Wonderful. Even if I wanted help, I’d managed to make it so I wouldn’t get any.
That seemed to be how every cautionary tale began, and I was surprised I was still falling for it. But a year into magic really wasn’t a lot of time to learn all the intricacies.
I slipped a hand into my pocket and curled my fingers around one of Twobble’s pebbles. The rough little edge of it dug into my palm, grounding me in the words I could imagine him saying. It would probably be a complaint of some sort.
The shadow paused halfway down the alley, flattening itself against a doorway with a cracked iron knocker. For one breath, I thought it would slip under the door, but then it pulled away and darted forward again.
In Shadowick, some doors were avoided even by shadows. Good to know.
As I moved past it, the knocker lifted on its own and tapped once against the door.
I froze, but nothing else happened until the shadow mark along my shoulder prickled with awareness, moving slowly down to my hip. It had been doing that more and more since the pendant left me, and I didn’t love any part of it.
As I kept moving, I saw barely a hint of the shadow before the alley opened onto a smaller street, not visible from the main part of the village.
This one curved downward between buildings with shuttered windows and soot-stained brick. Clotheslines hung overhead with dark garments clipped neatly in rows, and I was certain they’d never dry.
I heard a little bell chime somewhere down the street, and silence followed.
I glimpsed a piece of the shadow ahead as it moved faster. I followed, determined not to let it slip away. After all, I’d sent Barlen away just for the opportunity to sneak off.
A narrow shop sat on the corner with jars stacked in the window. Pale powders filled jars in one column while dried roots and herbs filled another.
The sign above the door had been painted over so many times I couldn’t read the original name, but the newest lettering said Remedies in flaking silver script, and I noticed the curtain moved.
Just a little bit.
I pretended not to notice and carried on as the shadow twisted around a lamppost and shot across the street.
I hurried after it, nearly tripping over a broken cobblestone that had lifted from the road. When my hand brushed the wall of another building to steady myself, the shadow mark flared.
A flash of memory struck fast enough to steal my breath as I saw children running down this street with ribbons in their hands and lanterns strung overhead while music played.
And laughter.
But darkness snapped over the image, and the street returned to its current state with locked doors, thick fog, and curtains shifting as people watched.
I stared at the cobblestones beneath my boots and gave myself a second to think.
Shadowick had not always been like this, thick with dread and doom curled into fog and cobblestones. Something wanted me to see the way Shadowick had been.
I looked up to see the shadow waiting near the mouth of another alley, pulsing faintly against the ground.
It was the shadow…
But the shadow slipped away, taunting me to follow it, so I went down another street and another, while I lost track of the number of lefts and rights.
It felt like the village was folding around me with each step as streets narrowed and widened before turning into themselves, and the fog climbed higher.
I spotted a candlemaker with no candles in the window, just a sign creaking in the wind next to a tailor with empty mannequins turned toward the walls.
Everything existed, but nothing functioned.
It was as if the village had learned to breathe shallowly so that nothing would notice it was alive.
The shadow veered right, moving beneath an archway where old vines hung limp, and I ducked through after it and found myself in a courtyard as the fog thinned.
At the center stood a dry fountain shaped like a woman holding a bowl to the sky. Her face had been worn smooth by time or deliberate hands. I noticed the bowl in her arms wascracked straight through the middle. I walked over and studied the black roots that had pushed up between the stones around the fountain. It reminded me of the roots back at the compound.
