Chapter Forty-Two
ELARA
Elara lay on top of clean bedsheets that smelled of lotus blossom, listening to the pitter-patter of gentle rain upon the window.
The bed frame was made of deep-blue sodalite, the floors aquamarine paving stones.
The crystals were supposed to ease troubled minds, the innkeeper had explained when taking her to her room, but Elara felt anything but eased.
She had to dreamwalk. She’d known it the moment Clari had advised her on how to rid herself of her shadow malady. But she was so afraid of what she might find.
She looked at the soft periwinkle hues of the streaked sky, the sun setting for the day.
She watched Enzo’s heavenly body dip below the singing cliffs and pulled upon his strength.
Enzo was brave and courageous. He looked adversity in the eye.
Elara had always run away from it, from her shadows, from herself.
She had faced them once, though. And now, she accepted that it was time to face them again.
Bone weary, she splayed her palms against the soft cotton and took another breath of the floral air. She found the drop, that in-between place of waking and sleeping, and made sure her tether was well secured before she began to walk.
No longer were her Dreamlands a place of comfort. In fact, as her surroundings blurred, she felt a lurking sense of dread.
As the world stilled around her and she walked forwards in this new realm, she noticed immediately the change in atmosphere.
Elara had not been able to visit her own dreams since Enzo had been trapped within them. And now that she was back, everything had changed.
The crystal-clear river had run dry. The trees, once lush and bountiful, were now bent, ragged and dying.
She stumbled forwards as trepidation grew in her heart.
She saw the little cottage she’d built as a girl—she’d always wanted a thatched one—though it looked in terrible disrepair, the roof falling apart, the door ajar.
She continued on, to a forest that she’d mirrored on the shadow woods by her palace, a place she and Sofia would play in frequently.
Gone were the animals of her imagination, the lush rolling hills, the fruits and berries.
Instead there lay a barren path. As Elara trod softly into the forest, no colourful birds sang, no wind blew through the trees.
She drew ever closer to a clearing—the same clearing where she had first met her shadow.
She could see something—a mass—slumped upon the ground.
Tears were already springing from her eyes as she approached, making out so clearly among the bleeding black trees: her shadow.
Everything Clari had said was true.
Elara sank to her knees, taking a shuddering breath as she turned the mass over. The form was the exact size and shape of Elara, down to the angled jaw and waist-length hair. The edges of her were frayed, as though she’d been clawed at, her black fingernails jagged, her hair torn.
And she realized something, a crystal-clear thought that emerged through the shadows.
The girl I was is dead.
Elara let out a deep sob as she cradled the shadow, as light as a feather. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered as she clutched the tattered parts of herself. ‘I’m so sorry I couldn’t protect you.’
Her shadow remained immobile within her arms as she blinked around tears.
‘You were my first friend,’ Elara wept. ‘You were with me when no one else was. When people shunned me, you were always with me. And I’m so sorry I ran from you.
That I didn’t let you in for so long. I’m so sorry that I treated you as something I was afraid of, instead of just another part of me. ’
The silence was too deafening, too all-encompassing.
‘Thank you for protecting me, even from myself. I denied you for so long, when all you did was try to love me. You saw every part of me when no one else did.’
Elara could do no more as she sat there, saying goodbye to her shadow.
Her Dreamlands did not bend to her will any longer.
Try as she might, she couldn’t erase the darkness, couldn’t brighten the sky or conjure running water to lay her shadow to rest. Something had changed, and she knew with certainty that it was the Dark’s doing.
Then came a roar. Elara stilled as she heard it, beastly and terrifying. She looked around her dreamscape to something she hadn’t seen before, a few paces ahead. A well.
Elara stumbled to her feet and staggered towards it just as the pained cry came again.
When she got to it, she peered over the edge with trepidation, and gasped.
There, at the bottom of the well, lay a dragun, as vivid as the illustrations painted on her old bedroom ceiling.
It raised its huge silver head towards her, tears in its starlit eyes as it gave another roar of pain.
She saw shadowed ropes binding it, saw scars and lashes upon it as it struggled against its bonds.
She began to shake, to stumble back. Fury and hurt and pain all tumbled together as she formed the decision in her mind.
Her eyes dried, salt pinching her cheeks as she uttered a promise. ‘I will no longer be a home to the Dark.’
Elara knew Enzo instantly, just from the back of his head. He was sitting in the fine, glittering sand of the lakeshore, feet bare. Merissa was next to him, patting him on the shoulder and listening as he spoke earnestly.
When she approached from the inn, the hour late, he turned his head.
Elara gave a half-hearted wave.
Enzo looked tense, wary, shadows under his eyes that she hadn’t noticed before. She went straight to him, and Merissa rose, giving her a quick smile before she made herself scarce.
Elara sat down beside him, careful not to touch him, but wishing, so desperately, that she could.
‘I’m ready,’ she said, reaching her little finger out towards him in the sand.
‘So am I,’ he murmured, reaching his own out, so that they nearly touched.
‘So,’ she sighed, ‘what are we to do?’
‘Well, we go back to Clari. Just you and I. And we follow her instructions to kill your shadows. We cut the rot out from the core. And then you will finally regain control of your magick.’