The Other Side

As Sir Silver stood rigid with the unfamiliar woman’s arms squeezing him, his mind was itching like crazy.

That was the only way that he could describe it. Bugs were nibbling at the edges of his awareness; mosquito bites had swelled on his consciousness. He’d been aware of it for most of the day, actually, but it had gotten stronger when she looked at him and was even worse now that they were touching. After a few lost seconds of helpless gaping, he came to himself again, and he broke out of her strange embrace.

“Who are you?” he demanded flatly.

The woman looked ruffled, wild with emotions. Her eyes were very wide. “You know me,” she told him.

“No,” he said. “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

She huffed, exasperated by his response, still refusing to break eye contact with him. “And I’ve never seen you, but what does that matter? You know who I am.”

“No.” He resisted the urge to take a step back. It wasn’t difficult; he had disciplined himself so thoroughly that his emotional responses were now jailed in a tiny compartment of his brain, one with no access to his rational thoughts or actions. In the face of a potential threat, like this woman might be, everything but stoicism was vetoed.

Her eyes flared wider; concern, indignation, and fear alternated in a way that he not only saw but also felt, in a vague and flickery manner. “You must remember me, Silas,” she insisted. “How could you have forgotten?! I’m your double! I’m Chuva!”

Sir Silver caught his breath, because of course he remembered, because part of him had known it all along, because the itch in his brain had given way to something else. For the first time since his bygone youth, his mind was entirely full and whole again, reunited with its long-dormant other half at last. And quite frankly, the feeling disturbed him greatly.

Two of his soldiers came up to flank him on either side – how had he managed to forget that his people were here? – and one of them frowned over at him. “Sir…?”

“Stand easy,” he instructed, without turning away from Chuva. “You don’t need to worry about her. I know her.”

Flickers of hope, of relief, in her eyes and in his mind. She took a step closer, closer than he was honestly comfortable with, but he wasn’t about to tell her to back off. “You do remember me, don’t you, Silas?”

He blinked, although of course it was invisible behind his mask. “Of course I do. How could I ever forget you, Chuva?”

A smile split her plump face, and he found himself dazzled by it, almost wanting to recoil as if from a very bright light. “Well, why didn’t you say so before?! Damn it, Silas, you were starting to make me worry with how weird you were acting!”

“What did you expect?” he said stiffly. “It’s been fifty-four years since I last heard from you.”

“I expected you to be happy!” she exclaimed.

“I am happy.” And, he realized, it was true: in his subdued way, he felt not satisfaction or contentment, but a brighter emotion that had not made itself known in quite some time. Yes, he was truly happy. Why shouldn’t he be? After fifty-four years, he had his double back…and rather than the voice in his head that she’d been throughout his adolescence, she was physically present, right in front of him.

Chuva’s expression softened, and she came forward again. This time, when she embraced him, he had enough presence of mind to relax just slightly, as well as bring his arms up to encircle her waist.

Chuva didn’t feel quite so much like she was hugging a wooden post this time, though Silas was still tense, firm with muscle and ramrod straight in all the places where she was soft and curved. He was both like and unlike the Silas of her imagination – she wondered why he still hadn’t so much as smiled, but that didn’t matter, her mind felt whole again and she’d accomplished her lifelong goal and it was all wonderful, just unbelievably wonderful. She pulled back to look at his face, only to find herself confronted by that dinky little mask, too impractically small to protect either his face or his identity. Why in the world had he charged into battle wearing a party accessory?

“So what’s all this?” she asked, eyes traveling judgmentally over his clothing.

“I am the Captain of the Royal Guard,” he replied. “This is my uniform…” His voice lowered. “Aside from the cape, but you know what that is for.”

She couldn’t help giggling. “Yeah. Though I don’t see any of your pals here wearing masks, either…but wow, Captain of the Royal Guard? When did that happen?”

“Many years ago. I would have told you before, if you had contacted me prior to arriving in this city.”

“Not for lack of trying!” she retorted indignantly. “But…well, see for yourself!” And she jabbed towards her cracked starstone, now incapable of doing anything but holding her cape around her shoulders.

Silas leaned closer, though he still left a respectable space between his face and her bosom. “It’s cracked?”

“It’s a broken piece of shit is what it is. Why else do you think I dragged my ass here from the other side of the world? I’ve been trying to contact you since the second that I woke up!”

“Woke up,” he echoed. He angled his head to stare off into the distance, revealing the elegant profile of his face, and was silent for so long that she decided to probe at his mind to see what he was thinking. But as soon as the fingers of her consciousness crept towards him, he spoke again. “You know, all this time I’ve been under the impression that you were dead.”

Damn. She’d known that this was coming, but she had hoped to have a little more time to be happy before…getting into it. “Um, yes, I kind of figured. It’s a long story…”

“I would be very interested to hear it. You can tell me on our way back to the castle to report the demon attack – which reminds me.” He seemed to shift his gaze to something over Chuva’s shoulder. “You should be on your way back as well, Miss Haraka.”

Chuva whirled around to see the little girl from the marketplace, who’d apparently decided to stick around for the battle after all, lingering behind them and doing a very obvious job of eavesdropping. The girl’s face colored. “O-oh, Sir Silver! I was just wondering why we were all standing around here–”

“I know what you were wondering. I’m sure that your parents must be very worried about you by now. My soldiers will be happy to escort you home.” Silas gesture to the uniformed guards, who at least had the decency to look like they were maintaining a respectful distance.

The girl, or Miss Haraka as he’d called her, did not move to leave right away. She looked at Chuva with – was that suspicion? Oh, void, it was; she actually had the gall to look suspicious after Chuva had just saved her ass – at any rate, she looked at her and then narrowed her eyes. “Who are you?” she murmured. “I mean, who are you really?”

