Chapter 26 #2
“I don’t know,” he admitted, frowning as he examined his arms and legs.
“I don’t feel anything.” He didn’t appear to have any physical injuries, but his expression told of a different kind of pain.
His real wounds were hidden, sharp, suffocating.
He met my eyes again, as if he wanted to say something but wasn’t quite sure how.
“The demon said I would never feel pain or be lonely again. So why do I—” Suddenly, his face crumbled. He turned away. “I don’t know why.…”
Without thinking, I put a hand to his back. It was how I comforted Elliot when he was sick or scared; a touch to remind him that he wasn’t alone. The boy flinched at first, hesitating, but a breath later, he relaxed, slumping forward to rest his chin atop his knees.
In an instant, the young Shadow Bringer had become what he truly was: a boy. And I realized I didn’t even know his name.
“I’m Esmer,” I offered quietly after a few moments had passed. “You don’t know me, but I want to help you get through this. We will get through this.”
The boy lifted his head. “Esmer,” he echoed, testing the word. “I have a unique name, too. I am Erebus.”
Erebus. It was a lovely name.
“Did the demon promise you anything?” Erebus asked intently. “It told me I would find where I belong. My purpose.”
I think I prefer you to the willful child inside my stomach. A truth, for one of your pretty teeth.
I could almost feel the demon’s dry, rotting breath on my face.
“The beast seemed more interested in how I would taste,” I said, shaking my head in disgust. “We didn’t get to the part where it promised me riches or good fortune.”
“The demon said it knew me, but it never even said my name. Isn’t that strange?” he asked.
“Demons are liars,” I answered. They were parasites, too, desperate to become what they consumed. And I had unleashed hundreds of them upon my kingdom. “Maybe the demon had a few of your memories or guessed what you were feeling. But it didn’t know you. They never truly do.”
I placed a hand on the pit’s wall. It resisted my touch; something on the other side was pushing back. “I think this pit is one of their tricks. An illusion, maybe. We just need to figure out how to break it.”
Erebus watched me with a mixture of curiosity and dismay.
“It’s rare to speak of demons so boldly.
” He drew closer. “Are you from Citadel Evernight?” He must have seen the genuine confusion in my reaction, because he continued, adding quickly, “Never mind. Someone from Evernight wouldn’t be here.
Weavers don’t care whether we live or die. ”
A distrust in the Weavers, even five hundred years in the past? I couldn’t help pressing the boy: “Why won’t the Weavers come? Aren’t they supposed to be protecting dreamers?”
Supposedly, the seven Weavers prospered before the Shadow Bringer rose to power, gifting humanity with handcrafted, Maker-blessed dreams. It would be years until the first outbreak of Corruption.
So why was Erebus left to face a demon by himself?
Weavers protected the world from demons, hunting any that slipped through their veil. Would they not go after this one?
“You really think that?” Erebus spat, clenching his fists.
“They never protected me. Not from this nightmare. Not from the demon. Not from anything. They abandoned me.” I began to hear the similarities between his voice and the Shadow Bringer’s.
The hatred and the deep, burning sorrow.
“Everyone else dreams like we’re meant to.
Everyone else can fly and do magic and see things.
My dreams turn into nightmares, and they end with my parents dying. And it’s always my fault.”
Erebus placed his hands next to mine. Instead of pushing into the demon’s strange, globe-like stomach, he pulled. The substance melted into shadow as it stretched, clinging to his hands. Several handfuls of shadow later, the globe still held firm. Huffing from the effort, he turned to me.
“My mother and father thought I was special. Funny, isn’t it?
They said the Weavers would take me to Evernight, and we’d never go hungry again.
” Shadows danced in his irises. His face, elegant despite his youth, was caught between calculated fury and something more desperate.
Colder. “But then they died, and no Weaver ever came. The demon told me the dark was my purpose. You said it doesn’t know me, but I think you’re wrong. ”
As if in response to Erebus’s proclamation, the dark deepened around us, encroaching on the mist. It moved over the boy who would grow up to be the Shadow Bringer with shadows dancing on his fingers and sorrow swimming in his eyes.
An image of the Shadow Bringer flashed before me. Was he still in the dream, crushed under the weight of the demon’s horn? Again, as if in response, the demon’s stomach began to change.
Water pooled at our feet, falling from its sky and seeping thick down its walls. The more I thought of the Bringer, bleeding and broken at the bottom of the pond, the faster the water rose. I shoved the memory of him away, fighting for control of the globe’s form, and the water slowed to a stop.
But as the water stilled, the dark drew nearer, tugging at my hair and crawling spiderlike down my throat.
And with the dark came unspeakable thoughts.
Visions of sobbing mothers with terrified children clinging to their arms. A village armed with smoking torches and bloody mouths.
Noblemen dreaming peacefully in beds carved from the bones of the less fortunate.
Erebus stood silent and wide-eyed beside me, experiencing visions of his own.
