17. Cinn
seventeen
Cinn
“ T oday I want to explore the origins of your shadowslipping, Cinn.”
Noir leaned back into his chair, already puffing away on his silver pipe. Cinn still didn’t know what the old codger smoked, but it certainly wasn’t tobacco.
“Sure,” Cinn replied, like he had any say on the agenda, anyway.
“Specifically, I want us to go back to your childhood.”
“What is this, a therapy session?”
Noir exhaled a massive plume of smoke. “If you need it to be.”
Crossing his arms, Cinn pushed back slightly on the desk, wheeling his chair away from Noir. “I don’t.”
With an upward quirk of his moustache, Noir said, “Very well, then. You’ve previously shared with me your first ever experience of shadowslipping, where you had morning tea with that pleasant gentleman.”
Cinn nodded.
“I wondered if you were aware by now, perhaps enlightened by some of the literature I’ve prescribed, of the speculated origin of the shadowslipping ability, the cause so to speak.”
God, Noir and his damned books. Didn’t he know there was music to be listened to, cookie recipes to master, troubled ex-boyfriends to call, beautiful yet complicated men to daydream about?
“I didn’t get to that part yet. ”
A crinkled smile. “Well, allow me to spoil it for you. I want you to think back to the time shortly before your first trip.”
Cinn stared at him. “Okay…”
“Did anything happen to you, Cinn, in the weeks or months prior?”
Many things. Many, many things. Most of them bad.
“You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“Well, our limited research into the handful of shadowslippers ever recorded suggests that a near-death experience often triggers the ability. Specifically, where the person is medically, or at least very close to, dead for a short period of time.”
Noir allowed him time to process his words, rearranging items on his cluttered desk.
“Do you recall such an event, Cinn?”
He did.
He recalled the feeling of sinking ever deeper into the icy water, the frantic, uncoordinated kick of his legs to no avail, the lungfuls of river he inhaled, to choke on. He recalled the burning sensation in his legs, then chest, the sting of his eyes. He recalled the odd sense of relief that washed over him when the world had faded to black.
“Cinn?”
There was no way in hell he was in the mood to spill his guts about one of the worst days of his life to Noir, as friendly as the mentor had been so far. Cinn didn’t have enough energy to face the judgement and pity that would be clear as day on Noir’s face. So he remained silent.
Noir sighed, running a hand through his beard. Hopefully, he’d got the message that Cinn wasn’t in a sharing mood. “If that is too much for today, perhaps we could return to our project of recording your experiences?”
By ‘our’ project, Noir meant his project, but fine. At Cinn’s nod, Noir brought out his large leather-bound notebook and his silly fountain pen with the ridiculous feather on it. Apparently, biro was too pedestrian for Noir.
He flipped to the next clean page. “So, we’ve covered your first episode with the newspaper and the gentleman, then we recorded the encounter with the fireman outside the burned-down department store near your house. Yesterday, you mentioned that your third trip was… less than pleasant?”
Noir looked up. It was Cinn’s turn to talk.
“Yes.” He tugged on his beanie. “Although most of them were pretty awful, from that point onwards.”
“Take me back to that day. Paint me a picture.” Noir waved his fountain pen in the air with a flourish and Cinn glared at him.
“It was a couple of months after the first episode on my thirteenth birthday. My mum and I were running late, so we were running for the bus.”
“Where were you going?”
“Is that bit important?” Noir didn’t respond, so Cinn continued, “Anyway, we were sprinting, so my heart was already racing.” He paused to allow Noir to note that down. Adrenaline increase seemed to be part of the trigger, for him at least—Noir rarely discussed any of the shadowslippers that had come before him. “If you must know, we were on our way to one of Mum’s medical appointments, and I remember we were late the last time, then she wasn’t allowed in, so this time she was determined to be on time and she made us run super fast.”
Even from discussing this early part of the memory, Cinn’s heart beat faster in anticipation of reliving what was yet to come. He twisted the golden band around his wrist.
