DARK AS DAWN, BRIGHT AS NIGHT is a dark fantasy novel serialized in seventeen episodes. This is Episode Three.
New to the story? START HERE.
Previously: Mae resolves to help her father, Ten sees ghostly visions, and Blythe regrets turning over her latest diessence to the keeper of the mornrill.
Up ahead: Ten makes an unsettling discovery and ends up in an equally unsettling conversation with Blythe.
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TEN
I’m awake.
I think.
I know my lids have scraped away from my eyeballs, but everything is still black. I lie there for a few moments, waiting for consciousness to fully return. An ache in my neck. Pain in my shoulder. My hand on something soft. I run my finger over the familiar knubby weave.
Mae’s sweater.
Mae.
I’m still on her floor. Still curled into myself, the sweater clutched into my chest. She was here. I remember now. It had been awful seeing her that way. Just smoke and ash—the ember glow of her eyes. It wasn’t my Mae.
But a small part of me had leapt at the chance to see her again, even if it was just a terrible shadow. Anything, anything was better than the nothing that I’d lived with for so long.
“Mae,” I whisper into the darkness. I prop myself up on an elbow, then edge into a seated position, my back against the wall. My head is fuzzy, a dull throb pulsing behind my eyes.
“Mae,” I say, louder this time, my voice a harsh rasp against the soft darkness. I search the corners for those glowing eyes, study the walls for a velvet shadow to separate itself from the gloom.
Nothing.
I close my eyes wondering if I can will her into existence. But if that had been possible, I would have seen her a thousand times before. No, she’s gone. Or, at least, no longer here.
I reach up to the lamp on her dresser and switch it on. I let my head loll against the wall and wait for my eyes to adjust. Paper stars and moons that Mae painstakingly cut and decorated with elaborate designs in silver ink hang from her ceiling, and I watch them twist slowly in the draft that always plagues this house.
We used to say that the only thing keeping its old rooms warm was the heat of our fiery personalities, because it definitely wasn’t the broken-down furnace in the basement. Mae, tall and willowy as she was, was constantly draped in cardigans and wool socks well into July.
I dig my fingers into her sweater that’s still clenched in my hands, hoping the pressure might snap me out of this bewildering fog clouding my mind, mixing the past with the present, the real with the imaginary. I know the house has a hold on me. The people that used to live here cling to my heart, and I can’t let them go.
But this was something new. I can’t shake the feeling that I’d been holding her actual hand, that I'd been staring into her real eyes.
I have an overwhelming urge to leave. I have to be out of this room, this house.
I push myself to a stand, press my hands flat against the wall when the floor threatens to rise up and knock me down. I drop Mae’s sweater, letting it crumple in a heap at my feet. Looking down at it, I think about picking it up, bringing it with me into the world, the autumn air, and the drying leaves. But, no, it belongs here in a way that I no longer do. So, I leave it, and command myself to take first one unsteady step and then another toward the door.
Halfway across her room, a wave of dizziness sends me sideways. I grab hold of her bedpost, right myself, take a breath. I’m about to continue on my sad, sloppy journey when I happen to glance up at the set of shelves above Mae’s bed.
The fairy, her guardian, the one that I'd given her years ago.
It’s gone.
Using the bed as a crutch, I make my way over to the shelves. It’s been years since I looked properly at the things on display there. When Mae was alive, all her prized possessions on those wooden shelves became the unchanging setting of our little family production, a constant background that my eyes slid over to rest on the star of the show. Then, when she died, all the things they contained seemed to me like pieces of Mae herself, and it was too painful to look at them for long.
Or at all.
But I know it’s supposed to be there. It was always there. All thoughts of the outside drain away, replaced with the mad desire to find Mae’s fairy. I throw myself down on the floor, thrust my hands under the bed, grabbing wildly at the empty space beneath.
Nothing.