Chuva rolled her eyes. “I’m a grown-up who needs to talk about grown-up things with my fellow grown-ups. You’ve got some nerve, you know that, kid? What makes you think that who I am is any of your business?”

The girl’s face puckered into a scowl, but she hurried over to join the soldiers, who dutifully flanked her and began heading back into Cumula City. Silas watched them go from behind the flat eyes of his mask.

“We shouldn’t let them get too far ahead,” he stated after a few moments.

Chuva nodded. “Lead the way, Captain.” After all, she’d only been in the city for a few hours, and even her magically-enhanced maps were nothing compared to the help of a longtime resident.

Falling into stride together, they passed the watchtower, then the cottages on South Broad Street. The gawking bystanders still lurking about all scampered out of Silas’s way, like cockroaches before a strong light, and several incredulous looks were aimed in Chuva’s direction. “I take it that no one much likes foreigners here?” she muttered to her double.

“Not necessarily, but the bridges have been closed for a generation, and everyone has stayed where they are since then. They simply don’t know what to make of you. Also, you still look a bit wild from the battle, and you are dressed like a vagabond.”

She looked down at her clothes, secondhand patchwork except for the incongruous cape, and sighed. “I am a vagabond. Though not for much longer, I hope.”

A prickle of anticipation reached the fringes of her mind, which surprised her; so far, she’d been able to sense his presence, but no specific emotions from him. Now, though, he was clearly waiting for her to breach the topic of where she’d been all this time, of why it had taken so long for her to reach him.

“I know what you’re thinking, and no, my starstone didn’t get broken…that night,” she started. “But it did do something weird.”

“Yes?” His tone betrayed no particular interest.

“I think it put me to sleep.” No, that wasn’t quite the right term… “Or in a coma. Or…what’s that thing where all your bodily functions freeze? Stasis? I think they used to have a spell for that, but it requires a lot of magic, no one can do it anymore–”

She felt him touch two fingers to her shoulder and realized how breathy her voice had gotten. “I’m not upset with you, Chuva,” said Silas, his voice still flat, but now she sensed affection lurking behind it. “Of course I was frightened when I lost you, and of course it saddened me, but I’ve never blamed you for it.”

Chuva managed a small, grateful smile. “That’s good to hear. But it’s still hard to talk about.”

“I understand. Just take it slowly.”

Slowly. Right. She began again, this time at a steadier pace: “You already know about the attack, how I was chased. I ran into the forest and found a cave. I took shelter there. It was super dark, but I could see just fine, and I was scared but I also hated myself for running.”

“I remember all of that,” he said.

But that would’ve been right about when they got cut off, the moment when he probably assumed she’d been killed. Only she hadn’t been. “Then my starstone started glowing. All those years I’d been using it to talk to you, and it never did anything like that! So I grabbed for it and that was it, I went right out. It wasn’t like falling asleep. More like I got whacked in the head so hard that I lost consciousness before I even knew what hit me.”

Silas stared straight ahead. “And you’re sure it was your starstone that did this?”

“I don’t see what else it could have been. I’m guessing that your sunstone never did anything like that.” A thought occurred to her. “By the way, do you still have it?”

He tapped his pocket affirmatively.

“That’s good. Anyway, like I said, I blacked out. And then I eventually woke up, feeling sick and weak and, well, almost hungover really, and I was still in that cave. My clothes were completely shredded, and I was actually dusty. Eventually I managed to crawl out of there, but when I got to the surface, I saw…”

Chuva’s feet stopped moving. Behind her eyes hung the image of the forest where she’d played as a child, the trees she had leapt off of and flown from, reduced to an alien landscape of gray toothpicks. She had no words for how the wrongness of that place had made her swoon, or how, even as awful as it was, it was nothing compared to seeing that the same fate had befallen her village. No words…but when she was communicating with her double, she didn’t need them.

“It had been numbed,” he finished for her quietly.

She inhaled sharply and began walking forward again. “So they call it. I found that out after walking for almost a whole day, when I got to the next village over. It was a sad place, really, falling apart and probably about to get numbed out itself, but I didn’t really care at that point. Once I convinced them that I wasn’t a ghost, they told me that Saint Valdez had gotten numbed out in a demon attack fifty years ago.”

“Fifty years,” Silas echoed. “And you were in that cave the entire time?”

“That’s what I’m telling you.”

“What about your starstone?”

“It was laying on the ground in the cave, where I dropped it, I guess, and it was broken by the time I found it.” She paused. “You know…I’ve always wondered if maybe I woke up because it broke. I don’t have any solid proof of that, but it’s a theory.”

“And you were not able to contact me,” mused Silas, clarifying the situation to himself. “Chuva, you…you certainly woke up late.”

She couldn’t resist snorting. “No shit.”

“Do you have any idea what happened in those fifty years that you were away?”

“Of course. I know enough to fight demons, don’t I?”

“That’s not exactly…” He trailed off, and the vague readings she’d been getting from his mind seemed to fizzle out. When he spoke again, his voice was completely inflectionless and businesslike. “We should discuss this later, preferably in private. For now, you must be presented to His Majesty, King Cecil.”

“Why?” asked Chuva warily.

“As you said, you just helped to defeat a demon. I imagine that the king will want to thank you personally for protecting Cumula City. And…perhaps you may even get a job opportunity out of it.”

Before she could ask why he was treating the king like a public employment officer, she realized what he meant, and grinned broadly. “A job working with you as a Royal Guard, you mean! Silas, that’s perfect! Now we’ll finally be a team, just like we always wanted to be when we were kids…!”

“I can’t guarantee anything,” he warned her. “You will still need to make an excellent impression on His Majesty for him to grant such a request. But I can show you what to say, and once I vouch for you – well, we’ll see.”

