes and Ajax for his size. Esme was probably the shortest woman in the whole population.

Nearly everyone was either handsome or pretty, though not in the phenomenal way that Li and my mother were. They had dark brown eyes and hair, with Gregory being the most notable of only a handful of exceptions. For the most part they smiled readily and welcomed us with short bows and reiterations of “Naiad's blessing" or “Naiad's peace" or something more complicated about waters remaining still.

To a native, their clothing would surely be highly distinctive, but to me they were uniforms; pale khaki pants and skirts, the cloth something like linen with only scarce embroidered patterns to reflect individual tastes. Apparently, there was a type of tree in one corner of the vale that shed a woolly bark once every spring. They used it for virtually all of their material needs, treating it in one way or another so that it could serve for blankets or blouses or baskets. A mundane sort of magic that was still kind of wonderful.

The waves of introductions came and went as the parties spread out again. A fire was built on a nearby knoll where most of the cooking was done, and people grouped into clusters around the lake to play games or to gossip. How a community this small had anything to gossip about I don't know, unless they were speculating about me.

"They kept talking about the Shadow," I said to Li. "What does it mean?" We were far from the Naiad, away from most of the action. I had crept back toward the tree house, bow by bow, as the Numians circulated. There were too many questions that needed answering for me to enjoy the community.

Li took a seat in a soft patch of grass and I dropped close beside him, absently noting the bowl I had left on the ground before we went to view the Naiad. It hadn't moved, naturally, and was surprisingly insect free. Not that I had left much to work with.

“Shadow is used as a name for many things," Li said. "Some people use it to label anything they don't like; as another word for evil. That is forgetting its original purpose.”

“They were calling Malice the Shadow. Casey was." I thought of how she had looked, looming over Milton's broken home. It wasn't a bad description. Her scales had been as black as any shadow. It was much easier to call her by that name than to think of her as my mother.

Li nodded. “That's closer to right. Dragons are called Shadows sometimes, as were Tellurians when they were common enough to be called anything at all. But originally, it was much more than that."

Li took a deep breath, pouring it out slowly. He raised one hand to hold over mine, not touching. The sun had finished its retreat, but the night was lit by a host of cold, clear stars. The dark outline of his hand, its shadow over mine, was visible, if only barely.

"There are no shadows in darkness," he said, and I immediately heard the Naiad's voice again behind his. “Shadow is the name for the inevitable balance against light, life, and creation. It is death, decay and disorder. These things would have no meaning in a universe of nothing, but balanced against life they take on enormous significance. Shadow is an old name for anything that breaks instead of builds. Have you read of the Wyrm? Did Timothy tell you of it?”

The question startled me. It was easy to lose track of myself, listening to his voice. Whenever Li explained something, it sounded like part of a melody, his timbre flowing regularly and soothingly as any tide.

"That was all he wanted me to learn," I said. I didn't intend to go into detail. I was still coping with the idea. First came Wyrm, then the Serpent became the Dragon Mother, and that legacy had trickled down from mothers to daughters who weren't quite human, all the way to Ai who became Malice, and then to me. I felt human, I think, but something other was in me. I could feel that too. "He gave me a book about Wyrm. I know how he died, and I know what happened to his body."

"Good," Li said. "I thought so. You had to have known something for you to realize what you are. Still," he looked at me in a way that made me blush even in the semidarkness, "you really are extraordinary to have accepted it so readily. Not a single denial."

"I read a lot of books," I said. "Fantasy prep."

His mouth flattened in a repressed smile, and the lecture began anew.

"The Wyrm was an archetype of the Shadow. He was pure hunger, and that hunger led to war. Death and chaos followed. The Wyrm was entropy, and all those who chose to live as he lived, and those who did not choose but cannot help themselves, are agents of the Shadow. It is not a person. It is not a mind. It is a natural force that springs from the existence of life and light. Because even gods and immortals can die, nothing can be born that will not have a Shadow."

Music drifted toward us from the lake, singing and rhythmic drums. I could even smell something sweet wafting from the fire pit. The Numians did strange things with fruit. It was almost a celebration, the way they played and sang. I had never seen people who seemed so glad to be alive. If the thought of Malice swooping down troubled them at all, I saw no sign.

Li shifted, moving away from me only slightly. I felt every inch. "Would you join them?" he asked. “Or are you still tired? It will be easier for them to think of you as Abigail if they see you mingling, but you will have to make the first move."

"What else would they think of me as?"

"The Dragon's daughter."

We were both quiet. Is that what I am now? Child of the Shadow, descended from the original version of the Dark Lord. No wonder Casey looked at me the way he had. Angry, distrustful, it was a miracle that all the rest didn't feel the same way. The Shadow in me was real, entropy, a distorted remnant of a dead god. It was a miracle that I didn't distrust myself just as much as Casey did. Yet I wasn't drowning in fear and doubt. I should have a regular identity crisis. That would be the standard model. After the succession of shocks I had absorbed from my dad’s coma to this, it wasn't only the world that was different and my family. I was different.

But that's nonsense.

I've read this book before. At the end of the chapter, the answer is that I'm the same girl I was, plus a little extra. Whatever is a part of me has always been a part of me. I'm not changed because I happen to know myself better. If I have to worry whether others will accept me as an individual instead of as an idea, I'm not about to tangle the matter further by being unable to accept it myself. Not if I don't have to.

Dragon's daughter. If not for all the evils it entailed, it didn't sound too bad. Almost like the title of a novel. With an exhalation, I got to my feet and retrieved my bowl, waving it in front of Li until he gave me the raised eyebrow look.

"Do we wash this stuff in the lake?"

"Yes," he said. "The water is cleaner than you might think. The Naiad keeps it pure."

"Neat," I said, and it was. I was growing so accustomed to magic in general that I didn't have the decency to be amazed anymore, at least not by something as quotidian as clean water.

So, Li wanted me to mingle? Fine. I strode down toward the lake and didn't glance at him once as I did, even though I could feel his smile behind my back.

I passed by a group of young men and women huddled around a wooden grid marked with stones. The players were too intent on their game, whatever it was, to notice me, but several of the others smiled and nodded their heads. I was who I was, but for most of them all that counted was Li’s guest right. For three days at least, they were all willing to be friends.

Gregory found me when I knelt by the water to rinse my bowl. He was holding a rough carved doll under one arm. It looks like a starfish with arms. The golden haired boy worshiped Li, and since I had arrived with his hero, a bit of that radiance infected me. He eagerly informed me of a hundred minor facts about himself, from which trees he preferred to climb to how many adults he had managed to trick into ‘catch.’

I was startled to see my reflection in the lake, relieved when I saw that I hadn't changed from what I remembered, even if I was somewhat mussed. Not physically changed, anyway.

I was so pleased by this that when I saw my image beginning to transform in the lake, darkening and stretching, I splashed it away before it had a chance to become anything more ominous. When the water settled, it was only me again, looking rather smug, with Gregory showing off his doll.

"And this," said Gregory as the climax, "is Mr. Waffles!"

Screw the Shadow.

I am Abigail. Hear me mastering the impulse to roar!

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