Chapter 21: 20. Two Children

The magelights went out for the first time since Eris and Aletheia were reunited. The two men and the elf were moved out into the grasslands, while Eris pitched her tent on a wide, flat clearing some ways off the road. She was prepared to retire into her tent when a fit of nervousness overcame her.

“Perhaps I should be with you,” she said. She tugged her fingers and twiddled her thumbs at her belly. “It is not safe—the two of us together would be better.”

“You said it wouldn’t come if you were there,” Aletheia said.

“I know—and—it is less likely, yet still—you have seen how deadly it is. How violent. Will it not do the same to you and Corvo, if you let it?”

“I’ll have a spell of light ready,” she said. “It can’t hurt us instantly. If it tries, I’ll make it vanish.”

Eris closed her eyes and clenched her jaw. This had seemed like a good idea to her after days of thought, but now, clearly, she had reservations. And Aletheia was happy that she did. It was normal. A mother was supposed to feel this way. Eris was human after all.

Aletheia took her arm. She didn’t like being touched, but this time she let it happen.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll keep him safe.”

A last sigh. Eris nodded. “Very well. I—very….”

She trailed off. And she turned, and she disappeared into the tent.

Aletheia smiled. She didn’t know whether or not Eris was a good mother, because she had never known any except her own. But she was a loving mother, and that was good enough.

“Is mama okay?” Corvo asked.

“She’s okay. She’s just tired. But now you and I get to stay up all night.”

It was already dark. The moon shone down with silvery light, and the blades of grass underfoot cast a million miniature shadows onto the plains around them. It was like any one of thousands of nights on the road that she had known before; as the gentle breeze came through, and with it that soft noise of rustling, nothing seemed dangerous to her. Nothing was amiss. Normally she would have felt comfortable sleeping here beneath the stars.

The Aethereal aurora was out. Sometimes the shadowed grass turned red or gold for a moment, and if she looked up, she would see the twinkling curtains of mana in the sky.

But she turned her attention to Corvo. “So. What do you want to do”?

He shrugged. He held the wooden figurine of a warrior in his hands and gazed it over. Aletheia had carved that toy for him herself, years ago.

“If the Shadow Man comes, will he bring his toys?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“He has the best toys.” He sounded sullen, rather than indignant. “His toys really fought. Not like mine. My toy is boring.”

He meant nothing by it, he was barely more than a toddler, but the word hurt like a sword point. The wooden statuette was meant to look like his father. It wasn’t very good, and she had never painted it, but it meant everything to her that he liked it.

“Only boys without imagination need toys that really fight,” Aletheia said. “Don’t you have imagination?”

He shrugged again. She was close enough to see his features clearly, even in the dark. She did her best to stay smiling. When he didn’t respond, she focused on the magic in the air. Then she cast a simple spell. From the mouth of the toy in Corvo’s hands, she imagined the small sound of a man’s voice.

“If you won’t play with me,” he said, “I suppose Ally will.”

Corvo was startled for a moment, but he realized where the voice was coming from quickly. He lifted the toy up and looked into its head.

“No,” he said. “You’re my toy.”

“Am I? But you like the Shadow Man’s toys more.”

He shook his head. “No. But the Shadow Man’s toys moved. Why don’t you move?”

“I can’t move. But I can talk. Could the Shadow Man’s toys talk?”

Corvo seemed to think hard to remember whether or not they could. Eventually he shrugged.

“Why don’t you put me on the grass, and we can go on an adventure together?”

He had an impulse to do as he was told, but once he had, he shook his head—and looked at Aletheia. “I know it’s you.”

“What? Did that sound like my voice?” she said.

He crawled over to her. “Aunt Ally,” he said, as though she might not know, “you have magic.”

She smiled and put a hand on his shoulder. “Oh. I forgot. If you don’t want to play with toys, then what should we do?”

“The fireworks?” he said, so hopeful that it crushed her.

“Not today. I’ll show you them tomorrow. What else? We could play swords. I brought them.”

He settled against her on the grass, still clutching the toy warrior to his chest. Once he had stopped moving he said, “I don’t like it out here. Can’t I go back with mama?”

