The Garden of Shades
William Tebb
Among the cascading bustle of the busy streets, a shadow shone. While normally such a thing as a shadow was not capable of shining, it did so anyway, a flare of unnatural radiance in the inescapable colour of the world’s deepest darknesses: Black. And in but a moment, it was gone, snuffed away by the fearsome light of day.
Was it beauty or tragedy, then, that its life was such a brief flicker against the vastness of time? And was it beauty or tragedy that only one lonely soul ever took notice of it?
That lonely soul, a girl with knotted brown hair eleven summers old, sat weeping on a distended iron bench. Ash and grime defiled her malnourished, bony features as she sat and thought of where she would be sitting if things had been different— if she wasn’t alone in the mud-choked metropolis surrounding her.
It was in the middle of this moment of mournful reflection that the shadow lived out its entire short, shining life, and it caught the girl’s eye from within the churning crowd of people on the busy street.
Feeling an unexplained rush of volatile adrenaline, the girl leapt to her feet, dried tears marking her ash-covered face as she pushed her way through the tumbling commerce to where the shadow had been. Once she reached the spot, disappointment swelled in her as she realised that the shadow was gone, before the feeling was shunted away to the back of her bedraggled conscience as another shining shadow appeared in the corner of her vision.
She raced after it, a gnawing suspicion growing in her as it vanished once more and another one appeared elsewhere. She followed them through the spires of the city’s highest heights and into the flyblown underbelly of its deepest depths, through archway and alley, over bridge and bypass. She followed the flickering un-lights for what seemed like days and days upon end, out of the city and into the dense, crooked woodland beyond. Here the trees arched over her with growing malevolence like hunchbacked despots, and dreadful howls echoed through the trees like the booming laughter of an uncaring, thirsting god.
The shadows led her ever onwards, and all the while she felt a creeping, inescapable feeling; as if she were being watched by some intangible force. On numerous occasions she felt she saw a pair of bright ivory eyes staring at her, but when she turned to look at them, they were gone— merely shadows in the mist.
Eventually, the forest brightened, a small clearing manifesting before the girl where the crooked trees gave way to dazzling illumination. The shadow flickered, as always, in the centre of the clearing, though this time it did not stutter and stop. As she approached, quaking, the shadow expanded and twisted, warping and contorting its darkly dazzling form over and over, again and again until a shade-child stood before her, its dark, misty face lit up by two pearlescent white eyes. It had no mouth, but the girl knew that if it did have one, it would be smiling a benevolent, warm smile.
The shade-child remained silent, merely blinking before many more shadowy children stepped out from the undergrowth, at least two dozen shadows of all different shapes and sizes. Then they started to dance, a joyful, energetic prance to a song none could hear but echoed through the earth and into the girl’s mind. Its soaring highs and impossible lows seemed to ease all the earth’s trouble, flowers and plants flourished in the secluded clearing and
new life was breathed into the forest where darkness reigned— And all the while the ivory eyes of the shade-children glared at the girl, unwavering in their impassive stare.
You are safe here.
The words were spoken by no-one, and they resounded with indefatigable verity through the girl’s mind.
But if you are to join our dance and sing our song, you must leave behind what you have lost.
The girl considered this for a moment that seemed to last aeons. How could she leave behind what she had lost if what she had lost was all she had ever had? But she knew, in her heart, that this was the only way forward; there was nothing left for her back there.
“I will,” she said, her small voice carrying a weight of regret and a flicker of hope. All around her, the shade-children’s eyes lit up in celebratory glee, and their dance began again, a formless hand wrapping around the girl’s thin, bony wrist and thrusting her into the great circle of music.
Their dance went on for hours, sometimes breaking into smaller groups of shades before rejoining the greater dance again. They danced until the silvery moon hung high in a sky full of gleaming stars, and their girl felt such joy that her old life seemed like a distant fantasy to her. Soon she found that she didn’t miss her old life at all, not even her family— she couldn’t even remember their names.
The dance continued to roll onward, though day never came and the moon never sank below the forested horizon— though she could always see the bushes and trees around her with perfect, unblemished clarity, for her eyes now blazed a milky bone white that illuminated the dense shrubbery.
And just when it seemed that her bliss would never end, she saw them.
Her mother and father manifested from the shadows, uncertain smiles gripping their fogged faces. The dance stopped dead as she stepped away from it and stared into their bleached-white eyes, heart pounding with fateful indecision.
Impulsively, the girl rushed to embrace them, regretting immediately all that she had done since losing them.
But when she wrapped her thin, shaky arms around them, they were gone.
As they had always been.
In an instant, the shade-children spun around, their brows furrowed and silver eyes blazing with malevolent amusement. A jagged, repeated grating noise resounded where their mouths would be and as the girl listened closer she knew it was laughter.
You should have listened.
And in an instant, the shade’s amusement turned to horror as the seeping blackness of the dark forest dragged at them and pulled them away, away from that pristine clearing that a starless, abyssal sky stared down upon.
The dark, empty void took the clearing away in fits of booming laughter, and as she wept for all she had lost, the girl let it take her away too.