Under her dresser. In the drawers. In the closet. The shoeboxes buried at the back. I tear the place apart. It has to be here. It has to. I scatter old school papers from her desk. A picture frame with the smiling faces of her soccer team falls to the floor, the glass cracking.
I’m wild, drunk with whiskey, and grief, and some weird, mad hope that what I saw is actually Mae. And I don’t know why, but I think if I find that fairy it will all make sense. Everything that’s happened, all the strange, inexplicable things from the last few days and the last few years are tied up with finding Mae’s fairy.
But it’s not here.
The fire of my anger burns brighter the more places I look, until, at last, it’s a white-hot rage. I’m not looking anymore—not even really seeing.
I’m just fury and fire.
There’s nothing to find now but my wrath, empty and consuming, but still I keep at it. I sweep everything off the top of her dresser, throw everything out of the drawers, all the blankets off the bed.
The bookcase is next. The only thing I haven’t touched. I scoop the books off the shelves. I can’t grab them fast enough, and as soon as they’re in my hands, I throw them against the wall, to the floor. They crash down, filling the space with a landslide of Mae’s favorite things.
One more book. I snatch it up and prepare to hurl it away. Then the feel of it makes me pause, just for a fraction of a second. Its smooth leather binding lights up a memory in me that short-circuits the rage. My hand is still trembling, my heart pounding in my ears, adrenaline surging through my veins, but I don’t throw it.
It’s Mae’s book of poems.
The one I gave her so long ago. The one with her favorite poem. The one I read to her each time I left. The one I read too many times.
I run my fingers over the oxblood cover, feel the faded gold-leaf pages as I gently fan them against my thumb. My heart rate slows, my breath comes more regularly. There’s something marking a page, and I open the book to find a photo of me and Mae when she’s maybe eight. I don’t remember where we are but we’re smiling, laughing in one of those perfect moments from Mae’s childhood. I stare at the picture, trying to remember being that happy.
I let my eyes wander from those long-ago people to the title of the poem: The Stolen Child. I read it through for the first time in a long, long while. Then I read it again. And again.
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
I think I understand now.
I understand plenty.
The whole damn world is full of tears and sorrow and empty places where the only people I ever loved used to be.
I’m crying now, I realize, the tears extinguishing the fire inside and leaving nothing but a charred hollow in their wake.
I put the picture of Mae and me back in the book and return it to the shelf. It looks lonely there, but I don’t stoop to find the other books scattered around the room. Instead, I find the few empty spaces where I can put my feet and slink from the room, slouch down the hall, grab my jacket from the hook by the door, and step out into the cold night air.
I take a deep breath, let the smell of coming frost, rotting leaves, and dead grass fill my lungs. I’m still drunk, I realize, but at least now I can walk straight.
Striding through the early evening, the streets eerily empty, I let my thoughts go, give in to the numbness. The growing dark takes me, and I follow. I’m not sure where I’m going. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s away.
The wind rattles the leaves, and a misty rain begins to fall. I turn down one elm-lined street and then another, until I’m somehow at the edge of the town’s central plaza. There’s too many lights here, and I crave the dark. I hurry past, anxious to hit the shadows again, when something bright in a street-facing window catches my eye.
Painted in intricate detail is the forest, the one on the peninsula. I recognize the fern-filled gullies and the old-growth pines. It’s a stunning work of art, shimmering with uncanny realness in various shades of evergreen and jade. But that’s not what makes me pause. Up on a razor-thin ridge, a figure in silhouette tips back into space, the beginning of a fall. And in the shadow of one of the massive trees is a sheen of black and white, beautiful and ominous.
What the hell.
I step closer, almost press my nose against the window. This can’t be real. I study the tiny, falling figure, the shaded gleam. It’s all too specific to be a coincidence. I back away, wait for some shred of logic to arrive in my tired brain that can explain this away. That can make sense of all the strangeness, but the only thing that echoes through my skull is a quiet, desperate voice repeating the same thing:
Crazy, crazy, crazy.