They began cresting a hill, and Chuva looked over her shoulder at the slowly spreading view beneath them. Cumula City was larger than most of the cities she’d visited during her journey, but with the eclectic architecture of a small town, and the overall stability of the most fortified settlements in the world. Her cape swept around as she turned, taking in the castle up ahead of her with its pale stone and elegant gabled rooftops, the ocean beyond and the ruined bridge that still glinted in the sun despite its condition. For the first time in her life, not only did she have no desire to leave the place that she’d come to, but she also she had a true sense of belonging. An entire adolescence of feeling like she didn’t fit had been wiped away by less than an hour of her double’s presence.

“You aren’t nervous?” asked Silas.

She shook her head dismissively. “Everything will work out now. I’m sure of it.”

“You’re not even nervous about meeting His Majesty?”

“That’s the least nerve-wracking part of the whole thing! Especially after I fought a demon and met you in person for the first time.” She smirked. “And besides…what’s a king to a god?”

One of the guards at the castle entrance told Sir Silver that His Majesty was expecting him, which was no great shock. Covering the short distance between the doors and the throne room, he searched for any trace of Violet, but if she was eavesdropping again, she must have been doing so more skillfully this time.

The meeting with King Cecil would be a delicate balancing act. While it was true that Chuva had been instrumental in slaying the demon, strangers were an uncanny sight here, even when their arrival didn’t preclude an unprecedented attack. And King Cecil, who had not been in power for very long, might decide to make a show of force so that his court wouldn’t think him spineless. Chuva would have to approach him with poise, with tact, respectful but not necessarily submissive…

He looked over at her to see that she had snatched the advice straight from his thoughts and was standing with impeccable posture, clasped hands, and a serene expression on her face. Good. Now, if she just doesn’t say that word anymore…

The corner of her mouth twitched. The G-word? Don’t worry, Silas, I’m looking for a job, not a mob.

Why was it still so disarming to feel her gaining access to the contents of his skull? Fifty-four years and he was behaving like a mortal… Brushing his introspections off with a practiced ease, he stepped up to the opulent wooden door, and the soldiers on either side opened it without him needing to so much as gesture.

At the far end of the room, Lord Algernon and King Cecil, who had been leaning together and consorting quietly, sprang towards the sound of Sir Silver’s entrance.

“There you are!” cried King Cecil. “Sir Silver, I have received reports that the southern border was just besieged by a…a…!” He stammered as if it were blasphemy to even think the word, let alone say it.

“A demon,” stated Sir Silver, feeling a momentary flush of contempt that this supposedly powerful figure was cringing at a mere word – and an incorrect one, at that. “Yes. Pardon my tardiness, Your Majesty, but I needed to ascertain that the danger had passed.” He moved forward in the supremely measured, gliding gait that he had learned to adapt in tenuous situations like this; Chuva, heeding his unspoken guidance, hung back for the moment.

King Cecil looked pasty-faced. “Any damage or dea – ah…that is, casualties?”

“It is too early to say for certain; my people are still investigating…” The king’s squeamishness amplified visibly, and Sir Silver took pity on him. “But I suspect not. The beast was intercepted by the border patrol before reaching the outskirts of town.” He steeled himself internally, as if he were preparing to yank a buried arrowhead from his skin, although his mouth didn’t so much as flicker. “And by someone else.”

Chuva responded to her cue quickly enough to make a stage actor proud, and continued her performance by mimicking her double’s glide, coming to a halt just behind him per his wordless instructions. She bowed deeply.

It was Lord Algernon, not the king, who spoke up first. “And who might this woman be, Sir Silver?”

“This is Chuva de Saría-Mustafa Maldonna,” stated Sir Silver, remembering a long-ago lecture she’d given him on naming conventions in her part of the world. “Or simply Chuva. She is a very old friend of mine who offered invaluable assistance in defeating the demon today.”

King Cecil, still processing this stranger, motioned mutely for Chuva to rise.

“Unusual sort of name,” commented Lord Algernon. “One you don’t see much of around here. Where do you hail from, Ms. Maldonna?”

Chuva’s eyes flicked towards Silas, an entire conversation passing between them in a fraction of a second. “I come from the wilderness around Saint Valdez Point – or what used to be Saint Valdez Point, near the city of Azuna.” Which was not technically a lie, but spared her from having to admit that she had lived in a village that’d been gone some fifty years while looking like she hadn’t yet reached her thirty-fifth birthday. Even someone as dense as King Cecil knew that mortals didn’t age that way, much as they would like to.

“That’s quite some distance away. How in the world did you end up here?”

“It took a very long time,” she answered modestly. “Years, in fact. But there was nothing to hold me in the area any longer, plus I wanted to see Silas again. I knew he was here, it was just a matter of traveling, and I happened to learn a thing or two about fighting demons along the way.”

“My word!” exclaimed Lord Algernon. “You must be quite close to Sir Silver to do all that for him!”

She offered up a saccharine smile, but Sir Silver felt the acidic disgust that her mind retched up at this assessment. He salved her bristling anger: of everyone on Atlas Isle, Lord Algernon was the one person capable of understanding what it meant to be doubles. (Although, when he realized how many people would probably assume that he and Chuva were courting, he understood her visceral reaction all too well.)

“Hang on,” interjected King Cecil. “Who’s Silas?”

Sir Silver cleared his throat. “That is my first name, Your Majesty. Chuva has known me since before I was knighted.”

The king’s pastiness became a blush, and he slumped back, obviously embarrassed.

Suddenly, Lord Algernon snapped his fingers. “I’ve just thought of something! Ms. Maldonna – may I call you Chuva? Yes? Chuva it is, then – did you happen to be on Atlas Isle two days ago? Fatesday, the twenty-second of Reapsmonth?”

