Chapter 1 #2
She certainly had a heart, but she was vaguely concerned that it simply didn’t work quite like other hearts worked. “I’m not opposed to the concept of love, Josie. I’d love to fall in love. It just hasn’t happened for me yet.”
“Oh that’s so sad,” answered Josie with a pout. “I’ve fallen in love twice since last Tuesday.”
Elana gaped. “With whom?”
“Once with Gabriel du Mond when he picked up the handkerchief I so carelessly dropped.” She lowered her gaze and looked up at Elana through her lashes, showing how she’d flirted with the boy who Elana had felt nothing for. “And once with Geoffry Boucher when he held my hand on the way to school.”
Oh to be Josie, whose feelings ran so hot and so close to the surface. Oh to feel love at the drop of a hat—or a handkerchief—and to allow yourself the belief that it could bloom into something more. To not be heartbroken, or worse, numb, when it didn’t.
Oh to be anyone but Elana, when it came to feelings.
“Well,” Elana said brusquely, “the gown looks lovely on you and it’s all yours.
That neckline would look nice with a low, loosely tied knot for your hair, and see if you can find some jewelry in the wooden box on mother’s dresser.
Ask her first!” she called, as Josie was already halfway across the room, eager to get ready for the evening.
Elana looked past her loom, to where her sunshine yellow dress hung, unfinished. It didn’t need to be fancy, she supposed. Needn’t any extra adornment.
Tonight wouldn’t be the night Elana Allard fell in love.
A shadowless blue twilight descended upon the valley, and the sounds of frivolity danced out across the meadow, reaching the Allard home just as the family was ready to walk into town.
Amazing, really, that one could hear the music from this far away, could smell the sweet burnt-sugar smell of roasted yam and the smoky crackle of bacon dipped in syrup.
“Please eat something other than sugar and mead, Josephine,” Mama Allard was begging.
Josephine was shaking her head in defiance. “That is not what I saved my coins all year for, Mama!”
Luc was scowling at anyone who looked his way, and Marcus was still fixing his mask and cloak as they walked. Papa Allard was too old for a mask and cloak but looked handsome all in black regardless; the dark threads of his richly embroidered vest reflected the beginnings of starlight from above.
“What are you most looking forward to, Edward?” asked Elana, trying to distract the family.
“Puppet plays!” he cried, swinging a makeshift wooden sword at his brother’s head. Papa Allard deftly caught the sword mid-swing and redirected it to the ground.
Michel nodded his agreement. “I want to see the shadow monster. Last year’s shadow monster was boring. I hope they make it scarier this year!”
Luc’s scowl faded at that, turning into a smirk. “You’re so brave, are you? And what would you do if a shadow monster appeared in front of you?” He made his slender fingers into crooked claws, and with a snarl, dug into Michel’s ribs.
Michel laughed and gasped at the tickling, trying to shove his brother off.
“I’d smack it with my sword!” cried Edward, demonstrating admirable swordsmanship on Luc’s shins.
Papa grabbed Edward by the scruff of his shirt. Edward, to his credit, never stopped swinging.
“You’re very brave, dear,” murmured Mama softly.
“But we don’t need to worry about any of that, as the shadow monster has been trapped under that well for a hundred years.
If it hasn’t come back yet, it’s probably not going to.
And even if it could, it’s gone a hundred years without eating. It’s likely long dead by now.”
In the silence that followed, Elana’s ribs ached with an old familiar longing, tugging toward the well.
She clenched her fists, trying to shake it off.
Having ignored the draw to the well for years already, it was second nature to push it down, crushing it into the darkest corners of herself.
She worked hard to be a good daughter. To be a good woman.
Elana imagined what it must have been like in those early years when the shadow-eating monster first came to the valley.
Were people truly afraid? The monster never hurt anyone, at least not at first. It simply devoured the darkness of a shadow.
What must it have been like, when everyone, everything, had a shadow?
How dark the world must have been. The bards sang of those times at the festival; Elana made a note to pay better attention this year.
