These Shadows Remain (2 page)

Again every child stared at him. He knew where they were going, he knew more than he said. They should have been afraid of him, but they didn't feel any fear when they were close to him. His way with them was warm and protective.

“That's its name,” Gabrielle said. “We're making our way through a forest we don't know. We don't have a path. But we know we must go north. When we stop just to rest or find berries and water, we hear the howling. It never ends. The toons no longer sing or say funny things. They howl and howl.”

“The night is terrible,” said a boy. 

“The forest is scary,” said a girl.

“I miss my bed,” said a boy.

“I miss my mommy and daddy,” said a girl.

*

“What turned the dreams into nightmares?” Tomas asked.

Gabrielle answered: “All we know is suddenly the toons started to talk to us and they asked for more life. I heard one toon say he wasn't real enough. He wanted to be real.”

“The wizard . . . ” Tomas said.

The children gasped together. But instead of shying away from him, they gathered towards him, seeking the strength they sensed in his words. They also saw the furrow in his brow. He wasn't sure how he knew about the wizard. The words came from an unknown place. Though he was surprised by this outburst, he trusted what he said. He also sensed that when he spoke, the world began to speak again.

He looked over his shoulder to the north, into the woods.

“The castle is that way. We have to go through the forest, along the paths we won't see clearly. The paths have never been clear. We can travel them anyway, because they'll take us where we have to go eventually. Remember, look closely at the ground and the trees, and trace the path by your feelings. We have to move soon because night is coming.”

“And the toons love the night,” Santiago said.

Tomas thought that the boy meant the toons held the knight, himself, in a special place. He could endanger the children. He was silent for a moment.

Then he said, “How do you know this?” “It's easier to be a shadow when every-

thing's a shadow,” Santiago said.

Tomas was impressed. The children had travelled a long way within themselves.

*

Who turned the toons? Instantly spreading across his mind like a screen filling with images, Tomas saw the wizard. The picture was unstable. The form dissolved, reformed, dissolved and whisked away. Every time he concentrated to make the image clear, the dark shape evaded him.

Around the shape-shifter there was an army of legendary knights. Their names came to him: Prince Valiant, Prince Charming, the Caped Crusader, Buck Rogers, and the twelve knights who had sat around a gleaming silver table. They were warriors who had been swayed. All had once been honourable and courageous. Why did they hate so much?

Swarming knights roared towards him, brandishing swords. He couldn't see the shape-shifter, not even a cloud or a wisp. The warriors protected the wizard. They had become his guardian agents, the ones who had helped to turn the other toons.

He snapped out of his trance with a quick gasp, and he found the children anxiously though still trustingly clinging to him. Gabrielle and Santiago appeared bravest, nestled closely under his arms. But he guessed they had seen the terror in his face, and they must have guessed he was being hounded too.

“How do you know so much?” Gabrielle's voice was pleading, filled with the hope that she wouldn't be terrified more by his answer. 

“We're all orphans now. And we don't have time to waste.”

He took Gabrielle and Santiago by the hand, and looked out over the frightened children.

“This way.”

They moved north through the trees.

*

They had been watched in the forest.

The wizard's eyes infiltrated the trees, collecting data.

“See them for me,” he had whispered to the floating eyes.

“I know you,” he said when the eyes carried back images of the knight and the children. The eyes hovered in the smoky air and burned their images on the screens that the wizard and his guards used for their tent. Hundreds of tent screens had been set up in the great encampment.

“You thought you could get away from me.” The wizard slowly changed from black smoke to a grey fog to a mist then to a black revolving cloud. He had no face.

“You've led me to the children. You'll lead me to where the last battle will take place. You're the guide for the end. You've already betrayed everyone. You believe you're doing the right thing. You who think you can live beyond images. You who think you can become something they call human.”

The whirlwind rose.

The eyes darted like fireflies in the dark and beamed images of the knight and the children in shafts of yellow, smoke-swirled light.

All through the camp the toons watched the screens. They laughed and pointed, deriding what they saw: people weeping, pleading, arguing, bargaining, offering rewards, some calling for lovers and friends, many calling for their children.

The human world had become a vast cartoon for the delight of what had once been dream-creatures. And the toons watched, and hooted, jeered and provided withering critiques, and passed comment cards back and forth among themselves, and commented acidly on the clothes and hairstyles and makeup and wrinkles around the eyes and mouths.

The smoke in the light beams was a trace of the wizard.

Every toon knew he was always in their midst.

*

“It's getting so dark,” Gabrielle said. 

“Shhh . . . ” Tomas said.

“I'm afraid,” a little girl said.

“Shhh . . . ” Santiago said to her, echoing the firm gentleness with which Tomas had spoken.

They stepped carefully through the woods over the fallen branches. Tomas had the impression that the branches had fallen recently, and that some trees had been razed to the ground at the same time.

“They're feeling the war,” he thought. “They know something's come.”

He realized again that he was beginning to read the world. Still he wasn't sure about many things.

“Watch where you put your feet,” he said to the line of children. Each child had a hand on the shoulder of the child before her or him.

Slowly they came out of the forest and into the valley. A screaming froze them.

“Toons,” Santiago said. “They're running somewhere.”

“No,” Gabrielle said. “It's worse. They're following us.”

“How do you know?” Tomas asked.

“I heard the trees start rustling and leaning away. The trees have never been afraid of us. I know the toons are after us.”

“They want to get to the castle too,” Santiago said.

The children whimpered.

“Keep moving, and shhh . . . ” Tomas said. They moved on into the valley.

*

The eyes flashed images of the knight and the children.

“They're close to where they want to go,” the wizard rumbled from the mist.