I think about retreating into the shadows, but this aimless walking hasn’t helped so far. Maybe some answers will.
I wrench open the door, set the bell above clanging wildly. And she looks up.
There is no mistaking the woman from the woods—the one with the beautiful face and icy stare. She doesn’t look startled or scared to see a strange man bursting in on her. She looks, if anything, expectant, a little bored.
“I was wondering when you’d show up, soldier” she says, eyes hard and sparkling.
“Come in, close the door. We need to talk.”
BLYTHE
He looks terrible. Worse than how I remember him from the forest, and even then I thought he seemed rough and unwell. This human is a key part of my plan to bring down the Wright once and for all, and here he is at my studio door, looking like that bitch has already been at work on him.
His skin’s a sickly gray. Dark purple smudges underscore sunken eyes. The smell of stale alcohol and sweat rolls off him in stomach-turning waves.
He puts a hand on the door frame to steady himself as he sways, rain dripping from his already soaked clothes to my clean floor. There’s an odd look to him. At first, I think it’s anger. There’s certainly a heat that simmers just below the surface. But, no, it isn’t anger, fear or even surprise etching worry lines into his face.
It’s desperation.
Perfect.
I knew I had been right to wait, to let him come to me. The longer he sat with visions of my world dancing through his days and nights, the better. For me, anyway.
I allow myself an inward smile and the hope that this encounter might actually go my way. Desperation is a great motivator.
“You’re the woman from the woods,” he growls.
“And you’re Tennyson Ellis, am I right?”
His eyes widen a bit at the sound of his name.
“Come in,” I continue. “There’s a chair by the fireplace. Take a seat. Warm up.”
I cross over to him, and he slouches against the wall, eyes wary, shoulders tense, as I close the door behind him. I step back into the glow of the fire, sit in the armchair. I smile, run a hand through my hair, adjust my cashmere sweater so that it drapes nonchalantly off a shoulder. Tonight, I’m relaxed, approachable. Someone he can trust.
I didn’t always understand the power of physical attractiveness. Those of the Dawn are not subject to the same vagaries of appearance as is humanity. We are a uniformly beautiful people. In the Dawn, the difference between the exquisite and the merely pretty is only a matter of taste, really.
Thus, advantages were accrued through the careful calculation of risk and reward, the detection and later exploitation of weaknesses. Mastering the use of artifice and guile was essential.
In this world, though, with its physicality and primal instincts, I learned a second language. Centuries in the same body have taught me all the ways to make it talk for me. I’ve discovered the best way to display myself in order to communicate availability, respectability, or virginity when the need arises.
Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that in my long exile I was drawn to the arts. Using tools to craft an illusion comes naturally to me, whether it’s brushes and paint, cleverness and deceit, or a striking face and suggestive pose.
He crosses the floor with heavy steps and eyes me warily as he drops into the chair opposite. I hesitate. I need to handle this situation carefully if I’m to secure his cooperation. I planned for him to be suspicious, cautious, scared even, but I hadn’t counted on the drunkenness or the damage I see etched into each piece of him.
I sigh. The closeness, the darkness, the way the fire jumps and crackles. It reminds me of the festivals of old, and I let myself wonder what his quintessence might taste like. A dangerous thought, but my imagination is the only thing I can feed in this wretched existence.
He’d be bitter, I think, but not entirely unpleasant, something of an acquired taste. Harsh, but rich and satisfying. Hunger bites through me. How long has it been since I’ve tasted soul, blood, and name? Passion and shade?
Centuries.
I’m ravenous.
I must use that craving. Make it seem like it’s for him in the usual way a woman might crave a man. There was a time, I can see, when he would have experienced this kind of attention often.
“How do you know my name?” His voice is a croak, rusty from drink and disuse.
“You seem to attract some unusual beings, Tennyson Ellis,” I reply. “The kind of beings that are my business you might say. And so, in turn, you attracted my attention.”
