Without a Shadow, page 15
“Tian,” he said. His gaze slipped through the trees, a softness curling through his voice. “He names all our livestock and makes us go through a day of mourning each time one of them has to be sacrificed. He somehow makes our mother’s cooking edible. He can find new places to discover even though we’ve grown up around the same rocks and trees our whole lives. And he gets our father to smile, even on days the crops rot or the rains don’t come as expected. He’s the son they deserve.”
Adlai frowned. “And you’re not?”
“I’m . . . different.”
“Because of your shadow? Your brother doesn’t have one.”
Erikys shook his head. “If he did, he wouldn’t have been so sick.”
Nadir had told her that not all of Farrin’s siblings had shadows. That it didn’t always pass down to every generation.
“But it isn’t really a shadow thing,” he said. “I just didn’t want that life. I’m too restless. I even feel it here. Like wherever I go, I want to leave. Don’t you ever get that feeling?”
Adlai nodded. “At the orphanage, every day.” She hugged her knees. “But if my parents were here, I’d have a home.”
He was silent for a moment. Palm leaves danced above them, flittering shadow back and forth. The sky was idyllic and calm.
“And what if you can’t get them back?”
Adlai’s face clouded over. “I don’t know. As long as they’re there, I have to believe it’s possible.”
Erikys brushed his hand against hers, and one of his fingers curled around hers. He smiled. “I’ve seen a lot of crazy things this last year. I even met a girl who came back from the dead. So I guess anything really is possible.”
18
THE FIFTH EARRING
On Adlai’s tenth birthday she rose early with excitement, not for presents or cake, but because she was going to play the Shadow Game on her own for the first time. She’d begged her father many times before, and now, finally, he thought she was grown enough.
So she chose to go to Second Skins, in the Low End of the desert market, where they sold precut clothes. Her own clothes were getting tighter and far too short in length.
A row of dresses in a rainbow of colors instantly grabbed her attention. As she looked them over, she saw a strawberry-red dress with yellow trim and a bow parceled around the neckline. It was a dress fit for a celebration.
Nervous and excited, she drew her shadow out. She was so sure of herself, already thinking of what to grab next. Maybe she would bring a gift for her father—a gold watch or a new cooking pot.
But her shadow wouldn’t move. A sudden dread filled her, and the busyness of the market seemed to hush to a whisper. She was cold. So very, very cold. Then a whisper took over.
What a fun game. Will you let me play, little child?
The voice didn’t sound human. She gasped as claws pressed into her shadow. Adlai’s knees trembled and her resolve shook. She pulled her shadow back and ran.
She ran until she was home, and then she cried. She had nothing. Her skin itched as she told her father how her shadow had frozen and she’d heard the monster inside it.
“How do I get rid of it, Papa?” She looked up at him, hoping that now he would tell her she’d imagined it. Still just a child, he would think, and she wouldn’t mind because nothing in her imagination could truly hurt her.
Instead, his face crumbled. So old, she thought. Her papa was getting so old.
“Your shadow is your own, Little Drizzle,” he said, stroking her hair. “As much a part of you as your own arm, or your own mind. No one can take control of it. Not if you think of it like this and set your mind to what you want in front of you. Think of only that.”
Her clothes stuck to her, dirtier than ever, and she thought back to the pretty dress and the ribbons she’d wanted to tie in her hair with bitterness.
“But I really did want that dress.”
He smiled his crinkly smile and brought out her cake; a lemon egg, named for having as many eggs as lemons, and the one he’d picked was especially large. Too large for the two of them, but he cut her a big wedge.
“It’s easy to get distracted,” he said soothingly. “We can want many things. Sometimes our eyes are bigger than our appetites. Have you heard that saying?”
Slowly she shook her head.
“Well, it’s true. Always focus on the thing in front of you. Too many desires can . . . be confusing for your shadow.” He looked at her steadily, his brow arched. “Do you want this cake?”
The golden sponge with its bright yellow icing beckoned to her. She nodded.
“Then try again.” Yet he held out a quick hand, covering the cake slice for a moment. “But, Little Drizzle, if you ever hear that voice again, do what you did this time and don’t ever answer it.”
With her father a few steps from her, Adlai brought out her shadow with ease. It swept over the slice and it was hers. When she picked it out again it was as cold and sharp as an icicle but delicious. It was her first taste of knowing what she wanted and getting it herself.
“What would you like to do for your birthday tomorrow?”
Her uncle was around for breakfast that morning which was a surprise in itself, but the mention of her birthday stopped Adlai in her tracks.
“I don’t celebrate my birthday,” she said and went for her normal bowl of oats, hoping he’d drop the subject.
“Eighteen isn’t significant, perhaps,” he said, “but I’d like for us to do something.”
She looked at him from across the counter. The important birthdays were celebrated every five years of a person’s life. With a pang she remembered her tenth birthday, and yet there was something muddled about her memory of that one. She’d lost her father a few weeks later; the whole year was a painful blur and she didn’t wish to remember it. Pen had tried to make her fifteenth special, but Adlai had decided by that point that birthdays without family meant nothing.
“Well, even if you don’t wish to celebrate, there must be something you want,” he insisted.
