The Stranger's Shadow Read online

  “Fine,” I said. “Everybody has his quirks. Still, I’d love to know who it is I’m speaking to. Who are you?”

  I dropped down on the grass wearily. The sleepy torpor had passed, praise be the Magicians, but my legs buzzed as though I had been working out on a treadmill.

  “I will introduce myself a little later, if you don’t mind. You are not afraid of me, are you?”

  I ran down a quick check of my feelings and said, “I don’t think so.”

  “That’s good.”

  “It sure is,” I said. “I do stupid things when I’m scared, and the Dark Side is not the place for doing stupid things, from what I gather, am I right?” I said.

  “Correct.”

  “What is it that you want with me?” I said. “Or did you just miss having company?”

  “No, I didn’t. And I do indeed want something from you. But before that, I want you to remember one story. It’s really nothing. Just an epigraph for the favor I’m going to ask you.”

  “What do you want me to remember?”

  “A thick book in a dark-blue, almost black cover. Two books, rather. Identical in everything but the numbers on the spines. They stood next to each other on the bookshelf in your parents’ room, too high for you to reach them. But you did reach them when you were nine, or even younger, by standing on a chair. Do you remember them?”

  “A two-volume edition of H. G. Wells!” I was surprised and I laughed. “Of course I remember them. I wasn’t nine, though. I was seven and a half. Why did you ask? You’re not H. G. Wells’s ghost, I hope.”

  “Oh, no, I’m not.”

  “Okay, that’s good. Do those books hold some kind of terrible secret?” I said.

  “It’s not terrible. It’s a wonderful secret,” said the stranger. “There was one particular story in those books. It’s the reason you’re here. It changed your life, absolutely and drastically. The story about the green door in the white wall. Do you remember it?”

  “I do,” I said. “I remember it very well.”

  “I also remember it. Do you want me to tell you what happens in the story? It was a story of a lonely daydreamer, a little boy—probably the same age as you were when you first read it—who was wandering through the city and found himself on an unfamiliar street. There he saw a white wall and in it a green door. He went in and ended up in a beautiful garden. What followed were a few pages of meaningless, sweet nonsense. The idea was that the boy found Paradise, and when authors try to describe it, they usually fail because no one has ever been there. I’m still not satisfied with that piece, but we digress. You got the impression that the boy loved that wonderful garden, nevertheless. That was good enough. Then the protagonist, as is often the case in fairy tales, broke some rule or other and ended up back in his hometown on an unfamiliar, dirty street. He stood there and cried, so miserable was he. An unspeakably sad episode.”

  “Yes, but worse things happened afterward,” I said, picking up the thread of the story. “That lucky boy bumped into his magic green door several more times in the most unexpected places—boy, was he lucky! And every time he just walked past. Once because he was running late for school, then because he had an exam at college, then something else got in the way. I really wanted to give him a good kick, I swear!”

  “But he did open that door one more time,” my invisible interlocutor said. “He was found dead in a shaft near a train station, and the friend to whom he had told his story of the Door in the Wall the day before could not figure out whether the poor fellow had indeed found his green door or whether he’d only dreamed it up. But you, you decided it was a good ending anyway.”

  “That’s right,” I said, smiling. “That’s exactly what I thought. Word for word. But how do you know all this? And why did you remember that particular story?”

  “Because H. G. Wells never wrote it,” said the voice. “Now, however, the text exists, and not only in your two-volume edition in the dark-blue cover. As far as I know, over time it has appeared in other editions. You see, I wrote it.”

  “What!” I was flabbergasted.

  “Yes, I wrote it. Upon the request of our good friend Juffin Hully. He thought I was the only one who could do it. He was no doubt right. They once called me the Master Steerer of Chance. That was before I became the Grand Magician of the Order of the Sleeping Butterfly.”

  “So you’re Glenke Taval!” I said. I should have guessed sooner, but it somehow hadn’t occurred to me.

  “Indeed. I’m certainly not H. G. Wells,” he said, laughing. “I hope you’re not going to kill me before we finish our little chat.”

