Shadow Walker

My name is...

Dec was ripped from the vision and flung into shadow space with the force of understanding—his mother was dead; Tommy and his sister, who, all this time had been hiding the true extent of their feelings for each other, were under arrest for his stupidity. And now, they were being told he was a traitor, brainwashed to believe he'd betrayed them all, his mother, his best friend, his sister, his city.

The realisation was too much to bear, and it pulled him over the edge of the precipice and into free-fall without a parachute. Faster and faster he fell, globules of light rising from the blackness and flashing before his eyes like comets, or city lamps in the window of a train about to derail. He tried to scream, but no sound came out. When he tried to locate the steady warmth of his corporeal body—the push of the boot latch against his spine, the slimy press of the plastic boot liner against his cheek—he found it gone.

Just when he wondered if this was what it felt like to die, the flash of lights slowed, the globules burst and took colour, like splotches of paint on a pane of glass. Beyond the globules, smokey impressions gathered—featureless faces, ghostly figures. They murmured in voices he didn't recognise, in words he didn't understand.

There was a gleam of raven hair and a sound, somewhere between a hum and a whistle, followed by a series of braying clicks and lyrics with too many vowels. It was the song Rain had sung in the tunnel, the one about the farmer and his horse. The one that had reminded him of their farm in Quarry Cove—the straw yellow fields the rustling wind, the vastness.

Rain.

He surged towards the shadow just as it turned and flashed coal black eyes. The figure slipped between the formless shapes and was gone.

Blackness, and then like a curtain parting, he found himself on the banks of a mercury-silver lake beneath a globe night punctured by stars. Unlike the detachment of mind and body he'd experienced during his other visions, this time, he could feel the silken volcanic sand beneath his feet, and see the white puff of his own breath in the cool, stagnant air.

A figure stood at the edge of the lake, part-turned, as though in expectation of Dec's arrival. It was garbed in a black shawl and spoke in a warm tenor. "What brings you here, shadow walker?"

Dec shivered. This was the singer. Not Rain. "Where am I?"

"Either you are lost, or you are in the place you sought."

"I was looking for Rain."

The man angled his head to the sky. "You will find no rain here."

Dec stepped forward. "I meant, I was looking for a friend. Her name's Rain. She was caught in an explosion. I need to know if she's alive."

"Ah, a woman? You were searching for a woman and instead you found me. I guess you must be disappointed."

Dec didn't know how to answer. And in the silence that followed, the molten lake didn't seem so serene, or the globe stars so wonderful. He was in danger—a deer come too close to a crocodile-filled lake.

"Who are you?" he said, though the answer was already forming in his mind.

The man turned with deliberate slowness. His face was the kind that left no impression, as though his features belonged to everyone and no-one at the same time.

"My name's Kai."