“Ten,” he says. “Not Tennyson.”
“Okay, Ten,” I say, raising a brow.
“What do you mean I attract unusual beings?” He spits out the last word like it’s left a bad taste in his mouth.
“I admit I didn’t recognize you at first when we met in the woods,” I say, dodging his question for now. Best not to be too direct. “I’m glad to see you’re okay.”
He gives me a small nod. We both know he’s not really okay. I wonder if maybe I should abort my plan. Maybe he’s too far gone. I need a warrior, someone with grit. I meet his bloodshot gaze, considering. There is still something there in him. An inner fire. It’s been tamped down, almost smothered. But the glow lingers.
“You’re much changed since I last saw you,” I say. “Although to be fair it was only a glimpse a couple years ago.”
Confusion furrows his brow, and he shifts in his chair. He looks uncomfortable; I can tell he doesn’t like to be at a tactical disadvantage.
“I don’t know you,” he rasps.
“No, that’s true, you don’t know me, and honestly, I don’t know you either. It’s your daughter that I’ve been tracking.”
He stiffens at this. A sore subject.
Humans are so attached to their progeny. Strange when their children are so feeble. Better that they shouldn’t nurture such bonds. But then perhaps it must be this way; otherwise, none would survive their infancy.
It took me a long time to understand this behavior. We of the Dawn are not born so much as made, brought forth from light to fill a need. Our youth are not children. They are simply those new to our golden realm, and nothing a human might call love is spared for these initiates, naïve and useless as they invariably are at the beginning.
“My daughter?” The words hiss from his lips—a question but also a threat. “What does she have to do with any of this?”
“She’s the reason for everything that’s come to pass for you in the last few days. Indeed, she’s the reason we’re here now.”
“Explain.” His voice is calm, quiet, but his body is tense. Drunk or not, I sense he could do real damage should he choose to. I glance at his fingers clutching at the arms of the chair, making dents in the soft fabric. Those hands have done violence. I’m sure of it.
I shift toward him, planting my feet on the floor, resting on an elbow, my fingers playing at the opal of my necklace. My free hand draws shapes in the air as I begin to speak, underscoring and highlighting, as necessary, the words that most humans will never hear.
“Your daughter is dead but not gone from this world,” I say.
Ten’s eyes narrow. He’s skeptical. A man of logic and reason, then. But he’s been touched. He’s got to have seen some of what I’m about to tell him. I take a breath, collect my thoughts, then continue.
“She lingers here, not as herself exactly, but as something we call a shade. Just a piece of her former self, insubstantial, invisible—usually,” I add.
“Are you saying she’s a ghost?” Ten rumbles. He runs a clumsy hand through his hair, blows out a long breath.
“A ghost, phantom, apparition. Your kind have many words for what she is, none of them apt, but shade gets closest to the crux of it.”
“Your kind,” he whispers almost to himself, mulling over the consequences of those words. He says nothing more, waiting for me to continue.
“There is—” I start. No.
How about “Once…”
Upon a time? Definitely not. I stop again. I’m not usually so inarticulate, but then I’m keenly aware that this human may be my final opportunity to defeat the Wright. How does she do it? She’s convinced thousands of humans to trust her, to believe in the unbelievable. What does she offer them in return for their suspension of disbelief?
A chance at eternity.
I try once more.
“What if I said ghosts were real?”
Ten narrows his eyes but remains silent. I push on, not sure how long he’ll remain receptive to what I’m about to tell him.
“What if I said ghosts are real, and you could choose to become one?”
This time I’m the one that keeps quiet. I want to gauge his reaction, hear some of his thoughts. We stare at each other for several tense moments, the room silent except for the crackle and pop of the burning logs. Finally, he clears his throat and speaks.
“I would say you sound like my late wife.” His face is grim. The deep furrows in his brow are made deeper by the raking light of the fire, his eye sockets are black in the dimness. He pauses, and then seems to come to a decision. “Explain. Now. Just know that I don’t take the notion of you ‘tracking’ my daughter lightly. So be careful.”