“So, we make it to the corner shop, and Mum looks at her watch, and says that we need to speed up. She’s dragging me by this point, I can barely breathe… and—” And she got cross with me for slowing her down. “Anyway, at the next crossing, we have to dart out onto the road without pressing the button.”
“The button?”
Cinn frowned. “Yeah, to change the traffic lights to red.”
“Right, right,” said Noir. “Carry on.”
“Anyway. Mum… forgot… to look.” He cringed, but Noir didn’t look up from his notebook. “And then this white car comes speeding round the corner. Genuinely, Mum said he was going way over the limit, and—”
The scrape of metal against paper stopped. Perhaps Noir had realised where this story was going. “Cinn, I didn’t realise quite how traumatic this particular incident could be to retell. Shall we take a break? Skip this one for now?”
Cinn gritted his teeth. There was no point stopping now. “No, it’s fine. So, the white car sees us, but it’s going too fast, way over the speed limit, and…”
The blaring of a horn, the screeching of tyres.
“It crashed into a lamppost. So hard the lamppost bent. After that, there was lots of screaming. Someone ran into the corner shop to call nine nine nine. I sat down on the pavement, unable to stop looking at the car. I remember my mum shouting at me that we needed to go, but I couldn’t move.”
“Is that when the slip began?”
“Yeah. This one was interesting because it was the first one where I understood I was in a memory, but we didn’t go there straight away. So, I felt myself fade away, and I guess it felt like I was slipping or whatever into the pavement. But it didn’t click at first that I’d slipped, because I was still on the main road. Although, everybody had disappeared, and the world went sort of… grey and blue. I kept looking at the white car until the back door opened.”
“And someone got out? ”
“A young girl.” He studied Noir’s reaction, but the man schooled his expression. “There was… blood all over her head, and her arms were all bent. I didn’t learn this until later, but she hadn’t put her seatbelt on.”
“And you’re certain this was her spirit form you were seeing at this moment? I only ask because of her appearance. We’ve discussed how usually, the spirits don’t present with the injury that killed them.”
“It depends,” said Cinn, wiping his hand over his face. “You should have more answers than me, anyway.” Noir didn’t take the bait, and waited for Cinn to continue. “So she stumbles up to me, and I stand up to catch her. She’s a couple of years younger, maybe like, ten? She’s wailing, almost screaming. I can touch her, and for some stupid reason, I try to straighten out her arms, like she’s a doll I need to fix.”
“Did you manage to?”
Cinn scowled. “Of course not, it just made her screaming worse. She started howling so loud, I grabbed both of her shoulders to calm her down. And then… I guess you could say I slipped through her. I felt myself falling towards her… almost like she was a magnet, sucking me in. The road faded away, and when I woke up, I was in a garden.”
“Ah,” declared Noir. “So, this is the memory part?”
“I think so? The girl—her name was Emma, I found out after—her injuries were all gone. She was smiling. Emma grabbed my hand and pulled me to her swing set. She wanted me to push her. So I did. I remember her black pigtails flapping in the wind, again and again as she flew up into the air.”
“Did you ever see her parents? At the roadside, or in the garden?”
“No. They both survived the crash.” Well, their bodies did, at least. With their only daughter dead, however…
“And how did the slip end?”
“I remember watching Emma swing forward and back, forward and back. And like a pendulum, I started to feel sleepy. My eyes started closing for longer and longer, and eventually, they stayed closed. ”
Noir’s furious scribbles dashed across the page. “And how did you return?”
“To my mum shaking me.”
“ Shaking you?”
“Yeah, because I was asleep! Well, I was to her, anyway.”
“I would have thought she’d have got a paramedic to look at you, as you were unconscious.”
“I don’t know, maybe she did!” After a breath, Cinn consciously returned his volume to normal to continue, “I woke up, and we went home.”
“Did the police want to talk to her about the crash?”
“What? That’s got nothing to do with this… record,” Cinn said, gesturing to Noir’s book.
With a snap, Noir closed his notebook. “Quite right. I suppose, what I really wanted to say, was that you shouldn’t carry any guilt with you about that girl’s death, Cinn.”
“I don’t!” A sour taste arose in the back of his mouth.