“Shall we stop them?” one of the knights asked. He wore the tunic with the red mast too, but the mast was turned upside down.

“He has no sword,” the voice like burning wood said. “He's lost his shield. He's unarmed. And the mast on his tunic has been turned around.”

The eyes showed how the knight didn't say much. Yet the images on the screen-tent revealed through the quietness and the slight gestures and the determined movements and the even breathing of the children that they trusted him. They were holding on to one another in what looked like a ribbon of humanity. He led them, but he didn't need to scold them or give many orders.

“They believe in him,” the wizard wheezed. 

“Shall we snatch them?” a flying monkey said.

“Shall we trample them?” an elephant with massive ears said.

“Let him lead them. I'll tell the remaining humans, and those poor children, who he really is.”

*

“There's a shadow.”

A little girl pointed to the top of the hill ahead.

The hill was capped by jagged dark outlines.

“Shadows,” Gabrielle said. “I see so many rising.”

“I see a darkness rising,” a little boy said. 

“I see dark mountains moving,” the little girl said.

“Is it a trap?” Santiago wondered.

“The shadows are growing,” Gabrielle said.

“The mountains are moving closer,” the little girl said.

The shadows were rising like smoke. 

“The mountains are burning,” the girl whispered.

“The sky has lost its stars,” another boy said.

The children, murmuring and groaning, bunched up together, and stopped.

“Hush,” Tomas said. “And listen.”

Soon they heard voices coming from the shadows.

*

“Is it you?”

“Can it be you?”

The voices were human, and the shadows became turrets, walls, spires and a gate.

Behind the children the howling echoed. Ahead of them they saw the castle and people ecstatically rushing out through the gate, and across a bridge, down to the slope that dipped into the valley. They were holding torches high.

The children broke from the line and the protection of the knight, and ran towards the adults and the torchlight. Some of the grown-ups called out names in recognition, and their children, crying and laughing, dashed up the slope towards them. They all ran, except for Gabrielle and Santiago.

“Why don't you go?” Tomas asked.

“Our parents won't be there,” Gabrielle said.

“We never knew them,” Santiago said. 

“Brother and sister. You've always been orphans.”

“Yes, so far as we can remember.” Gabrielle was matter of fact. “We lived with uncles and aunts, and sometimes godparents. All of them were taken at the start.”

She stared up towards the castle, never wavering in her gaze. Santiago looked up to the castle too, then to his side at Tomas, then back again at the castle, and the children and the adults who hugged them and whispered their names through laughter and tears. Even if the castle wasn't familiar to the children, with so many of their parents there it was now home. A few of the children didn't recognize the adults, but this didn't seem to upset anyone. Human greeted human.

“They'll adopt the ones who lost their parents in the war,” Santiago said.

“They didn't die,” Tomas said.

Suddenly he had the attention of the two children who remained beside him.

*

“You know so much. How is that so?” Gabrielle asked.

For the first time Santiago withdrew a step, and then another, putting a small space between himself and the knight.

“Images keep appearing to me. I guess they're memories. I'm not sure. It's like watching a story in my mind coming in bits. And never coming in an order I can predict. They're like flashes on a wall somewhere.”

“What happened to the other children and grown-ups?” Santiago asked.

“I can see them. It looks like they're in a picture that moves. Now I know. They've all been taken up into screens. They're confined to that realm. But they're not dead.”

“Can we free them?” Gabrielle asked.

He paused, seeing the picture of the humans sprawl across his mind.

“Yes and we will.”

Gabrielle and Santiago reached out to the knight and each child clutched a gloved hand.

“We named you, you belong to us,” Gabrielle said.

They squeezed his hands gently, and moved closer to him.

*

In a whirlwind the wizard cried out. The eyes had emblazoned the images of the two and their knight.

Everyone watching the screens stepped back from the wizard's rage.

“This won't last. This will not be.” 

Throughout the encampment the toons saw the same pictures: a castle where people still lived, a valley and a high hill, the joy of the humans, and a figure, familiar to them, embraced by two children.

The whirlwind cried out again, and a silence descended over the camp.

“Cut it off.” His hiss was like the crackle of dry leaves on fire.

Everywhere the screens went blank.

But soon the toons howled for their entertainment. And soon the screens came back on, with their pictures of imprisoned humans and their flat concerns.

*

“Who is this?” a man said. He had stepped briskly away from the group of celebrating children and grown-ups.

“Tomas . . . ” Santiago said. “He led us out of the woods.”

The man nodded, but watched the knight suspiciously. He eyed him up and down. The mast on his tunic was turned in a direction familiar to any sailor but not familiar to anyone who had fought the image army.

“Where's your sword?” the man asked. 

Others started to gather.

“I don't have one.” 

Murmurs.

“You look like one of them,” a voice pressed from the crowd.

The man frowned and reached down to his scabbard where he had a sword. With his other hand he began to reach inside his tunic.

“Wait,” Gabrielle intervened. “We found him in the forest and he helped us. Why would he lead us here if he was going to harm us? He was lost too but now he's with us.”

“He belongs to my sister and to me. And we to him.” Santiago blurted this out. He was surprised by the words and by his gathering courage. He'd always thought that his sister was the braver of the two.

The man let go of the hilt of his sword, and withdrew his hand from the inside of his tunic. The crowd appeared to be calmed.

“Yes,” a little girl said, “He brought us here. He made us feel strong.”

“Welcome him, please,” a little boy said to the man who had come forward.

*

“So we shall,” the man said. “Thank you for our children.” He extended his hand.

Tomas, silent and watchful, backed away. He was afraid of the handshake. The men in the crowd reached for their weapons.