Aisling Read online

  Aisling

  Nicole Delacour

  Aisling by Nicole Delacour

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used.

  AISLING

  Copyright © 2020 Nicole Delacour

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  Chapter One

  The day began like any ordinary day. Two Jessica Goulds woke and went about the same morning schedule they’d had since arriving home. They ate cereal with milk for breakfast before heading upstairs. A few goodbyes were called down as the rest of the family went off to work. Stripping, both Jessicas got into the shower and began washing as they thought completely different thoughts about the day ahead. While one would be doing thesis research for the remainder of the day, the other would not be able to maintain its post much longer.

  Its post as Jessica Gould’s Aisling had begun only seventeen years ago which was three years short of Jessica’s twenty years. An odd collection of circumstances had brought the two together although the human Jessica Gould remained oblivious. When the human looked in the mirror, she only saw a reflection. She didn’t see the Aisling looking back. Her ignorance wasn’t unique. In fact, it was a reality which made the Aislings’ job possible. If humanity realized something was always with them – always watching, the panic would destroy the carefully maintained normalcy the Aislings fostered. Much had changed since the Aisling had been created. Some days, it longed for the ease with which it had once lived.

  Aislings hid silently in the second dimension only visible through reflections and tricks of light. They stretched as shadows beneath and above and around. Any strange occurrences were readily explained as humans commonly did. Two shadows were blamed on the light. Sometimes, it truly was the light, and the second Aisling would be an older one not yet reassigned. Most would pass on content in their service. Some – in love with their duty, the core world, and humanity – would be foolish. They would fight the original Aisling in hopes of commandeering a post. The original Aisling would almost always win. The connection between them and their human ward made them too strong. The only difficult part was hiding the conflict from their ward.

  However, there were the rare few who appeared as a second shadow when there was no light. Those daring few came and fought in desperation. Aislings had little else to their beings aside from their duty. They were born to protect their wards. They were born to ensure the core world was safe. The outcome – like before – was often failure, or death of both the original Aisling and the ward, but the other Jessica was not a usurper. It had been an Aisling who had been reassigned numerous times. It – unlike its brethren – was important. Not for its duty but for its knowledge. An unfortunate state for an Aisling.

  While others guarded a single human, it had guarded dozens. It lived long before humans forgot what they possessed. A time when humans knew what they truly owned in the worlds that blanketed the core beneath. They had presented it with tokens to ensure its loyalty though it needed none. Aislings were not made for such knowledge. While the rest of its kind faded beside trees, mountains, and dirt, it marched from one ward to the next. There had been too many Aislings dying in recent years as the war between the outer dimensions escalated, and it was unable to fight beside its peers knowing what it did. The Compass had given it new orders, and it had taken a place as a second shadow of a three-year-old girl. It had been strange to be in such a tiny form, but it had conformed, and when the time came, its millennia of experience had allowed it to easily overpower a new Aisling less than four years.

  In Jessica Gould’s shadow, it had guarded the child hiding in plain sight while its brothers died. The girl – Jess – was not meant to be important. She was meant to be happy – to live long and quietly. Her Aisling watched her struggle with thoughts that leaked between them: ideas of lives others had lived. The books of these lives would never be published. The Compass would silence her at every turn though she would never know. When ideas of ancient scientists leaked into the child’s brain, they were silenced by eerie whispers given to those around her by other Aislings. Eventually, the child settled into being accomplished within reason, and the other felt safe.

  That morning was truly not common. As Jess scrubbed at her toes, she heard something drop and an odd sort of echo that interrupted the water yet didn’t. She looked up only to freeze in shock. She glanced behind her cautiously and saw no one there which made it all the more peculiar her reflection on the wet shower wall was being attacked. A tall man choked her reflection, and though their minds had quickly grown accustomed to one another, the Aisling had never formed a physical connection strong enough, so Jess stood awkwardly unharmed.

  Jessica had no idea what to do. She swatted her arm around where the other person should have been, but her reflection’s attacker didn’t notice. Poking at the reflected face, she grew frustrated as her actions did nothing but blur the image. She turned the hose on it, but the image only blurred again. Jessica and the other her made eye contact then for the first time that day. In a reckless moment, they moved without thinking. Human hand met Aisling’s. The lights flickered. At the same time, Jessica threw a bottle of shampoo through the divide to hit her reflection’s attacker in the face. The water paused as the lights turned off completely.

  A voice commanded: “Blur the image!”

  A strange epiphany flooded over Jess chilling her to the core. Mirrors – she’d always hated them. The memory flooded back. A ghost she had gladly forgotten. Ignorant of Jess’s shock, the Aisling moved. Tiny pieces of what felt like dice fell into Jess’s hand as she swept the hose across and blurred the image completely. Turning off the water, Jessica leapt from the shower and dried off as she duck below the bathroom mirror and headed into her room. She pulled on underwear and jeans letting the towel drop fully as she clasped her bra. She pulled her black T-shirt over her head grabbing a zip-up hooded olive green sweatshirt and the Swiss army knife her father had given her. All the while, she couldn’t help but see a reflection in the window panes. The two Aislings fought still although she could not recognize either as her own.

