Aisling Read online

  The force shook through her, but adrenaline shuddered through her soaked form. The stones slid beneath her fingers. Droplets splattered over them though their ridged surface gave strong hand holds. Her feet sought refuge and caught against the roughed cliff face where the water did not reach. Against the thundering of the falls, she hefted herself into the strange alcove behind and out of the flood. Darkness towered above and beyond her deep beneath the ground she had previously stood upon. What she had once believed to be an alcove ran deep into the earth – a hall into darkness.

  “Are you alright?” he waited for a response. She slumped against the cavern wall behind the waterfall. Light glistened through sending strange shadows about, but all those inside slept unhindered by their presence. “Jess! Are you hurt? Are you alright? Are you bleeding?”

  “I will call you dumbass, and you shall be mine.” She laughed, and though she was mocking him, he couldn’t help but to be happy at the sound.

  “That doesn’t answer the question,” he murmured softly and circled around her carefully until he shattered against the raging water.

  She rolled her eyes and poked at each bruise and scrape. “A bit of a mess, but I’m fine.”

  “Don’t joke with me. I can’t see you well in here.” Pulling back, he observed the Aislings slumbering around them. They did not stir. “You have to tell me if you’re hurt. Things are only going to get more difficult as we go. This is the safest place to rest that we’ll have for a while.”

  “There is no food. I haven’t eaten in…” Jess glanced down before sighing and removing her watch. “Well there goes that.” She set the wristwatch on the stone beside her. “I haven’t checked it since we got to Camp Greenwood, and that was - what? Like two hours ago? Three? Shit, it’s almost six. Or it is six. Twelve hours…this is bad. I’m not trained for this sort of thing, and I’m certain there is a BOLO out there with my name on it. My parents have no idea where I am, and my room looks like an abduction zone thanks to you and whoever that was. If I sleep, I won’t want to get up. I don’t need sleep. I need food.”

  “You can last a week with just water. You need rest. Drink some of the water and rest for a bit.” He curled around her carefully keeping her from the others even as they flickered in their comatose states.

  “You still need a name,” she whispered, reaching out to gulp down handfuls from the roaring water.

  “You need to sleep. I have never had a name. Aislings aren’t meant to be named.” He sheltered her from the light even as the refracted beams cut through his core projection.

  “Narcissus or Perseus?” Pulling her knees to her chest, she shifted back to face further into the cave. With the light behind her, she could watch him in broken glimpses. She leaned and rested her head against the cold stone. When he didn’t immediately reply, she repeated, “Narcissus or Perseus?” and waited.

  He did not respond to her second request any more than he’d responded to the first. The names weren’t meant to be honestly considered, so he let silence reign until her breath grew shallow and soft. Ptolemy had recognized their separations, but the man had proclaimed that he was himself and anything which reflected his face could be no other but him. They were a separated singular identity. When the man was a boy, he had called his shadow we and us. When he grew, the shadow was owned and belonged to the man. A name meant more than he could describe. A name meant freedom. He huddled around her and tried to shove the thought from his head, but her voice haunted him. She would not give up until she could call him by some title. He was unsure if he could bear such a distinction. They were barely connected, and he needed what ties remained to save the little girl he had sworn to protect.

  “Kilpeni.” He twisted the sound upon his tongue. Kilpeni was as fit a name as any other. Names were a thing for the core world. He was her shield, and if he had to disguise the words for her to be willing to call him such, he would.

  She chuckled in her sleep. Her ears were keen with an unfamiliar hunger. “That’s not a name.”

  “You would not know one way or another. Perhaps it hasn’t been worn before. Then let it be mine,” he whispered and watched her sink back where he could not follow. Dreams were a privilege of the core world. A privilege he had never known.

