Абрахам Меррит - Creep, Shadow!

Ahead of me were shadow mountains, stacked against each other like gigantic slices of black jade; lamellar; distinguishable from each other only by their varying darknesses. It seemed that I could reach out a hand and touch them, yet I knew they were far and far away. My eyes – my sight – whatever it was that functioned as sight in this shadow that was I, sharpened. I was ankle-deep in somber, shadowy grass starred by small flowers that should have been gay blue instead of mournful gray. And shadowy livid lilies that should have been golden and scarlet swayed in a wind I could not feel.

I beard above me a thin trilling, plaintively sweet. Shadowy birds were winging over me toward the distant mountains. They passed… but the trilling lingered… shaped itself into words into the voice of Dahut.

My way was toward the mountains – the shadowy birds had pointed it. I had a swift moment of rebellion, I thought: I will not take it. This is illusion. Here I stay…

The voice of Dahut, pitiless: Creep, Shadow! Learn whether it is not real!

I began to walk, through the somber grass, toward the black mountains.

There was a muted beat of hoofs behind me. I turned. A shadowy horse was driving down upon me, a great gray destrier, armored. The shadow who rode it was armored, the shadow of a big man, wide of shoulder and thick of body; unvisored, but chain-mailed from neck to feet, in his belt a battle-axe and across his shoulders a long two-edged sword. The destrier was close, yet the sound of its hoofs was faint, like distant thunder. And I saw that far behind the armored man raced other shadowy horsemen, leaning forward over the necks of small steeds. The armored man drew up his horse beside me, looked down at me with faint glint of brown eyes in shadowy face.

"A stranger! Now by Our Lady I leave no straggler in the path of the wolves I draw! Up, Shadow… up!"

He swung an arm and lifted me; threw me astride the destrier behind him.

"Hold fast!" he cried, and gave the gray horse the spur. Swiftly it raced, and soon the slices of the black mountains were close. A defile opened. At its mouth he stopped, and looked back, made gestures of derision and laughed: "They cannot catch us now…"

He muttered: "Still, I do not know why my horse should be so weary."

He stared at me from shadowy face: "I do know… you have too much of life, Shadow. He who casts you is not… dead. Then what do you here?"

He twisted, and lifted me from the horse, and set me on the ground, gently.

"See!" he pointed to my breast. There was a filament of glistening silver, fine as the finest cobweb, floating from it… stretching toward the ravine as though pointing the way I must take… as though it came from my heart… as though it were unwinding from my heart…

"You are not dead!" Shadowy pity was in his regard. "Therefore you must hunger… therefore you must thirst… until you feed and drink where the thread leads you. Half-Shadow – it was a witch who sent me here, Berenice de Azlais, of Languedoc. But my body has long been dust and I have long been content to feed on shadow fare. Long dust, I say and so suppose… but here one knows no time. My year was 1346 of Our Lord. What year was yours?"

"Nigh six centuries after," I said.

"So long… so long," he whispered. "Who sent you here?"

"Dahut of Ys."

"Queen of Shadows! Well, she has sent us many. I am sorry, Half-Shadow, but I can carry you no further."

Suddenly he slapped his sides, and shook with laughter: "Six hundred years, and still I have my lemans. Shadowy, 'tis true – but then so am I. And still I can fight. Berenice – to you my thanks. St. Francis… let Berenice hereafter toast less hotly in Hell, where without doubt she is."

He leaned and clapped me on the shoulder: "But kill your witch, Half- brother – if you can!"

He rode into the ravine. I followed in his wake, walking. Soon he was out of sight. How long I walked I did not know. It was true that there was no time in this land. I passed out of the ravine.

The black jade mountains were palisades circling a garden filled with the pallid lilies. In its center was a deep black pool in which floated other lilies, black and silver and rusty-black. The pool was walled with jet…

It was there that I felt the first bite of the dreadful hunger, the first pang of the dreadful thirst…

Upon the wide jet wall lay seven girls, dull silver shadows… and exquisite. Naked shadows… one lay with chin cupped in misty hands, glint of deepest-sapphire blue eyes in shadowy face… another sat, dipping slender feet in the black of the pool, and her hair was blacker than its waters, black spume of blacker waves, and as fine… and out of the black mist of her hair eyes green as emeralds but soft with promise glanced at me…

They arose, the seven, and drifted toward me. One said: "He has too much of life."

Another said: "Too much… yet not enough."

A third said: "He must feed and drink… then come back, and we shall see."

The girl whose eyes were sapphire blue, asked: "Who sent you here, Shadow?"

I said: "Dahut the White. Dahut of Ys."

They shrank from me: "Dahut sent you? Shadow – you are not for us. Shadow – pass on."

… Creep, Shadow!…

I said: "I am weary. Let me rest here for a while."

The green-eyed girl said: "You have too much of life. If you had none you would not be weary. Only life grows weary."

The blue-eyed girl whispered: "And life is only weariness."

"Nevertheless, I would rest. Also I am hungry, and I thirst."

"Shadow with too much of life… there is nothing here that you can eat… nothing here that you can drink."

I pointed to the pool: "I drink of that."

They laughed: "Try, Shadow."

I dropped upon my belly and thrust my face toward the black water. The surface of the pool receded as I bent. It drew back from my lips… it was but the shadow of water… and I could not drink…

… Thirst, Shadow… drink only when and where I bid…

The voice of Dahut!

I said to the girls: "Let me rest."

They answered: "Rest."

I crouched upon the rim of jet. The silver girls drew away from me, clustered, shadowy arms entwined, whispering. It was good to rest, although I felt no desire to sleep. I sat, hands clasping knees, head on breast. Loneliness fell upon me like a garment; loneliness rained upon me. The girl whose eyes were blue slipped to my side. She threw an arm around my shoulders, leaned against me:

"When you have fed… when you have drunk… come back to me."

I do not know how long I lay upon the rim of jet around the black pool. But when at last I arose the girls of tarnished silver were not there. The armored man had said there was no time in this land. I had liked the armored man. I wished that his horse had been strong enough to carry me wherever he had been going. My hunger had grown and so had my thirst. Again I dropped and tried to sip of the pool. The shadow waters were not for me.

Something was tugging at me, drawing me on. It was the silver filament and it was shining like a thread of living light. I walked out of the garden, following the thread…

The mountains were behind me. I was threading my way through a vast marsh. Spectral rushes bordered a perilous path, and in them lurked shadow shapes unseen but hideous. They watched me as I went, and I knew that here I must go carefully lest a misstep give me to them. A mist hung over the marsh, a gray and dead mist that darkened when the hidden things furtively raised themselves… or fled ahead to crouch beside the path and wait my coming. I felt their eyes upon me – cold, dead, malignant.

There was a ridge feathered with ghostly ferns behind which other shadowy shapes lurked, pushing and crowding against each other, following me as I threaded my way through the spectral rushes. And at every step more woeful became my loneliness, more torturing my hunger and my thirst.