A Shadow All of Light (24 page)

When we arrived at camp on the crest of the ridge the sun was almost ready to peer over the horizon, and I ordered them to cache all our goods in the holes we had dug to store them and to cover these over with canvas and brush.

This done, we looked to one another. Squint must have caught the worst of it. His pupils were enlarged and unfocused, gray sweat bathed his neck and forehead, and his face and arms and hands had taken on a sickly, blue-gray pallor, as of a consumptive shut long away indoors.

“Brandy,” I said. Goldenrod reached for the bottle in our chest of potables and Squint dosed himself with three liberal swallows. His eyes became calmer, but his complexion remained gray.

“How goest thou?” I asked.

He considered. “It felt like something was being pulled out of me,” he said. “Out of my chest, from between the ribs.”

“Like a knife withdrawn?”

“No … like a length of wool-stuff slipped through the fingers.”

“Painful?”

He shook his head and tottered and his mates settled him to the ground, where he put his head between his knees and coughed dryly.

“Is anyone else affected?”

“Here, cap'n,” Sneakdirk said. “Naught but only a twinge, like the passing of a dead woman's hand over my front.” He wiped his forehead. “'Tis away from me now.… I will take brandy for it.”

“Better conserve,” I said. “We know not but we may have need.”

“Let us all take a sup now,” Goldenrod suggested. “I am certain it hath power to ward off evil aforehand.”

I let them jolly along with such talk, then put it to them: “What think you? Shall we try the Dark Vale again tomorrow night? We have learned that it is indeed the danger it is fabled to be, though we know not what causes it to be so.”

“But we have learned,” said Torronio, “that our precautions are good defenses, if we take pains to follow them aright. We were only tardy in taking leave, so that our palest shades betrayed us. If we approach in full dark and depart while the dark still holds, we shall be secure enough.”

“But we would not return to the same place,” objected Crossgrain. “If we go back, we must thrust farther to gain a different variety of herbage.”

When they looked at me, I nodded. “He says true. There will be more profit in a wide selection. But are we willing to face those slime-snakes and their dire stenches again? Maybe we can ablute ourselves with a substance to keep the ooze from us.”

“But look!” said Sneakdirk. “The slime is drying.”

So it was. Goldenrod had been most thoroughly covered with the ooze, and I asked him to stand forward against the sunrise now full on the horizon. As we watched, the black oils whitened like campfire coals embering, gathered to a gray dust, and fell from him like flour through a sifter. He shook himself like a bear that has forded a cold river, and all that substance dropped away.

“I am game to return,” he said.

*   *   *

When I put it to them that we must capture some of those black serpents to bring out of the Vale, they were displeased. The hour was drawing toward twilight and it would soon be time to reenter.

“Wherefore?” scolded Crossgrain. “I do not relish going again amongst these smelly slime-worms, but I will do so to obtain plants. Yet I see no profit in the serpents. No sound mind would purchase such ugliness.”

“I have not become enamored of them,” I replied, “but I have had a thought. The slime that covered Goldenrod changed to white powder when the sunrays struck it. Upon examining, I found it to resemble that generative fine dust the ancients called
pollis
or
pollen,
necessary to the propagation of all flora excepting the ferns. I think that if we carry our Dark Vale plants away, they will not propagate without the aid of those black snakes.”

“So you think,” retorted Crossgrain, “but you do not know.”

“True … Can you conjecture another purpose for such animals?”

“They exist,” said Sneakdirk, “in order to sour the innards of anyone who attempts to uproot those plants. Their guardian purpose is to sicken by putridity, in the fashion of vultures that protect themselves by vomiting.”

“I will perform this task myself,” I said, “since none else hath heart for it. If the rest of you will gather the flora, I will collect the serpents. I may take as my reward a slightly larger portion of profit.”

“And welcome to it,” said Goldenrod.

*   *   *

So we returned to the Vale, following the track as before but pushing a little farther into the valley, where the darkness seemed to grow thicker and more malodorous with every pace. Squint had acquired a swift skill in unblinding and reblinding his lanthorn and the others grew defter in plucking, snipping, and uprooting. I judged that we would have a broad variety of plant life to take away.

