Every time Taru thought she’d lost her extra passenger, she’d turn to check and suddenly there he was, watching. If she looked directly at him he’d begin whispering awful things. Sometimes swallowed by his words, she’d ask herself how she’d survived up until this point given how utterly useless she was. Other times she had the strength to look away. Unfortunately, the darker it got, the latter moments became fewer and farther between.

One time, as she tried to stop thinking about a particularly nasty tirade, a flickering orange light caught her eye. Both blocked by and lighting a clutch of rod-straight trees around it was a campfire. Between here and there was a jagged gorge that dropped through darkness into gods knew where, meaning reaching that warmth was impossible. Looking ahead, she found Bhaltair already had their eye on the light. Looking back for Ruskin would have been dangerous: the path was narrow enough that she could easily lose her footing and the drop was steep enough that she had little hope of surviving it. Instead, she concentrated on how Bhaltair’s hand kept darting up to their neck and ear.

Some way along the narrow path came a tree thick and long enough to bridge the gorge. 

“Are we all good with this?” Bhaltair asked as they peered ahead along the path. 

“I’d rather not,” muttered Ruskin, inching towards the path ahead.

“Well,” Bhaltair said, turning back to him with a tight smile, “you’re out of luck: this path runs into a cliff. It’s the tree, the drop, or back the way we came.”

As Taru followed Bhaltair across, she mostly succeeded not looking down and filling the darkness with her imagination. When she didn’t, the world turned, dragging her down into churning depths through gnawing teeth.

Ruskin’s hand landed heavy on her shoulder. “Hey,” he said, his hand warm through Lady Hennessy’s shirt. “Look where you want to go, not where you don’t.”

She met his overly bright smile with wide, blinking eyes, and tried to offer one in return. Ignoring the pale shape she suddenly remembered in the corner of her vision, Taru turned forward. Looking where she wanted to go and not where she didn’t, she headed towards where Bhaltair was waiting on the other side.

As the pair waited for Ruskin to join them, Taru scoured the darkness for any sign of the campfire she had seen. 

“Do you think there might be someone else here?” she asked, and Bhaltair shrugged.

“I heard voices,” they said.

Taru chewed on her bottom lip as she glanced around their face. “With your ears?” she muttered, as Ruskin landed beside her with an,

“Oof!”

Bhaltair stared at her.

“It’s a bit flatter over this side, isn’t it?” Ruskin remarked lightly as Bhaltair looked away.

“Very,” they hummed.

Taru went back to looking for a dot of orange.

“I doubt it’s going to last long,” Ruskin said, dusting off their shins, “if the last mile or so is anything to go by. There were times I was thanking the gods we were on even footing, then we’d end up climbing down another ravine or up another mountain. Played havok with my knees.”

“I doubt we’ve climbed any real mountains,” Taru tried, watching Bhaltair shift away from the pair of them in the corner of her eye.

“Maybe not,” Ruskin agreed airily, “but my knees feel like we’ve bested twenty.”

“All the effort, none of the glory,” Bhaltair joked half-heartedly, eyes darting over what, to Taru, was an indecipherable landscape of shadow.

Ruskin laughed as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

“This way,” Bhaltair said, and started walking. 

By now, Taru knew not to question them. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Bhaltair’s impressive senses made Taru and Ruskin fairly dependent on them. She may not have had any other choice but that didn’t mean she liked it. There was something upsetting about the way Bhaltair could just walk off—just like now—and not look back to check if either of them were following. Ruskin was, of course, but Taru hadn’t taken a step. Not yet. She was, in fact, entertaining the idea of not doing.

Ruskin paused, his shoulders hunched.

Taru started walking before he looked back.

-~*~-

The warmth of the campfire, unlike its light, couldn’t reach Taru. The scratching and scurrying sound, however, had become so intense that she wanted to bury a stick in her ears and dig out the thing that made it.

