Where Shadows Meet

by Patrice Caldwell

To my younger self, who loved vampires and believed in happily ever afters but doubted that she was deserving of one—who tried to mold herself into someone everyone would love. Everyone but herself. You are enough just as you are. This one’s for those like you.

Fantasy and romance have, at many times, provided me with a much-needed escape as well as validation and catharsis. As such, it was important to me for my characters to reflect the world I’ve lived in and the things I’ve lived through—the struggles, joys, and everything in between.

She could easily return to where she came from and forget this girl. But there was nothing easy about forgetting, and the princess did not want to go back to the way things were, had been, and would always be with her father caring more about the next goddess he could lay with and her mother doing nothing to stop him. Soon enough, he’d have what he really wanted ever since her brother’s death: a son who could replace her as his heir.

The girl threw her head back and laughed. The sound echoed throughout the forest, making the hairs on the princess’s neck stand straight up. “The princess of the gods, lost in the very kingdom she’ll one day rule?” She shook her head. “I’m no fool. Your family has taken enough from me. Let me live and die in peace.”

A shadow flickers before us, and the goddess hesitates, clutching her hands, gripping them until her knuckles pale to yellow. My eyes flit back and forth before they still—there’s nothing there. This place has a way of taking root deep within you. Creating images only in your mind. Planting suggestions you know to ignore but don’t. That’s what happened to the goddess of the dead before this one. And to be honest, the one before that one, too—they lost all sense of what was and what wasn’t and had to be replaced.

how we yamaja are blessed by the gods. Tales that conveniently leave out how much of a curse our visions are—how heavy a burden they will become. As I’ve learned, knowing the future doesn’t mean you can change it—it only means you’ll suffer twice the pain.

Of how we came to be the yamaja—the messengers of fate. Tasked by the goddess of knowledge herself not to control fate, for even we are subject to it, but to ensure that it is carried out.

Her eyes are like mine—ever-changing to match her mood and capturing the sea’s hues. Today, they are a cloudy blue gray, like the sky anticipating a hurricane.

Maybe if she did, she’d start to live in the now and realize that her life, one full of constant hoping, will be our downfall. Hope doesn’t feed the bellies that grow empty every time our people fail to catch enough fish because we’re too busy gathering threads for our tapestry.

“She was my mother, too. But with her gone, there’s a gap that must be filled. I can’t just sit around all day like you. It’s been years, Naj.” I scoff. Apparently, six years is enough time to mourn your mother, to simmer your grief and stop it from boiling over.

A flamethrower maneuvers through the crowd. Fire spouts from her fingertips. She shoots a flame up into the air and catches it in her mouth, and when she smiles wide, the flame is still inside. The nobles clap and cheer. An ember falls, singeing the shoulder of my dress. It’s made of yet another impractical thing: freshly picked violets. And though they are my favorite flowers, it’s a dress that is only good for one night,

May this help you keep your thoughts close and your heart locked away. These are the words I wish my mother had told me and so I pass them down to you. It is the only way to survive.

The castle here floats upon a cloud. The highest one. Below are the lights of the nobles’ estates—each on a cloud of its own. Below these are the homes of the minor gods—the commoners, as the nobles call them, for technically everyone here is a god. Those who are gods, yes, but whose lineages are not as fabled and long, whose powers, in comparison, are mundane: the gods who instead of moving mountains can only shift pebbles; who can grow any flower, but cannot control life itself; who can maybe make something from nothing but cannot create an ocean to wear to a party simply because they wish it so. Thana told me she is more powerful than them all. And that beside her, I am, too. But I don’t feel it. I just feel very small.

Mother would finally be proud. This is the life she wanted. To have power, to be worshipped, to be adored. But what about me? I want to focus, for once, on what I want. Thana. Her face is clear in my mind, as if she’s before me. The way she makes me feel when it’s just us snakes its way into my heart. She makes me laugh at the simplest of things, she latches onto my every word, and remembers them, too. How even here she filled my bedchamber with plants, trying to re-create the forest itself. The chamber was so filled with vines, and trees, and red roses, and violets that she carried me across the threshold, battling plants all the way. Even last night, when she sensed I was still homesick, she bade a young sea goddess to build me a lake on the castle’s grounds, one that only I can access, where I can be alone. She will do anything to protect me. After all, she killed her own father just to be with me. So, maybe, it happened a little too fast for me to be certain that what I’m feeling is love. But if I’m feeling isn’t love, whatever could it be? No one’s ever done such things for me, she must love me very much. Of course she had to bring me here—how else were we to be together? How could she rule from the forests’ depths when most of her citizens live near here? And of course she chose to keep her throne. After all, hadn’t I shown her that path—a way for her to have everything she wanted, a way for us to be together unobstructed?

No one has ever done such things for me, she must love me very much. “It’ll be worth it,” I whisper to myself. It’ll be worth it in the end. To have the love I always dreamed of, love Mother never gave to me.

She chuckles against me, her mouth below my ear. “Shall I continue to make you forget? Or”—she draws the word out—“you can tell me who it was, and I’ll bring you their head.” Playfully, I push her away. “If I asked for their head every time someone spoke ill of me, you’d have no subjects in this realm.” She pauses as if considering it—annihilating her subjects just to please me. I think she knows I’m not serious, but remembering the way she drained those humans, one after the next, I add, “I’m joking, Thana,” to be certain. She rolls her eyes. “I know that. Can’t be a queen if you don’t have anyone to rule over.” She scoops me up and places me on the bed. It’s heaped with satin pillows. “I shall just have to make it so they can hear us all the way in the guest chambers and remember that you are mine and to mock you is to mock their queen.”

I can’t lose you, too, I want to say, but I stop myself. If I say it, she might not go, she might stay because of me. And if she does, she might eventually lose hope in all the things that make her her, until she is but a shadow of herself. And then I’ll lose her anyway.

We walk past several stone buildings. They reek of blood nights old; death’s stench coats their walls. During the war those taverns were where vampire went to feed, where desperate humans who needed extra coins were paid for their life force by the ounce. Now they’re required to have a license that shows that their blood is legally sourced from the monthly shipments the humans send.