Cara sat cross-legged on the gritty floor of her domed chamber, imagining the warm cluster of candles behind her was the sun. She slid her hand under her long shadow and tugged it, feeling the rubbery texture. Not sunlight quality, but it would do. She winched the shadow, slowly folded it over her hands, and began weaving it into a shawl.
With every stitch, she imagined the World Above, where time was defined not by the chime of the bell towers, but by a celestial ball of fire in the sky. What would it be like to live in that world? To taste a ray of sunlight on her tongue? To weave shadows without having to hide from her mother?
As she finished the thirtieth stitch, a crackle came from above. A great concrete lump bulged from the ceiling, slithering along its length. Cara turned, threw the shadow sheet on the candles, and it evaporated like salt crystals in water. The wall-swelling continued its descent along the wall, down, down, down. As if some burrowing animal crawled beneath it.
The lump rested at face-height with Cara. Contours formed along its surface and pop. The rock split, revealing a woman’s face—skin like cracked cement, wispy hair, and a fine chocolate-ink line for lips.
“Hi Mum,” Cara said, lowering her head.
“Playing with fire again, Cara Ludia?”
Cara pursed her lips. “Just some candles.”
Her mother walked out the wall, rock cracking and mending itself behind her. A poncho of shadows draped over her, frilled with loose dark threads that fluttered in the light of the candles. For all her mother talked down on shadoweavers, she loved nothing more than to dress herself in the garments of their craft.
She brought a cold stiff hand to caress Cara’s cheek—nails like burned paper, flakes of gray skin drifting off. “Never mind that,” she said. “The Velwarders made their decision. Your graduation passage is to begin today.”
A shiver ran down Cara’s spine. “So soon? I haven’t had time to practice glasscrawling.”
“Don’t make me laugh. You’re a master at all forms of crawling already. The faster you’re done with the initiation, the faster you’ll be assigned to a lucrative post at the Veilgates.”
And the faster you’ll be able to gloat about having a Velwarder daughter, won’t you, mother? Yes, my little Cara Ludia is the youngest crawler throughout Rhondo to ever guard a Veilgate.
A warm lump formed inside Cara’s throat. The voice of her best friend Fenster echoed in her mind: “Just tell her you want to work in the Shadow Refinery. You don’t have to mention the sun or the World Above. She’s wearing shadows herself, isn’t she?”
Her mother rubbed her temples, eyes narrow and weak. She was tired again. She was always tired. The words twisted in Cara’s throat. What came out instead was,
“I won’t let you down, Mum.”
Cara stood at one end of Rhondo Stadium, waiting for her trial to begin. The stadium was a long expanse of glass, showered by green lights, checkered here and there with tiles of wood, metal, and obsidian. The seated crowd produced a loud din that wrenched Cara’s stomach. She noticed her mother among them—eyes tired and filled with flickering hope.
A low hum came from all around, and the crowd fell silent. The walls around the stadium bulged like velvet sheets in the breeze. Slits formed on the far wall and opened to reveal big yellow eyes that stared right at her. The Velwarders.
She knew they could be everywhere at once when they merge with their surroundings, but she’d never seen it up close. Was this what she had to become?
She shuddered, suddenly more aware of the night’s chill. She shut her eyes, took a deep breath, and counted to ten. She imagined bubbles encapsulating the disturbing images of the Velwarders. She imagined the bubbles drifting up to a sunlit sky and popping to nothing. Until her mind was as clear as the eternal night.
Cara stretched down, squeezed her fingers between her toes, arched her back and imagined a wave of light passing from her shoulders down the soles of her feet. She imagined that wave taking everything from inside her, gathering it all into a ball that could fit into the crook of her elbow. Until she felt light as a feather.
A bell echoed. A bass voice followed, reverberating from all around her.
“Initiate. Begin!”
Cara pressed her finger into the glass panel beneath. It dipped inside, forming ripples. Sharp cold penetrated through her muscles to the marrow of her bones. The arm was in. She exhaled and slid inside the panel. Sand pushed against her nostrils.
