Chapter 3 Winter #2
It was Elana’s turn not to know what to say.
Instead, she wrapped Josie in her arms and held her tight.
“Thank you,” she whispered into her sister’s hair.
“Thank you. Maybe nobody understands me. Maybe even you don’t understand me.
But thank you for not stopping me.” Her sister’s support, albeit a questioning kind, was refreshing as a cool drink of water after her brother’s threats and suspicions.
Somehow Elana was sure that her sister wouldn’t care she had grown a new shadow.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Josie would certainly care. But she wouldn’t be angry or upset, as long as Elana was safe and well.
“What should I tell the others?” Josie asked.
Elana pushed her away, holding her at arm’s length. She pressed her lips together in thought, remembering the dinner she’d packed for herself on the sled. A sudden burst of laughter bubbled up her throat, escaping her. “Tell them I’m at dinner with a handsome stranger.”
Josie had the decency to look scandalized. “You want me to lie?”
The shadow woman was truly a handsome woman, and she certainly counted as a stranger, but Elana didn’t think her sister was ready to know that particular truth. She chewed her lip in thought. “Lie if you must,” she said at last, “but whatever you do, don’t send them after me.”
Josie hesitated, but nodded at last. “Go,” she said, “and be safe. When you come home, I want you to make me a dress.”
“Whatever would you need a new dress for?” Elana asked. It wasn’t like her sister to demand new things for no reason.
“Didn’t anyone tell you? The priestesses officially announced the departure of the shadow monster, and in response the town decided to hold a celebration.
I’m certain there’ll be dancing. And dancing requires a dress.
That’s the price for my silence, sister.
” Josie made a playful face, but Elana would do it.
She would make the dress, she would dance with her sister, if only she could go to the well and be at peace.
“Wait,” said Elana, “when is this celebration to be held?” She couldn’t commit to making a new dress if it was within the week.
Josie laughed. “Not until spring. You have plenty of time!”
A smile spread on Elana’s face. “It’s a deal then.”
She tugged her sled away from the yard, her sister watching her go. It was heavy, laden with all that she needed, but it glided cleanly over the snow, adding two thin lines to the footprints Elana left as she paced toward the well, toward the pull in her chest, toward longing and desire.
She would keep her new shadow, brother be damned. Priestesses be damned. Shadows themselves be damned.
Her heart thrummed as she approached the well, the last vestiges of the sunset still glowing over the mountain pass.
With much effort, she ignored the well, dumping the contents of her sled on the snow nearby.
She bound her stolen sticks with rough-spun threads and pulled her waxen, quilted cover over it until, at last, it resembled something that a shadow monster could live inside.
It was small and ramshackle, but it was made.
She stood beside the tent and watched her fledgling shadow lay on the snow beside the open, empty space where the tent’s shadow would be if it had one.
Her shadow wasn’t as dark as the stuff the monster was made of, but it grew long and grey and wiry in the evening light, stretched thin thanks to the angle of the setting sun.
It was strange to think there were places where this was normal.
Where everything, everyone, had a shadow.
What must a place like that be like?
Before Elana could think on it for too long, the now-familiar hissing grew behind her, and the shadow woman emerged from the well like a mermaid from the foam of the sea.
Elana’s heart stammered and she pulled herself to her feet, twisting the front of her gown in anxious fists.
Would this pile of scrap fabric and foraged wood be enough?
Would it pass muster for this ancient being?
The shadow woman came forth. Because it was not yet fully dark, she was shadow but not, solid yet not quite opaque.
Elana longed to plunge her fingers into the shadow woman’s hair, to see if it was real or a mirage, to pull it until the shadow woman’s head fell back and the translucent column of her throat was exposed to the sunset.
Instead, she balled her fists at her side and waited as the shadow woman examined the tent.
“This?” said the shadow woman. “You made this, for me?”
Elana didn’t know if her raspy voice was filled with contempt or awe, so she could only nod once, sharply, in response.
The shadow woman ran her fingers along the seams of the tent, delicately, like the makeshift home was something to be adored, exalted. And when she stepped to the other side of it, her coal-bright gaze caught on Elana’s sinewy shadow, long and lean, darkening the snow.