Instead, she stayed admirably still, hunched in the bracken between Bhaltair and Ruskin as the three of them watched stilted shadows search what remained of two or three travellers. A pot bubbled above the fire; some bedrolls lay intact, though disturbed; a sideways toppled pot mug oozed soup into the ground by a flutter-paged book. Whoever had been here had beat a hasty retreat, it seemed. Taru wondered if Bhaltair really had heard them. She wondered if they had heard the commotion, too. Glancing aside, she found Bhaltair’s eyes darting over all the items, searching. A swish of fabric drew her attention back to camp, where a shadow lifted—actually put its hands on and lifted—a bedroll into the air. They tilted sideways in two movements, hanging their head as they looked underneath.

Bhaltair grabbed her arm and shook their head before jerking it back the way they’d come. Taru nudged Ruskin’s knee with her wrist to pass on the message. One by one they crept away.

-~*~-

Bhaltair had been silent since the empty camp, their shoulders as impassable as any cluster of thorny brambles that had jumped out into their path over the hours or days the three of them had been walking. They’d been so silent that when they finally called back, Taru jumped.

“Rusk.”

Catching her breath, Taru glanced at the back of Ruskin’s tilting head.

“Aye?”

“This village you grew up in, is it nearby? Or is this another long journey from home, for you?”

“Eh… no. It’s nearby,” Ruskin admitted, shoulders shifting strangely. 

“Is that right,” Bhaltair didn’t ask. Instead, they slowed until they walked alongside Ruskin, their attention trained on something up ahead. “How near?”

“Well… uh… just outside Denlinne, actually. Not too far at all.”

“Just outside?” Bhaltair asked smoothly, their eyes wide as they landed on Ruskin: wide and disingenuous. “So you come in here often?”

“N-no,” Ruskin said, swallowing. “This is a sacred place to the alfar of Denlinne, and though I’ve never personally had contact with your people in any great number, I have a great respect for you. I would never normally cross the boundaries set down by your peoples. But the situation is dire.”

“So you say,” Bhaltair drawled.

“I sought permission from the border trees. I wasn’t turned away.”

“Of course you did.” Bhaltair stopped walking, and so did Ruskin. Taru slowed to a stop a few paces away, curious as to what was happening and worried that she knew exactly. “Fairweather is an interesting name. Where’s it from?”

“M-my, uh… my village.”

Bhaltair shifted closer to him. “And what’s your village called, Ruskin?” they muttered.

“Does it matter?” Taru tried, stepping closer.

“You tell me,” Bhaltair said, but they were still looking at Ruskin.

“Well… what it’s called… that depends on who you ask.”

“I’m asking you.”

“Then… it’s called—”

“Now’s not the time for this,” Taru insisted just as Ruskin said,

“Dachaigh. Or… Bluff.”

Taru was ready to get between the two and stop whatever was about to happen, which she had assumed was nothing good. However, she was stopped by that second word: the name of a place in a different world with different people and smells and tastes and feelings.

“Bluff?” she breathed as Bhaltair lunged forward. They grabbed Ruskin with two fists in the front of his shirt, their teeth bare and flashing white.

“You’ve been killing my people!”

“I have not!” Ruskin cried, struggling against Bhaltair’s grip. “I’ve never killed another person in all my life! I’m an apothecary!”

“Your people have crossed the boundaries lay down by our ancestors and have been indiscriminately ripping down ancestor trees. You dare step foot in the most sacred part of our forest when you’ve been profiting off our deaths?!”

Ruskin’s eyes were wide with horror. “Gods! I had no idea, Bhaltair, I promise.”

Bhaltair shoved him back with a snarl of disgust. “Don’t you say my name. You’re the reason this place is how it is, you know? You and your people. I ought to—”

Their fist jerked up nearly as quickly as Taru leapt in front of it, hands up and face stern. “Quit it,” she demanded. “I know you’re angry, but this isn’t gonna fix owt.”

Bhaltair’s fist hovered in the air, badly shaped for punching (they’d likely break their thumb, and that’s only if they hit with any force), before they grunted a restrained noise and let it drop. “I guess we do all have our secrets."

And before she took any control over herself, she was saying, "Yeah, we do, don't we?"

Bhaltair’s eyes narrowed at her. "What's that tone about?" Likewise, their tone was ice.