I am lightning flashing through the frozen sand. I am the sound of thunder, quaking the windows of a massive temple.
The next tile was wood. She made contact. Clack-clack the splinters crackled around her as she slid into it, merged with it. Twigs scratched her stomach from within.
I am water flowing through the pith. I am the blood in the vessels of a great tree.
She moved to steel. She smelled bitter smoke and tasted metal. A great weight pushed against her heart. Iron dust suffused her lungs.
I am heat burning through a tempered sword. I am fire swallowing the railings of a bridge.
Glass came again, thinner this time. Then wood. Steel. Glass. Earth. Ice.
Cara slid through everything and slipped out on the other side. Bones encased her marrow, flesh encased bones, skin wrapped tightly around flesh, hair prickled like a million tiny needles. She took an airful of the cold night into her lungs.
“Cara Ludia,” a voice quaked the stadium. “You pass!”
Cheers erupted from the crowd. On the stands, Cara saw her mother clapping and smiling a bright chocolate smile. Then Cara’s gaze drifted to the stadium wall, where a toothed crescent stretched like bulging graffiti.
It was the smile of a Velwarder.
Patches of honeycombed sandstone connected the rooms in Cara’s house—easy to slide through. Her mother had made beetle pie and crunched happily on the other side of the table. The grandfather clock tick-ticked, counting down the seconds until the Velwarder’s decision. She imagined the clock would stop once her initiation was complete, and the living room would lay in silence for the first time in a hundred years.
“You should hear word from them soon,” her mother said. “They’ll send a crow with a scroll bearing their decision.” She smiled. “Oh darling, you were brilliant.”
Cara remained silent.
“What’s the matter?”
“The Velwarders. They were … not what I expected.”
Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “Not what you expected?”
“Their eyes,” Cara said, “their mouths, they were everywhere. It was …”
“That’s their job. To be everywhere at once. To guard the bridges between worlds, that’s what you will have to be. Isn’t this what you always wanted, Cara?”
The familiar lump formed in Cara’s throat. In her mind, she heard Fenster’s voice again,
Tell her.
Cara tried to twist the lump into a sentence, but before she could structure it, her mother gave an inward hiss of pain and leaned forward.
Cara leaped to her mother’s side. “Migraines again?”
Her mother rubbed an index against her temple. She sighed. “I haven’t had a good sleep in three bell-chimes.”
She looked so tired.
“Anyway,” Cara said. “I guess it won’t be so bad to have the option of using my powers to intimidate and scare people. There are plenty of bad people in the world. I wouldn’t want them to cross over the veil and disturb the balance.”
Her mother smiled. “Yes, that makes sense. Don’t let anything discourage you from your dreams.”
Cara clenched her teeth. I won’t be discouraged. I can do everything. I won’t pile on your troubles, mother.
I’ll be the perfect daughter.
A chilly wind blew in the graveyard hill, carrying floral scents and the occasional owl hoot. Cara leaned against a gravestone, holding a bowlful of shadows on her knees, weaving it into a hat. Fenster sat beside her. His amber-candy eyes shone under the moonlight, his breath smelled of bitter coffee, and his sinewy shoulders knotted around his body in a not-too-unappealing way—for a ghoul. He molded his own shadows into a thick tenebrous ball
Her shadows were rough and frizzy, smelled of wax and cement. His were slick like velvet and smelled in that unique scent, which Fenster had claimed to be the scent of sunlight on sea-soaked sand. That’s the quality of shadow professionals used. Imported from the World Above.
“So we won’t be seeing each other again?” Cara asked Fenster, although she knew the answer.
“It’s part of your plan, isn’t it?” he said. “You will join me in the Undertombs soon enough.”
Cara wanted to say she was happy for Fenster. He’d gotten the promotion to the Shadow Refinery. He’d get to live in the Undertombs, so close to the World Above. He would get to see the sun.
She should be happy for him.
“I’m jealous, you know,” she said as she stitched another waxy thread.
