* * *
This is a story of the Smoke, Switch said, where the heat burns but the Spark is hidden.
In the olden times at the roots of things, there was a king in the far south who ruled a land that has long been ashes and whose name no man remembers. Great stands of timber grew in the western highlands, teak and kore and ironwood, so they were never short of wood with which to build. In the eastern marshes his people tended vast groves of rubber trees and bamboo and sugar cane, whose blood could be turned to a thousand uses. In the north they grew food enough to feed three kingdoms: oranges and grapes and mangoes, quinces and pomegranates and tamarinds, figs and dates and almonds by the bushel.
But the king got nothing from the forest of the south, for it was cursed. The people called it the Shadow Wood, and would not venture beneath its eaves.
At last the king grew impatient. “The whole world envies our eastern marshes, our western highlands, our bounteous north. And yet the whole world laughs at us because we will not master the Shadow Wood. This is intolerable!” So he summoned his army and bade a hundred men go into the Shadow Wood and claim it for him. His armorers fitted them with spears and shields and his priests blessed them with prayers and incantations and the women of the capital were promised to them on their return.
On a morning bright with sunshine the hundred men set out. The smell of them was of fresh oil and leather and high resolve. The sound of them was of young men singing, fearless and full of joy. The sight of them was flashing eyes and steel and pennants snapping in the breeze.
But the hundred men marched under the shadow of the wood, and they did not come back.
So the king sent out two hundred men to look for them, but they did not come back.
So the king sent forth five hundred after them, but they did not come back.
So the king sent ten hundred men to find those who were lost, but they too vanished and were never seen again.
And every morning the shadows streamed forth from the Shadow Wood, and every evening they streamed back in, and joy left the kingdom, and silence came upon the armorers and the priests and the women of the capital, and fell heaviest of all upon the king himself. “So it is,” he said at last. “We are not meant to have the Shadow Wood. Let that be an end to it.”
But the next day a young man came to the capital. His walk was as graceful as a dancing girl’s and his arms were as strong as a smith’s. His step was jaunty and his spirits were high and the people who saw him in the street took one look at the long-handled steel that dangled by his side and knew he was destined for adventure.
The young man came to the palace in the morning and was granted an audience that very afternoon. “I am a student of this long-handled steel,” he told the king, patting the sword by his side. “I know the Gull Warrior’s secrets and I understand the Way of Stone. I have studied the Hundred Schools of Combat. I am looking to make a name for myself and I heard this might be the place. Is there anything really dangerous to do around here?”
And the king said, “Well, yes, as a matter of fact. Just to the south of us lies the Shadow Wood, which no man yet has ever claimed.”
“Let me explore it!”
And the king said, “If you wish—but I cannot recommend the enterprise, for the rate of return has not been good.”
But the young man said, “It was not I who went before,” and hastened from the room.
Now he meant to plunge straight into the forest, but as he left the audience chamber a wrinkled hand plucked at his sleeve. The wrinkled hand was attached to a withered arm, and the withered arm led to the spindly body of an old man with a kindly eye. “Tarry a moment, young hero.”
“I am afraid that is impossible, wizened ancient. I am off this very instant to explore the Shadow Wood.”
“This I know,” the old man said. “And I applaud your audacity!”
“Do not try to stay me with counsels of cowardice, wrinkled sage. My heart is set on this adventure.”
“And credit it does you!” the old man exclaimed. “Listen but a moment further. I lost a brother to that evil wood many years ago, but my heart tells me he lives yet. If you see him, will you rescue him from the shadows?”
“But of course, aged petitioner! What else would a hero do?”
A corner of the old man’s mouth twitched as if he meant to smile. “O most excellent youth! Let me grant you one thing more to help you in your quest, that you may surely bring my brother back.”
“What aid do you offer, withered counsellor?”
The old man burrowed in a pocket and brought out a little silver box with one match inside and a tiny candle made of golden wax. “Only this. It is not much, but when all else fails, light the candle and you will see an answer to your problem.”
“Many thanks, feeble grandfather!” With a deep bow and an elaborate flourish, the young man took his leave and headed for the city’s southern gate, and the dark wood beyond.
He went far, far into the forest.
On the third morning of his journey he heard the sound of a great beast moving through the wood. Vast trees parted like grass before it, and it walked with a mountain’s tread. The young man was tempted to use the golden candle, but instead he drew his long-handled steel, and turned to face an enormous wolf with limbs of rock and a muzzle of iron, towering taller than the tallest tree.
They fought from dawn until high noon, but the young man knew the Way of the Gull Warrior, who cuts and melts and is not struck, and at last he conquered his foe.
Several days later as the young man strode through a clearing in the early morning he closed his eyes and yawned, and as he did so he kicked over an anthill. From that hill poured forth a torrent of ants, each one the size of a wildcat. Again he thought of the golden candle, but instead he gripped his long-handled steel and fought for his life. All morning the battle raged, and all afternoon too, and the young man was worried and circled and chittered at by a thousand foes. But he knew the Way of Stone, that stands even before a thousand waves and is not moved, and when the setting sun ran like blood from a wound between the mountains of the west the last ant was vanquished, and the young man threw himself on the ground to sleep, ringed by a wall of his dead.