My duty with the serpents went none so pleasingly. I grasped them up, dropped them in disgust, found others, and thrust them into a leathern bag. Though eyeless, they struck at my hands and legs as would any of their breed, but they had no fangs. It was something like catching eels, except that people make dishes of eels. The man who would eat these serpents must be a starving omnivore, capable of ingesting iron, stone, and the burdens of privies.

Yet again I had miscalculated the amount of time our expedition must consume, and my error cost us grievous. There being no birds in the Vale, there were no fore-dawn songs to warn of daybreak and, too, we had penetrated farther and would require more time to leave.

The light came on sooner than we were prepared for, and on this return our shadows were more substantial than before. Torronio advised his Wreckers to keep close to one another, reasoning that in a group they would cast but one large shadow instead of five smaller ones and the plants would not be able to tear such a large one away.

It proved a sound stratagem until Goldenrod gave in to his terror, broke from the pack, and struggled up the slope past me as I led them. There he stood plain against the light that slanted over the ridgetop. He had climbed some six paces before me, panting, stumbling, and sobbing. I saw that his shadow, though not solid, had sufficient body for a black, spiny bush to catch its edge with a thorny twig.

There was an instant when his shadow seemed to stretch like a woolen stocking pulled from the leg. And then came a sudden
chuck
of sound, as of an arrow striking into an oat-straw archery target. The tall fellow uttered no more than a squeak; a mouse in the claws of a tabby would make a louder sound.

His shadow I could not see as the bush enveloped it, but the effect on the plant was evident. The ebon thing shuddered from ground to top leaf. It wriggled within itself, enlarging its shape, and the pulpy leaves rubbed against one another with a motion like a butcher washing his hands after a slaughter.

Goldenrod—or rather, his corpus, for he was no longer a living man nor even the same man now dead—pitched southwise off our track like a statue toppling. As life left him, I could feel the serpents in my bag suddenly roil and tumble together. The other plants around set up an inward commotion. All about us there was a change in everything, even in the soil. Everything
shifted.

Now the Vale gave birth to an eerie music, a moaning dirge mingled of the voices of scores of men, a chorus of those who had died here, their shadows absorbed into the bodies of plants as red wine is absorbed into a swatch of linen. What mouths produced this music we never discovered. I have conjectured that the sad chords emitted from animals we had not seen, but Torronio proposed that the blind serpents sang out when a shadow was taken by the Vale.

There was no time to debate. We redoubled our efforts, straining every muscle to haste us out of that place. Each of us felt a mucid clutching at his shadow, a sensation we would feel in our sleep for long nights to come.

*   *   *

We climbed at last out of the reach of the Vale and no more of us were stricken fatally, yet none was soundly whole. Each had lost some part, though small, of his shadow and of his
vis vitae.

We stored last night's gathering quickly and then flung ourselves to the ground in silence and lay like shipwrecked men cast ashore. I felt strengthless, as after a long bout with grippe, and strength did not return to my limbs for some part of an hour.

My case was not the worst. Crossgrain lay perspiring in rivulets, staring sightlessly at the high blue sky. He heaved for breath and his teeth chattered. We rose to our feet to gaze down upon him but offered no aid, for none knew how to minister to one whose shadow had been half devoured. Squint thought to pour brandy into him, but his chattering teeth and the convulsions of his breast prevented that succor. Sneakdirk thought to allay his anguish somewhat by holding a blanket between him and the light, so that his sadly torn shadow did not lie in the sun, and this did seem to alleviate his suffering. In a while he quietened and closed his eyes in unpeaceful sleep.

Though none had stomach, we moved ourselves to eat and drink. Afterward we sat silent, looking sorrowfully at one another. In time I said what all waited to hear: “We must bring Goldenrod out of the Vale.”

“Why must we?” demanded Crossgrain. “He lives not. He has no wife nor child to mourn. His elder brother died off the coast of Clamorgra in a great tempest. There is scant reason to risk ourselves.”