She had been eager to play, despite the circumstances, and felt a tingling of disappointment. Turning him down was very hard.

“Not yet,” she whispered. “We have to… have to….”

She saw a shape in the darkness past him. It moved like something solid, as though someone had really been there, but when she blinked and refocused her eyes, it disappeared.

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The Shadow Man was watching them.

“Here,” she said. “I’ll use my hands and pretend to be a monster.”

But Corvo didn’t respond. Instead he said, “I’m scared.” He wrapped his arms around her. “Tell me about daddy.”

She had no chance to savor his affection. Her eyes were alert now, taking in everything around them, checking everywhere for the Shadow Man. This time she saw nothing.

She put her mouth to the top of his head.

“He wasn’t ever scared,” she said. “Not of anything. Sometimes I was, but he wasn’t.”

“Mama said he cried when he saw spiders,” he said quietly.

Aletheia laughed. “She did? Okay, well… he didn’t like spiders. But just because he was afraid, it didn’t mean he wasn’t brave. He once killed a spider the size of an ogre, just because I was in danger. That’s how brave he was.”

“Mama is never afraid of anything.”

“That’s not true. She’s afraid of bad things happening to you. Or to me. Or that she might not be able to be around for you. She’s afraid of the Shadow Man.”

“Is that what she calls me?” said a voice from the darkness.

Aletheia jumped. Corvo yelped and closed his eyes, burying his head in Aletheia’s chest; and when she looked a few feet ahead, she saw it sitting there, staring back at them.

Two red eyes on a body made of tar. Long, midnight arms; folded, umbral legs. A large and malformed head, a featureless face—almost like a blur in her vision, like a floater in her eye. A shadow come to life.

But in three dimensions. Solid. Alive.

Aletheia felt her heart pound against Corvo’s ears. She stared, silent, dread oozing from her chest. Not a giant spider, not a living vampire, not a rampaging demon had scared her so much as this creature’s appearance.

It had no mana. It was an apparition, clearly magical, not natural at all, but she felt no energy from it. She could not tap it. She could not make it vulnerable with a spell. She had never heard of anything like it before.

She was afraid.

But she nodded.

“Why do you sit with my crow, when you cannot keep him safe?”

The voice nauseated her. It had the precise cadence of Eris, the sing-song of her spoken voice, yet it sounded discordant, wrong—perverse.

“Go away now. Let us play.”

Corvo clutched her tighter.

“I can’t go away,” Aletheia said. Her voice was weaker than she wanted, but she could not embolden it.

“You take him into danger and do not protect him. Yet I am the one the lights keep away. If I could make darkness to keep the magicians away, I should do it, and he would be mine.”

“He isn’t yours,” Aletheia said. “Eris gave birth to him. We raised him. He’s ours.”

“Then why does Eris abandon him while she works in her bright dungeon? Why does she force him to his own room? Why will she never play? She is like all the others. She does not care for him. She abandons her child, as magicians always do.”

“Go away,” Corvo whispered. But the Shadow Man did not seem to hear him.

“Have you known other magicians?” Aletheia asked.

“They come to my tower. They sleep within me. And they are happy to play, until they tire of me. Like Eris tires of my little crow. But I will not tire of him.”

“Sometimes magicians have work to do. That doesn’t mean they’ve abandoned the people they love.”

“They are all the same. She does not love the little crow like I love him. I would never leave him.”

“You would. Whenever there was light.” Aletheia spoke more steadily now. The Shadow Man had a voice, a will, a personality. It could be confronted. That gave her courage. But she was careful with her words. She tried to imagine she was speaking to a child, even more than she ever had with Corvo. “You abandoned him every day, didn’t you?”

“No! I was always there. In the shadow.”

Corvo dared a glance, but Aletheia placed a hand over his eyes.

She was ready to conjure a light if the Shadow Man moved. The spell was ready, her Essence prepared, the mana already woven into the correct patterns. But she wanted more from this creature first.

“What do you want with him?” she asked.

Now the Shadow Man crept forward. It made no sudden movements, but seemed to glide across the grass, coming in close. Then it stopped.

