Little Shadow

Her vision dances before her, flecks of near blue in an endless black sea, stumbling about like drunken ants.

She digs her knuckles in deeper, and blue brightens to white, a starry sky painted against her eyelids, then beams of bright light, then dizzying spirals that slowly swallow the darkness. Maybe if she pushes hard enough, they’ll swallow her too.

She brings her hands down to rest in her lap, one atop the other, and in time the brilliance subsides, and she is once more alone in inky blackness.

All around her are the sounds of panicked people that should be at rest. She focuses on the rough stone beneath her instead, cold as the desert night. She ought to be wary, sat as she is, a restless city beneath her, their cries drifting to her ears on the wind. But some slight, terrible instinct within her fears that to leave her refuge and descend, would be the most dangerous thing of all.

She sees brief glimpses of reds, and oranges, dull and throbbing. Perhaps figments of her imagination, perhaps not, but dread pulses through her regardless.

Her head hangs low, spine curving forward like a triumphal arch, severed in two. A single spasm could send her tumbling over the edge. 

The reds and oranges continue to bloom like weeds, just as the white did, as if hoping to engulf her.

Razia opens her eyes. She looks down, to see a world ablaze.

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They’d lain in wait beyond the city walls. Tens of thousands of pale demons – armoured ghosts, bloodless ghouls.

She doesn’t know when they’d first arrived. It feels like a lifetime ago, but she remembers the time before. She remembers a calm, of sorts. A crystal night, when she had climbed up onto the city walls and seen nothing but stars, eternal and unending. A darkness not permeated with the glare of firelight on metal, and silence not corrupted by the constant brays of dying horses.

The city has not been dark, truly dark, for many months, but she would rather the uneven night to the inferno she sees now. 

“Hell must be empty,” her mother had once said, “for the number of devils in the world.” She thinks now, that her mother must have been wrong. She looks around, and knows that Hell has followed its servants here.

The very air burns.

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She cannot stay on this roof, sedentary, sedate, as much as her fluttering heart implores her to stay. She feels exposed, and vulnerable, and she knows that while the streets hide untold dangers, they will still be safer than simply waiting for fires to spread and claim her.

Voices rage below her. She uses that disquieting blend of terror and triumphant mirth to mask the sounds of her own descent, and when bare feet finally touch down on dusty earth she keeps close to the flickering shadows of building, innocuous and unnatural.

This is her home, the city where she grew up. These are the alleys she played in as a child, the homes where her friends and family live. She can only pray that the familiarity will serve her now.

The dark shields her like an old friend, while surrendering the foreign devils without mercy, pale faces reflecting the firelight like fallen moons.

Her mother calls to her in her mind, in her memory. “My little shadow,” she’d laugh, walking between the rows of buildings as she visited her patients, bringing food and medicine, comfort and clothing, and Razia would doggedly follow her footsteps, though her feet would ache and she was seldom allowed inside.

Today, when the cries had rang out that the walls had been breached, heralded by choked screams, her mother had looked at her with bright eyes and wordlessly told her to flee. Today, when her mother had left the house, Razia didn’t follow.

But she can still be a shadow. She moves like one now, silent and stealthy. Intangible. If she can convince herself of that, then maybe the flying arrows and stray blades and wandering hands will believe it as well. If she can will herself untouchable, perhaps she will make it through this night unscathed.

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The air stinks of smoke and the night is thick with screams. But for just a moment, Ravia feels removed from it all, hearing nothing, feeling nothing. For a moment, here, in this alleyway, as the city burns around her, she is only aware of one thing.

The man lies on the ground, stiff and unmoving. She thinks she could recognise him, but she looks away before she can be sure, not wanting to know. Lidded eyes unseeing, rigid fists press deep into his flesh, tight around the sword hilt protruding from his stomach.

The ground around him is streaked red. She imagines him, the man he was, dirt beneath his fingernails as he desperately tried to claw himself towards help, to safety, before succumbing to insurmountable pain, to the beckoning of death, and simply holding on instead, as his grip slipped on the life bleeding out of him.

She moves closer.

More screams – and laughter too, she can hear now, but screams always are the best at making themselves heard at night. She knows these streets like a sailor knows the night sky; even amidst the chaos, she could walk the path to her uncle’s shop with closed eyes. The mosque is around the corner from there. She is sure, with a sudden, plummeting certainty, that that is the focus through which the demons will unleash their Hell.

People must have fled to the mosque when the battle horns sounded, seeking safety, sanctuary, salvation. The void within her remembers the cries she tried to block out on that roof, and their words take shape in her mind now, though she did not want to understand them then. She sees smashed doors and burning buildings, but not a single person, and has the horrifying suspicion that those who did not run to the mosque were dragged.

Screams and laughter, and the screams demand more attention, beg more loudly to be heard, but it’s the laughter that sends shivers down her spine.

She wants to run, but she has nowhere to go. And she wants to survive, but she doesn’t know how. Choices stretch out before her, and she fears that they all lead to death.

She moves closer still.

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She kneels. A dampness soaks through the knees of her shalwar.

The hilt is a curious thing, strangely crooked, topped with a cross. She tries to adjust the hands, to better study the sword – there is a little resistance, then a loud crack, and she can move the arm aside with ease. The blade, what little she can see of it, is narrow and flat. She tugs, but there is little give. She thinks it must have been straight at one point, but now it sticks, bent against the ground. Useless. 

The screams are growing softer, hoarser. Her resolve strengthens with every one. If the only thing she can do now is give witness, she will not shy away.

She turns instead to the man’s belt. It holds a dagger - small, with a beautiful curved blade and a hilt that fits her hand as if moulded for her grip, as if it were made for her to wield. Part of her laments that she cannot use the demons’ own blades against them, but the better part knows she is as like to damage herself using a sword as the enemy. Perhaps she will do the same with this knife, but it is at least familiar, and will not unbalance her as she walks. And for all the strength of her will, she cannot bring herself to approach the devastation unarmed. 

The taste of smoke has made a home in her nose and mouth, and she is preparing to venture even deeper into the hellfire. She will need protection.

She can readjust her hijab to loosely cover her nose and mouth, and must be content with that. She reaches out to close the man’s eyes, and then stands. She doesn’t know the entire Salat al-Janazah, but it feels wrong to say nothing. So she recites the Takbir, and hopes someone will be able to perform the complete rites later. And then, still in the shadows, she begins to walk to the mosque.

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She watches from the shadows, as the mosque, it’s doors barred, is set ablaze to depraved laughter. She chokes on smoke and other people’s screams, and ash clings to the tears that stream down her face. 

Heat floods the night - she tells herself it is still the night, though the sky is so thick with grey that she doubts she’ll know when the morning comes, because if this is only one night then it can still end when the day breaks - and dries her throat, her mouth, her lungs. She welcomes it - it keeps her quiet, silences her sobs.

And through it all, she refuses to look away. This is her burden to bear, the price of her unearned fortune, and she pays it willingly.

So though her eyes sting, with sorrow and anger and frustration, she opens them wide, and lets the sight of flames engulf her.