Other Worlds

What the Darkness Is-3

She and Aydan walked the whole circuit of their round island, hand-in-hand, the twin lines of their footprints a braided line in the sand. Abi liked the sensation of returning to the place they'd started, the familiarity of it as well as the disorientation of seeing it from a different angle. Sometimes they talked about where she'd come from, leading them to the one subject painful to both of them.

“Will you go back to the sky with the other angels?” he asked. It amused her when he called her an angel. Many of the things they did together were surely things no angel had ever done. Still, she liked it.

“No. We will have to move onwards, go deeper.”

“Why does this demon pursue you?”

“Only I can speak the words to unravel her magic. She has frozen her world in perpetual night.”

Aydan gazed over the sparkling waters and shook his head. “When will it be?”

“I don't know. Not for a long time, I hope.”

“We could have children.”

She stroked his face. “I'd like that. Truly. But not with this hanging over them.”

They were both silent for a time, lost to their own thoughts. Then the sun filled their eyes once more and they ran together for the splash of the sea.

One day, the villagers found the remains of a small deer, its body torn to scattered shreds. There were no predators on the island capable of such butchery. In the sand all around were the footprints of animals that might have been hounds. The Chronicler, seeing them, nodded his head to Abi.

Aydan pleaded to come with her, but she didn't know how that might be worked. There was the danger, too. With Abi gone, Aydan's life would be as safe and peaceful as it always had been. They allowed themselves one final night, Abi always alert for howls and snarls.

“Will you come back?” he asked as the first light found the shadows in the corner of their room.

She lay with her head upon his chest, their limbs entwined. She wanted more than anything in the world to say yes. Here would be a fine ending to the story: an ending that was a new beginning. But it couldn't be. She could think of no words to give him.

She and the Chronicler sailed in an outrigger to the sacred atoll, home of the people's few gods, the paradise they all went to when they died. There, among the many offerings sent bobbing over in bottles on the ocean's currents, they found scrimshaw carvings depicting the fairy palaces of the land that, it was said, the island people had once come from.

Their escape.

Barely six months later, they stood upon a final hilltop, so high that the drifting clouds were around them and below them. The old man slumped to the ground, the weariness raw in him. She could see the shape of the bones in his face, as if his features were sinking away. Even his red birth-mark looked faint. He had told his last story, woven his last tale to foil Lady Lillian. Abi saw with sudden clarity how exhausted he was. He nodded his head, as if he knew what she was thinking.

“What will you do?” he asked. His voice was weak. “What ending will there be to this story?”

“There can only be one ending,” said Abi. “I have to go back where it started. I have to destroy her, stop the monsters pursuing me and free the world from the moment it's frozen in. That's it, isn't it?”

“Once, I thought so. But we have been through much together, you and I. I think you can make your own ending, now.”

“What other endings could there be?”

A flicker of delight passed across his features. “Perhaps … perhaps you will tell the tale of how you become the Lady Lillian we knew. How you loved the beauty of that starry night so much you stopped the world. That might be a fine twist.”

“But it's not right.”

“Or perhaps you will describe how you took a baby girl and rescued her from the gore-hounds, became Vanda to bring her to the Chronicler. A small but vital role in a bigger cycle that leaves those hearing the story guessing, lets them decide the ending. Or you may come up with some conclusion I have not foreseen. In any case you must choose. I can't hold off the hounds any longer. You can only snatch victory from the jaws of defeat so many times before the story falls apart.”

“How do I get to the real world?”

He shrugged, as if it was the easiest thing in the world. “I have shown you. Tell the tale. Speak the words of Making, then step across. Step further in.”

“But I'm not going deeper. I'm going back to the start.”

The little smile of delight was there again. “You know, I'm never really sure there is a start. There's just the maze, stories within stories. Maybe, who knows, there isn't even one real world and they're all as genuine as each other.”

Did that mean she really was returning to where she'd begun? Or was she creating a new story, a different telling of the same root tale? Perhaps it made little difference.

“If I go, what of you?”

The old man closed his eyes as if he might fall asleep. “My part is played. It has been a fine story, but characters come and go. I'll remain here to mock them when they come, tell them they can't win. An amusing counterpoint to the final drama. Hurry, now. They are near.”

Abi cleared her mind. Words came to her, flowing without conscious effort. Yes. She saw what had to be done. How the world she wanted to reach looked: the woods and the seas, the bright stars and the crescent moon, and Lillian's high tower on its hill looking down on everything. The Chronicler had described it often enough over the years. The words of Making and Unmaking she would need also came to her. She saw what had to be done about the Lady, what the darkness was.

