Chapter 1 #4
Toward the darkness.
Above, thunder rolled, and lightning flashed across the sky as though nature itself was enamored of the puppet show, as though the vault of stars above, hidden behind the thunder cloud, was simply another actor in the show.
The crowd gasped, and a hush fell. Elana’s attention returned to the stage, where the puppets gathered around the well.
Above, a lantern swung until it was behind them, shining light into the eyes of the audience.
The main puppet, standing in the very center of the well, was that of a young mother with a babe in arms.
“A new child was born, a child with a shadow,” called the actor over the hush of the crowd.
The wind blew fiercely, howling its approval.
“And the townsfolk knew that nothing drew the monster more surely than a freshly created shade.” The puppet mother seemed to step up to the edge of the well, holding her babe in arms.
“The new baby’s shadow was cast down into the well, and the shadow monster followed it down, hungering to the end.”
The long swath of fabric fell from the ceiling of the auditorium, swooshing down the well.
“And the townsfolk sent their strongest young lads to cover the well for good.”
Several puppets from one side lifted a wooden cover onto the well, and a few from the other side heaved a huge rock on top of the cover with a resounding thump.
“And for a hundred years, the shadow monster was never again seen.”
“One day,” chimed in another voice, “our priestesses will find a way to rid us of shadows forever, and we will rejoice. One day, our priestesses’ magic will grace the valley with unending light.”
The audience was rapt, and it was a moment before any of them realized they should clap. But when they realized, the applause was as thunderous as the sky above.
The first fat drops of rain fell, and an icy wind wound once more through the crowd, drawing a cry of surprise and a shiver from the onlookers.
Elana grabbed her brothers by the arms, much to their complaint. “Before it rains us out I have to see the research block,” she insisted.
The boys grumbled. “Research is boring,” whined Michel.
Elana shook her head. “It’s not, actually. Don’t you want to see the shadows? You’ve barely seen a shadow in your life, come on.”
Edward relented, with a thoughtful finger on his chin. “That’s true, I suppose. Michel, what if we solve it? What if it’s us who figures out how to keep the shadows at bay? Imagine how famous we’d be then!”
Now Michel was nodding wildly. “Father would have to buy us any sword we wanted, then.”
Edward laughed. “We could buy our own sword because we’d be the richest men in the valley!”
“Yeah, with the prettiest wives,” said Michel.
“Yuck,” said Edward.
Silently, Elana agreed, but she wasn’t about to turn down any reason the boys might have for wanting to go along to the research block, so she tugged them along and they came willingly.
The research block was the park-like area in front of the temple of the Priestesses of Light.
Each festival, they held all the people with shadows in a fenced in area in front of the temple, bound and still so they could perform their experiments for all to see.
It was a public display because the people of the valley gave the priestesses food and tithes in order that they should continue to be able to research how to end shadows for good, whether through magic or some other means, and the people felt they should be allowed to see the work their tithes paid for.
As Elana and the boys neared the temple, a soft sobbing picked up, barely audible over the sound of the growing wind.
The walkway was lined with low berry bushes and both Michel and Edward picked and ate as they went, staining their hands red with the juices of the ripe berries.
By the time the fenced in area of people with shadows came into view, their chins dripped red as though with blood and their eyes were wild with sugar.
“A shadow!” screamed Michel, pointing.
Elana cringed. The first woman on display in the fenced in area was older than Mama Allard, hunched with age, and wrapped in a shawl.
She shivered against the cold, biting wind, or maybe against the priestess who stood nearby with a blade and a quill, penning results as she studied shallow cuts on the woman’s forearm.
Next came another sectioned off area filled with men, varying in age from just older than her oldest brother to significantly older than Papa.
Elana wondered mildly why the woman was being cut while the men were simply having lanterns shone onto them in various manners; into their eyes, across their bodies.
They were being asked to lift their arms, bend their legs, clearly all in some attempt to understand the qualities of their shadows.