“I’d like to not go to class,” she offered.
Luth frowned at that. “Why would you want to risk falling further behind?”
Adlai shrank at his words. She was still the worst in the class. Her last impressive stunt had been stealing the dress from Caster Mai’s stall.
“Perhaps this will improve your mood,” he said, and took out a small black box with a white ribbon tied around it. “You were due this anyway, if you’d rather it not be a birthday gift. I had them made for you.”
Adlai put down her spoon and reached for the non-birthday gift. She pulled away the ribbon slowly and opened the lid.
Inside were ten small, hooped earrings. The bottom ones were silver and the top an obsidian black. They were beautifully crafted with details on each of the hoops.
Adlai looked up at her uncle, who wore all five black hoops along the top of his left ear. He was still the only one she’d seen wear five.
“What does each one mean?”
She knew they were related to skill level but these ones all looked so unique, each seeming to tell a story in their markings.
“This one,” her uncle pointed to the first in the silver line, where a small hand grabbed around the hoop, “is yours to wear straight away. It means you can steal with your shadow.”
The next one had a skull mounted in its center.
“You can also wear this one,” he said. “It’s for those who can use their shadow to bring themselves back from the dead. Not everyone will have one of these, because it’s not a skill we like to test, for obvious reasons.”
Adlai traced the skull, bumpy over her thumb, and she shivered. It seemed a dead thing in her hands somehow.
“Now this next one is a very useful skill,” he said, pointing to the third hoop. It had an arrow pointing through it, which her uncle told her was for when she could travel. “And this one is a difficult one to master but useful if you come across a trapper.”
The fourth earring was striped, like a snake was wrapped around it. Her uncle told her it was for when she could pull someone’s shadow to her, or resist her shadow being pulled from her.
The last one, the fifth, had a blade hanging from it.
“What’s that one for?” she asked.
“That . . . is the least common one,” he said.
He didn’t elaborate. She wondered if it was a power her mother had had. If it was the reason some people seemed to have feared her shadow as much as they respected Luth’s. “How many of these did my parents wear?”
“Your father, three. He was the most skilled with the first one,” Luth said. Adlai felt disappointed. Three seemed to be the average and she didn’t like to think of her father as average. Her uncle continued: “But Leena wore five. People said it was because we were twins that we were so equally matched.” He smiled. “The truth was, your mother was not my match. She was far stronger.”
She entered the classroom more miserable than when she’d woken up, and without any of the earrings her uncle had given her. The two powers she had seemed so insignificant. She was just a thief who’d cheated death. Her own mother had mastered all five powers and yet she’d died. For all the power people seemed to think her mother had, it still hadn’t saved her.
“Adlai!” Nadir came up to her immediately. “I’m so glad to see you here,” she said breathlessly. “When you didn’t turn up yesterday, I thought it was because of me and what I said about . . . about Arbil. I really wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s okay,” Adlai said. Though Nadir wasn’t wrong. She hadn’t come to class yesterday precisely because of what she learned about Arbil. She’d been tempted to miss this class too and wasn’t sure if she might have made a mistake coming back.
To make the class worse, Caster Shani partnered Adlai with Kanwar again and told them they’d be working on shadow resistance—the fourth earring, the skill that drained her the most.
She swallowed hard as Kanwar stood facing her. His face was unreadable and his eyes almost as dark as the trapper’s had been in the desert market. Two black coals. The trapper had pulled her shadow toward him as though it had never been Adlai’s shadow to begin with. Ripped it like the label was wrong on her.
Kanwar didn’t bend down as the trapper had. If anything, he stood taller. Smoke from his shadow rolled over him and veiled his dark green tunic, embroidered as fine as any prince’s.
“Have you been practicing?” he asked. His tone made it obvious that he knew she hadn’t been. She gritted her teeth, recalling Caster Shani’s teachings instead.
Caster Shani had told them to resist the pull by gripping tight on the connection with their shadow. To focus on it like it was a part of their body and let its weight fill the ground. Weight. Heaviness. Her shadow a rock, falling deep down into the ground.
Adlai thought these things, but she didn’t feel them. Kanwar already had the fourth earring; the twisted silver glistened at the top of his right ear.
Her shadow broke from her. It rushed to Kanwar. Like a rug pulled from under her feet, she was down on the ground, a wave of sickness crashing over her. Without her shadow she was disorientated. It was a shock like losing a limb, and the lack of power made the pain of the fall that much worse. She hurt from the inside out and didn’t want to get up again.
Footsteps. A shadow loomed over her. She stared up at Kanwar’s face; his mouth was curled down in disgust. Disgust for her, she realized. In one quick movement he returned her shadow, the way someone might throw coins down to a beggar.
“Do you even try?”
The pain and sickness left her. Power rushed back, like air filling her lungs again. Her body was sharp, on edge. She stood up and moved within inches of him. He didn’t back away, but neither did she. They stood staring at each other for a beat longer.
“What exactly is your problem?” she said at last.
A secondary sense told her the attention of the class had shifted to them.