  “You’ve got my number,” I said. “To kill you and not get the answers to a million questions? No way.”

  “Well, that’s good. I have just one request: don’t hurry with your bloody mission. You’ll get your chance. It’s very easy to kill me—didn’t Juffin tell you that?”

  “He did.”

  “And it is true, unfortunately. Now you can turn around, if you wish to. I don’t mind. I was afraid you’d recognize me. Did Juffin tell you what I look like on the Dark Side?”

  “You’ll be surprised to learn that he didn’t even bother telling me what you looked like in the World,” I said. “He refused to tell me anything about you. Well, almost anything. He only told me that you were good friends once.”

  “Ah, so he’s not that mad at me after all, since he gave us a chance to talk in peace,” Glenke said, sounding relieved.

  He finally approached me and sat nearby. I looked at him, and frankly, I felt sorry that he hadn’t stayed behind my back. Glenke had no face. None. Just a blob of emptiness surrounded by disheveled dark hair, soft as that of a baby.

  “Normally I look like a regular person, but here . . .” he said in a guilty tone, covering the emptiness that was his face with his long, thin hands. “Unpleasant, isn’t it?”

  “Not so much unpleasant as it is . . . well, unnerving,” I said. “Don’t worry, I’ll get over it. Will you please explain the meaning behind that H. G. Wells story that is actually your story? Why did you do it?”

  “Because Juffin needed you, but he couldn’t transport you from one World into another without your consent. Well, not just that. Simple consent wouldn’t have cut it. You had to wish for it to happen. Wish for it with all your heart. Some are easy to tempt with a promise of special powers; others can be enticed with a promise of love. Juffin was sure that you were the kind who would only buy into a myth. That’s why we fed you the myth about a man who opened the Door between Worlds, the oldest myth in the Universe told in a language you understood. And his plan worked. You read that story and became obsessed. You must have forgotten already, but back then you swore to yourself that—”

  “That I would look for that dratted door,” I said. “And that I would open it without a second thought when I found it, no matter what other pressing business I had. Good golly, I completely forgot about that!”

  “You did, didn’t you? But that doesn’t change anything. Your words have special powers, not just on the Dark Side—at least sometimes. From that moment on, you began destroying your life without realizing why you were doing it. From then on you never went with the flow. You jumped out of it and took a turn onto the road that eventually led you to Green Street. Mind you, Green Street. Talk about coincidences.”

  “Well, maybe,” I said, shrugging. “Just maybe it all happened the way you are describing. But why me? Am I special? Did I win some mystical jackpot?”

  “Something like that,” said Glenke. “You won it by virtue of birth. You were born an Origin, and in our World, Origins are very rare. The last Origin I know of was King Mynin.”

  “An Origin?” I said, frowning. The term reeked of dangerous romantic nonsense I could smell a mile away. “What kind of a sick thing is that, an Origin?”

  “You should know,” said Glenke, smirking. “But this is why your words have a special power, cities from your dreams materialize, and all your wishes come
true sooner or later, somehow or other. A dangerous quality, if you think about it, especially since in the beginning every Origin thinks he’s an ordinary human being and begins collecting other human problems with gusto. In our World, Origins are born very, very seldom, and it’s a blessing. Your home World, on the other hand, is teeming with them. But what’s the use? Usually Origins are unbearable. The ones who don’t know what they are doing are spoiled by their powers. Juffin’s idea was that you would have a desire so fundamental, so strong and unfulfilled, that you wouldn’t have the time or strength to waste on other trivial concerns. I came up with the story of the Door in the Wall especially for you, and Juffin snuck the edited book into your parents’ house. I don’t know how he did it, but he did.”

  “Okay, so I’m an Origin. Fine. Could be worse, I guess,” I said. “But to Magicians with my life story, I’ll figure it out myself somehow. Why did you send the Lonely Shadows to Echo? Were you bored or something?”