  In the second dimension, the shadows vibrated. Old ones who stood sleeping beneath and about the cavern maintained their slumber despite the oncoming repercussions of his interference in the affairs of the core world. The layers of each dimension pulled apart the harder as the residents struggled to reach the battery at the center. Those leeches held tight to the Aislings they had infected, but even a host would be unable to sustain them for long without the keys that created the pathway from the second into the first dimension. All lines blurred between the second and higher dimensions as the natural equilibrium of the interweaving universes was unsettled.

  The Compass, the god of the second dimension – the one being who could hold the worlds apart, grew impatient. Kilpeni’s skin itched as the writing burned his flesh black leaving the scarred command: Keep The Girl Moving Stop. In the face of his commander and surrounded by his slumbering brethren, he could not deny that they needed to hurry lest the others wake as enemies. The mimicked heart in his chest hummed in a muted imitation of his ward’s own. She had never been meant for what was to come. Her life was one of luxury. She was unprepared for days without rest and without food. There was no denying she was already stretched beyond her previous experiences of exhaustion. Though she slept now, this sleeping would mean greater speed when it mattered most. He wished – not for the first time – that he had been given a choice. Jess was young – too young and too untrained. She had only been chosen for her relative location to a safe house and her general unimportance. There had been others. Other options – other wards that would have been better suited. Wards trained by starvation and surrounded by war. They would have been better. The Compass had not agreed.

  “She needs sleep.” He carved the words into his flesh though the thought would have been enough for his leader.

  An invisible brand brushed fire against his skin before his wounds faded. His false blood turned to flecks of dust: Girl Is Expendable Stop. Keep Moving Stop. He wrapped himself tightly around her and ignored the throbbing of his bones. She had experienced hunger before. She would be clearer after sleep. Jess could do what was asked of her. If nothing else, he needed to believe that he had killed the right Aisling. Her small, still-shifting face had stared up at him in confusion when he had come up to her while the child had been sleeping. Almost four, less than a year older than her counterpart, but the young Aisling had spent more time sleeping and stretching and forming than learning the battlefield into which some were brought immediately. She was utterly innocent in this war, and no amount of ending, of meaning, or of explanation could pass her off as anything but an unforgivable casualty. It was her war too. She was born into this age of decline. A tiny shifting little face who didn’t quite know how to pretend to be human, but she knew him. She knew what he was. She had known, more than anything, the reason he came in the night when her ties to her dreaming child were the weakest.

  Aisling never dreamed. Memories were as accessible as taking a book from the shelf of their minds. The flashes of her face as she tried to scream were stuck in the pages of one of his darker chapters. When Jess had woken and tried to scream, he had held them both silent. Slitting her thin throat, he had thought she didn’t understand the dynamics. Most would have been wrecked with a spasm then faded. The little Aisling had bled. There had been so much blood, and Jess had shaken. Though he’d killed before, he’d never watched another bleed out. Felt warmth flow over his hands. She shouldn’t have bled, but she did. He hadn’t expected the paralysis either. Jess and her original Aisling weren’t meant to have that strong of a connection yet. A long week and half with doctors and an emergency room visit had been worse than any pain he had vicariously felt through his previous wards. The girl shied away from him in fear exac
erbating her muscular spasm and lengthening her recovery time until she had given up in the early morning of the last night. It hadn’t been an alliance formed between them. She had surrendered.

  His thoughts curled to the secluded Compass louder than any message Kilpeni had sent beyond before. “No. Not this time.” Whatever tender relationship had formed between them was not one he was willing to risk. He had sworn to that small child that he would protect her from ever having to experience such pain again. Now – in the cavern beneath the water – he could feel the trauma of her fall. As she slept, he aligned their bodies and took her form to better understand her injuries. He had felt worse. She had felt worse. Slamming her right arm back into socket through the slivers of their dying ties, he heard her muffled groan of pain. Dreams held her tightly and cradled her from the agony of her shoulder being righted. He couldn’t heal the bruises or the cuts. The possible sprained ankle and the definite cracked ribs were beyond him too.

