27. Chapter 25
Chapter 25
Please know that I was not the hero of this story. I was the villain. I simply didn’t know it.
~Maeve Arden, The Future of Magic and Dragons
Maeve
The Shade walks across the island, and a ripple of fear courses through me. He is terrifying. I don’t know exactly why, but he elicits a primal terror inside me, and I beg the void to consume the island faster. The waves lapping at the shore speed up ever so slightly.
I barely notice, though, because he keeps touching things. The branches of half-burned trees. A stone made of swirling black crystal shadows. Black-tinted nails scrape the surface of anything he moves by, and each time he does it, memories flash through my mind.
His nails over my cheek. His breath on my skin. His fingers inside me…
They terrify me. I don’t know how I know him. I don’t know what happened between us before I was here. Before I was… whatever I am now.
I wonder why I feel like I do. All I have to do is wait for him to leave or for the void to take this place. It’s no different from before.
Except that every time he runs those black nails over a piece of bark or stone, I feel him. I feel the darkness in him. The memories that linger just out of reach call to me.
I know the Shade, but I don’t know how. I know his touch, but it’s more than this. I have memories of that touch affecting me, of it pushing me to be different, to lose control. Shadows extend from his hand and brush across the trees as he passes them, those dark tendrils teasing me with more memories that I can’t quite remember.
Flashes of darkness wreathing a body, of seductive teasing, of desperate need.
“Maeve,” he calls out into the forest. “I know you’re here. Come out and play, Maeve. You know you want to.”
The world seems to shake for a moment, and several burned branches crumble and turn to ash. “No,” I mutter. “I can’t.”
The Shade is a cruel creature. He will take everything that I am and break me. He will use me. But…
“You will,” he responds. “I know you better than anyone. I know what you crave, and I’m the only one who can give you what you want.”
Another earthquake rumbles across the world. The light shines on me, and pain still courses through me. All I need to do is wait. I can see the edges of this world being eaten away by the darkness. Those waves come ever more quickly, and it won’t be long now until I can finally give into it.
But the Shade tempts me. From his words to his touch to his shadows. They pull at my memories and remind me of a time before this place—a place before this place. They remind me of when I was different.
His words rake across me again. “I’m not leaving. I will be here until the darkness overtakes everything, so why not come down here?”
His nails caress a branch that had been burned, and the world quakes ever so slightly. The branch crumbles to ash and blows away in the wind, and the Shade watches it move while he moves his hand to a different branch, his nails sliding down the smooth bark with agonizing slowness.
Memories of a time when he stood in front of me and ran his nails over my cheek move through me. I remember staring into that darkness under his cloak. I remember feeling something else. Something other than the pain.
Instead of hiding, I create another effigy. From nothing, a woman made of carved wood appears in front of the Shade, and he stops, pausing.
“You’ve decided to come play,” he whispers, his eyes on the woman. Shadows crawl up from the ground and wrap around her arms and legs. They solidify and pull at her body, trapping her. I can feel every touch of his shadows, and they only remind me of other sensations. So different and yet so similar.
But what’s different about them?
He glides to her, and I’m silent as I watch him move. I remember being in this same position, but I was terrified.
His nails move over the effigy’s cheek. The rasp of hard nails against hard wood is the only sound in this forest. For a moment, everything else, including the wind, is silent as he teases me. His nails move down the wood, gliding over its throat to its collarbone. A stronger earthquake moves across the world as those nails move to the effigy’s breast.
I’ve felt each of these things before, but somehow, it’s different. Somehow, this feeling is nothing like what I remember. This is distant, like a tingling. A memory of a feeling rather than the feeling itself.
“Why can’t I feel you?” I whisper.
“Because you’re too far away, Maeve. You’re still hiding.”
The effigy shakes its head. “I’m right here. I’ve let you capture me, and I’m letting you touch me. I’m not hiding.”
The Shade pauses, and I know that he’s smiling behind the hood. But what’s there to smile about? “You’re letting me touch a part of you, but that’s why you can’t feel me the same way. I need to touch your mind and soul, but I also need to touch your body.”
“My body?” I say it and more memories flood me. Memories of a world away from this place. A world where trees rise above me rather than being a part of me. The light gets brighter, and I remember other fragments of memories. A village full of cottages hidden under massive oak trees. A village that was lost to mists. People that I cared about.
“Yes, Maeve. Your body. It’s the only part of you that knows how to truly feel my touch.” His nails move over the effigy’s stomach, down between its legs. Another memory fills my mind. A night when the Shade bound me and made me beg him to touch me more. I’d been willing to do anything for him. I’d been willing to give him anything.
“You used my body against me once before, Shade,” I whisper.
“I did. But I didn’t give you what you wanted then.” He raises his hand and says, “I swear I won’t hold back this time, Maeve. Come back to your body and I swear I will give you every bit of pleasure that you wanted from me.”
A band of red encircles his wrist and glows with power. An unbreakable vow. He’s not lying. “But the pain will go away if I just wait. Everything will go away.”
“Everything will go away, including the pleasure. If you fix things—if you heal yourself—I’ll be waiting for you.”