  “No, not really,” said Glenke. “Juffin had his own plans for you, and I had mine. When the Kettarian asked me to make up a good fairy tale for you, he promised that someday you would take care of my problems. Alas, I have no time left. No time at all. You see, I’m dying. Here on the Dark Side, I’m still doing fine. Perhaps my powers have even grown stronger, since I was capable of raising an entire army of Lonely Shadows and making them work for me. But there in the World, you’d have to talk to a dying old man. A witless dying old man, even, which is the worse part. The disintegrating mind of the semidead Glenke Taval is incapable of sending Juffin a call to demand that he hurry up and keep his promise. Or, rather, hurry up and send you to keep his promise—which, as far as I can tell, you didn’t even know about. That sly old fox, let me tell you, can be notoriously leisurely when it comes to dealing with someone else’s business. The Lonely Shadows were like an angry letter addressed to both of you. It happened in just the way I expected: Juffin learned that the Lonely Shadows had appeared in Echo by my command and sent you to take care of me. At the end, I managed to turn the tide of chance once again—this time for myself.”

  “No wonder they called you the Master Steerer of Chance. It’d be strange if you didn’t manage,” I said. “And why do you need me, Glenke? What are your plans regarding me? You didn’t go through all that trouble just to discuss your literary talent with me. The story is excellent, by the way, don’t get me wrong. It really got me. I should thank you for it. But that’s not enough, I take it?”

  “Naturally, that’s not enough. Use your head, Mr. Secret Investigator. You still don’t understand what I want from you?”

  “Nope. I might be an Origin, but I’m one heck of a brainless one.”

  “You don’t need much brainpower to understand it,” said Glenke. “What is the one thing a dying man might want? The Origin can grant a new life and freedom to anyone, even a dead man. In my case, it’s especially relevant. All my life I’ve been groping for some freedom that I myself never understood completely. Was it freedom from human fate that I wanted? I desperately tried to break through beyond the limits of the World, but I could never get beyond the Dark Side. Now I am dying and my powers are not enough to withstand death. I want to try one more time, and all I need are a few words from you so that instead of the unknown of death, another kind of unknown will accept me. You did this once before—for Red Jiffa from the Magaxon Forest. Without his requesting it from you, by the way.”

  “Oh, I get it now. Sure, I’ll do that for you. After all, that’s why I came here.”

  “Ah, but not exactly,” said Glenke, laughing. “You came to kill me, didn’t you?”

  “You don’t know me well enough,” I said. “From the get-go I was almost sure I wasn’t going to kill you. Maybe send you to some far-off place, what with all the Worlds in the Universe, inhabited and not. Juffin, I’m sure, also knew it. I’m also sure he was satisfied with that outcome; otherwise he would have sent Lonli-Lokli instead of me. But hey, you were risking a great deal when you started all this! And then those Lonely Shadows of yours—they killed several poor souls that had nothing to do with you, or Juffin, or me, or H. G. Wells. That wasn’t right.”

  “Agreed on all counts,” said Glenke. “But what choice did I have? I’m as good as dead anyway. If you were in my shoes, by the way, you would have eradicated the entire populace of Echo without a moment’s thought. And don’t pretend you’re shocked to hear that.”

  “I guess you’re right,” I said reluctantly. “Okay, one last question then. Why did Juffin start it all? I mean, what does he want with me?”

  “I think you should address this question to him,” said Glenke. “It was his idea, I only helped him a little. But knowing Juffin, I don’t think he requires anything in particular from you. Juffin doesn’t need anything from anyone. What I’m saying is that he’ll never ask you a personal favor like I did. Maybe he’s just happy to help you harness your own powers, and of course he’s burning with curiosity to see what you will do next. A fascinating experiment, quite to his taste.”

  “Yes, it sounds just like him,” I said, smiling. “Well, are you ready, Glenke? I’m going to—”

  “I’ve been ready for many, many years. But please come up with some good wording. So much depends on it.”

  “Okay,” I said, nodding.

  Suddenly, I was overcome by a strange sense of paralysis. Nothing remotely like this had ever happened to me before. I became indifferent toward everything: the fate of Glenke Taval, my own mysterious fate, the books of H. G. Wells’s stories, the Door in the Wall, and many other things. Yet I was prepared to pay up, to give Glenke Taval what was his due.