“Fatesday?” she echoed. “Yes, that would have been the morning that I arrived…why?”

“Because on that particular day, we had reports of a demon attack on a farm outside of Cumula City, as well as claims that an unknown stranger had stopped it. Was that you, by any chance?”

“Oh!” She blinked. “Yes, that was me.”

That’s such an obvious question, why didn’t I ask her that before? Sir Silver reprimanded himself. He was too used to being the only demon-killer in the vicinity.

“I’m afraid that I didn’t actually destroy that demon, though,” cautioned Chuva. “It ran away before I could finish it off.”

Lord Algernon nodded gravely. “Then I suppose the creature was the same one that attacked us today?”

“Actually…no. I think that they were both ocean-dwellers, but they were definitely two separate demons.”

The emotional temperature of the room dropped by about twenty degrees. One demon in the holy land could be written off as a fluke, but two meant that the numbing was looming closer than anyone wanted to admit.

After nearly a minute, King Cecil dredged up enough dignity to pull himself together. “Well. At any rate, you have done us a great service, Ms.…Chuva. If there is anything I can do to repay you, you have only to ask.”

This would be the ideal time to ask for a job – and while Chuva was more than capable of speaking for herself, Sir Silver decided to act as her voice in this matter, lending his respectability to someone who was still, fundamentally, an outsider. “Chuva has informed me that she wishes to request permission to emigrate, Your Majesty.”

Although immigration to Atlas Isle had been virtually unheard of since the closing of the bridges, such an entreaty was not surprising, even to King Cecil. After all, this was still seen as the paradise where anyone would be blessed to live, recent altercations notwithstanding. “That can certainly be arranged. I can have the appropriate paperwork brought–”

“There is something else that I wish to discuss.” Most people wouldn’t dare to interrupt the king, even a king as objectively unintimidating as King Cecil, but Sir Silver was not most people. “Chuva and I have developed a proposal that we believe would benefit everyone involved.”

“Ah–?” The King seemed nervous about what was to come next, judging by the slight recurrence of his pasty complexion. “Please continue, then.”

“In my professional opinion, Chuva should be installed into the Royal Guard posthaste. Preferably in an upper echelon position, one that would make her subservient only to myself, to your court, and of course to you.”

King Cecil jolted forward, his round stomach pushing across his lap. “Excuse me? Sir Silver, you must know what an unusual suggestion that is – in fact, I would even call it unprecedented! We have very specific customs for appointing Royal Guard members, as well as for promotion through the ranks, which involve years of observation and character judgement! N-no offense, Chuva, I’m certain that you’re an excellent warrior, but we simply cannot appoint a foreigner to such a high position.”

Disappointment from Chuva grazed the edge of Sir Silver’s mind, along with squirming fear that her quest would end right here, that she’d be forced away from him. He wasted no time in placating her by beginning to speak again.

“I am well aware of hiring protocol, Your Majesty.” I’ve been involved with it for far longer than you have. “Therefore, I am afraid that I must disagree with your statement that my proposal is unprecedented. I am a foreigner, and King Dromedor appointed me the Captain of the Royal Guard due to my experience with battling demons, in case the day ever came that we would need to defend Atlas Isle from such enemies. Now that day has arrived. We need as many qualified demon-fighters on our side as possible, and for that reason, Chuva would be an immense asset to us.”

Lord Algernon laid his fingers lightly against King Cecil’s arm. “He’s right, Sire. We’ve had two demon attacks in less than a week, and Sir Silver is the only one who really knows what to do – the rest of his people aren’t even old enough to have fought in the Thirty Years’ War.”

King Cecil’s face was puckered with uncertainty. “But we don’t know her,” he muttered.

“I know her,” stated Sir Silver. “After twenty-two years of faithfully serving the monarchy, do you really believe that I would try to endanger this kingdom now?”

Lord Algernon nodded eager encouragement.

Slumped back into his throne, cornered by the opinions of so many people who knew better than him, King Cecil looked more like a child who’d failed his examinations than the appointed leader of a prosperous kingdom. “I suppose,” he mumbled, “that if she can pass the physical aptitude test, then perhaps…”

“Pardon me, Your Majesty?” asked Chuva, ending a long silence from her corner of the discussion.

“Every candidate for the Royal Guard must pass a test of skill and endurance,” explained Lord Algernon, “overseen by Sir Silas as well as His Majesty. Of course, for someone who regularly fights demons, it should be no challenge at all – just a mere formality…”

“But we can’t completely dispose of protocol,” interjected King Cecil. “Even in these desperate times.”

“Certainly not, Your Majesty,” agreed Sir Silver. “Thank you for your gracious consideration. Permission to begin preparing Chuva for her trial?”

The king was visibly relieved at the prospect of banishing Sir Silver’s steely masked eyes from the room. “Go ahead. Dismissed. Ah, I suppose I’ll see you later for a detailed damage report, once our people have put it together.”

Sir Silver nodded and turned for the door. It was a strange relief to see Chuva’s face in his line of vision again, her smile just as sunshiny as the color of her hair. She breezed a little closer to him, but before either of them could go any further, he heard Lord Algernon speak up again: “Permission to assist Sir Silver with Chuva’s briefing, Sire?”

“Right now?” protested King Cecil anxiously. “But aren’t we supposed to be discussing the, the–”

“We will,” Lord Algernon assured him. “This will only take a few minutes.”

King Cecil sighed, resigned. “Do as you wish, Algernon.”

Ignoring Chuva’s surprise (and annoyance; she clearly wanted to spend some time alone with her double) Sir Silver strode for the doors, his cape sweeping out behind him. The other two lingered by his shoulders, Chuva on one side, Lord Algernon on the other, and at least he heard the reassuring thunk that meant that the throne room was out of earshot. At last, they had left the company of that imbecile king, and by extension, they were free to discuss matters of real importance.