Two bushy eyebrows flew up in time with two palms. “Alright, quite right. I think we should leave it there for today, then. You’ve got plenty of reading to be getting on with, anyway.”
Cinn half stood, but then sat down again. He’d almost forgotten something. Something very important, ahead of their next attempt to contact Béatrice tonight.
“Before I go, I wanted to ask you what you knew about how shadowslippers bring spirits back to this realm with them. Like I accidentally did when those four people died.” He bit his lip. He still wasn’t completely convinced his secret plan to find a way to bring Béatrice back to talk to the other three directly was the best idea. Although, it did hold a certain appeal—the look of elation on Julien’s face for one, plus then Cinn needn’t panic about asking her all the right questions .
“You shouldn’t need to worry about that, not with your warding device.” Noir nodded at Cinn’s wrist.
“I know, I know, but say I wanted to bring someone back, for a short amount of time—” He cut himself off at Noir’s rapid blinking, his pipe frozen on the way to his mouth. “I mean, completely theoretically. Before, you said you’d do some research into how exactly I was able to bring spirits back, the very few times I’ve done it.”
“I am still in the process of that research.”
Great . He’d alarmed Noir for no reason.
“It seems that very, very few shadowslippers have ever experienced that particular quirk. In fact, there’s only one record of such a person.”
For a moment, his heart inflated with the hope of meeting someone else like him. Then he remembered he was the only shadowslipper currently alive.
“Shall we reconvene tomorrow, hmm?” The old man appeared deadly serious as he reached forward to grasp his arm. “I hope you’re taking care of yourself, Cinn.”
After promising that he was, Cinn freed himself and let himself out, rummaging around in his rucksack for his A Tribe Called Quest cassette. His hand paused, however, at a shadow slinking out from behind a corner. Cinn fought to suppress a smile. This was the third day in a row—making it every day since their return from Paris—that Julien had been waiting for him when he’d finished with Noir. And just like those other times, Julien had in his hand a black coffee from Curio Café Collective, ready to pass to him.
“Thanks,” Cinn said, beginning the long walk down the many sets of spiralling stairs. He still avoided the so-called ‘elevators’. Surely they weren’t suitable for coffee carrying, anyway.
Cinn wasn’t sure what sort of message Julien was trying to communicate with the coffee, exactly .
‘Yo, I’m your friendly coffee-bringing buddy who can one hundred percent be just friends with you?’
‘I didn’t want to kiss you when we fucked, but now I’ll bring you coffee every day to fuck with your feelings?’
Except he couldn’t quite get an image out of his head. A snapshot of the expression Julien had worn on his face moments before Cinn left him alone in that alleyway in Paris. Surprised, yes, but underneath it, the unmistakable hint of despair, and even regret.
So, Cinn wasn’t sure what to think of either of their ‘feelings’ anymore.
Once they reached the street, they walked a few steps in tension-laden quiet, until Cinn cracked and stopped abruptly in the middle of the pavement. He opened his mouth, but Julien beat him to it, to say, oddly, “Before I forget, I got this for you.”
Julien dipped his hand into the front pocket of his over-the-shoulder messenger bag to reveal a fistful of olive green material.
He tossed it to Cinn.
It took him a few blinks to recognise it as a hat.
“It’s only because I was sick of seeing that ratty grey one on the top of your head,” Julien said, mouth perfectly straight, eyes guarded.
Cinn let out a short, unsure laugh as he stuffed his old hat into his bag, and tugged the green beanie onto his head. It was far warmer, fit him perfectly, and was as soft as kitten fur.
“It’s bamboo fabric blended with organic cotton,” Julien said in a rush. “But if you hate it, I won’t care. I just saw it in passing when I was out doing something else.”
Cinn stared at Julien, his heart doing an odd sort of tap dance. Where on earth did beanie-hat-gifting fit into the ever-shifting dynamics of their relationship ?
“Thanks,” he said at last. Then opened his mouth to see what would come out next, only to shut it again, since Darcy was charging towards them, scarf flapping in the wind, lips pressed in a grim line.