  The Aislings sleeping above, beneath and about the stones stirred but did not wake. The strings holding the universe together quivered. Dreams were beyond Kilpeni’s reach, but there – there she was safe until the time came when he would pull her back into the world and lead her deeper into the darkness. The light awaiting them remained beyond their view. Settling in around her once more, Kilpeni imagined what it would be like to dream before staring cautiously out at the bleak world surrounding them.

  Chapter Six

  Waking had been difficult. Jess had believed – for only a second – the day before had been a dream. When she had stared at the darkness then turned to the waterfall, she had been a strange mix of annoyed and relieved. The adventure was real, and Kilpeni was too. She stood at her shadow’s urging and moved along the tunnel doing her best to not limp. All the way, she could feel his eyes watching her like he was waiting for a sign of weakness. She refused to show one.

  Only a few feet into the cave beneath the waterfall, a wall of stone stood. The ascension rose within the slim pathway leading up into undisturbed darkness. There were obvious outcrops throughout, large enough for hands and feet; however, the twisting shadows loomed in threatening exaggerations. A foot or two would find little peril, but she knew that there was a greater climb than the safety would permit given the uncertainty of each hold. Jess wanted nothing more than to walk back towards the entrance behind the waterfall and go back to the cold sleep. Complaints tickled at the back of her mind: her clothes were damp; she was still hungry. She bit her tongue and said something else instead.

  “Tell me a story,” she whispered from the bottom.

  He hummed and moved forwards and upwards along the wall. “This isn’t the time for stories.”

  “I’m starving.” The complaint snuck out despite her. Inhaling slowly, Jess put her hands on her hips. Staring up at the wall, she tried again. “I could possibly literally be starving by the end of this. Just tell me a story while you make me risk my life.”

  In his thousands of years, there were many memories. Few he wanted to relive and even fewer he’d care to tell. Reaching into the depths of his memories, Kilpeni recalled a story. Whether it was real or fake, Jess didn’t need to know. It was enough of a fiction to not pain him to tell. Long enough, perhaps, to count.

  “Once – a long time ago – there was a boy,” he said, and Jess stepped to the wall reaching upwards to grab her first holds. Jess stretched and slowly scaled the treacherous stone face. “He was an excellent hunter – strong and brave though many sought him for his beauty. Some said he had a face that would win the hearts of the gods. Every morning, the youth went into the woods or the plains and hunted. Each night, he’d bring home a prize. Praise followed and word spread. Suitors came, but he rejected each in turn. One day, on one of his many hunts, he met a shadow who had wandered from the second dimension.” He paused guiding Jess’s hand to a hold. When she was secure once more, he continued, “The shadow had left her world out of love. She dreamt of emotions that her kind were not meant to find. The two fell in love.” Jess drew higher than her own height then moved quickly to double the length by adrenaline and feverous fear.

  This time, when Kilpeni fell silent, Jess asked, “What happened to her person?”

  “That isn’t important to the story,” he scolded though his tone was softer than his words.

  She scowled and nearly slipped causing her to hold desperately to her spot. “It is important. Those details are always important. If you paid attention in any of my courses, you’d know the author ought to know all these details even if they aren’t in the story. How her person died or if they’re alive, it changes the story. It changes the shadow.”

  “She had died or something,” he dismissed pressing on. “The shade didn’t wish to be repurposed, so she escaped. Will that do? It’s a story after all!” When she gave him no answer and continued her ascent, Kilpeni moved on with his tale. “The youth became enchanted with the outer dimensions. With her and with the idea that he had his own shade – his own guardian, but there are rules to these dimensions which must be obeyed. Those who maintain the balance saw the unnatural love and decided to destroy it.”

  Jess’s brows knotted. “Why?”