A week later the moon had died in the dark before dawn when the young man heard a mad gibbering that filled him with dread. This would be a good time for that golden candle, he thought, but it was dark, and he could not remember where last he’ d put the precious thing. The gibbering grew madder, and louder, and closer, and finally the young man whirled, snatching out his long-handled steel. He found himself beset by a headless champion dressed all in slate-grey leather, wielding a terrible weapon: for this dark warrior used his own head as the ball of his mace. The head screamed and chattered as it swung through the air.
Then they fought a terrible battle, the like of which has not been seen since the last time the Fire ate away the world. Three mornings they strove together, and three afternoons, and three terrible nights, while the forest rang with the clash of steel on steel. But the young man knew the Hundred Schools, and at last the groaning mace fell silent.
When the final blow was struck, he hung gasping over the hilts of his long-handled steel, thinking about the darkness of the wood, and the length of the long march home, and the way his body cried for sleep. But only after he found the little golden candle and put it in a pocket just above his heart did he throw himself on the ground beside the headless champion. There he slept for a night and a day.
When at last he woke, he decided to strike for home. Surely I have done as much as one man could to claim this dark forest, he said to himself.
Finding his way back was more difficult than he had anticipated. It was dark, under the Shadow Wood. By day he could see no paths, and by night the stars were hidden.
Long he wandered, lost in shadows, until one evening as night was falling, he spied a light between the trees. With a cry of joy he followed it, arriving at last at a great house carved from
the flesh of scores of trees. Gleams of lamplight slipped out from under the leafscreen like sly glimpses from hooded eyes.
Boldly the young man strode forward and knocked on the front door, a vast portal carved in a hollow trunk. The sound of his knocks boomed within the tree, fading slowly like the sound of a stone dropped in a deep well.
Suddenly the door swung open, and the young man started back in surprise. “By my long-handled steel!” he swore. “You must be the brother of the withered sage I met in the capital! Two men could not look more alike!”
A corner of the old man’s mouth twitched for an instant, as if he meant to smile. “Why yes, I did have a brother in the capital once. But that was long ago.”
The young man shook his head in wonder. “Had I not known about you, I would have said some strange enchantment had brought that wrinkled sage hither.”
“Ahem,” the old man said. “Be that as it may. You must be cold and weary, for the forest is dark and full of peril. Will you not come in?” And he held the yawning door wide.
For one long moment the young man paused, reluctant to cross the threshold. Am I to quail now? he rebuked himself. I who slew the wolf with limbs of stone, and the mound of ants, and the headless champion? As long as I have my long-handled steel, what harm can come to me?
With this thought in his heart he meant to stride forward, but his legs would not move. Only when he put his hand on the pocket just above his heart, and felt the silver box there, and the little golden candle, did he draw a deep breath and step inside.
“It is very dark in here,” he said.
“You will get used to it in time.” The old man began to climb a flight of steps carved into the tree’s heart. These led up a great way to a walkway that ran between two trees, far above the ground. “Have no fear. There are rails on either side. So! I am surprised to see you here. Few travel even one way through the Shadow Wood. Did you then fail to encounter the Wolf Mountain?”
“I know the Way of the Gull Warrior, and so reduced that particular peak to rubble.”
“And were you not seized by the Army of Thousands?”
“I was, but I know the Way of Stone, and I rebuked them with my long-handled steel.”
“You were not vanquished by the Headless Champion?”
“You are perhaps unaware that I have studied the Hundred Schools,” the young man replied. “Thus I was able to defeat that decapitated devil once and for all.”
The old man rubbed his chin and shook his head in disbelief. “Truly, you must be a great hero.”
Darkness whispered between the branches. As they walked from tree to tree, the planks creaked and swayed beneath their feet. The young man heard a stream murmur far, far below. He gripped the rails more tightly and hoped their journey was nearly at an end. “Tell me, doddering wise man, how came you to the heart of the Shadow Wood?”
The old man had reached a door in another vast tree. “You mean my brother did not tell you? When I was your age, I too was a great adventurer. I too won through to this place with my wits and a piece of steel with a handle just the length of your own.”
Once again the young man paused, reluctant to enter the dark heart of another tree. “Then why are you still here? Surely a man who has scaled Wolf Mountain and turned back the Army of Thousands and defeated the Headless Champion could not lack the resolve to leave the forest?”
The old man had gone ahead, and his voice carried weirdly through the echoing gloom. “Who, me?” he said, with a strange little laugh. “Oh, I am a terrible coward. Why, I am afraid of my own shadow!”
“This will be your room,” the old man said. The bed’s curving headboard rested against the north wall of the tree; high on the south side a window notch flooded the guest room with moonlight. A spiral staircase wound up through the middle of the floor, vanishing into the ceiling.
“I shall only trouble you for a single night,” the young man said. “On the morrow I will be fresh again, and with your directions I should have little difficulty leaving this melancholy forest behind.”