“He is our friend and comrade fallen in the enterprise,” Torronio said. “This duty bears upon us.”

Crossgrain objected. “I would not call him friend. We were ill sorted.”

“It matters not,” said Squint. “It is our duty regardless.”

“Our time there would be better spent in collecting more herbage,” Crossgrain said. “We have much expense to make up for now.”

“As to that,” I said, “we shall gather no more. I spoke beforehand of the perils we might meet, but this mortality is too sorrowful. We must return to bring Goldenrod away and bury him with proper honor.”

“We have no honor—” Crossgrain began, but he was shouted down. I believe that each felt that any of us might have failed of his nerve and broken rank and suffered shadow-loss and died dreadfully in an alien place. We did not wish to live unreconciled. I pictured my lifeless corpse lying in a black hell apart from all other humanity forever, my life taken by gruesome, foul agency.

We decided to put our gatherings in order, go back after dark to the Vale, bear Goldenrod away, and depart on the morrow for the bivouac where Mutano stood abandoned.

*   *   *

Events did not fall in so orderly a succession.

As soon as it was securely dark we made our way back down the ridge slope, our estimation being that Goldenrod's body would lie about halfway to the valley floor on the overgrown path. We had to steel ourselves to begin the lightless decline and our spirits were sorely battered. I tried to assure Torronio and the remaining Wreckers that our shadows would regenerate from their damaged states and, over a healing period, make themselves whole again.

I did not know if this conjecture would prove true. Shadows damaged by clumsy thieves or by accident or combat or otherwise will indeed return to their earlier conditions or near, but a shadow devoured must be lost, I thought. Yet I said naught, for it was best not to dishearten my fellows.

Nor had I been wholly truthful in the matter of Goldenrod. In a different circumstance, I might have let him lie to decompose into the evil soil of the Vale or to be eaten by whatever tenebrous scavengers ranged therein. My hidden desire was to examine the corpse, in order to determine if the manner of his dying left marks by which I might discover some method of defense against the deadly flora of the place. If I could find such a thing, a fortune lay before me.

Down the pathway we struggled, keeping close company and hearing all around us the succulous leaves rubbing one against another and feeling, more than hearing, the blind black snakes crawling about. We made ourselves silent as the night and place demanded.

Then we could not ascertain the spot where Goldenrod must lie. The track had overgrown notably during the brief time we had come away from it. There was an abrupt steepness of the slope where our comrade had fallen, but he was not near it.

“I misremember it being so close-knit here,” Sneakdirk whispered, and we assented silently as we scattered out to search.

We were sufficiently diligent, I am sure, to have turned him up, but that tall, lanky body was nowhere to be found. He seemed to have melted into the surrounding Nature as a pinch of salt will melt in a pail of water. Squint unblinkered our light more times than was safe, but naught was to be seen.

“Come away, lads,” I said. “There are mysteries in this place we lack resource to comprehend. Our friend is gone from us, taken by peril, as I forewarned you.”

They agreed readily, except for Sneakdirk, who averred that Goldenrod had owed him some small amount he wished to reclaim from the corpus. His objection was swept away.

The starry midnight had passed by the time we returned to camp. We composed ourselves for sleep and lay in our places, keeping well away from the pallet where Goldenrod had lain. My sleep was uneasy with nervy dreams and, to judge by the muttering and restlessness, so was that of all.

*   *   *

In the morning we were brisker, boiling up tea and munching the biscuits and salt beef we had found in Mutano's store of victual. We spent a goodish deal of time putting our samples in order to travel, and it was then that my bagful of a dozen or so of the black serpents disclosed itself as a clutch of inert vines or roots.

They had been snakes when I thrust them into the leathern bag—slime-sheathed, offal-smelling, writhing, and blindly striking. But when I brought them out into the light to place them in a wicker basket, they had changed into solid, woody lengths, so stiff as to be almost rigid. Except for the general shape, there was little to recall their former serpentine nature. An indentation here might suggest a mouth or some lichenous mottling elsewhere might recall scales, but these details seemed but accidental as the early sunlight fell upon them.