Josephine threaded her fingers demurely in front of her. “And you, Elana? What are you most looking forward to?” She batted her eyelashes.
Elana knew the answer her family wanted to hear.
They wanted to hear that she was looking forward to dancing the part of the light with a man dressed in black for her shadow.
For him to chase her, and for her to retreat, delighting in the game of predator and prey, exhilarating herself with being hunted.
But she’d done this dance year after year, acting the part of delight while feeling none of it.
This year she was going to be honest with herself, and damn being a good daughter.
She set her lips in a firm line. “This year I’m going to observe the research block. I want to see the work they’re doing to ensure the shadows never come back.”
Her honesty clearly shocked her family into silence, and for a long moment they quietly walked, the only sounds those coming from the festival ahead.
In the valley, shadows were nearly nonexistent.
At least in the town, at the farm, in the meadows, seeing darkness upon the earth where the light was blocked was as good as unheard of.
There was only one place where the shadows remained, where they had never left at all.
The Somberweald, the wood to the east, far past the meadow, past the well.
Townsfolk avoided the Somberweald, which wasn’t difficult as it was so far out of the way, and tales of the darkness within spooked young children in their beds at night and kept them close to home.
Small troupes of men would occasionally make wood-cutting journeys there, but they mostly cut at the edges of the wood and stayed out from within the shadowy depths.
And as for people who still had a shadow, they were a rarity, a freakish phenomena, feared and reviled.
There were some who still feared that those who had a shadow would draw the monster back, its appetite ravenous after a hundred years’ imprisonment.
The few shadowed folk who remained were studied each festival season by healers and witches, priestesses and medics, all trying to understand the nature of their shadows so they could take them away, to ensure a normal life for those who lived in the valley.
There weren’t many of them, and most of them were older, because when shadowless parents gave birth, it was, without fail, to a shadowless child, like Elana and her siblings.
Travelers rarely made the dangerous journey through the mountains to visit the valley, and when they did, they never stayed.
Outsiders would always comment on the wrongness of walking through daylight without a shadow to fall beneath them, and the folk of the valley would withdraw in horror and panic at the sight of the strangers’ shadows on the ground.
Newcomers had no desire to stay when the mere sight of their shadow made the valley folk gasp and hiss.
But if the research block could find a way to take a shadow away, then newcomers could be fixed.
There would be nothing to distinguish them, nothing to be afraid of, nothing to tempt the monster back.
After a hundred years of shadowlessness, the valley could welcome travelers without trepidation, and everything could remain as it had been since the shadow monster was locked away.
The research block served one other purpose as well, because of course, there were some others like Elana.
Others who were drawn to the well. She knew their plight; knew the way their insides ached with longing and their dreams were interrupted by bouts of sleepwalking.
She knew what it was to wake, confused, in front of the well with a nightgown soaked in dew and feet like ice.
These others, with their strange longings, had been delivered by their families to the temple, to the priestesses and researchers, in order that they also might be fixed.
The only difference between Elana and those others was that Elana had a family who cared for her, who longed to keep her with them.
The cuffs around her ankles were evidence enough of that.
Where other families had turned their sleepwalkers over to the temple, the Allards had kept Elana home, safe with people who loved her despite her uncontrollable night time urges.
And as long as the priestesses never found out about her desires, Elana could remain free. She could remain with her family who loved her and supported her despite the wrongness in her that drew her toward the shadowy woods and the well with its cover and boulder keeping the monster at bay.
As the Allard family neared town, the simple blue twilight of sunset descended on the valley.
Behind them, heavy black clouds gathered against the backdrop of the mountaintops, and a low rumble of thunder growled softly in the distance.
Mama Allard turned to look back the way they’d come, across the meadows lush with wildflowers, toward home, toward the far edge of the valley where the fabled well sat.
“I hope it doesn’t rain out the festival,” she said.
It had been a restless, hot summer day, the exact kind of weather that would gather all the moisture from the earth into the sky and send a thunderstorm ricocheting from one edge of the valley to the other, trapped between the mountain peaks.
But a little rain and a noisy sky wouldn’t stop the festivities.