The old man said, “Just so. I shall be in the room below. Good night, and good luck!”
With this unsettling remark he vanished down the stairs, and the young man prepared to sleep. His every muscle burned and his every bone ached. His skin was a tapestry of bruises. He wanted nothing more than to crawl beneath the covers of his bed and snore the night away.
And yet he could not sleep.
The forest was in his room. The silken pillow felt like moss beneath his ear. The cloth coverlet felt like softest heather on his body; it smelled of wet leaves and blood and vixen. Outside, the secret trees whispered and bowed, and shadows crept around the corners of the room, rising and falling, slipping away at the edge of sight.
What had the old man said? He was afraid of his own shadow.
The young man found himself staring into the darkness, flinching at every creak of the wooden floor or crack of the wooden ceiling. Silver fell through the high window. Steeped in moonlight, the young man had the strangest feeling that his very essence was bleeding slowly from his pores, swirling out to the room’s edge to be consumed by shadows.
Nonsense, he told himself. They were shadows, nothing more. Shadows could harm him no more than names called out by rude children. Shadows. That was all.
A muffled cry from the room below made him leap to his feet. Grabbing his long-handled steel, he rushed down the spiral stairs.
The old man’s bed was empty. Quivering like an arrow in a target, the young man stood on the lowest stair, eyes wide and fixed on the creeping night. He saw nothing but moonlight and dim shapes and the shadows of tree limbs, crossing like ancient hands rubbed together in sinister amusement. The young man stepped toward the bed, walking like a dancer on the balls of his feet. His long-handled steel trembled, ever so slightly, in the hands that had held steady before the Headless Champion.
For a long moment he stood motionless beside the bed. Then with a great cry he flung back the coverlet.
The old man was gone. But underneath the blanket, hard-edged in the moonlight, lay his shadow.
The young man yelled and ran for the stairs. A flood of shadows poured after him. When he reached his own room he risked a quick glance back, but the moonlight showed the horrible truth: the shadows were following him. Somehow he knew that once drowned beneath that tide of darkness he too would never leave the darkling wood.
Up he raced, and up still farther, until he thought his heart would burst, pounding up stair after stair until he found himself in a tiny room with no more stairs to climb. It creaked, that treetop room, swaying in the murmuring wind, and the floor beneath his feet sloped first this way, then that.
He was desperate. He could flee no farther, but neither could he cut the darkness with his long-handled steel.
Then, at his wit’s end, he remembered the old man’s gift.
With shaking fingers he plucked the silver box from the pocket of his shirt, shook out the single match, and struck it on the bottom of his boot. He blinked in its sudden light and then held it to the tip of the tiny golden candle.
The candle spat and sparkled into life. The young man set it in the middle of the floor and then whirled with a great cry as the first shadow slid up the stairwell behind him. The young man lunged, jumping before the candle flame, and then struck into thin air.
The shadow hissed and writhed and died—for now the young man had a fine shadow too, and a long-handled darkness to wield against the night.
He stood against the shadows like a stone, lanced through their ranks like the Warrior and then melted away. He needed every trick he had learned from the Hundred Schools, for against him were ranged the shadows of the one hundred men the king had sent into the forest, and behind them the two hundred, and behind them the five hundred, and the thousand sent to search for the others.
But the young man was strong, and swift, and in the end the last shadow, stooped and wizened like an old man, turned and fle
d down the stairs. Curiously, this final shade rubbed his hands together, and the sound of the wind hissing through the branches outside was like the sound of distant laughter.
But the young man laughed too, for he was brave and a champion. Then he leaned upon his hilts, spent in every limb, and watched the golden candlelight sparkle down the length of his long-handled steel. He had turned back the tide. He was alone.
Almost. There was still a silver moon and a dark wood outside. The wind still whispered and a wild scent like wet leaves and vixen lay heavy in the air.
The young man glanced up at an unexpected movement. His eyes widened as a dark shape walked across the room.
His shadow, his own shadow leaned forward, glancing up at its master. And then with the smallest, softest sigh, it blew the little golden candle out.
And from deep within the darkness, the shadow laughed.
* * *
“And that is the story of the Shadow Wood,” Seven finished softly, his voice like a thread of wind in the gloom. “Told to me by Switch of the forest people, as I have told it to you. You see, Reed, I too have learned the Hundred Schools, and I too have made myself in the image of the Gull Warrior. But I do not wish to be his champion. I do not wish to be my story’s shadow.”
Foam shifted on the middle thwart. “I do not believe you need to worry. Remember what the Singer said, the night we captured Thumbtip? She said that your story, which started out so much larger than life, would turn into a personal tale.”
“Great stories turn to small ones,” Shale said.
“My story . . . and Hazel Twist’s. The thing we make together.”
Shale shuddered. “Twinning stories are the worst. Remember those horrible ones Brook used to tell? And now . . .”
Fog still drifted in wavering white billows across the water. The lights of Delta were drawing steadily closer. It would not be long before they reached the lagoon. “I am not used to hearing fear in your voice,” Reed said.