“What do you want with him?”

“I want to make sure he grows up safely. I want him to be healthy and strong. I want him to live until he’s a hundred and has his own family and is happy. That’s all I want.”

“Is that how a mother is meant to feel?”

She nodded.

“Then why did my mother go?”

Its face was hardly a foot from hers. Its burning red eyes gazed into Aletheia’s. Yet they were not hostile. Its face, with no face at all, seemed almost curious, and its voice rose with the inflection of serious questions. There was no rhetoric in the Shadow Man. He was sincere in everything he asked.

Aletheia felt a tug of empathy.

“Not all mothers are good,” she said slowly. “My mother was evil. She experimented on me. I had to run away from her.”

The Shadow Man cocked its head. “Experimented?”

Aletheia nodded. “She was a Magister. She hated that I was mundane.”

“Was I an experiment?” it asked.

“I don’t know. Who was she? Your mother?”

The Shadow Man’s head cocked to the other side. It seemed to think for a moment before replying.

“Did your mother love you?”

“No. She hated me.”

“My mother loved me. She gave birth to me. She took the darkness and gave me life. She taught me to read and write and make sounds in this strange language. But still she did not stay. Why didn’t she stay?”

“I don’t know,” Aletheia said. “Where did she go?”

“She would no longer speak to me. She would no longer play. She went to the basement and did not come up again, and she played with the maggots until she disappeared.”

Aletheia struggled to visualize what this creature meant. But she was learning, and she said, “She died?”

“She abandoned me. She never spoke to me again. Then she vanished.”

“It wasn’t your fault. She passed away. Every human has to pass away. She didn’t mean to leave you.”

“But mother was only the first. They always abandoned me. Men and women with ugly eyes like my little crow’s parents. They would come to my tower and play, but they would always leave. They would make their lights to keep me away, and then they would go.”

“With the maggots?”

“No. Down the mountain. Did I drive them away?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But you let them go. You should let Corvo go, too.”

“All I wanted was to play. But then he took my body and voice away. He abandoned me, too, forever. I didn’t do anything but be his friend. Why did he betray me?”

“Who?”

The Shadow Man rose. Its dark figure appeared to swell within the moonlight, and Aletheia felt her control of the conversation slipping away.

“He put me in the pages! He pretended to love me! I was his friend, but he imprisoned me, and then he left! Why!?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry he hurt you. But you can’t have Corvo. That doesn’t make things right.”

“I will never leave my little crow! I will keep him safe. I will not take his body or voice away. I will never let him be imprisoned. He can trust me, and I will trust him. And we will spend forever together, like I was supposed to with mother.”

“He’s going to grow up. He can’t play with you forever. And he’ll die someday, just like your mother, even while you’re still there.”

“He will never die!” The eyes levitated higher, and higher, until they towered over Aletheia, and the Shadow Man was the size of an elephant. “You admit he is not safe with you! I will keep him safe, like you cannot!”

Corvo began to cry shake against her chest. Aletheia pulled him backward, then pushed him toward the tent. She presented an arm, ready to use a spell, but not yet. She still thought she had a chance. The Shadow Man was an abandoned child, an abused monstrosity created by magic, but it wasn’t evil. It could be reasoned with. She knew what it wanted. Now she just had to convince it.

“Wait!” she said. “Please! Can’t we talk?”

“You will not come between—"

A sudden ray of light cut through the dark. It shot around Aletheia’s head, casting her shadow in the night, from the tent and far off to the horizon: a blinding beam, a nearly solid shaft of illumination. It made no noise, and the night was quiet as ever, but the Shadow Man’s voice cut off in an instant.

And its body disappeared.

Eris stood at the entrance to her tent, her staff in hand.

Three magelights appeared at the staff’s orb and floated into the air. Then all darkness was gone, and it was bright at night once again.

Corvo grabbed hold of his mother as he sobbed.

The ray of light vanished.

“That was quite enough,” Eris said. “We have learned all we were going to.”

Aletheia sighed. She did not agree. But there was nothing to be done but nod.