K Jeter - The Kingdom of Shadows

His heart swelled beyond the walls of his chest, beyond the walls of the cold, black world through which they made their way. He had been born, and born for this.

She stopped and looked around them, her gaze searching the unlit buildings, the sharp-toothed broken windows glinting as they caught an angle of moonlight.

“You must help me.”

“Yes…” Pavli tried to draw her away from the spot, before anyone might see them. “Of course…”

“The studio… you must take me there…”

“I can’t.” He shook his head. “It’s all in ruins. I saw it -”

“I don’t care!” She snatched her hand away from his grasp. “And the director – you must bring him there, too!”

“Von Behren? But what can he -”

“It must be finished! Everything must be!” Her rain-damp face was painted bright by the sliver of moon above. “You don’t understand… but it must!”

“All right…” He tried to soothe her, stroking a trembling shoulder with his hand. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

Marte collapsed against him, as though the burst of anger had consumed the last of her strength. He held her and kept her from falling, her face pressed against the side of his neck; he felt the brush of her lashes as she closed her eyes.

“Come on, then.” He pulled her with him, bearing her fragile weight with each step across the rubble. “It’s not far…”

The broken metal of the roof creaked as the night wind pried at it. Von Behren glanced up at the noise, then drew his jacket tighter about himself. “We shouldn’t be here,” he said. “There is a military curfew in this area – and patrols.”

“Then we should work fast.” Pavli kicked aside a few pieces of brick and settled the legs of the camera tripod on the studio’s floor. “It will only take a few moments.”

“Just about as long as it takes for a Russian soldier to put bullets through our skulls.” He sighed and shook his head. “What is it that she wants, anyway?”

“The same that you do. To finish the film.”

“I had no idea she even cared about that.”

“But you do, Herr von Behren. Der Rote Jager is your film. All that Marte can do is play the part you gave her. To the end.” With a bit of rag, Pavli wiped the camera lens clean. “The last scene.”

“If only.” At any moment, von Behren knew, there would be footsteps outside, and guttural Slavic voices. “From what I’ve been able to see, none of this ever ends. It just goes on and on.” He glanced toward the battered scenery, the painted castle stones, barely visible in the shadows. “I shouldn’t have let you drag me here.”

“I didn’t have to drag you.” Pavli turned away from the camera and showed a thin smile. “I couldn’t have kept you away.”

That was true. I’m an idiot, thought the director. Madness within madness. The world was in ruins all about them – what better than to film some scrap of legend from the Middle Ages? The red hunter had seized its prey in the forest of the city’s streets, had placed its skinning knife to the throats of those who had thought they could outrun their fates. Von Behren knew he could hardly escape his own; he had to be here.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s get this over with. Is she ready?”

Pavli nodded. “We found one of the gowns. It will do.”

“And petrol?”

“Enough.”

He supposed that if one dug around in the rubble long enough, one could find anything. Pavli had located a generator that had been used for outdoor shoots; von Behren watched as the cameraman sloshed the fuel dregs from several metal canisters into its tank. It took several attempts for Pavli to start it up, then the chugging rumble broke the empty studio’s silence.

“ Schei? -” Von Behren cringed at the noise. “That will bring every Russian from here to Moscow around.”

Pavli appeared unconcerned. He looked through the camera’s eyepiece as he turned it toward the pool of light that had unfolded against the mock stones. A single light, rigged to a dangling iron rail; it brought the shadows in its beam to razor sharpness.

“Yes,” whispered von Behren. His breath caught in his throat. Suddenly, he didn’t care if a entire battalion of Russian soldiers was outside. The illusion was perfect; it was real. Just as he had seen it, on the screen within his own thoughts and dreams. Light and shadow. The final scene, the last glimpse of another world, that never ended. “Bring it closer.”

He didn’t need to look through the camera, to see what it saw, even as Pavli adjusted the lens. “That’s fine.” He called out her name: “Marte…”

She stepped forward from the shadows. The hem of the white gown floated luminous above the stage’s rubble-strewn floor. Von Behren had to close his eyes for a moment; time and loss had made her that much more beautiful. To gaze upon her would blind the unwary, as though the moon and its attendant stars had been revealed for the first time. The blind would see; darkened theatres would be temples. And he who showed the rapt, grieving audiences this face – he would be immortal as well. Von Behren leaned the side of his face close to the camera, making its eye his own.

“Hold.” He laid his hand upon Pavli’s shoulder. “Just hold.”

No need to tell the cameraman. He saw as well.

She turned her annihilating gaze straight toward them. The hearts of men would shatter, knowing how they had failed her, as they had failed the ones sitting beside them in the dark. Who wept at small graves, the freshly turned earth sifting through their empty hands…

All that was in her gaze.

“Hold…”

Marte turned away from the camera. To profile; her golden hair, which would be pure light on film, on the screen, drifted against her throat as she reached up and loosened it. Silently, she looked before her, seeing nothing but her own memories. Her fingertips moved downward, pushing aside the gown’s thin substance, baring her white shoulders.

He watched. And saw all that happened next. Light and shadow.

Something more weightless than silk, more colorless than air, brighter than star and knifeblade. That was not skin, but for a moment held the shape of the naked body from which it had risen. As though it were smoke; or what was left after smoke had drifted into the night sky.

He watched, as the camera watched. He saw what it saw.

“Closer…”

Pavli reached up and adjusted the lens, a fraction of an inch.

Silk and smoke, tracing upward into the darkness, out of the single light’s gaze – such a thing had not been in the script. But that will work, thought von Behren. Better than anything he could have devised.

This was why Pavli had brought him here. To see this, to make it part of his film. His masterpiece.

Her masterpiece. This moment when she become nothing but light. That drifted upward, luminous, weightless. Casting no shadow, to mingle with the other shadows close about her.

He watched as her hand drew softly down to the hollow of her throat. Parting the silk that clung to her white breast for only a moment, as though she were discarding another gown from her body. A gown that no night wind caught, but which drifted away from her, tangling with the other strands that had already been laid upon the darkness.

He knew already how the scene would end. The only way it could.

Silk and smoke. Light and shadow. Until nothing was left. Her hand had already reached her heart, a pale thing that trembled. For only a moment, before it unlocked itself and leapt slowly upward, mingling and disappearing with all that still bore some fragment of her image.

“Pull back…”

The camera saw it all. Light and shadow…