Elana smelled that watery earthen smell, the feral sweetness of her shadow woman.
Her mouth watered. And then the shadow woman inhaled so deeply Elana thought she might breathe the evening inside of herself.
She stepped closer to Elana’s shadow, crouching low on the ground, and ran her fingers over the darkened snow.
“We had a deal,” Elana reminded her. She was to keep her shadow now that she’d provided shelter for the shadow woman.
The monster stood with fluid grace. “We did,” she agreed. “Yet still, I hunger.” Her gaze turned upward, to the east, to the shadowy trees backing the well. They were a seemingly impenetrable wall of wood and moss, ferns and mushrooms, and more than that, of shadows.
She exhaled an earthen breath, and her mouth opened.
And opened.
Her mouth opened wider than any woman’s mouth had ever opened before, her jaw unhinging, her teeth too sharp and too many.
Elana hadn’t been frightened of the shadow monster before, not really. But now, whatever nameless feeling swirled within her drained into the pit of her stomach in the shape of fear, cold and heavy. Elana’s hands grew icy, and her whole body began to shake.
Those teeth. The puppets. The bloody fabric. The massacre.
Elana swallowed.
The shadow woman threw herself to the ground, writhing like a snake, like fog over a wetland, her jaw still wide and her teeth glistening in the setting sun, and she flowed over the shadows at the base of the trees, devouring a swath of them in one swallow, mere yards from where Elana stood.
Spread over the snow, the shadow woman writhed in her darkness, the soft black tendrils coalescing as she was remade into the shape of a woman.
Elana took several steps back, holding her hands in front of her to ward off the creature. But she couldn’t deny the feeling in the pit of her stomach that remained, the part of the feeling that was not fear.
She swallowed down the dread and tried to focus on what was left as the shadow woman glided back to where Elana was. When she spoke, her voice came out low and shaky, and the question she asked surprised even her. “What is your name?”
The shadow woman hissed in a breath, and the tendrils of darkness breathed and quivered around her like steamy breath on a winter’s day. She could see Elana’s fear, Elana was sure of it. “I have no name,” she answered. “What is your name?”
Elana lifted her chin in defiance of her fear.
“My name is Elana.” For a moment, the two women looked at each other, and Elana wondered what it must be like to be a creature trapped in a well for a hundred years without even a name of one’s own.
Hesitantly, she asked. “Would… you like to have a name?”
The shadow woman’s hair lifted, floating around her as though she existed underwater, as though the shadows that made her up were swelling with a feeling like the one in Elana’s own chest. She stepped toward Elana and Elana stood strong, her heart beating wildly as the shadow woman approached.
The shadow woman took Elana’s hand again, and the fear in Elana simmered low in her belly.
“Yes,” said the shadow woman, nodding. “I would like that very much.”
Elana’s mind worked. The shadow woman wasn’t really human, and the way she acted wasn’t human, and Elana couldn’t think of a human name that suited the woman anyhow. “We’ve always just called you The Darkness.”
“So that’s my name then?” asked the shadow woman.
Elana was thoughtful, winding a golden lock of hair around her finger with her free hand.
She didn’t think it was fair to call the monster The Darkness, especially now that she looked like a woman and not like a swirling black void.
So with trepidation she offered “What if we called you Ness? Or Nessa?”
“Nessa,” hissed the monster, and something almost like a smile tugged her lips upward.
And the heat slung low in Elana’s belly bubbled in response.
Nessa stepped closer to Elana again, and this time Elana had no desire to back away.
She leaned closer, too, until there was nothing between them but the last glint of the sunset, which winked into darkness as Nessa reached for Elana’s nightgown.
She caressed the fine fabric, rubbing it between her first finger and thumb.
Elana felt the nightgown slide across her skin as Nessa tugged it, and felt her skin respond with a flush of heat.
“Would you bring me something to wear?” asked Nessa. “I would like to be dressed.”
Elana, her throat dry, could only nod in response.
“Thank you,” said Nessa, and this time the shape her mouth made was most definitely a smile. She ducked inside the flap of her new tent, and Elana knew she was dismissed for the night.