“Cara, you could come work in the Shadoweavers Guild any time you wish. You’ve been working with crude material for so long. It’s amazing that you got this far. I mean, you’re working with candlelight shadow! With your skills? You’d be promoted to the Shadow Refinery within a month.”
Cara looked to the horizon. Beyond the bent bell towers and the twisted steeples, in the middle of Plaza Muerta the Veilgate stood tall—a great stone arc whose mouth was filled with tenebrous shadows. The gate to the World Above, whose secrets were only known by the Velwarders. They would guide Fenster through it soon. “I will do that one day.”
“Right, you’ll be a Velwarder and a Refiner.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“I know that no one’s ever done it before. And I think you’re stretching your shadow so thin it will break apart.”
Cara looked at Fenster. He wouldn’t meet her gaze. If her best friend didn’t believe in her, who would? “Well,” she said. “That’s my choice to make.”
“Apparently it’s not.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Fenster set his shadow aside and looked her in the eyes. “You’re a slave to your mother’s wishes. She guides your life while you’re trying to sneak in a choice of your own in secret.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then help me understand. Why are you going through with these trials? Why don’t you quit this game and join the Refinery?”
“Because I worked too hard for this, okay? I worked too hard to make everything work. It’s my choice to do both. Mine alone. She’s always so tired,” she choked on her words. “So damn tired.”
Fenster hugged her then, and she pushed her nose into his moth-eaten rags. Once she calmed herself, she said, “It’s my choice to follow my dreams when she is not watching. I have the capacity to do it. Whether you believe it or not.”
“I want to believe it, Cara. The World Above would suck without you.”
“Well, it won’t suck. Because I’m coming,” she pulled out of his grasp and punched his shoulder. “Don’t you forget it, you hear? I’m coming. You’re not getting away from me that easily.”
A crow flew overhead and dropped a scroll on her lap. Cara unfolded it, read through it.
Talons of dread clawed her heart. The scroll dissolved in her hands as soon as she finished reading.
“Cara, are you alright? What did it say?” Fenster asked.
“I passed. The message described the final stage of my initiation. I am to be baptized in spirit lava. Form a pact.”
“So you’re almost done then. Isn’t that—”
Cara burst into tears. Yes, she was almost done, but the letter said spirit lava would change her physiology to match a Velwarder’s. If she ever came in contact with sunlight, it would dissolve her from the world.
It was a pact never to leave Rhondo.
“It makes sense if you think about it,” her mother said as she chopped a batch of black onions, suffusing the chilly atmosphere of the gray kitchen with sharp scents that made Cara’s eyes water. “Velwarders guard the gates between realities. They are ideal because they cannot abuse them. The balance is fragile. You have to make some sacrifices to achieve your dreams.”
Cara palmed her own belly, feeling as if a spider was weaving a web across the intestinal walls of her stomach. The room seemed smaller than ever, walls slowly closing to swallow her. Her grandfather’s clock drilled against her brain with every tick. “You’re right, Mum. I have to make sacrifices to achieve my dreams.”
“Of course, I’m right. Now leave your worries aside and—”
“I don’t want to be a Velwarder.”
Her mother exhaled deeply. “I get that you’re stressed. But you shouldn’t give in to it. Take a walk, stretch your limbs a bit and you’ll feel all better.”
“I want to be a Shadow Refiner. It’s what makes me feel alive. It’s—”
“Cara! You have trained for this your whole life! You can’t just give it up to become a—a what? A tailor? It’s a hobby. I thought it helped you relax, but now I doubt it. Just take a break. It’s the stress talking.”
Cara shook her head. “No. It’s not the stress. I’ve been practicing on the side to be a Shadow Refiner. I want to travel. To leave Rhondo and see the real world. I want to see the sun.”
Her mother mumbled to herself, shaking her head. She didn’t even seem to be talking to Cara anymore. “I knew this ghoul friend of yours was a bad influence. You should be hanging out with people your level. Shadow Refinement, chasing fables of glowing fireballs in some alien sky … why don’t you go live in a cave with him while you’re at it?”