The guy, the Royal Advisor guy – Algernon – had a slightly rodent-like quality to his face that was oddly endearing: nonthreatening features and deep, sentimental eyes, like an overgrown rabbit. Right now, those eyes were shining delightedly, gazing at her like she was a savior who had just descended directly from the heavens. Which was both flattering and a little disquieting.

“Chuva Maldonna, we meet at last,” he gushed. “I’ve heard so much about you, but I never thought we’d be face-to-face like this!”

She recoiled, flinging her polite act aside. “What the void?!” she demanded.

Algernon chuckled. “Relax, milady. I don’t mean to put you on the spot! Your double told me about you, that’s all I meant.”

“Silas – ?!” She whirled around to face him, and found herself looking at the very tiniest of smiles.

He said, “Relax, Chuva. Algernon is an old friend of mine. After two decades on this island, he’s still the only one that I’ve trusted enough to share certain details of my life with.”

Suspicion and curiosity dueled within her. “Wait a minute. You just called Silas my double. If you know that about us, then does that mean you know we’re–”

“From another place altogether, yes,” Algernon finished hurriedly. The euphemistic phrase was vague, but she immediately got the meaning, and also the gist of why he’d phrased it like that: the G-word was still off limits.

“He told you that?” And if Silas had known Algernon for two decades, then, what, had some random guy known that she was a god before she even knew it, before she’d even woken up? That hardly seemed fair.

Silas shook his head dismissively. “He had practically worked it out for himself before I ever said a word. Algernon is far too quick-minded for me to keep up with, sometimes. The polar opposite of His Majesty.”

“Don’t start with that again.” Algernon addressed Chuva. “Our king is new at his job, but first impressions can be deceiving, and I truly believe that he has the potential to be a great leader. Still, that’s our Silas, isn’t it? He can be cruel sometimes, but at least he’s always honest.”

“I guess.” Chuva didn’t bother mentioning that this description didn’t match her memories of Silas at all. Sure, he’d always been honest, but sensitive, poetic boys like him tended to dress up their cruelty in so much flowery language that you could hardly even tell that they were insulting you anymore.

Algernon’s expression softened and darkened simultaneously. “Where have you been, milady? Silas believed that you were gone for good, and though I’m generally an optimist, I had to agree in this case that people who vanish during demon attacks don’t generally reappear after half a century.”

Her cheeks warmed, partly from shame, partly from the indignity of just meeting someone who already knew all of her deepest secrets, but she managed not to lower her gaze. Silas swooped in to save her from any floundering attempt at speech that she might have made. “It seems that she had a mishap with a certain magical object, which ended up putting her in stasis for all that time.”

“All that time!” echoed Algernon incredulously. Now he was regarding her less like a savior and more like some kind of unearthed historical relic, which made her glad that more people didn’t know about the fifty-year gap in her history. “You poor thing, you must be so out of the loop…”

“I was,” she cut him off pointedly. “But it’s not like I just woke up yesterday. It’s been three years; I know about the war, I know about the demons.” She paused. “Although I have to admit, I never thought that demons could touch Atlas Isle, or at least not Cumula City. That part’s new to me.”

“New to us, too,” he murmured. “I suppose that means that you’ll have your work cut out for you, won’t it? And who knows, perhaps now that both of you are here together, we’re going to have the chance to actually tackle this issue at the source…”

Irritation burst into being from Silas’s side of her mind, taking her off guard; it was the most intense emotion she’d gotten from him so far. Yet the visible portions of his face remained as unnervingly neutral as ever. “I can agree that Chuva’s arrival is most fortuitous,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean that we should be giving her false hope about our chances. We are still no match for the Equilibrium.”

“Excuse me?” said Chuva, baffled, and not just by the unfamiliar term that he had used.

“The Equilibrium,” he repeated, lifting one hand with the fingers curled outwards. “The numbing. But the numbing is actually but one symptom of a much larger process, along with the planetary changes, the desperation of the populace, and the demons – which aren’t even demons, not really. The more proper term for them is Equalizers.”

“I…haven’t heard any of this before.” And now she felt a little defensive about her ignorance. “I mean, of course I know about the numbing, but nobody ever told me that it was all…one thing.”

“One entity.” The way he said it threw her for a moment, like he was mocking her for her imprecise language, and she had to remind herself that Silas would never do something like that. “The Equilibrium. We can fight it, Chuva, you and I, and we will fight it, but understand that all we can ever be is damage control. There’s no chance of us winning.”

Chuva’s stance swayed; she wasn’t sure whether to recoil or get right up in his face. “Um, Silas? Am I hearing you right?! Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve been mister work-for-the-greater-good, and now it sounds an awful lot like you’re just giving up! Did you forget that we aren’t like normal people?!”

It was like she’d touched a bruise on the surface of his mind. She felt him stiffen, flinch – and push her away.

“What do you think happened to the gods, Chuva?” he said quietly. “Do you think that they vanished of their own volition?” (They, not we; it was safer that way.) “Of course they didn’t. Something forced them out, and only one entity has enough power to accomplish that.

“While you were asleep, I went to war. I joined the Global Safeguard Army, which wasn’t just ‘normal people’ either, did you know that? Thirty-one years we fought, struggling with everything we had, but it was no use. If the gods at full power couldn’t stop the Equilibrium…well, the GSA didn’t stand a chance. And if the GSA didn’t stand a chance, then you and I most certainly don’t either. It doesn’t matter that we’re doubles. It doesn’t matter that you know enough swordsmanship and magic to best a few Equalizers. The real enemy is out of your league; you are nothing against it. Do you understand?”

