A City of Shadow
Float by Jasmine Kareem-Robinson digital art
A City of Shadow by Genevieve Dreger
There are five secrets in the city of Nym. You figure out the first one pretty quickly: your shadow is treacherous. Of course, it's not quick enough. When you get stuck here, thrown tumbling from a strange trellis in the royal garden onto a hard patch of concrete in a strange city, your shadow isn't exactly the focus of your attention. You're mostly scared, wondering if you hit your head too hard because all you can remember is that strange trellis with those sickly sweet yellow flowers and a crown that you should not have been holding. More and more of my memories seem to go every day. Little snippets of a life that's no longer my own.
Of course, I can never catch snippets of my damn shadow. It could be anywhere in this strange city at this point, but I know I need to find it. I know I had a shadow when I first fell – I remember the echo of myself on the ground racing to meet me. When I got my bearings though, my shadow was gone, and so was the crown. It must have taken it, I know it. I just need to find where it went, and then maybe… maybe I can go home. Whatever that means.
That first day in Nym, I tried to figure out where I was. I remember someone telling me long ago that the best way to know is to get to a high place. So I climbed one of the strange turrets that grew out of the city walls like a weed. No one spared a glance as I pulled myself up the cruel spikes on its obsidian surface. I meant to get to the roof, but the odd gashes of windows at the top stirred something in the depths of my soul that I didn't like, so I decided to rest just below them instead. Balanced precariously against one of the longer protrusions, I got my first look at the city. I learned secret number two then and there, only a few hours into the first day as I gaped at the strange place I found myself in. The proud stone walls crisscrossed in an odd shape around Nym, like crooked hands cradling a precious drop of water. Beyond the strange, sprawling city was… nothing. An abyss stretched out as far as the eye could see, vast and rumbling and full of shadow. The inky black depths seemed to meld with the always pink sky, the edges of the horizon glittering like a gem. Hungry. I took as much in as I could stomach, which wasn't very much at all, before hurriedly climbing back down. That was secret number two: Nym is all on its own.
It wasn't until a few days after that that I discovered the third secret. I had quickly learned that the people there didn't react to me unless I directly threatened them, and even then they refused to speak. Everyone here was slightly translucent, as if cut from diamond. They did not speak in any meaningful way -- after each interaction, I would know only that they had communicated but not what they said. I quickly made myself an enemy of whatever law enforcement was here, snagging scraps from the people here. It was strange how good at it I seemed to be. I knew exactly what I needed to say to coax a laugh out of someone, their eyes on me and not my pockets. It was one evening, dashing through one of the alleyways that I really understood the third: nothing is as it seems.
I had taken a loaf of bread a little too carelessly, and was running from whatever was chasing me for it. I can never remember what they look like, which always makes stealing hard. I dodged down a small alleyway, taking the turn a little too carelessly. I slammed into the wall there – except, there was nothing to catch me. I tumbled through the gray-brown brick, head over heels into the ominous darkness. It was cold there, in that in-between place. A kind of cold that shouldn’t be felt, as if something had taken up residence in your heart and slowly sapped the life out of you. It was gone as quickly as it had come, and I crashed onto pristine white stone. The overflowing window boxes and clean streets almost let this quadrant of town shake the inescapable feeling of a slowly decaying city.
You’re not supposed to be in the quartz district. It hit me like a stone, sinking in my gut as I realized what this polished place was. The strange void should never have spat me out here, but as I pressed each perfectly aligned stone in the alley around me, I could not find a way back. Only a solid, unflinching wall, indifferent to my plight. I could not be caught here. It wasn’t a secret that you weren’t meant to be here. The massive, solid iron gates and spiked walls glared down on any who dared venture near them. My heart hammered so loudly I didn’t hear the footfalls behind me.
This is where I learned the fourth secret of Nym: Pain is Eternal.
A young boy pointed at me, his gem-like hand casting a glittering shadow, and called out to his mom. My heart froze. I couldn't seem to move, too afraid of what was to come. I wasted the split second I had to run before they were upon me.
I don’t remember who it was that hit me, but that's for the best. It was nothing, and then it was searing pain, brutal in its indifference, tearing through any hope I had of escape. It left only a burning red pain in the echoing place my screams escaped from, blurring my vision into darkness. Even as my consciousness faded though, my brain could yield only thoughts of the fifth secret. The one I can never seem to learn.
Where the shadows hide.
