The morning passed uneventfully for Caewen.
She walked along the thin and grey-brown stretch of dirt that marked itself upon the land, curling over the brows of hills and dipping through valleys. The countryside showed signs of pasturing and cropping–old drystone walls and hedgerows laid out in straggly lines–but there were few enough kine or sheep, and fewer cottages. No hint of any tower-house or fortalice crept up on prominent hilltops. The farther Caewen went, the more the land felt like an in-between place, a no-man’s land where one governance had frayed away to nothing before the next could assert itself.
Once the rather unpleasant Matty Nutch was behind her by some hours, Caewen finally started to relax in her stride and enjoy the long rolling sweep of each step, the crisp air against her skin, the constant noise-speckle of birdsong. It was a calm, low-energy sort of enjoyment. A plain, on-the-surface sort of joy. It took Caewen some moments of reflection to realise that she felt more in the moment than she had in a long time. The part of her that had been distracted by imaginings and daydreams, with idle plans, anticipations and trepidations, all of this was quiet. Her capacity to feel these things felt dulled or gone away entirely.
It was a strange experience, both freeing and concerning in its unfamiliarity.
Sometime around noon, a shadow passed over her, and Caewen looked up to see the spread white-and-glacial wings of a creature floating away eastward. Where it had come from, she could not guess, but it seemed to be following the road. She experienced a cold feeling, shivering itself down into her spine, and prickling into the small of her back and the pit of her stomach in equal measure.
The thing had come upon her too swiftly. Hiding was not likely to do much good. She saw it twist its neck and fix one of its big black eyes on her. Then it coiled itself up into a rising spiral, and soared away, soon vanishing behind the nearest treeline. Caewen was certain she had seen a rider on its back.
She considered moving off the road. The beast had given her an unpleasantly cold sensation as it passed.
“Tssch. That was her, you know.”
She paused, wondering how she had not immediately known the same. “My shadow.”
“Yes. She rides a regal beast and goes hither and thither. You trudge on the ground. Tsch. Tsk. I don’t mean to compare, but she might be making the better of things.”
“Well, we shall see.” She continued on her way, barely breaking stride.
“You’re not going to leave the road?” asked Fetch. “We could cut across the pine woods, just there. They are dark and pleasant, and full of resin. Even a dragonish beast might have difficulty smelling you.”
“No.” She had to think why she didn’t feel the fear that she ought to. “I will face whatever I must face. Better sooner than later.”
“Better alive than dead,” countered Fetch. He said nothing more, though he did curl up in the satchel, then set about occupying himself by mewling and hissing with a slightly self-pitying air.
Caewen lost track of how much longer she walked before she started to feel that same sense of cold otherness and wrongness creeping into her fingertips. Her lips tingled. She squinted into the bright light that sparked against shining green leaves and the wet-dabs of scattered rain-puddles.
“Tssssch,” whispered Fetch, meaningfully, but Caewen kept up her pace, coming over a hill and there stopped to look on the scene before her.
A little way beyond the foot of the next slope a pavilion had been erected. It was a silken affair, dyed in the blues and greys of soft shadows. Before the tent a figure in a resplendent dress lounged in some sort of chair. Behind her two men stood. Guards perhaps or maybe servants? Their postures were attentive and alert, and they were armed with longswords at their belts. Behind the tent lazed three draig. One was a large white and silver beast, presumbly the same that had flown over earlier. Curled up near its belly, like kittens beside a mother cat, were two smaller, greyer and more drab companions. These two looked more like the draig that had been at the Battle of Owls and Ghosts. She wondered if the two attendants were Sorthemen, but thought perhaps not. There was something about their thin delicate frames and milk-white skin that even from a distance did not look like the grey skinned and steely Sorthe she had previously met.
The tent, beasts and persons were arranged across the road so that there would be no easy way to go around them without being seen. A large sward of short, cropped grass spread north and south.
There seemed nothing for it but to proceed as calmly and as carefully as possible.