  “Because they weren’t the same species – they couldn’t mate – they weren’t meant to be together. Pick your reason. It was simply unnatural that she was even on the same plane as him.” Kilpeni clucked his tongue and guided her hand away from a false hold. “They did it to protect her from emotions that she was not meant to handle. He would die. She would just fade and linger. One day, he’d be just another human she would mourn if that, but they were too late. The youth broke the shadow’s heart and cast her into despair. She cried and could only utter in a broken reflection of the world around her, for he had come to believe that the only person – the only thing that could truly understand and love him was his own reflection - the being that had been born with him. Renewed or created in his image who had followed him in his every deed. “

  “‘Utter in a broken reflection,’” she murmured staring up into the nothingness ahead. “You mean an echo.”

  “Yes, she became an echo. The least of us – she became what remains when there is nothing of us left. A trick of air trapped between two dimensions. Something that sputters out of existence as suddenly as it had been made.”

  Jess frowned as she pulled herself higher and higher. “That’s a terrible story. It was bad in school, and it’s crap now. Narcissus falls in love and wastes away staring at his own reflection.”

  “A being that had no will or desire to love him back. I wonder, sometimes when I have the thought to, if Narcissus’s death was a relief to his Aisling when the end came. Countless die of their own wills – perhaps a number even waste away of their own accord, but he was the only one who died pleading for his reflection to love him. How powerless would that make you feel?” Kilpeni pondered.

  The ledge above peaked into view. Jess prayed it was not a trick of light. As she reached for it, she considered his words. Unrequited love was a horrifying concept often used in romance as inspiration. At times, such unreturned affections served as a motive for positive improvement, but in others, the sentiment could be no more than a catalyst for devilish deeds. Narcissus had been said to love his own reflection in a false belief of it being another, but for the cursed lie to be truth seemed an all together crueler fate for both, and a curse more malicious than any Aphrodite had fashioned.

  When her own thoughts became too much, Jess pushed them back on her shadow. “I thought this was a story.”

  “It was…it is.” The words rang false to both their ears. Kilpeni knew too much about the truth behind the fiction to be completely honest, but to call the story more than it was misled the teller’s intention. With a soft sigh, he confessed, “They used to believe humans were once awe-inspiring creatures with four arms, four legs, and a two-faced head. When the gods grew afraid and split them, most believed that the others were also on earth - Greek philosophy an
d theology and all that. Narcissus was real as was Echo though not exactly as I told it.”

  “Tell me the truth then.”

  “Narcissus believed the gods went further to divide such awesome power once he met Echo. He believed his Aisling to be his split self. Echo suffered for his faith – died for a love that could not respond in kind. Humans crawled from the mud and ash of a thousand species covered in blood and death. Is that not more full of awe than Aristophanes’ speech?” he asked softly. Aislings rarely had opportunity to speak, and often, he had hoped he was not alone in the thought.

  Jess frowned searching for her next perch. “How many myths are true?”

  Despite his change of face, Kilpeni’s expression shifted to mimic hers as he replied, “How many lies are false?”

  “You always have a sage-like retort, don’t you?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “How did Echo get through?”

  “She jumped through Death, and when she was pulled back, the Compass turned her to stone.” He anticipated her question and added, “Yes, these stones. Aisling are made of everything and nothing, so the stones are indescribable like our true form. She was the first warning. The doors were drawn in the dead with corpses of dreamers too ignorant to wake up.”

  With each foot gained, the top moved further out of reach. Darkness begat only further darkness, and her eyes fought to adjust as the black deepened. Her fingers moved over the stones ahead. Half the time, her actions seemed like blind guesses held only by sheer force of will and perhaps Kilpeni’s interference. Though she couldn’t tell how far she had fallen, the length of the whole waterfall did not measure in her mind’s eye as far as she had ascended. When Kilpeni fell silent, dread filled Jess. All she had were her own thoughts. Calculations of the fall jumped alongside with broken bones and snapped spines.

  “Who else?” When he didn’t reply, she followed the tethers on her feet glancing off to her right. Jess scoffed. “Not important? Not remembered – just another soul lost to obscurity that deserved more.”