“Mum, do you ever listen to me? The sun is real. It’s not some fable. Everyone in the Shadow Refinery knows these things. There is no shadow without the light. There is no stronger light than the sun. We import most of our shadows from the World Above! You wear sunlight shadows! You—you just never listen to me. You’re stuck in this tiny world and you don’t see anything beyond it. All that matters to you is prestige and looking good.”
She said more than she meant to say. Everyone who knew Cara was impressed at her willpower and calm, but when anger seized her tongue she became someone else.
“Did you get it all out?” her mother said. “If there’s nothing else, better go study your vows. The ceremony will take place at the fifth bell chime.”
Her mother slipped out the room, leaving Cara alone. Cara clenched her fists so hard her nails dug into the skin of her own palms.
She had to get away.
Cara carried her cluster of candles in a cart, brought it to the graveyard hill, and weaved a poncho of shadows. She tried anyway, for in her frustration the shadow batch was coming out stale and rank of wet cement, falling apart in her fingertips in inky puffs of smoke.
She was not good enough for this. Her talent was not reliable, it just came and went so easily. She’d never have enough talent to be a weaver and she’d never get to see the sun. Never get to see Fenster again, either.
She eyed Plaza Muerta on the horizon. A crowd of undead swarmed around the Veilgate, partaking in the festivities to celebrate the upcoming Velwarder. It was all too much. She wanted nothing more than to climb up the massive cord and leave this place behind. And maybe—
Maybe she could do just that.
The Velwarders would be attending her ceremony today. There would be little surveillance on the Veilgate. No. It didn’t matter. The gate was impossible to breach, else anyone could cross and upset the balance of worlds.
The frizzy shadow chilled her hands. She cupped it, pressed it, molded it into a ball and breathed out to relax the strands. She wondered then, what lies within a shadow. Almost everyone in Rhondo wore woven shadows around their bodies, oblivious to where they came from. Only the Shadoweavers truly knew that absence, felt it with their trained fingers.
Of course. Cara was not just any citizen. She was a trained Velwarder, save for the pact. She was a Shadoweaver in all but name. A crack in the system. A hole in their books. There had never been one with the combined skills of shadoweaving and crawling.
She gathered the cluster of candles and headed for the Plaza. She knew what she had to do.
Plaza Muerta, a thirteen mile long and just as wide square, buzzed with the din of the undead onlookers, redolent with greasy marrow-sausage stands and ghoul peddlers of carbonated platypus sweat. Cara’s shadow wavered ahead of her as she dragged a cart filled with lit candles behind her. Conversation snuffed at her passing. She waded through the onlookers followed by a gray river of candle-smoke.
Did they know she was not supposed to be here? No. No one knew the intricacies of the ceremony.
Cara reached the foot of the Veilgate. The shadows swirled like turbulent waves, revealing nothing beyond. She could cross through the shadows, but she’d simply appear on the other side. Only fully trained Velwarders, baptized by spirit lava, could guide people through. Or so they thought.
Cara sat in front of it, allowing the light to cast a long Cara-shaped shadow over the pavement, up to the tip of the shadowy curtain. She stood still and waited, feeling the curious stares at the back of her neck, blood pumping loudly in her veins.
There were undead mumblings, rustling of broken limbs, violent coughs from some ghoul’s fragmented vocal chord. She thought of Fenster. He’d be proud of her, standing up to the world like that.
Something broke the routine tumult of undead life in the Plaza. Something like slithering dirt and crackling rocks. It came close, closer, and with a burst, her mother emerged next to her.
“What are you doing here?” her mother said.
“I’m focusing,” Cara said. She wouldn’t be swayed.
“Bones of the Allfather, Cara! The Velwarders are waiting for you!”
“Let them wait a little,” she said. “They have all the time at their disposal, don’t they? Or was it just space? These things are so relative.”
“You are so talented,” her mother said. “Why are you slicing your own legs like that? Do you want to end up like me?”