“Erebus, look at me.”
Erebus worked his mouth open and shut, but no words came.
“No one is made for the dark. You might control the dark, but it isn’t your purpose. Nor your essence,” I said.
Shadows burst in from all directions, swirling up in a thick, bubbling fog. They began to obscure Erebus from me, as though they were set on eating him alive.
“What do you know?” Erebus finally shouted, whirling to face me.
“The dark listens, and I listen back. It knows me better than anyone.” He showed me his hand.
Even as the shadows obscured him, they danced around his fingertips.
They were beautiful, in their own way, shimmering faintly with small flecks of light.
“My power scares people,” he said, lowering his voice.
“It scared my mother and father. It scares you, too. You’re afraid of me. ”
Erebus stood tall, daring me to say otherwise.
My heart broke for him and his distorted view of himself. How could the dark be someone’s purpose? Why did it linger around Erebus—around a boy who should have been safe in a Weaver-crafted dream and not rotting in a demon’s stomach?
I held myself as he did, bold and unwavering. “I’m not afraid,” I said, meeting his defiant glare. “I’ve seen the dark, too. I’ve lived in it.”
As a child, I spent days adventuring in the Visstill.
I enjoyed reading by the barn and delighting in the reckless joy of a season without Corruption.
There were beautiful days in my childhood.
But after Eden’s death, the shadows stretched higher as the sun dipped beneath the trees it once smiled upon.
I remembered the circle of torchlight, wavering in the long nights when the elixir supply was down to its final dregs.
I remembered the desperation forming in my father’s eyes.
The rage in my mother’s. The fear in my brother’s.
Perhaps I ran from the shadows for too long, repulsed by how they whispered to me, linking me to the Shadow Bringer.
But that was a mistake.
The Shadow Bringer’s life was wrought with darkness, but that didn’t take away his admirable qualities.
He was clever. Imaginative. Unflinching even in the face of despair.
Powerful despite centuries spent in a looping nightmare.
Maybe the Bringer’s shadows were beautiful; maybe mine could be, too.
Perhaps I didn’t need to flinch from my past or my darkness as though they were shameful cloaks to be stuffed away.
I could bravely wrap them around my shoulders and be free.
“Knowing the dark doesn’t make you a monster,” I continued, assured in what I was saying. What I was trying to make him see. “It’s what you do in the darkness—and how you rise to overcome it—that matters.”
“You’re lying,” Erebus accused, taking a step back. “No one knows what it’s like to live in the dark. Not the way I do.” His eyes brightened in the fog. “You’re not really here, are you? I imagined you to protect myself.”
I reached for his hand, just as he began to melt into the dark.
“Erebus, no,” I insisted, begging him to stay.
“If my purpose is evil, then what good am I?” he said. At this point, he was nearly gone. His limbs were caught in the shadows, half-eaten. “Where do I belong if I’m a monster? Nobody loves or protects me. Perhaps my mother and father did, once, but they’re dead now.”
Lunging, I managed to grab his arm. The shadows retreated at the contact.
As his shadows overlapped, folding in and out, their light—just a handful of tiny shimmers a moment before—grew strong.
“Just because there’s darkness, it doesn’t mean all the light is gone.
Look—see? And you do have somebody, Erebus. You have me.”
And I have you, too.
“I…” Erebus began to whisper something but stopped, watching the light dance within the shadows. Together the twin energies radiated from his hands, blanketing the pit. The heavy fog disappeared, replaced by a sea of stars.
Together, we looked in awe at the transformation.
Soft, twinkling light came to rest upon Erebus’s face, illuminating his hesitant wonder. Slowly, his desperation faded. Slowly, his breathing quieted.
“I never knew,” he whispered, lifting his arms. At his call, some shadows dropped, coiling elegantly around his shoulders and forming a cloak on his back.
Others tangled in his hair, shaping into a loose crown.
Power radiated from him, wild and true. “I thought the dark was a terrible thing. But this feels different. I can control it.” More firmly, he repeated, “I can control it.”
The sides of the demon’s pit began to splinter and crack.
“These walls aren’t going to last much longer,” I observed, sidestepping a piece of the globe as it fell. “I don’t know what will become of us if that happens, or if we can still escape. But we need to try.”
Erebus turned to me. His eyes were burning. “I’m going to rip us straight from the demon’s stomach. I swear it.”
From the ferocity in his expression, I believed him. “Good. Then the beast won’t be able to hurt anyone ever again.” Nor will it continue to hunt me, my family, and the Shadow Bringer.
Erebus nodded. A swath of darkness pulled itself from the sky, moving to rest atop my shoulders, too. It felt warm. Comforting, even. I leaned into my new mantle, savoring its touch.
“I’m sorry for saying I imagined you.” He smiled then. His expression held sorrow, but amazement, too. “You just seemed too good to be true, is all.”
Erebus held out his hand. I took it.
And the globe cracked in two, bursting with the light of a million stars.