Maybe Elana was misjudging. Perhaps each shadowed person had to go through all the tests.
Maybe each shadowed person had to go through all the tests every single year. Elana looked down at where here shadow would have been, if she’d had one, and she shuddered at the thought of being the subject of the priestesses’ knives.
“That one’s bleeding,” said Edward, uncertainty making his stained chin wobble. “That doesn’t seem right, does it?”
Elana tried to comfort him. “The priestesses only have our best interests at heart. They’re trying to understand what makes a shadow so that they can.
.. cure these folk.” She heard her own uncertainty in that pause.
The words, meant to comfort her brothers, felt ashy and stale in her mouth.
Shadows were unusual, but she didn’t find them horrifying to behold.
“I don’t understand what’s the big deal,” complained Michel. “Who cares about a few people with shadows? Who are they hurting?”
“Hush,” Elana told her brother sternly. “Don’t let the priestesses hear you speak that kind of blasphemy.
You don’t know what they might do.” Elana understood her brothers’ questions and concerns, and in some ways it would be a lie to pretend she didn’t share them.
But she had witnessed the way priestesses treated anyone who tried to speak in favor of shadows.
It wasn’t long ago that a young man had been whipped in front of the temple until he was barely a quivering pile of flesh.
His crime? Suggesting that if the valley had shadows, it would help create a cool place for livestock to recover from the heat of the sun.
The temple held phenomenal power in the valley, and they scorned darkness with every inch of it.
A scientist had come from outside to try and study shadowlessness, but he had left in distress soon after his arrival.
Josie had overheard him in town muttering that he’d never seen anything break the science of physics quite so succinctly as this little town had, right before a priestess tried to lure him to the temple.
To his credit, he politely declined and fled shortly thereafter, for who knows what might have become of him if he’d taken up her invitation to study their ways.
The incoming storm tore Elana’s attention back to the present as wind screamed through the berry bushes.
The shadowed folk, tied up as they were, grumbled their complaints to the priestesses.
Elana knew with empathy that they were looking forward to the end of the festival simply so they could go home and hide for another year.
But the people who wouldn’t get to go home were those who were restrained near the temple entrance, and it was this group that made Elana’s heart constrict in her chest. These were the people who were drawn to the well.
Even now, some were at the ends of their ropes, tugging against the restraints.
This close, Elana could see the rough red skin beneath the ropes, hear the sharp intake of breath as one of them tried, unsuccessfully, to untie herself.
Their secret desires had not been kept secret, and now they lived at the temple, bound there, with no hope of relief.
The few intermittent raindrops that had started began to multiply in earnest, and Elana tightened her grip on her younger brother’s hands. “Come on,” she said at last. “Mama will want you to be getting home.”
“Awe but we haven’t even had maple floss yet!”
“Please? One more puppet show?”
“What if I try and dance with a fancy girl? Can we stay then?”
The boys complained the whole way back to the bonfire while Elana searched through the quickly dampening crowd for her parents.
There she saw Josephine, wrapped in the arms of a dark stranger, exactly as she said she would be.
His mouth fit to hers, and his hands found her waist, and she tipped back almost as if she would fall from the sheer intensity of his kiss.
Something inside Elana responded. It wasn’t jealousy of the fact that her sister was kissing a man. It wasn’t even desire to be kissing a man. But there was… something. A feeling she wasn’t ready yet to examine.
The stranger pulled her sister under an awning and out of the torrent of rain, and Josephine met Elana’s gaze for a moment.
“Don’t tell Mama,” she shouted over the sound of another blast of thunder.
Elana shook her head, a silent promise that she’d protect her sister and her silly, romantic endeavors.
Elana trusted Luc and Marcus to find their way home no matter the weather, and Mama and Papa were old enough to make their own choices.
Josephine had found someone to keep warm with and so, drenched and miserable, Elana led her younger brothers home across the meadows, their feet splucking and squelching in the mud as the lightning flashed overhead again and again.
***