“Aaaad ddddd aaaa aaaaaaaa.” Lor babbles on and on to himself while Iohmar gazes at his woods. It is peaceful here, at the border between his realm and the humans’. Animals prefer one world or the next, but moths flutter among the branches heavy with scent, bodies round with flower nectar, wings often brushing his skin. After landing on Lor’s cheeks, they are frightened away by the following joyful scream.
Crows circle overhead, but without their gossip or the promise of a treat, they are uninterested. Heat from Iohmar’s twilight lands meets the human sun, mixing into a soupy sky. Sleep pulls his eyelids, and he lets himself curl against the mossy ferns, Lor tucked between his arms and stomach. The boy pulls fistfuls of moss and flings them to either side, rolling with great effort onto his stomach and wiggling his fingers and toes into the soft earth. Pale flowers and tufts of leaves float from his skin happily.
Iohmar dozes, opening his eyes only to assure the boy has not wriggled away. His sleep is dreamless, the heat of the day or his own contentment with the quiet place he has chosen to rest making both his limbs and thoughts heavy.
“Daaaaaaaaiiiiaaaaaiiiiiaaaa,” Lor gurgles, patting Iohmar’s cheek with a tiny fist until he opens his eyes.
“What? Hmm?” he asks, not entirely awake.
“Daaaaaaada . . . Daaaiiidiii . . . Daidí!” the boy coos, and Iohmar’s eyes snap open.
He gazes at the boy. Where did he learn such a word? Iohmar called his own father as such many times in private but hasn’t had a reason to speak it in centuries. Surely he hasn’t said or even thought it in the boy’s presence. Could I be sharing my dreams? He hopes not. They are not often pleasant. Even Iohmar does not comprehend the way their magic is bonded.
“Daidí,” Lor says, the noise much more a word this time, and Iohmar’s chest gives an odd squeeze. His eyes tingle.
Absolutely unnecessary, he tells himself, then curls over to kiss the child between the eyes. His skin is soft and warm, smelling of plants and the earth he’s been digging up.
“My son,” he murmurs.
He does not move his face from the child’s, and Lor does not squirm, patting Iohmar’s cheeks with little fingers as he did when Iohmar first brought him to his Halls beneath the mountain. Their world is calm and quiet, and after a time, Iohmar feels the watchfulness upon them.
When he raises his head, there are shadows about them, fluid and too dark in this bright section between the human world and the Fair Halls.
Lor’s birch-silver eyes flicker, taking in the strangeness with a seriousness not fitting an infant. Iohmar does not release him, sitting and scooping him into his lap. His movements are slow, nonthreatening, and he takes in the scene before him as he did the first time he encountered these strange creatures. What must the human have thought to gaze into the trees and see these same woods gazing at him in return?
As before, he senses no ill will, but the thought has occurred to him that they may come from the rippling lands. Now that the suspicion has entered his mind, he cannot shed it.
“Hello, my shadows,” he says. As before, there’s no response.
He carries his weapon against his back within the folds of his robe but does not wish to threaten. Instead, he sets Lor in his lap, holding his empty hands to the woods. The shadows flicker and dip but stay quiet as the night, and Iohmar is grateful at least no strange voice calls to him from deep in the trees. With a great deal of care, he curls his legs under himself and rises, Lor in one arm. His head dips with the weight of his horns and leftover sleep.
“Walk with me,” he says with a softness reserved for children and other timid things.
Stepping from the greenery, Iohmar takes the path between the mountains. Past the grave. The shadows slip. Now he notices the places they don’t fill. Bits of normal shadows still appear in the far areas of the forest. Surrounding him are these new dark creatures, but they do not fill the trees forever. It is a group of them rather than a strange being overcoming all natural light. Satisfied with this new information, Iohmar does not speak until the path is fully in his lands, sloping up to his mountain.
“There are a few things I’m curious of,” he says, hoping words will elicit a reaction. “I do not know what you wish of me or whether you dwell in this land or the next. I wonder if you can understand me. Do you understand and not wish to answer? Or can you not answer? I will speak with you in friendship should you choose to do so.”
He pauses, slowing to a standstill while the mountain slopes. He does not wish to lead them to his Halls or the privacy of his chambers. They are closer than before, darkness slipping and slithering mere hands from him. Iohmar crouches, bending his head to the nearest shred of shadow. It is utter darkness, full as night and deep as the fine ink Iohmar uses to write letters.
“But I would request you no longer travel to the human world. They are fragile creatures, often frightened by unusual things. You may upset them.”
So close, their presence is more apparent—near a tiny heartbeat, almost imperceptible. He smiles. If these creatures understand expression, Iohmar hopes they see the gentleness and warmth intended.
These could not originate from the rippling lands. Those monsters are all cold and hollow, empty fear. There is nothing similar in the way they are formed.
Wishing to learn but hesitant to approach with Lor in his arms, he holds his hand above the slip of darkness, letting it hover without touching. The shadows bend and dip but do not retreat. Vaguely, Iohmar is aware of the rest drawing near, blocking the sunlight. He allows his fingers to drift down. The black shards of his talons match the shadows so deeply that they disappear into each other. Even when he presses his hand to the earth below, the shred of night swallowing his pale hand, there is close to no sensation. There is a whisper of a heartbeat as a flutter of hair, a soft sweep of cold reminding him, for a moment, of the ripplings. But this is a different cold, like the cool of the caverns weaving below his Halls.
No way of communication presents itself, no means to form a greater connection. Disappointment tugs at him. He is grateful the contact reveals no harmful intent but wishes further understanding.
He draws back. The shadows cling.
Panic pierces his chest, but he forces himself not to yank away with violence. He thinks of his father’s finger swallowed by the rippling monsters, returning shriveled and weak.
These are not the same.
Slowly, he stands, withdrawing his hand. The shadows stick to his skin, stretching as uncooked dough. As they drop, the dark of his talons spreads up his fingers and to his wrist, veins of black as much a part of his skin as his own blood. It bleeds out, dripping into the creatures. His fingertips remain pitch as his talons. Iohmar holds them near his face, touches his lips to them, and frowns at the undesired change to his appearance. He turns his hand in the sunlight and watches his skin shimmer from black to an even deeper blue than Rúnda decorates hers with.
The panic has faded, and the ripplings pick at his thoughts, as does the woman in the caves—helping him save Lor, breaking his horn and sickening his magic until his appearance turned to ink without his knowledge or permission.
She saved Lor, he reminds himself. And she was much more alive than the shadows. Besides, she is far gone from the tunnels beneath the mountain.
Perhaps these creatures are not for him to know. There are many things in his lands he has little knowledge and sense of. Perhaps they are not for him to befriend or reject and are simply beyond his knowledge and understanding, magic born in darkness as much the same as Iohmar’s was born in both shadow and sunlight, creatures of the deepest parts of his lands even he will never understand.
“I offer my friendship should you desire it,” he tells the shadows. He bears strange marks now from saving Lor, his precious boy, and will bear marks from welcoming new creatures to his lands if such is their impact on him.
The shadows snake away as quickly as they appeared, and the tips of Iohmar’s fingers remain black as the deepest of night.
AUTUMN
14
Winds in the Meadows
The trees explode with fragrance. Even without changes in weather, Iohmar’s woods know the difference between spring and fall, shimmering with darker hues of green and the spare leaf of fire as time changes.
Rúnda declared her tower chill with the beginnings of winter—as she has many times since they spoke of her desert sands—and Iohmar hoards every moment with her now that she’s found her way to his Halls. Already, she and her folk have resided here for some time. Iohmar is unsure of the days, the warm weather and feasting blending together in a gentle wave.