  Her mind raced while she shoved her feet into sneakers without untying them, but she calmed it with rigid intent knowing panic would do little to assist her situation. Before she could consider her options in any depth, she heard a voice in the gurgling water of the small fountain on her dresser, “Just run!”

  She flew down the stairs and threw the door open only to slam it tight behind her. The words, strange and too deep, echoed within the crevices of her mind. Running down the street, she did her best not to glance down at the shadows following behind more like a centipede than her own form. Her thoughts blended one into the next. Without a clear idea of where she was headed, Jess kept running. Today was the day that Jessica Gould met her Aisling. It was an unfortunate sort of day.

  Chapter Two

  Early morning dew covered the small park. Puddles lined the sidewalk up until the large fountain standing at the center. Whether guided by another’s will or moving without any rationality, Jessica stopped there over three miles from her home. Water bled from her hair into the back of her sweatshirt. She gasped for breath, and spinning in a circle, she sought an enemy who had never been there. A small circle of water collected in a divot behind her. While she was disinclined to approach the huge mirror of the fountain’s surface, she leaned slowly over the small reflect
or.

  “Are you a bit calmer now?” her face asked shifting from one skin tone to the next like a mood ring.

  Her heart thudded, but she didn’t scream. Standing straight, she looked left and right slowly before crouching down tentatively. “How are you talking to me?”

  “I take that as a no.” She saw herself sigh. The water rippled, and a boy stood staring back then an old man then her reflection again. “Let’s sum up because we don’t have time for this panic.”

  “I think we have some time for this panic!” Jess retorted darkly.

  The other sneered. She’d never seen the expression on her face before. Between the dry dullness of her reflected eyes and the minute differences in the way her reflection held itself when not copying her, Jess was sure she had to be dreaming. This was impossible.

  “No.” Her newly independent reflection scoffed. “We don’t. I’m an Aisling – you’re a human. You live in the core world; I exist in the second dimension. Dimensions are like onions.”

  “Or ogres,” she grumbled darkly and glowered over her shoulder at her shadow who had its hands on its hips and stood straight while she crouched.

  “Everything has a reflection and shadow. Aislings act as protectors for the core world. We have to find a safe place for those stones I gave you.” She lifted her hand, and the other nodded sharply. “Those stones open portals between the dimensions. Can’t have that. Bad things get through and dead things abound, yes?”

  “No comprendo.” She kicked the puddle and stomped over to the fountain.

  Her hands patted at her pockets double checking on her knife before finding an overstretched black elastic in her sweatshirt pocket. Wringing out her hair, Jess pointedly didn’t look down at the water. Her fingers parted her hair into three groups then blended them together. Jess repeated this two more times before winding them together into a braid. Pulling her watch from her other pocket, she strapped it on her left wrist.

  The face stared up with a body now attached. Its arms were folded. “Don’t be smart with me. We’re a team here. The core is locked, but the outer dimensions aren’t so neatly separated. You have the keys, but as long as we’re connected, there is a bypass to you through me. We’re going to work together to get them to somewhere safe. Got it?” Before she could reply, the reflection threw up a hand. “No need. You have got it because you don’t have a choice in this!”

  “Fine.”

  This wasn’t the sort of fine that her Aisling wanted. It was the fine of a person who had just become rather certain they were insane and would soon be turned into a raving lunatic if they hadn’t already become one. The visions were too dull though she squinted as though blinded by their brightness when flashes came all at once. Three-years-old– listening to her sister sing her to sleep - the last night touching hands with her shadow where it felt like more than habit. Waking to pain, she had watched in paralyzing agony as two shadows had thrown each other around her. There hadn’t been much to know or think when she had watched a strange form slit her throat in shaded puppetry. She hadn’t been able to remain silent then. Now, she still couldn’t swallow all the poison down.

  “I know what you did to her. I saw what you did to her,” Jessica grumbled at her own shifting face in the fountain. “What am I even supposed to call you? You killed me!” Her hand ran across the slashing scar she had never had. “You killed me. Slit my…I can’t breathe.” Ducking her head between her knees, Jess gasped for air.

  “I don’t have a name. We are not given names like humans are. Aislings are meant to be hive-minded guardians. We are assigned to a single person and die, or we are eternally reassigned until we know too much or are too weak.” The reflection sighed and ran its hand through its hair although Jess’s hand never moved. Only then did Jess realize that while her hair was braided, the other’s hair remained down. “The Compass deemed I should hide within your reflection. You weren’t supposed to be someone of great importance. Your fate was to live a mediocre life and die of old age. However, my influence seems to have been greater than the Compass believed it would be. I’m so sorry.”