Taru straightened and looked straight into their fathomless eyes. "I just think it's odd how that shadow always knows where we are."

"That... it's a shadow. This whole place is shadows. I'm sure the other wee shadows probably tell it what's going on."

"You sure?"

"What you getting at? Out with it."

Taru shrugged. "It just looks a bit... you-like, dunnit?"

Something scurried under the detritus at Taru’s feet.

Bhaltair’s chin tucked in affront. "Me-like?"

"Yeah," Ruskin said, turning on Bhaltair with a wagging finger, "that big one. Stares at you a bit much, eh?"

"I… I hadn't noticed."

"How long exactly have you been shadow-torn?" Ruskin asked as something scratched at the nearby trees.

"I'm not."

"Come on, Bhaltair,” Taru said. “We saw the scars."

Bhaltair's hand shot up to their neck. Their face screwed up in a snarl. "How dare you?!" Their expression changed immediately, Taru assumed with regret.

"Yeah, how dare he check you over to make sure you weren't dying. Totally out of order, that."

“Shh,” Bhaltair demanded suddenly, eyes darting around.

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Taru laughed coldly. “Ready to trick others into baring their weaknesses but not ready to—mrph!” Ruskin’s hand covered her mouth, hot and smelling of dirt.

That’s when she heard it, now drowning out all other noise: the clicking and whispering and smothered laughter of shadows drawing near.

“Little skvader, little skvader, come out and play.”

“Run!” Bhaltair cried.

-

  ~

     *

9-year-old Taru sat on her 11-year-old best friend’s bed and watched her pack her new leather suitcase. Sylvie’s cheeks, already darker than Taru’s, were made even darker by her excitement as she folded a new cotton nightshirt inches from where Taru’s crossed ankles bobbed unceasingly up and down.

“You’ll come back and visit, won’t you, Sylvie?”

“Of course!” Sylvie sighed. This wasn’t the first time Taru had asked. “But, as I’ve told you many times, my new name is Charlotte.”

Taru frowned. “Do you like it better than Sylvie?”

Charlotte paused and frowned. She shook her head and smiled brightly. “Well it doesn’t matter, does it? It’s what my new parents like, so that’s what I’ll be called. Charlotte Lucia Ackerant.”

Taru nibbled her bottom lip. “Right,” she said. Having a middle name put her above middle class and the -ant at the end of her new surname meant Charlotte was now zenith class working caste, the best of the best below the nobles.

“But,” Charlotte began, sitting on her suitcase to clip it closed. “Well…” She rose to standing and met Taru’s eyes for less than half a second before glancing away. She fiddled with her nails for a moment before hiding her hands behind her back.

Taru asked, “Well what?” while looking up at her expectantly.

“Well, it’s just that…” She clipped her heels together, her expression suddenly severe. “Well, I’m going to be very busy with my adoptive family, delivering my new responsibilities.”

Taru hardened her expression to stop it from changing and stared at the door behind her friend. She’d seen enough people leave the orphanage to know what was going to happen: how Charlotte would leave and never come back. But it would have been nice to keep on pretending for a bit longer. In fact, she was angry that Charlotte wasn’t continuing to pretend. She always got so angry with Taru for stopping their games of knights and dragons early, but now suddenly she was allowed to stop the game and make them both miserable? That wasn’t fair.

“I don’t know how much I’ll be allowed to visit, but I’ll try my best,” Charlotte said, and Taru’s anger simmered down. “And if they don’t let me, well I’ll sneak out and throw rocks at your window until you come out and play with me!” Charlotte beamed at Taru, her eyes strangely glossy, and Taru mustered her best smile to make her feel better.

“All right,” Taru announced, standing up from the bed. “But you have to play the dragon this time and let me play the knight.”

Charlotte rolled her eyes, then shoved her hand between them at the end of an arm so straight the elbow bent backwards. “Deal,” she said, and Taru took her hand, shaking it vigorously.

“Deal,” she laughed, and then Charlotte picked up her suitcase and smiled at her strangely one last time. Then, she left.

Taru never played knights and dragons again.

     *

  ~

-