“No,” said Caewen. “Waylay me, or do not. But do not think I will submit to you. Not now. Not ever.”
“My shadow, oh, my shadow! Listen to me. Look at me. I cannot be whole with you walking the world. And you cannot be whole with me in the world either. Why force yourself upon this road of long burden? You are thin and scared. Alone and hollow inside. And here I am, joyful and full of splendour. My life is rich with beauty. Already I have seen such marvels as you could only dream of. Give yourself up. You will become me. You will live in ceaseless wonderment and find love in the arms of a god made flesh upon the earth.”
“No,” repeated Caewen.
“No? No. You defy me and your fate, but you cannot win. My shadow, I am you. I have all your memories. I know everything you know. I am you, deeply and thoroughly. How can you defeat me? Just… all you have to do is give up. Give yourself to me. Peacefully. Wondrously. In awe of me. That is all. Just give up.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I will not. And if you know all my secrets, then you know that the King Who Sings in Winter gathers armies in wanton aggression. There is no threat from the south. The oracles are lies. The foretellings are lies. The prophecies are lies.”
This disturbed the Other Caewen. She looked away, and seemed troubled, perhaps even distressed or ashamed. “I have said this to him. He does not believe me. His soothsayers scream at me and call me a liar and a sun-born whore and worse. But he loves me. And if you were to join me and we were to be whole, then we could convince him of this. I am certain. War could be averted. Lives… so many lives, saved.”
“I do not believe you, and I think you do not believe yourself in this either.”
She looked back at Caewen. The snow-thing on her shoulders curled and crept like a wisp of hard, white mist shot with sunlight. “Alright. Perhaps I have hope, but hope is better than what you have. You are nothing but a thin shadow made of desperation.”
“Hope? Hope is all that is left to me, but do not mistake it for something fragile and bright. It is a hard, nasty little stone at the bottom of my soul that reminds me only of everything else that has been lost. What of our own home, so far away? Family? Friends?”
“You speak of Dossel?” And here the Other Caewen laughed a long, sad, sympathetic peal of laughter. It struck Caewen that she had never laughed so wildly and with so much abandon. “You speak of your brother, Tul? Of people in the village. Asheway the weaver. Ely? Or do you mean Gowth and his fat miller’s hands and greedy miller’s eyes.”
“What about Farrowly?”
“A boy? That tagalong milksop who mooned after you? What madness is this? You could share a bed with a god. But you think of him?”
“I think only of his sacrifice. And my promise.”
“Fine. Then once we are whole, we will beseech our Lord and Master and go to the Castellation of Shadows and release the boy-man from there. Who do you think laid the curse upon the place for such ill-treatment. The hand that dealt the curse, can also break it.”
Caewen hunched her shoulders. “I’ve heard that gods are jealous things. Are you so certain that your lover would so casually free a man who–“
“Who what? Say it.”
But Caewen looked at the ground. She felt small. She shuffled her feet and shifted uncomfortably. Around her the noise of blackbirds fossicking in the dry leaves made a shush-shush-shush noise.
“So be it. I see that I will have no sense from you. It would be better you would give yourself up with joy and free will. I see that the other way is needed.”
“And so you will strike me down? Or set your guards upon me?”
“Always so hasty. No. The other way is harder. A ritual is needed. The disobedient shadow that has slipped loose must be properly buried, deep, deep in the earth.”
“I will defend myself. I have arts and powers still. You know that. I can lay a fey-stroke on you or a dozen soldiers.” Her voice steeled, she added, “Try me.”
“Oh, I do know you, Caewen. I know you so well. You will get drawn into some nonsense, and save someone or other, and you will exhaust yourself down to nothing. And then I will come for you, Caewen. When you least expect it, I will come for you. And when I do, you will beg for the other, pleasant way.” She was pensive. “But I have offered that way and you have told me ‘no’, and so there is little I can do. I will cry as you are buried alive. But when it is done, your ghost will rejoin me and we will then know wholeness and be happy.”
All this time, Shadow Caewen had remained seated, but now she rose and moved closer. She reached for Caewen, and her fingers brushed Caewen’s cheek, and ran through the wild locks of her uncombed hair. “I long for you and you long for me. But we will not be apart long.”
They stood for a time, staring at each other across a gulf of silence and suspicion.
At last, the Shadow Caewen said, “Go. I have a mind to dally in the cold sun for a while. Drink some of the clear, dark wines of the northern vineyards, eat delicate pleasant morsels. You may pass. I will not delay or stop you. Now is not the right hour.”
Caewen fleetingly considered throwing a spell at her shadow and the frost-fleshed swordsmen, but knew in her heart that there was already too much power in the Shadow Caewen to be easily overthrown. And besides, what would that achieve? Like as not, they’d both be maimed or killed. Neither of them had the advantage, and both knew it.
She was about to go, but stopped and said, “I thought you would ambush me and try to take the fragment of the Old Great Spell. But, I think I see now that was a foolish fear. The finding of the other piece lies at the other end of a cold, lonely road. You do not have it in you to suffer a torturous path. And you would not want another to find the other fragment of spell, and with it the glory. Perhaps you carried away with you a freedom to luxuriate in idylls. But the iron in the soul was left with me.” She looked at Shadow Caewen out of the corner of an eye, and she saw the mirror-woman shift uncomfortably under even that fleeting gaze.
Without another word, Caewen walked away. She passed the men with their ice-white skin and long, glossy black hair. Their eyes like wet riverstones watched her go. The three Draig regarded her casually. Whether they understood anything of what had transpired, Caewen could not tell, but there was something of a keen knowingness in their eyes, so perhaps.
The trudge along the wet, brown mud road was wearying. And all the while she could feel the weight and cold power of the gaze that lay upon her back as she went.
She had gone maybe a hundred paces down the road when she heard her own voice call to her, clearer and more beautiful than Caewen had ever spoken. She stopped to listen, but did not turn around, keeping her eyes fixed on the road ahead.
“I will give you one last chance, because I love you. I love you as I love myself, as you are me. Caewen, please. Listen to me. See sense. You cannot defeat all that lies before you. You are bone-weary. You are desperate for rest. Just reach out and take that respite. The world will be better for it.” She paused. “Caewen, a person needs to want something. But look at you. You want nothing but to fix the world. That does not make you a good person, because it does not leave you with enough humanity to be a person. It makes you a good idea. Why keep pretending that you are real?”
Caewen did not answer. The words needled her, getting under her skin and sinking right down into her soul. She desperately wanted to turn around, march back and yell and argue with the Shadow Caewen until it she was the one to give up. But she also felt deep inside herself that if she went back, she would lose any argument, eventually. The Shadow Caewen was too deep and cunning in her own thoughts. She would always say what Caewen feared to think.
And so, saying nothing, thinking nothing, she walked onwards and the sense of angered power grew only more palpable behind her.
Author’s note: The reference to Farrowly and the other characters in Caewen’s home village will make more sense if you’ve read the re-written and expanded first instalment. One of the key drivers that comes out of the expanded story is that a childhood friend, Farrowly, allows himself to be trapped in a cursed castle in order to allow Caewen to go free. She promises to return and free him. This then also forms a part of her motivation to go to the moot (to search for a way to release Farrowly). I’m adding slight rewrites and additions through the other novels now so that Caewen (at least now and again) remembers Farrowly and her promise.