Caewen walked down the sloping road, leaning back a little, counter to the incline to steady herself. She was aware of the soles of her boots skidding on gravel and pressing for purchase against nodules on the road, even as she could feel the eyes of the woman and her retainers on her. They watched her as she approached, and she looked at them in turn. Soon enough Caewen found herself looking at her own reflection, sitting there sprawled on a golden field-chair. The sight of her own face caught in Caewen’s throat, just a little, but enough to notice. Shadow-Caewen’s dress was a mass of rippling folds and elegant drapery, so that it looked as if she were wearing a garment of molten glass stained in silver and white. A spirit of some sort crept about her lap, and she stroked its neck idly. It was snowy and feral looking, and gave off the same aura of cunning that Fetch emanated.
The two men were dressed in armour of a silvery white that matched everything else. They were clearly not Sorthe. Their skin was as white as snow. Their eyes were black and foxlike. Down upon their backs and hanging either side of their necks cascaded long locks of dead straight hair that was as glossy and dark as polished obsidian. Small touches of ice fumed and crackled at their feet. One of them went to collect something and where he walked the grass was frozen.
Caewen arrived without being greeted and without greeting. She and her shadow eyed each other across a gap of a few feet that might as well have been an abyss.
At last, Shadow Caewen blinked her eyes, yawned, stretched, and said in a voice as soft as darkness. “Welcome. Will you sit awhile? Eat and drink? We have enough to spare.”
“And be poisoned? Or drugged?”
Laughter rang clear and crystalline from a throat that was so much more elegant, flawless and smooth that Caewen’s own sun-roughened neck. “Why would I hurt you, my Other? You are mine and I am yours. I do not want you harmed. I but want you back. Rejoined and remade.”
“But with you as the master, I expect.”
A smile like a serpent coiled over her lips. “Of course. Should not the more masterful be the master? You are dutiful, my Other. And deeply earnest. But there is nothing in you that has the ambition to lead or master anything, let alone yourself. Or me.” The smile did not fade, but grew in its self-assurance. She saw Caewen flicking suspicious glances at the two retainers and their belted swords. “Oh, they are no threat. The Men-of-the-Rime are loyal to our master and lover. They do as I bid, for he has instructed them to be so bound to me.”
One of the men leaned low, close to Shadow Caewen’s ear, and spoke to her quietly. When he opened his mouth, Caewen saw that his teeth were sharp, like a foxes. His voice was inhuman too. It was not full of distinct words, but more akin to wind whispering and singing over bare, storm-sculpted rocks.
Shadow Caewen laughed. “Yes,” she said. “My shadow is a wee slip of a thing. Fragile, indeed.”
“Your shadow?” said Caewen, snorting. “You forget who is the shadow between us?”
“Do I?” said Shadow Caewen. She lit her eyes intensely upon Caewen. “Are you so certain? If I was the shadow once, am I that now? In the end, who is shadow and who is solid might be more fluid than you imagine. The more thin and joyless and without hope you grow, the more real I will be. The more sleek and joyful and full of hope I become, the more faint and translucent you will be. If I am not already Caewen, if you are not already the shadow, soon enough, this will be the truth of it. You know this, I think, my shadow.”
Caewen shook her head, but had nothing to say. She looked at the ground, furrowed her brow, frowned.
But Shadow Caewen spoke on. “Do not think me cruel. Do not think that I have no love for you. I deeply love you as I love myself, for you are myself. I want you to join back to me in happiness and acquiescence. Already, I am caring for you, helping and aiding. That nasty man, the magician of the hamlet. He was unkind to you.”
Caewen looked up, suddenly and with a sickening worry in her chest, beating just below the skin. “Why? What have you done?”
Another glorious smile rose and shone. “What have I done? No more than he has done all his miserable life.” She considered her fingernails, examining them as if looking for chips or flaws. “I was unkind to him. That is all. And it was no more than he deserved. In this, I think you ought to agree.”
“I do not.”
“Ah, and there is the thin, bleached out morality of my shadow. We shall be wonderful dancers together once we are joined back into a single soul. Though, I shall have to discipline certain aspects of us. That fool morality, for one.” She gestured then to the men, and one of them brought out a silver jug and two spindly goblets. Into these he poured a liquid that looked and smelled like wine except that it was the colour of sea foam. In silence, he handed one to Shadow Caewen. She took it gracefully and said, “Thank you.” He offered the other to Caewen, holding it within her reach to take. “Please,” said Shadow Caewen. “Take it. Drink and feel the warmth and the chill of it. It is a delightful and rare draught. And it will loosen the mind and the tongue. For we have so very much to discuss, you and I, we two who are in truth the one and the same.”