  “Go to a place where you can be alive, Sir Glenke Taval,” I said. “I want you to break free of your fate, disappear from this beautiful World, and end up someplace where everything will be different.”

  Glenke vanished before I finished talking. I felt drained and bone-tired. I sat down on the soft red grass and closed my eyes. No good. I could still see the glowing sky and the gorgeous landscape of the Dark Side. Either my eyelids had become transparent, or here on the Dark Side we don’t use our eyes to see.

  “Melifaro!” I called. “Take me home.”

  “Aw, the little baby wants to go home. Want me to buy some candy on the way, too?” said Melifaro, helping me get off the ground. Around me it was dark again. The mysterious double of my friend had already disappeared, praise be the Magicians. It was all for the best—I had had it with incomprehensible creatures for today.

  “I wouldn’t turn down some candy right now,” I said, smiling and trying to stand up on my wobbly legs. “Let’s get out of here. I’m exhausted.”

  “Believe it or not, me too,” he said, yawning. “So close your eyes and try to walk on your own two feet, okay?”

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  Soon Melifaro gave me a gentle push with his elbow.

  “You can open your pretty eyes now. And let go of my arm. You’re clenching it like you’re trying to rip it out to sell at a fair in Numban,” he said.

  “I didn’t know I could sell stuff like that there,” I said, opening my eyes. “I’ll keep it in mind, in case I come across a spare limb somewhere.”

  In the World it was nighttime. The night was warm, humid, and windless. Nearby stood my amobiler, now equipped with menacing tank tracks. From it came the annoying sounds of the barrel organ.

  “What have you been doing there all this time, Max?” grumbled the owner of that ingenious musical instrument. “What have you done to our felon?”

  “Did you visit him at home?” I said. “Well, what happened there?”

  “‘What happened there’ you ask?” said Kofa. “I spent almost a dozen days sitting here in your jalopy, entertaining the local shapeshifters. There were a bunch of fellows that hung around here and turned into squirrels at night. They came to listen to the music. At first it was quite entertaining, but then I thought I’d go crazy from their chitter-chatter. And I had to put up
with all that, only so I could eventually go to Glenke Taval’s castle and find a half-dead crazy old man who had the temerity to disappear right in front of my very eyes.”

  “That’s right,” I said, happy. “That’s very close to how I imagined it. Don’t get mad, Kofa, but Glenke Taval doesn’t exist anymore. He’s neither dead nor alive.”

  “Oh, really?” said Kofa, with a cunning squint.

  “Well, at least he doesn’t exist in this World, which is what was required of us. I’m sorry you had to take that unnecessary walk there. If I had known beforehand it would be so easy, you could have just stayed at home. Or, say, in the Middle of the Woods. Beats sitting in the bushes, surrounded by man-squirrels hopping around you all night.”

  “If you had known anything beforehand, it wouldn’t have been you. It would have been someone old and wise,” said Kofa, smiling. “I don’t blame you, boy. What I would really like to do now is to kick our Sir Venerable Head’s butt. Although I don’t think I’m going to succeed. Back in the day I tried to perform that noble task on many an occasion and, alas, always failed. Why on earth did he have to get me involved in this undertaking in the first place?”

  “Didn’t you want a vacation?” said Melifaro. “You did, and so did I. So Juffin gave us a vacation.”

  “Right. Didn’t you like it?” I said. “I thought the trip went great. I have nothing to complain about.”

  “Especially the music,” said Melifaro and laughed. “And the happy days you and I spent in the Middle of the Woods about half a mile away from the outhouse. Granted, your story of the Black Hand was kind of cool. All right, let’s head back home. Home is the best place in the world. Plus, your wives are waiting for me there.”

  “Kumonian honey is what’s waiting for you there,” I said.

  “Don’t remind me,” said Melifaro, stretching out on the back seat. “On second thought, leave me here. Maybe those musically inclined man-squirrels will accept me into their herd and later make me their leader. I’m pretty good at making disgusting sounds myself when I . . .”