I pulled open the door and saw shadow.
All my life, I had heard the warning, Don’t look at the shadows too long, or a demon might look back. It made me afraid of closed-up, darkened rooms, of dimly lit mirrors, of the quietly whispering woods at night. In that moment, I realized that I had never seen shadow. I had seen objects—rooms, mirrors, the whole countryside—in the absence of light. But through this door lay nothing at all except for perfect, primal shadow that needed no object to make itself manifest. It had its own nature, its own presence, palpable and seething and alive. My eyes stung and watered as I stared at it, but I could not look away.
Then the shadow looked at me.
There was no visible change, but I staggered under the weight of perception and the knowledge I was not alone. Gasping, I grabbed the door and started to push it shut. I leaned my weight against it, but the door moved slowly, as if I were pushing it through honey. When I glanced at the slowly closing gap, I saw nothing coming through the doorway; but when I looked back at my hands, I saw from the corner of my eye a webbed mass of shadow gripping the doorframe with its tendrils.
All this had happened in complete silence. I was too terrified to scream. But when the door was nearly closed, I heard a chorus of children’s voices. It sang the tune of my favorite lullaby, but the words were wrong:
We will sing you nine, oh!
What are your nine, oh?
Nine for the nine bright shiners,
The night will snuff them out, oh.
The sound crawled over my body like a thousand cold little feet. I had been taught charms against darkness, invocations of Apollo and Hermes. But the voices nibbled the knowledge out of my mind, and I sobbed wordlessly as I struggled to push the door shut.
Eight for eight dead maidens
Dead in all the darkness, oh.
The door was almost shut now, but the pressure of the shadow pulsed against me from the other side. One tendril touched my cheek, burning cold. I choked, the air stopping in my lungs.
Six for your six senses,
Never more will feel, oh.
With a final burst of desperation, I pushed the door shut. Gasping and shuddering, I staggered back against the wall. The shadow was gone, but I still shivered, and my eyes stung with tears. When I wiped them, the tears burned icy cold on my skin. I looked at my hand.
Liquid shadow dripped across my palm.
I remembered the people dragged before my father, reduced to broken husks. I thought, This is what it was like for them.
Then I finally screamed.
They sang from all around me, a million bodiless children whisper-chanting in my ears:
Five for the symbols at your door,
Telling us your name, oh.
Four for the corners of your world,
We are always nibbling, oh.
Shadow dribbled down my face and welled up out of my skin. The shadows in the hall responded, coming alive. I wanted to claw my skin off, to gnaw the flesh from my bones, anything to get the shadows out of me. I scraped my nails down my arms, but as I raised pink welts, I heard laughter again and I remembered: these were the demons of the Gentle Lord. I’d sworn to save Arcadia from their attacks. They wanted me to destroy myself.
I could not let them win.
Three for the prisoners in this house,
We will eat them all, oh.
I tried to run, but the shadows lapped at my skin, and though my feet pounded slowly I didn’t move forward. Then the air rippled and threw me back against the wall. As the shadows swirled around me, I sank to the floor, the last strength oozing out of my body.
Two for your first and for your last,
We will be them both, oh.
I knew the final verse of the original song, and I knew with a sick certainty that they would sing it just the same, and I was sure that if I heard those final words I would be lost.
One is one and all alone
And evermore shall—
An arm wrapped around my waist. A gold ring glinted on a hand. Fire blazed at the corners of my vision.
“Children of Typhon,” Ignifex snarled, “return to thy void.”
The shadows wailed like a rusty hinge as they flowed away and crawled under the door, out into the darkness. They wailed on and on, until my throat ached and my eyes watered—and I realized that the wail came out of my throat, and my eyes were still weeping shadow. Ignifex had me pinned against the wall by my wrists; my back arched and my fingers writhed as the shadows seeped out through the pores of my skin. I wanted them gone, but it felt like my body, my entire self, was tissue paper and the shadows were shredding it as they left.
If I could crawl after them, through the door and into their perfect darkness, I would still exist. I would be their plaything forever after, but I would exist. I felt the certainty in every jagged throb of my heart, and so I bucked and writhed against Ignifex’s grip. I had to follow them. I had to.
“Nyx Triskelion,” Ignifex growled, “I command you to stay.”
The sound of my name slashed through the compulsion like a serrated knife. I slumped against the wall and went still as I watched the last shadows flow back to the door and through the cracks. In a moment they were gone.
Without the shadows, the world felt hollow and listless. The walls of the corridor were flat and still, the remaining darkness dead and powerless. My heart thudded in my ears; my skin felt at once numb and prickly. I wanted to follow them, I thought, but I couldn’t yet feel anything about the idea.
Ignifex let go of me. I blinked at his moving lips and realized he was speaking.
“Are you all right?” When I didn’t answer, he slapped my face lightly. “Listen to me! Can you speak?”
“Yes.” The word came out low and rough.
He inspected my arms. “I do believe you’ll live. Tonight.”
The tone of his voice sparked my anger back to life, and the rest of me with it. I raised my head, teeth bared—
He poked me in the forehead. “But is there any limit to your idiocy?”
“You mean my idiocy of not being told your demons are running loose in the house?” I shoved him back. “I believe that would be your fault.”
“I told you that some doors in this house were dangerous. And I tucked you into a nice, safe room for the night. It’s not my fault that you snuck out of bed.”
“You locked me in a tomb!”
“Safe and snug.” Ignifex’s voice was still light, but there was a strained note to it. “And now it’s past my bedtime.”
Abruptly I realized three things: He was wearing dark silk pajamas. He was swaying as if about to collapse. And the darkness was eating him.
Not shadows. It sounds strange, but the little dark tendrils that lapped at his skin, leaving behind red welts, were nothing like the uncanny horror of his demons. Those shadows had been alive, aware; this was simply the nighttime darkness clotting around his body, as naturally as blood clots over a wound, and burning him as acid burns skin.