Some people speak of shadows as though they are harmless things. A tag-along friend in the high noon, clinging to a child’s side. An imaginary guest at the playground who always hid away when the clouds were around. To some, they are beings attached at the hip who follow their casters with the energetic fervor of their host.
But less are shadows angels than they are menaces. In the evening, when the sun has not quite retired and the moon has slowly begun its dominion over the sky, they are lanky, wild things that linger effortlessly in the dark, long-limbed and wiry with the ominous poise of a dead-branched tree. They are the demons in the corner of children’s rooms that send monsters scurrying beneath the beds, armed with nothing more than tales and fright to do their bidding. Shadows are ravenous creatures of the dark born of malice and fear, spurred by the grim pleasure of destruction.
And the shadow, here, in the furthest depths of the woods, is screaming.
Screaming for its chains. Its solitude. Its dire, primal need for vengeance.
And still, it is bound and broken and beaten, and still, it yearns to snap the tether that binds it.
It howls, its frustration tangible enough in the density of the newly swindled fog.
It skewers prey deep within the water, the rapids churning with its rage.
And when the ripples break and crest over the banks, pulling birds and skittering rodents into its domain, whirling, white and wrathful, the demon in the woods is a little calmer, though it still seethes with unbridled fury. But it forces itself to pace the perimeter of the woods, searching for the familiar wavelength of the stars it once called home. Of the connection it once had to its siblings, now gone, dissolved to nothing.
But this is fine, for now, conceded the demon.
After all, the human had a plan.
A plan of release. A plan of power. And the beast longed for the latter.
It was not the demon’s idea to put faith into such a spindly looking mortal, who sauntered around like he owned the place, head high and mighty. The stranger fancied himself a long, red coat with gold lining and buttons that stopped at his knees, closed up neatly at the chin where the popped, exaggerated collar resembled a lizard’s frill, but regal. He looked like a well-trimmed royal with scraggly, deep red hair that looked like something had coagulated within it and stuck the bedraggled strands together at strange angles. He had sharp, vulture-like blue eyes the color of the murkiest depths of the ocean, just as cold and just as dangerous. Like he expected the world to bow to him, the demon included.
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As if it was not the Maiden who stationed the creature here to serve as trusted sentinel to begin with, but a peasant.
But when the man arrived one night, flanked only by the white-eyed children of the beast’s kin, it knew there was something strange about this human to taunt it so openly. There was no single reason for there to be any trust held between them, demonic creature and man. Shunned god and mortal.
Until the red-coated stranger patted his compatriots on the shoulders and simply walked away. As if he knew, then, what the demon truly wanted.
The children lasted no more than a few fleeting moments. Heartbeats, really, before they realized what had happened.
Only after the beast had finished its meal did the regal human return, hands behind his back, one foot in front of the other, pacing the water’s edge. The steps were slow, steady, a big cat on the prowl. And it occurred to the demon that this man was a predator, too.
“I know what your siblings did to you,” said the stranger, eyes locked on the mangled, corpses pressed against the bank that stained the river red, “through the words of the ancestors and the texts they graciously left behind. And I know you are restless here, bound most … wrongly, to your tree.
“Fabled Beast of the Maidenwoods,” he continued, propping a foot on one of the bodies. “Grim Spectacle of the Shadowed Waters. I have a proposition for you. I can snap your chain.”
The words sounded like a declaration. Like a promised truth. All the demon could do was laugh. What good was the word of a mortal whose pleas would fall to nothing the minute their soul disappeared?
The man scowled and turned to walk away, but not before reaching into the blood red coat and tossing a disk-shaped pellet in the demon’s direction. It clattered to the ground hard, steaming like a fresh breeze carrying frost, the white smoke nearly concealing the pulsing blue and purple hue radiating from within it. The demon nudged the object with its hoof.
Though the man could not see the beast, those sharp, blue eyes bored into the creature’s skull anyway and his lips cracked into a serpentine smile. “Mock me all you want, monster. But our goals are aligned far more than you think. As for that”—he motioned to the object on the ground—“consider it a truce. A parting gift, if you would.”
And with not a single explanation more, the villain disappeared into the fog.
Since then, the demon of the woods had had many meetings with the man, each escapade enough to sway the beast into some semblance of compliance. It was an uneasy truce built solely on shared interest and promise of power.
And the human, for the little faith the demon had in such a pompous cur, delivered on his promises. Each visit came with a gift and a sacrifice like the first day, the next more lucrative than the last.
In return, the demon gave its compliance. It obeyed orders. It killed on demand. It even restrained the urge to make a meal of a white-eyed translator child the man had brought with him. The distrust lessened over time and then a partnership was born. A small one, born of promises in the dark, but a partnership nonetheless.
A partnership the creature didn’t intend to keep beyond the seizing of its freedom.
Because if there was one thing the Beast knew, it was that you should never extend your trust to shadows. And the human of the woods was just as bad as the shadow that followed him around.