He’ll be waiting for me. I don’t know why, but that thought gives me pause. “But it hurts…”
“The pain will still be there. It will be terrible, but every day it will get better. It won’t ever go away, but you’ll learn to live with it. Eventually, there will even be days you forget that it’s there. Instead, you’ll smile and think about the other things you have. But if you give up—if you disappear—then you’ll never know what else is waiting for you.”
A memory runs through me. A night around a fire with people drinking coffee and laughing. I felt light then. I was… happy . Not content. I was more than that.
The effigy turns away from the Shade to look at the broken forest around her. “You’ll be there with me?” I ask. “You promise? Will you stay with me until it’s better?”
Another memory. This one is so long ago. An image of me in a house next to a girl. I was terrified, and then the Shade was there, and I knew things would be better. He would fix whatever was wrong.
He nods. “I will stay with you until you ask me to leave, Maeve. I will help you bear the weight of your suffering.”
Then, the effigy does what I wish I could do. She reaches out and takes the Shade’s hand in hers. “I don’t know how to fix myself. It’s all breaking. Everything’s disappearing. I don’t remember things. I… I’ve forgotten so much.”
Words come to my mind unbidden from somewhere that I can’t place. One cloak was given to my House. Darkness given form. Power for the powerless. For one who will change the fate of himself and the many. The Shadowed Cloak will be the undoing of kingdoms, but according to Calyr, it is the final piece.
The words come unbidden as the effigy’s hand rests upon the soft linen that seems so familiar to me.
“Make it grow, Maeve,” the Shade says. “Rebuild the forest.” He smiles through the darkness again and raises his hands. Around him, shadows rise from the broken and burned skeleton of the forest. Leaves of black sprout from shadowed branches. “Grow the forest again. Think of me. Find your shadows again.”
The effigy looks up at him, its black eyes turning green, and then it says, “I think I can do that, but… I need you to leave. I need quiet.”
He looks around at the world and shakes his head. “Maeve, I can’t leave you. If I leave, you could…”
“Give up?” I finish.
He nods, and I say, “Yes. I could.”
The Shade glances at the edges of the world where the black sea washes up onto the banks. Moments ago, it had been taking pieces of my island away. The effigy reaches out for the Shade, and presses a wooden hand against the black linen hood. “You promise you’ll be there?”
“I will.” The words are said without doubt. Like the vibrations from his lips had carved them into stone. He will be there. Not a promise. A truth.
The pain that seems to be all that I can remember clearly is still there. It’s still beating against me, doing its best to break me, and everything inside me wants to give into it—to wait for the world to crumble and fade into nothingness.
But the Shade is a wall against that agony. His promise is a stone in a current of misery that I cling to. “It’s going to hurt to rebuild this place, won’t it?”
He nods and doesn’t respond, but his words echo inside me. The pain will still be there. It will be terrible, but every day it will get better. It won’t ever go away, but you’ll learn to live with it. Eventually, there will even be days you forget that it’s there. Instead, you’ll smile and think about the other things you have.
“It’ll get better,” I say slowly, the words rolling like a strong wind. The effigy lifts her hand, and I instinctively know what to do. Power flows through everything, and I see the world below the black sand. Underneath it all is actual stone instead of the crystal shadows that cover the beach.
I pull it up to the trees and regrow the trees out of the bedrock. One at a time, I begin to rebuild them. They’re not right, though. Something is still very off.
They need movement. They need life and growth, and that’s not possible with Earth. The Shade looks at the handful of trees that I’ve rebuilt, and he holds out his hand. Flames rise along his blackened fingertips, and he presses them against the stone bark.
Like ice melting, the stone fades, and underneath is a living tree. I brush my fingers against it, and agony hits me like a wave that’s overpowering. Memories of Hazel are my entire world. I remember her eyes and her kindness. I remember how she took my hand the day I moved in with Aunt Prudence and Uncle Trevor and taught me to play. I remember Hazel.
Then I remember that she died.
The tree blazes to life in front of me, and tears pour down the effigy’s cheeks because I remember the life and death of my closest friend. I understand part of where the pain came from now. I understand that every one of these trees is a memory, and I’m going to have to relive all of them, one at a time, to rebuild this place.
I look at the Shade, who hasn’t budged. “You had better be there when I leave this place,” I say.
“I will.”
Everything hurts, but I remember Hazel. I don’t want to forget her even though she died. She didn’t deserve to be forgotten, even for a moment. She was too good for that, and I won’t let her memory be lost.
I look at the Shade and nod to him. “Go. I’ll fix myself. I promise.”
The Shade looks at the effigy and then looks into the sky. “Don’t rush. Take all the time you need, Maeve, but don’t let the pain get to you. Whatever you do, don’t let it win.”
Then he bends down, and with his hands, he digs a hole in the sand. Flames erupt in the center of the hole, and instead of saying anything, he walks toward my effigy and leans down to press his shadow covered lips against its carved lips. I can feel the tingle of desire flowing through me, even though he only kissed my effigy.
It’s a kiss that’s so filled with passion that, even now, the anguish has to recede some so that the tingling feel of desire can work its way into me. There will be pain, but there will be more than pain. Then he disappears, fading into nothing and leaving only the flames in the sand.
I glance at the flames and at the only truly living tree in my forest before looking at the hundreds and thousands of trees that I’m going to have to regrow.
I won’t let these memories be lost. Even the ones that hurt.