She began to tell the story forming in her mind.

She climbed the steps that wound up the hill to the tower. The bright stars blazed down, hard as jewels. The slender crescent moon hung among them. It was beautiful in its cold and colourless way.

The howls of the gore-hounds filled the night air, but Abi paid them no heed. They couldn't harm her, because the story couldn't harm the storyteller. At the gates they snarled and snapped, stained teeth level with Abi's face, their breath the smell of rotting meat.

Abi waved them away with a word of Unmaking, their names spoken backwards. One by one, they melted to the ground to become shadows, become nothing. Pushing the door open, she wound her way up the spiral staircase to where she knew Lady Lillian would be waiting for her.

A single, circular room took up the whole of the top of the tower. Twelve arched windows, open to the night air, looked out over the world. A figure in white lace, white as bone, stood at one of them. She gazed out across a wide sea, the moonlight a shimmering path across it.

“It's beautiful, isn't it?” Lady Lillian said.

“It is,” said Abi.

“You would destroy it?”

“Stories can't stop,” said Abi. “They must reach an ending. The pages must be filled, new characters brought in as old ones die.”

Still not looking at her, Lady Lillian shook her head. “This isn't a story. It's real life. There are no simple endings.”

“The wheel must turn,” said Abi. “I understand now, after all these years of flight. The hands of the clock must go round. Your world is beautiful but there are other beauties. The smile of a friend. The sun on the morning mist. The frost on the trees. Waves washing through a field of tall grass. The gaze of a lover or a baby.”

Lady Lillian sighed. “I suppose it is only fair you kill me after all these years of pursuit. I would have killed you if I could.”

Abi walked to stand directly behind Lady Lillian. “Kill you? Why would I kill my own mother?”

Lillian's voice was cold. “I'm not your mother, child.”

“Look at me,” said Abi. “Of course you are. That's why I have the words.”

When the Lady turned to face her, anger and then confusion and then wonder battled across her features. “I don't … how is that possible? My daughter died long ago. They told me.”

“I was smuggled away for fear of what you might do to me when you learned I had the Speech. Do you not recall? My father died returning for my birth and you were lost in grief. Perhaps you blamed me for the accident.” It was, perhaps, too obvious a storyline, but the power of it couldn't be denied.

Lady Lillian reached up to touch Abi's face. “Is this possible?”

“Yes. It is the truth.”

Lillian looked puzzled, as if grappling with difficult ideas. “I have been so distracted by starlight. I have been moon-mad, lost to my own darkness.”

“I know.”

“I couldn't face life without him. Couldn't face another day. I was up here, watching for him, when word came. His ship lost at sea. How you must hate me.”

Abi took her mother's hand in hers. “No. I haven't come here for revenge, or to destroy you. Between us, we'll speak the words of Unmaking. The darkness must end. There will be more nights of sparkling frost, but there will also be days of summer. We can live through all of them. We can give this story a good ending, if you are willing.”

There were tears of moonlight in her mother's eyes as she nodded her head at Abi.

When it was done, Abi left her mother for a time and walked from the tower to the woods. She picked her way among tall trees grown thick with moss. Her feet seemed to know the path to take. Through the branches, a candle flickered from the windows of a little cottage in a clearing on a hill, calling her like a beacon.

Abi knocked on the door and waited for the old man to answer. A story didn't only need a finish; loose ends needed to be tied up, too. The Chronicler would understand that. He'd know how to find Aydan and Gemma and Vanda and all the others, even his little dog, so that the rest of their tales could be told and her part in them played out.

As she knew it would, the door opened silently. An old man's face peeped through the gap, his eyes regarding her over the top of a pair of half-moon spectacles.

“See,” said Abi. “I have found the ending of the story.”

In the east, over the trees, the sky was finally lightening to morning.

What the Darkness Is was originally pubished in Metaphorosis magazine in 2017. It's one of my favourite short stories, and another one that hid in the shadows of my mind for some time - years - before emerging, blinking, into the light. I love the idea of the narrator being a part of the story, and I love the idea of worlds within worlds, so that it isn't possible to work out which is the "real" one. Is the land Abi finds herself in at the end the same as the one she started in, or did she form it to suit her own needs? I don't know. Perhaps, as Abi thinks, it doesn't really matter...