“My problem,” he said, low and steady, “is that I have to share class with someone who only knows how to steal. If you bother to turn up to the class, that is.” He was almost a head taller and looked down at her like she was the smallest thing in the world. “Your shadow will never burn. You and Erikys are no more than petty thieves hiding away from city guards. He’s told me himself he’s just waiting to go home.”
Wherever I go, I want to leave. Adlai remembered Erikys’s own words to her. She stepped back, a strange dizziness hitting her. There was ringing in her ears and a million thoughts chasing around her head, but her body seemed to slow. She blinked. The room had gone so quiet.
Erikys really was thinking of leaving. Would he go back to his family, or would he leave them behind as surely as he would leave her?
“I don’t . . .” Her voice trailed off. Adlai didn’t have a home anywhere.
All she had was Penna in Libra. And if Erikys left her here, then all she’d have was her new, still timid friendship with Nadir. Her uncle was so rarely around. She was alone.
He crossed his arms. “You know everyone talked about you coming. The daughter of Caster Leena. The niece of Caster Luth. Caster Shani even warned me I might not be the best in the class anymore. Your power would surely eclipse all of ours.” He smiled, handsome and cruel in the same gesture. “I suppose you take from your father. He really was just a thief, wasn’t he?”
Her attention was focused on Kanwar, but her vision blurred.
There was no smoke, no black fire. Her shadow moved as it always did: a stretch like her arm reaching out. Only the motion was stronger somehow. She had found muscles she didn’t know she had. It felt good to move. All the fear and tension she’d felt with her shadow was gone. This was freeing. This was right.
As though she was looking through a distorted lens, she saw Kanwar bend suddenly to his knees. How strange, she thought, but pushed the thought aside. She enjoyed the feeling of standing over him. She felt powerful. The air was light and charged with the same coolness that seeped through her. In that moment, she could do anything. Kanwar was the insignificant bug, and she was . . . she was magnificent. She was in control of not just herself, but of everything around her.
Thump, thump, thump. Her shadow pulsed with the rhythm. Quicker and quicker it raced, like there was a heartbeat knocking against her shadow. It felt like some wild bird caught in a trap, so small and afraid in the dark.
Kanwar clutched at the ground desperately. He was trying to pull her shadow from him but his grip was weak, and her shadow was large. She let the darkness swarm him.
“Adlai!” She heard someone shouting her name. There were flashes of movement around her, but it all seemed so unimportant.
Cold laughter ran through her shadow.
Very good, little girl. It’s no more than he deserves.
Thump . . . thump . . . th-ump. The heartbeat weakened. Then stopped. The great wave of power she’d felt rise up inside her was calm and her mind slipped slowly into blackness.
19
EIGHTEEN
Adlai was cold when she woke up. She was lying on top of her bed, fully dressed, and she wasn’t alone. Her uncle sat in the desk chair facing toward her. He was reading one of the books that had come like pretty decoration for her room. She saw the glitter of gold stars running up the book’s spine as he snapped it shut.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“I’m not sick,” she said. Or was she? Adlai couldn’t remember what had happened, only that she’d been in class trying to use her shadow and, just like when she was a kid, she’d passed out from overdoing it.
Weak. She was always too weak for what she wanted to do.
“No, you’re not sick, Adlai.” Her uncle put the book away and came to sit on the end of her bed. “Drained and tired, perhaps? I fell into shivers the first time myself.”
Adlai pushed herself up and looked across at him. “Did I travel?” Her heart quickened. Had her shadow brought her here, she wondered? She hadn’t been thinking about her bedroom, but maybe for traveling the first time it was the easiest place to go.
“You didn’t travel,” Luth said, dampening that idea. “You did something far more interesting. Around here, I’m the only one with that power.” He smiled. “Was the only one.”
“What power? What are you talking about?”
“You were angry at Kanwar, so I hear,” he said, not quite answering her. “I’ve spoken with him and he holds you no ill will of course. He’s glad, as I am, that another of us has the gift.” He saw her growing frustration and put his hand over hers. “If you think hard enough, you’ll remember. It’s a rather hard thing to forget.”
But Adlai’s mind was blank. Her heart was racing and when she tried to think back, cold sweat crept over her skin.
“I don’t . . .” She stopped. She could see Kanwar kneeling on the floor, her shadow swarming around him—and this feeling . . . a feeling of power. Dominance. It had seemed as though she’d had his life beating in her hands.
Sickness curled in her stomach. His life had been in her shadow. She’d felt it, and she’d crushed it.
Her uncle squeezed her fingers. It was the most tender he’d been with her, but Adlai couldn’t stop herself—she leaned away and vomited over the side of the bed onto the cream rug below.
I sent Kanwar to the shadow world. I killed him.
Even though he had a shadow and clearly had come back with it, she knew what that felt like. To die. To have to pull yourself back to the living.
Luth murmured something to her but she wasn’t listening. All Adlai wanted was to crawl under the sheets and pretend she was back in the desert market. Back where her shadow was a thing of wonder, an extension of her father that could slip and steal anything she wanted.
Now she wished she could rip her shadow out of existence. She never wanted to use it again. Not to steal. Not to travel. She didn’t want to discover any other tricks, because now she understood why her father had told her she could only teach it one trick.
