These Fleeting Shadows

by Kate Alice Marshall

I PROMISE I will tell you the truth. But first, I need to lie. It doesn’t make sense yet. It will. Be patient.

There is another relevant scientific principle: entropy. All order eventually succumbs to disorder. No system can remain stable forever. All things fall to ruin.

“There was a maiden, golden-haired, Came to the fold, came to the fold. She walked among the shadows there. Her bones are white, her blood is cold.”

Thus, the words above the lintel: Ex Aliis Mundis Verum. From other worlds, truth. He believed that this valley was a place of particularly powerful connections between the worlds.

I hated school. School meant strict routine. Sitting still. Filling in worksheets with the answers, not scribbles of vines and eyes. Obeying the ringing of the bells that told you when to move, when to sit, when to eat. But kids were supposed to be in school, and I didn’t want my mom to be sad, so I pretended that it didn’t make me want to slither free of my own skin.

So we weren’t going to acknowledge what had just happened. You didn’t talk about your problems at Harrow; you talked around them.

She had to make herself small to fit around him, I thought. I could see it under the surface, the pieces of herself she’d carved away so that he could feel mighty.

“Even if someone killed Grandpa, no one would have hurt Jessamine. She was just a little girl,” he said. “People do terrible things to little girls all the time,” I replied, but he was already gone.

“She’s wrong. I would never hurt you,” Jessamine whispered, brushing her fingers through my hair. I whimpered. “You’re not human. You’re not a person,” I whispered. “But we try to be. We get it wrong, but we try and try and try. Then they scatter us.”

I was dying. And I did not want to die. It seemed so obvious, but I’d never felt it before, this terror, this absolute rage at the idea—I didn’t deserve this. I didn’t ask to be here, and I shouldn’t be, and I wouldn’t let it beat me. I wouldn’t surrender to this place, to these people, to this fate.

One step after another, I told myself, and don’t let that desperate fear tear you apart because your body has gone soft beneath its brutal teeth.

The bells rang. I woke, I paced the floor, I stared at the bones. I appeared when I was summoned, I vanished when I would not be missed.

“There’s no way that he was the only one that was in on all of this. Eli knows everything about Vaughan history,” Bryony said. “He would have inherited, if he wasn’t gay.” “Great, we’re a homophobic murder cult. This gets better and better,” Desmond muttered.

“I promise I will tell you the truth,” she said. “But first, I need to lie.” My grandfather’s voice, my grandfather’s face. “It doesn’t make sense yet,” Jessamine said. “It will. Be patient,” and it wasn’t any of them.

I found the heart of Harrow, and the thing at its center was me. We opened our eyes.