She stared at him, eyes stretched wide, so that her pupils would be burning into his if it weren’t for that damn mask.

“Was I supposed to know about this?” Her voice rose at the end, almost into a squeak, but sharper.

Silas’s shoulders slumped, almost imperceptibly; in fact, maybe she didn’t see it at all. Maybe she only felt it as the tiniest bit of tension leaked out from him. “No, of course not, there’s no way you could have known. I’m sorry, Chuva. I don’t mean to upset you, truly…I just want you to know how things really are.”

What the fucking void is that supposed to mean?

Algernon, who she’d nearly forgotten about, cleared his throat tentatively and glanced over at the door to the throne room. “Perhaps we ought to get someone to escort Chuva to her new room…?”

Silas shook his head, brisk and businesslike once more, all traces of potential sentimentality swept out of his demeanor. “It would be better to take her to the armory first. She needs to complete her trial, and the least we can do is give her a decent weapon.”

“You want me to jump into the trial right now?” she exclaimed.

“No time like the present. Everything hinges upon His Majesty’s approval. Don’t tell me that you’re worried about your chances of success.”

“Oh, trust me, I’m not.” It looked like she might have a few things to get concerned with here, but whether or not she’d impress an ineloquent bureaucrat wasn’t one of them.

“Good. You have no reason to be.” For a fleeting second, his finger brushed against her arm, stiff glove-fabric nuzzling the skin left bare by her frayed shirt. “I’ll go and make the preparations.”

He turned to depart, but Chuva bounded a single step after him. “Wait!”

“It’ll only be for a little while, Chuva. We’ll be together again very soon.”

“I know that. I just want to ask you a question.” Although, of course, she did feel an absurd sense of loss from watching him walk away, one that she couldn’t conceal from him. But she wasn’t lying, either. She knew that this was only a temporary separation, and she really did have a question to ask him.

She took a breath. “It’s something I’ve always wondered about. No one has ever been able to tell me, but I figured that you might know…who we used to be. What we used to be. Do you…?”

Uneasy silence percolated the air. Algernon seemed twitchy, ready to flee, and Silas kept his unfeeling back towards her. Yet he responded all the same.

You really need to be more careful about what you say out loud. But you do have a right to know the answer, all the same. The truth is, I never figured out for certain who I was, because it’s impossible to tell without your double being around…but I did narrow it down. And seeing you here, in person, confirms what I suspected.

She leaned forward, practically rocking onto her toes.

I am Darkness, said Silas, in the mental voice that had not altered with age or time. And you are the Light.

His unspoken words flared warmly in her gut. You are the Light…yes, she was the Light; nothing had ever felt like more of a solid identity than that simple phrase did. Except for maybe the moment, earlier in the day, when she’d seen his face and suddenly known exactly who she was looking at.

“Thank you,” she said, aloud, because it didn’t strike her as dangerous to do so.

“Thank you as well,” replied Silas, followed by the sound of his boot heels stomping as he retreated down the hall.

Chuva spent a minute or so watching him go – the solidity of his movements, the way his feet struck the floor, and even the way that sunlight from the windows rippled on his cape. All of these things reassured her, confirming that the boy who she’d always known as merely a voice in her head really did exist. Yes, of course he did, and hadn’t she always known that? Even if he wasn’t quite the same as she remembered…

Behind her, Algernon uttered a sigh. “Poor fellow,” he remarked. “I suppose that if I’d seen all the things that he has…but I still like to think that I wouldn’t be quite as much of a pessimist. What about you, Chuva? Do you think that there’s no way out of our current predicament, as your double does? Or can you find even a small amount of hope in your heart?”

“Hope?” She blinked, startled. “Uh…I guess I’m not the best person to ask. I mean, I only just found out that there’s such a thing as the Equilibrium. But…I don’t know…I’ve never really believed that there’s such a thing as a problem that can’t be solved. Even demons have their weak points, so who’s to say that this Equilibrium thing is totally flawless, that there’s no way to blow it wide open?”

Algernon smiled broadly. “I like your spirit very much, milady. I hope that you and I can become friends, just as Sir Silver and I did.”

“I hope so, too.” It would be nice to surround herself with people who actually knew what was going on.

“We need people like you around,” he declared fervently. “And I’m not even referring to your…origins. This is my home, it means everything to me, and it does me good to meet someone who believes that it can be saved. If we don’t have at least that little hope, well, how are we ever going to fight?”

“I know what you mean,” agreed Chuva, but now her focus was diverging, and she could tell that she sounded distracted. His words had provoked a growing uneasiness within her that she’d been trying to ignore.

His fingers played across his long veiny neck, thoughtfully, absently. “Of course, I can’t fight, per se – I’ve always been the brains to Silver’s brawn. And he never wants to hope for anything, of course. But I just feel that with you here, it’ll be better for him. Better for all of us.”

And then he must have spotted her preoccupied expression, and misinterpreted it, because he quickly reassured her, “Don’t let his doom-saying discourage you. No matter how it may sound, that man is a born warrior; you couldn’t stop him from throwing his all into beating the Equilibrium. And if he battles while still not thinking that it can really be done, well…that’s just the way that he is, isn’t it?”

His tone remained light, platitudinous even, and her mouth made some kind of sound to agree with him. All the while, her eyes were still fixed in the direction that Silas had gone, as if she were willing him to step back into sight – only this time without the mask, without the brooding, without the harsh assertion that she was nothing in the face of the Equilibrium. But even with all that, he was still her double; his presence sat in her mind the way that a familiar old pen might sit in the contours of her hand. That should have been enough for her. In fact, she turned on her brewing dissatisfaction angrily, snapping at herself that it was enough for her.

