Overhead, the moon sways through all eight of her phases in the time it takes for me to take my first step.
It’s magic and magical.
It’s primal. Ancient beyond simple human understanding. I have lived twenty-seven years in a jungle of concrete, of loud noises and angry people. And never, not once have I felt such profound balance. Such a shift of peace.
I don’t remember letting Malakar’s hand go, but I’m moving alone through trees as thick as ten men and so tall, I can’t see their tops. I’m stepping through moss and over smooth stones like I’ve been here a million times. All around me, the worldhums with a melody as old as the earth itself and I close my eyes as it plays across each bone with loving harmony.
When I turn at last to find my boys, they’re there. All three of them. Far enough to let me explore but close enough to watch over me. But they no longer have their faces. No longer have flesh and substance. They cling to the shadows, to the vacuum of space between trees as if hiding. I would miss them entirely if not for twin pinpricks of light where their eyes used to be.
“Why won’t you come closer?” I ask.
“We don’t want to frighten you,” one whispers as low as a breeze.
I narrow my eyes and move back to where they stand, protected by the forest.
“I won’t be scared. Please let me see you.”
A second of silence follows before the darkness shifts and they emerge.
Tall. Taller than they’d been in their human forms and draped in dark cloaks with the hoods pulled low.
“No, I want to see you. All of you,” I correct.
The hesitation is palpable but long fingers unfurl from billowing sleeves and hook into dark folds. I watch, mesmerized as the articles are shed and I’m face to face with ... nothing. They simply vanish into the night.
I blink and take a step back. My gaze swings wildly over the places they’d been seconds ago.
“Here, little one.”
Something brushes a lock of hair off my shoulder, and I turn my head.
He glimmers at the corner of my eye. A faint whisper of movement no more than a trick of the light. He’s gone when I face forward.
“You’re a ghost?” I guess.
“Shadows,” he corrects. “I suppose some have mistaken us for spirits.”
Shades,I think.
Still, I put out a hand and feel my way forward. I barely make it a step before my fingers slip through ... nothing, but something. Like smoke, but nearly tangible.
“Would you like us to wear a face?” the one looming before me asks from somewhere in the tendrils.
I cock my head. “Yours.”
I may not be able to decipher their expressions, but I can almost feel their exchanged glances.
“It might be too soon,” the one on the left whispers with the raspy hiss of sandpaper being rubbed together. “It will only upset you.”
The implication that they either think I’m too weak to take it or that I would ever think them so hideous only prickles my temper.
My blanket slips open down the front with the irate placement of my hands on my hips.
“I’ll be the one to decide what upsets me. I want to see you.”
They don’t seem to be breathing, but I swear they collectively sigh. Still, no one argues. I watch the swirling wisps congeal and shift. They pull back with the reservation I feel coming off each of them.
I may not be the biggest fan of horror, and gore on its own turns my stomach queasy, but these three are mine. Maybe that sounds insane. Unrealistic, short-sighted and delusional. But I am bound to them, to this place, in a way I don’t think has words.