Her voice seemed to be pleading. Her eyes were not disapproving, but sad. Cara was not prepared for that. “What do you mean?”
“Look at this, Cara,” her mother said, rubbing her arms, peeling off dustings of flakes like grinding a salt rock. “That’s what happens to failed Velwarders. This is the skin of someone who tried to merge with glass and failed. You have done it all. And you’re throwing it away!”
A thorn pricked Cara’s heart then. Her shadow crackled at the edges. She slouched over it. “I’m sorry I can’t be who you wanted, Mum. And I’m sorry I pretended to be who you wanted. Perhaps, if I were more honest with myself earlier, we wouldn’t have to say goodbye.”
“Cara?”
“Goodbye, Mum. I love you.”
Cara touched the shadow-fabric. Slowly, her fingertips flattened, her hand submerged in the dark shape. Slowly, her shoulders became smoke and she got sucked into an inky haze.
I am the lingering silence of a cut flower. I am the absence of sound in the void of death.
She slid into the surface of the cold Veilgate shadows. Her eyes were phantoms showing her the way. They felt like real eyes, and they itched and smarted with real tears. A long tunnel appeared before her. It was not illuminated by any light, it was just there. A path to another world.
I am the still finality of a last goodbye.
Cara realized she had reached the Undertombs when she felt the warmth. She’d never felt so warm before. There was a putrid smell, and the texture of criss-crossing catacombs itched her phantom skin and organs from within. She heard voices.
She ballooned out of the wall to the yelps of a group of ghouls.
“Hi,” she said. “Do you know where the Shadow Refinery is?”
The ghouls exchanged confused looks. “Uh, just follow the Worming Tunnels that way. Look for a door with a dark circle.”
“You’re awesome! Thanks.”
She left the blushing ghoul behind and followed the suggested path, popping her head out now and then to ascertain she headed the right way. Now there was an empty corridor, now a small horde of what appeared to be undead bovines passing by, halting abruptly to look at her in bewilderment. She must have looked funny. She imagined herself: a head sticking out of the ceiling with long hair dripping down like some perverse chandelier. She laughed at the thought and popped her head back in.
She continued through the walls until she rammed against something hard. She emerged from the wall, clutching her head. Her own face looked back at her from the reflective surface of the walls of a large chamber. In the middle, a candelabra illuminated the room. There were many ghouls looking at her.
“Cara?”
She turned her head, caressing the bump that was starting to form on its crest. “Fenster! Oh, am I glad to see you!”
She leaped to embrace him.
“You made it!” he said. “I didn’t think it would be so fast. What—”
“Can I have a sack of ice to put on my head? What are these walls made of, anyway?”
He laughed. “Osmium. It’s the most dense material in the World Above, and also extremely reflective. Speaking of … We better leave. This will hurt your eyes.”
“What will hurt my—”
A trapdoor hissed open from the ceiling, dousing the chamber in a slant of honey light. The slant expanded, touched the walls, and bounced off, forming stars of shadows beneath each ghoul’s legs. One, two, four, six. The shadows multiplied as the light came pouring down, and Cara shut her eyes.
She found that it was unbearable to open them.
“Just follow me,” Fenster said.
She held his hand, and he led her to the comforting faintness of the Worming Tunnels.
“That,” she said, “that was the sun, wasn’t it?”
He nodded. “Takes a while to get used to. The Osmium Chamber amplifies it to a degree that it would make even humans shut their eyes. But I guess it’s—why are you smiling?”
“The warmth feels nice.”
He smiled. “I’m so happy you made it. But how?”
Cara bit her lip. “I violated several laws. I—I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back.”
“Oh …”
“Can you carry my letters to Mum from time to time?”
“Of course, Cara.”
She hugged him. After a long while, she followed him back inside, squinting as sunlight bathed her, opening her mouth to taste a warm ray in her tongue. She crouched, touched the soft surface of the star-shadows forming beneath her, caressed them, winched them, folded them.
And she weaved.