The fact that the Silas she’d always known would never have declared an enemy to be undefeatable, and never would have given up hope that goodness would prevail, didn’t bear thinking about. They were together again, so everything was all right.

It’s your turn to tell a story first.

Chuva smiled, making her cool starstone shift against the struts of her neck. Sometimes she would lay the old brooch against her forehead, sometimes over her heart, but it never really mattered; as long as its smooth surface was touching her flesh, her mind opened up to Silas. “Oh, so we’re saving the best for last again, huh?”

What–?! No! His utter mortification always made her giggle. She’d never met anyone who was so averse to the idea of being perceived as even a little bit mean. You know I like your stories a lot!

“I know.” She didn’t bother to remind him that they weren’t her stories, not really. Somehow, Silas always managed to unwind brand-new fictions out of his head, like a fairy tale hero spinning straw into gold, but Chuva simply wasn’t that creative. So she usually just ended up repurposing whatever books she’d been reading lately.

So tell me. You must have something, you always do!

“Of course I do,” she agreed. She propped her hands behind her head, took a breath, and began in her usual way: “So once there was this princess…”

All the girls in the stories that Chuva had read were always princesses. Vaguely, she understood that the term had something to do with royalty, but Saint Valdez was not a monarchy nor even located within fifty miles of one. That was all right, though. To Chuva, “princess” just meant “heroine” – it was a title you received when you were a girl with a story worthy of telling.

This ritual had nothing to do with her village, anyway, or with anything in the real world. Practically every day, at eight in the evening for her and eight in the morning for him, Chuva and Silas gathered together in their own inviolate location. Connected by minds, emotions, and odd old stones, they were gradually building up a world of their own, day by day and night by night.

“And this princess lived in a kingdom where her mother, the evil queen, had made a – a – a-lie–”

Alliance, supplied Silas helpfully.

“Yes, that. She made an alliance with a dragon to make sure that everybody in the kingdom always followed the rules, even the king. Because the people were never allowed to do anything on their own or have any fun, they were very unhappy. The princess couldn’t stand it! But she was lucky, and one day, she met a knight…”

Boys in stories, she’d found, were usually knights. Sometimes they were also princes, or else common poor people, but they never stayed poor for long; they always became knights or princes by the end of the story. And in every case, without fail, the boys always fell in love with the princesses.

“She tried to fight the dragon herself, and would have died – but the knight saved her. They realized that they should work together, because he knew how to fight, and she knew about all the queen’s plans. After a lot of training and a great battle, they finally won! The queen was banished and the dragon was killed. And the knight and princess got married and became the new rulers. The end.”

That’s a really good story, Chuva, declared Silas, duly impressed.

“I know, right? I think it might be one of my favorites.” Except that the ending could have used some work…just stating that a great battle had taken place wasn’t very exciting. She wanted to know about the knight thrusting his sword, and how many times he had to stab the dragon, and the way that all of its blood and guts had come gushing out. She was never able to transfer her gruesome imaginings into words, but maybe Silas would have better luck with that…

On cue, his probing tendrils of curiosity wriggled into her head, prodding the recesses of her skull. It was an intimate process, and maybe an ordinary person would have found it too violating, but for Chuva it was merely a form of communication – one that was better than normal speech, because it granted perfect understanding like language never could. He set about finding her thoughts, examining them, reorganizing them…

’Twas once a princess in a kingdom

Where a fearsome dragon ruled the land

She was so devoted to her people

That at last she took a stand…

Grinning to herself, she considered telling him that restructuring her story into a poem didn’t count as his story for the evening, but she didn’t want to spoil the moment. And she liked his rhymes enough to make an exception tonight.

So, setting off to slay the beast,

The princess sought help from a knight

The battle raged for many days

’Til both came out all right…

“You still forgot the part where the knight cracks open the dragon’s head and all the brains and blood come spilling out,” interrupted Chuva.

He twinged with disgust and distress. That’s not what poems are for! They’re supposed to be about beautiful things!

“Well, it could be very beautiful blood!”

You’re gross, Chuva!

She giggled, rolled over, stuck out her tongue…only to find herself facing her bedroom wall. In what was becoming a more and more common occurrence, she’d momentarily overlooked the fact that he was not physically with her, someone that she could poke and tease and blow raspberries at. In fact, other than a few blurred mind’s-eye glimpses, she couldn’t even really see him.

Turning back over to face reality again, she felt her cape twist awkwardly around her, the way her blankets did when she moved too much in her sleep. Except that this particular blanket couldn’t simply be kicked off in the morning.

Chuva? Are you okay?

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, I’m fine.” She maneuvered one chubby leg free. “I was just thinking about how much I wish you were here.”

I wish I was there, too.

“Earlier today I drew some pictures of the story I told you. If you were here, I could show them to you.”

I’d like that.

“Maybe you can see them one day, when you come and rescue me like the knight rescued the princess, and we’ll finally be together…”

Dissent rippled across the surface of his consciousness. That can’t happen! I can’t come and rescue you and I’m not a knight. And I can’t become one, either, so don’t say that I can.

Why did he have to go and start crimping up the pretty fantasy that she’d been laying out for herself? “Sure you could! I mean, why couldn’t you?”

You know exactly why. I’m a cursed child…

One thing that Chuva had never really considered before she met Silas: people in other parts of the world often had very different ways of thinking about things. For instance, while the people of Saint Valdez Point did not exactly regard a winged girl as normal, Chuva had never been an object of open scorn or fear. But in Silas’s town, according to his accounts, people often gaped in horror whenever they encountered him on the street, making holy gestures, crossing over to avoid getting too close to him. He said that his parents tried to shield him from this, but there was only so much that they could do, and he was too perceptive not to read the words “cursed child” on the lips of the townsfolk.

“You are not cursed,” said Chuva firmly.