I smile inwardly. He has no clue what he’s dealing with. But I can appreciate his fierce loyalty. I arrange my features to give just the barest hint of nervousness, to let him have a small victory. I see his tense fingers soften ever so slightly. He’s used to employing intimidation to get his way and the apparent effect this approach has had on me relaxes him.
“There is a being called the Wright,” I say. “The Dusk world called to her and she answered, learning from the darkness the magic required to separate the essence that lies inside every human into its five constituent parts.”
Ten makes a small noise in his throat. I pause, unsure of whether he means to interrupt, but he says nothing more and continues to gaze into the fire, the light dancing in his eyes.
“Every human has a quintessence,” I say. “Five elements that together make up what most people call the soul, although it is but one part of the set. The Dusk is only interested in the shade, the soul’s counterpart. Indeed, the Dusk is nothing without these dim specters; they make up the very fabric of the Wright’s realm. She is utterly dependent on the creation and enslavement of human shades. This is what happened to your daughter, Ten.”
He had been looking into the fire the whole time I was speaking, but when I mention his daughter again, his gray-blue eyes slide back to mine. Just for a moment, I’m taken aback by their intensity. Now that the drink is wearing off, I can see how he must have been once: a wildcat sizing up its prey, preparing to pounce. I meet his gaze with my own, cool and direct. I know now that he isn’t one to be easily influenced by appearances. Fine. I appreciate directness, rare as it was at home.
“You’ve seen her, haven’t you?” I ask. He’s a man of action, of the concrete and the real. So, I’m giving him the candor he prefers. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. Or, at least, you wouldn’t have stayed.”
“How did this happen?” he asks, his voice tense.
“Someone granted the Wright access to her, provided the materials that would allow your daughter’s shade to be tied to the Dusk.”
“Helena,” he rumbles, more to himself than to me.
“Is that your wife?” I ask. When he doesn’t answer, I continue. “Because, usually, when the shade is a youth, it’s a grieving parent that approaches the Wright. Nowadays she calls herself Hesper Wright and has fashioned herself as a grief counselor. But those in the metaphysical community, believers, they whisper about Hesper’s magic, about being able to escape the eternal rest of the grave, of becoming ghosts. Though the afterlife they gain by enlisting the Wright’s services is far from the immortality many of them hope for.”
“You said they’re enslaved,” Ten says.
“It is a sorry existence. A quintessence yearns to be complete in life. After death the worldly elements fade. What was a quintessence becomes a diessence: soul and shade. Should these two be severed from each other the consequences are dire. They cannot move on in such a state, and the parts, soul and shade, are lost, adrift in a world to which they no longer belong. They become vulnerable. Longing for wholeness, they are easy to command. And a shade that is commanded by the Wright becomes a tool, beholden to her whims. Of course, she leaves this bit of information out when convincing her clients of the value of her services.”
Ten’s eyes haven’t left mine, and their intensity has, if anything, become even more disquieting. It’s a rare thing, for a human to unnerve me. Turned as he is now, toward the blaze in my hearth, his face is aglow. With the shadows erased and the ferocity of feeling he has for his daughter animating him, he seems younger, more powerful.
I can practically smell his quintessence coursing through his veins. Name, blood, passion, soul, and shade suffusing his body, and all I want in that instant is to make him mine, consume him, until there’s nothing left but his bones licked clean of flesh and fire.
But such pleasures are not for me. Not anymore. And the moment passes, the afterglow flushing my cheeks.
“Why are you telling me all this?” he asks, his words awakening me from my revelry.
“Because, together, we can rid this world of the Wright,” I say, and the words feel sweet in my mouth, honeyed by the feeling that this man might actually succeed where so many others have failed.
“Together,” I continue, “we can finally silence the demon I made.”
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