  “‘So sorry,’” Jess mocked. Those words weren’t the Aisling’s words to say. They simply served to remind her how invasive the other’s existence was. “You’re such a…I don’t even have a word for how wrong this is.” Inhaling slowly, Jess leaned back to stare up at the sky. “What’s done is done. Who was your first person? You can take their name.”

  “Sudās. I would prefer not to assume the name of a dead man if it makes any difference to you.” Despite its words, its face transformed into a middle aged man with black hair and red-brown skin. The eyes were all that remained the same through the transformation. “The matter of separating your identity from mine should be the least of all things on our mind. We need to get the keystones to a place without reflection.”

  “Can’t I just stick them in a box? No mirrors or shining surfaces in there,” Jess replied, but the man in the water shook his head.

  His voice was far deeper than hers when he spoke. “It must be without shadows as well. Utter darkness may have no shape, but there are still separations between the shades.”

  “Fantastic.” Standing, Jessica moved away from the fountain combing her fingers through her hair until she could plait it into a French braid.

  “Wait! What are you doing?” The water called, but she refused to listen to it. She had no desire to deal with her unimportance and the apologies of a reflection. “Jessica! Jessica Anne Gould! Get back here this instant!”

  Jess took the stones from her pocket and walked forward until she looked down into another puddle. “You want these?” She held them out towards the other’s face. “Guard them yourself. I’m unimportant, right? So whatever I do must be insignificant. Like this.” Her fingers opened. The stones tumbled down. They slowed midair. Winds silenced. Tiny pieces of ether drifted down as if through a vacuum – propelled only by the initial push. A breath expanded through her chest as they fell.

  Her reflection screamed struggling against its watery confinement. “What are you doing? You’ll kill us all! Catch those! Catch those this –.”

  With her opposite hand, Jess caught them and moved on, “Go away. I’ll find a way to destroy these on my own.”

  “Destroy? Who said anything about destroying them? We need to not destroy them. They have to exist. If we destroyed them then…” Though her reflection kept speaking, Jess couldn’t hear it.

  Weariness ached in her joints. Her mind fogged in discontent. Named or nameless, the human tore herself bit by bit away from the duality she’d unconsciously accepted. Her shadow – once a mere abstraction of light – followed of its own accord. Alien and cold with a species separated from hers, Jess watched the shade skitter out of the corner of her eye. The other’s movements stumbled, shifted, and stretched with every step. On the ground, her shadow was no longer a woman. An obviously male figure took her place. Its height towered over her, and its flat chest stood out more than she might have suspected. Short hair sprang straight from the roots atop its head. With a nose flatter to his face than her aquiline one, there was no denying they weren’t the same.

  Though her thoughts raced, her expression remained neutral. Jess paused in her step. “You’re a voyeur. A species of stalkers.”

  The shadow scoffed. Its arms crossed, vanishing into its torso. “A species of guardians – no more interested in your life than a programmer might be in a single pixel on a screen.” Impatiently, the shade tapped its foot, tearing the sole away from hers. “We have places to be. Get a move on!”

  “Where exactly do we have to be? And how are you talking?” She lifted her arms into the air, and his arms moved to his hips. The pronoun shifted in her mind though the otherness remained.

  “None of that!” the shadow commanded. “First, we need a safe way to travel with those. We can get a pouch or some little bag from that store down on Main Street.”

  “That’s five miles away. If I had kno
wn we were running for miles, I would have taken a car.” Jess turned towards town and grimaced. “My thesis is due next month. I don’t have time for this.”

  “The whole of the universe rests on your shoulders, and you’re thinking about some stupid English thesis? Creative writing – ha! I have never heard of a more useless major!” he proclaimed and stormed ahead of her. When his feet moved past her own, she let out a horrified gasp.

  “If you can just leave, why don’t you take them!” she called out after him.

  Slinking back to her, he reattached himself to her feet. “I can’t drag you, so let’s get moving. Main Street! Pouch then hiding place!”

  Rolling her eyes, she trudged forward.

  Chapter Three

  Jess picked up one pouch then the next. They all seemed the same, but a soft hissing noise rose up from her shadow with each one she lifted. The Aisling grew excessively violent in his hissing when she moved towards darker leather and away from the nearly see-through organza. The kohl-eyed flower child behind the counter stared darkly up from her magazine, but Jess stared resolutely down and moved back towards the shimmering satchels towards which the shade gesticulated.

  “I don’t have money…” she whispered louder than she had intended, but the woman was still staring down at the latest Cosmo quiz.

  The shadow mimed placing an absurdly pink satchel into its pocket and running. Lifting her eyes, Jess wondered how low she would sink. She ran her hand over the pink monstrosity trying to psych herself up for her first intentional theft only to have her stomach betray her. A groaning gurgle erupted from her gut and echoed in the small odds and ends shop. Embarrassed, she wrapped her hand tightly around the bag and looked up only to see that the cashier was no longer at her post but stepping into the back completely oblivious to her.