Am so.

“Are not!”

Am so! Everyone says it!

“Then everyone is wrong!” She crossed her arms, as if he could see it. “We’re not cursed, we’re special! If they can’t see that, it’s their problem, not yours. And that’s…that’s why you have to come here!”

A soundless, inquiring frequency hovered in his mind, a question mark made flesh.

“That’s right!” she continued, warming to her spontaneous idea. “Because if you came here, nobody would think you were a cursed child, and you could be whatever you wanted to be! Plus I’d get to see you…”

She felt him turning the concept over, prodding at it. Then he quietly conceded: That would be nice…

Chuva smiled triumphantly. “Then let’s do it!”

Right now?! We can’t do that, Chuva! We’re just kids!

“I know that! I just meant someday…when we’re bigger. You’ll come here and then we’ll be together.”

Someday, he repeated. Okay. I can do that.

“Do you promise?”

Yes. I promise.

She shifted, and her cape rustled slightly, which gave her another idea. “Hey, Silas. How about when we’re together, we show each other our wings? We could even go flying together!”

I don’t know how to fly.

“Me, neither,” she admitted. “But I’m going to learn. Just you wait and see…”

Then she heard a sound that startled her: knuckles rapping against her bedroom door. It must have been one of her parents – but they’d never come knocking at this time of night before. She jerked upwards; the starstone tumbled from its spot on her throat; and she was suddenly alone in the rom. “Come in,” she called reluctantly.

Saría opened the door, and Chuva regarded her suspiciously. It wasn’t quite bedtime yet, and Chuva wasn’t doing anything wrong, but she knew that her mother could always find something to complain about.

“What are you up to, Chuva?” asked Saría.

“Nothing,” Chuva answered, like any adolescent. Her mother didn’t appear to be very interested in what she was doing, though; it looked like Saría had her own agenda.

“So your father and I have been talking…” she started.

Chuva stiffened, because “your father and I have been talking” had become a common phrase since the emergence of her wings, and whatever came after it was never anything good. Usually it preceded sentences like “we’re going to be pulling you out of school for now” and “we think it would be better if you just stayed in your room this week.” When her father and mother had been talking, it meant that impactful decisions about Chuva’s life had been made without her input…again.

“We understand that the past couple of months have been very difficult for you,” Saría continued, “and they’ve been difficult for us, too. We needed to wait and see what would happen with you before making any promises about the future. But…”

Chuva kept her face carefully neutral; she’d long since learned that any trace of sullenness or resentment in her expression could trigger Saría into a lecture, or worse, a screaming fit. On the inside, though, she was scoffing. It wasn’t her that her parents had wanted to “wait and see” about, it was the town. Specifically, how weirded out the town was by a girl with wings walking among them.

“Everything seems to be going fine so far,” stated Saría, albeit cautiously. “So after talking it over, we’ve decided that you can start taking magic lessons with Magi Corona.”

The girl blinked. “Wait…what?”

“Magic lessons,” said Saría again. “You still want to do that, don’t you?” It was a moot question; Chuva had begged for magic lessons from her parents half a dozen times, until her mother warned her that if she brought it up again, it would be absolutely verboten. So she’d stopped.

“Yeah, of course!” She pulled herself up straighter, eyes widening. “You’re really going to let me?!”

Saría shrugged. “You really do need to start getting out of the house more. Magi Corona thinks that you have a lot of potential – possibly enough to become the next town magi, if you work hard. And even with your tutoring, we can just afford it.”

“Yes, yes, yes! I can’t wait!” And then, as an afterthought: “Thank you!”

“You’re welcome.” Saría moved back towards the door, not having bothered to sit down, which Chuva was glad of. With the unexpected good news delivered, she wanted her mother to get out so that she could tell Silas all about it. Saría added just before she left, “Bedtime soon. Make sure to wash your feet.”

“I will, Mama.”

“Good. Good night, Chuva.”

But when Saría was gone, Chuva made no move to change into her pajamas or head to the washroom. Instead, she snatched for her starstone. Silas was waiting for her to reinitiate contact, and once the brooch was brushing her skin again, she felt his confusion and concern dissolve into relief.

There you are! What happened? You just blanked off!

“Sorry,” she told him. “My mama walked into the room, so I had to let go for a second.”

Oh, no! You didn’t get caught, did you…? Silas had a perpetual fear that if either of their parents knew about these conversations, then they’d fear that their children had become delusional and take the magic stones away. Chuva personally doubted that her mother would fear for her sanity, but she’d probably confiscate the starstone anyway, just to be spiteful…or worse, use it as a future threat: “If you don’t do exactly as I say right when I say it, I’ll take your starstone and you’ll never be able to talk to your imaginary friend again!”

“Thankfully, no. It’s actually good news! She’s going to start letting me take magic lessons with Magi Corona!”

Oh, that is good! Except… He paused ponderously. What are you actually going to do once you know magic?

“What kind of a question is that?! I can do all kinds of things! I could sell charms and get money. I could become the new magi. Or…something even more important!” Her story from earlier sprang back to the forefront of her mind. “I could slay a dragon with magic!”

There aren’t any dragons, Chuva, he pointed out.

“Well, then I could make one! I mean, with magic, what can’t you do?!”

Probably a lot. One time I read this book on magic, and it said there are a lot of limits, like…

She rolled her eyes, and he trailed off, sensing that his pessimism would not be listened to. Right now, there were enough limits on Chuva’s life that she didn’t want to hear about any more. Magic was her only liberation right now: the magic that allowed her to communicate with Silas, the magic that might even let her fly one day. That was why it was so important for her to learn more. Like the princess in the story, she’d been locked down by an evil queen, and she had the feeling that magic might be the first step to breaking the chains.