Shadow Realm Book 1: Exile

Chapter 1: The Accidental Assasination

It’s that time of evening when the stars become too many to count. Dusk has settled, casting deep purple and blue hues across the skyscape. I sigh comfortably, nestled way up on my favorite tree branch. I have to stick my head through the foliage if I even want to get a glimpse of the road. And I don’t want to. So I guess it’s not rude. But that doesn’t mean it’s not creepy for other people. But there’s nobody here, and there will never be anybody except for me up here. Nobody to make me run their errands or to tell me how my older sister, Keisha, is so much better than me. The sound of the wind rushing through the pines seems to be the only thing there is in the world.
Sometimes it gets boring up here. I pick off a few pine needles and bend lightning lazily, setting them alight. I always liked the feeling of the blue sparks fizzing at my fingertips before I really concentrated and streamed the ice-blue flames long-distance.
I throw the embers into the wind, but they blow right back at my face. Thankfully the wind has extinguished the flames. I’m okay at controlling my lightning, just like I’m okay at everything else, but learning how to control the wind is still a work-in-progress. If I can do that I’ll be a legend.
But then I hear a much louder sound. Clop-CLOP, clop-CLOP. Suddenly the sound stops. It’s a horse. Silently, I part the pine needles with my hands and see part of its jet-black coat, the back feet pawing the ground restlessly. I squint. The rider is a woman, as she is wearing a velvet dress. The horse moves backwards a couple inches, all I need to see the gold-plated hairpins she’s wearing. She’s a woman of status.
“Hello?” she calls out uncertainly.
Well, this is just the perfect opportunity to make some money! She’s obviously important by what she is wearing, so she probably has a lot of it. Maybe she needs help or directions and would be willing to pay me for my excellent services. Actually, I’ve never done a service for anyone who might be willing to pay me, but that doesn’t mean I’m no good. I run errands all the time. It’s just that nobody is willing to pay me.
I jump down from the tree like a flash, showering myself with pine needles, but I’m already so muddy from a long, hot day of playing with my friends that it won’t make a difference. “Can I help you?”
“Oh, yes.” Her face relaxes. I was right about the status. Her lips are as red as blood and her skin is as white as the inside of a peach, but only those with money can afford to buy the products you need to make your face like that. And in contrast to the pale skin and red lips, her hair and eyes are as black as her horse; she must be from Athgar, the only other land to border this side of the Shadow Realm.
“Just show me the way to Eron’s castle, dear,” she says.
“You got it. Follow me.” I trot off, trying not to stumble on my words in my excitement, as I dream about the kingly sum I’m going to make.
If you’re walking fast, it’s twenty minutes to King Eron’s castle. Halfway through, the lady (for a lady she certainly is) gets bored of the silence and starts talking. Apparently she finds me very interesting.
“What’s your name, dear?”
“Elora.” I think about asking what’s her name, but she answers first.
“Elora, what a pretty name. Mine is Melaina.”
“Why are you going to the castle?” I blurt out.
“I’ve got some business with Eron,” she says, not the least bit offended. “I’m Lord Ivar’s second-in-command, just like Eron is second-in-command to Lord Eirik.”
She’s definitely from Athgar; Lord Ivar is its ruler, and Lord Eirik is the ruler of my land, Glaria. Good - we share a long border with Athgar, and it’s our closest ally. Mom says that there are no allies against anything but the shadow realm, but I’m not sure. I have a feeling Athgar is pretty scared of Despard.
I want to show the lady that I’m well-informed, so I add: “May I ask who you think is responsible for the recent Covert Demon attacks on Athgar and Glaria?”
“Oh, about that. I’m not sure, dear. But it’s rumored that there is something in the Shadow Realm. A real demon.”
“Really?” I whisper. Demons are for legends.
“Yes. They’ve been calling it the Shadow Demon. It’s widely believed that it is this demon who is ordering the Covert Demons to expand the borders of the Shadow Realm.”
“But the Shadow Realm is big enough already,” I say in hushed tones. The only place bigger than that is Despard. And Despard is just a bunch of land with people and sheep and cows on it.
The Shadow Realm is something else entirely. No one knows much about it. Many have tried to cross, but few have made it out alive. And every one of them described the various creatures which we now call Covert Demons - serpent gorgons and blood-sucking ghosts and huge, bat-like creatures - as well as something else. Something none of them were brave enough to talk about.
“Try to convince the Covert Demons.” Melaina laughs loudly, leaning over to adjust her gold boots. If I get any money off of this, that’s what I aim to buy.
In a few minutes we’re at the castle. It’s very small compared to the castles from legends but the biggest building I’ve ever seen. It is made of dirt-flecked white stone, and the drawbridge creaks horribly whenever you raise it. I don’t know why they have a drawbridge, I could swim across the tiny moat.
“Here you are,” I say, stopping just before the bridge. I turn around and stick my hand out. “My payment?”
Melaina is so surprised she can’t speak for a minute. “What was that, dear?”
I put my head to one side. “Please?”
“Oh, all right.” She pulls some money out of the deep pockets of her purple velvet dress and hands it to me. “Thank you, dear.” Then she gallops swiftly away over the drawbridge.
The coins feel cold in my hands but my heart is pounding with triumph. Hah! Didn’t expect that one to work!
The sky is now full of tiny silver stars, and it’s getting cold out. I turn my back on the pretty lady now convincing the guards to let her in, and her money, and her horse, and run homeward, the breeze whipping my plain brown hair.
I am not beautiful like Keisha is. But I’m good-looking enough. My eyes are hazel and my skin is olive. And when I stand in the light my hair looks caramel. I’ve always envied Keisha, because she’s smart and good and got married to somebody rich from Athgar. Now they live together happily at the edge of Glaria, in the beautiful countryside, where I’d like to go someday.
All this talk about the Shadow Demon with Melaina hasn’t made me as nervous as I’d hoped I would have the sense to be. Keisha would be shaking with fright. But I’ve always been a “bad girl”, too adventurous.
“Listen up, world!” I yell at nothing. “One day I’m going to see the shadow demon for myself!” I’m approaching the first houses since the castle, might as well: “I’ll be a legend, you’ll see!”
I pause for a minute and look at the coins in my hand. My blood runs cold. These coins are not from Athgar. They are of the Despard currency, which Lord Zorgart, a man all of us in Glaria hate, rules over. It’s said that he wants to rule the Shadow Realm. If he can defeat this Shadow Demon thing, he will rule the world.
Something about this lady is very, very wrong.



I get into bed and curl up in the blankets, still clutching my precious coins. Even if they’re from Despard, I bet people will take them. Maybe I have enough for boots or a dress like Melaina’s.
I half-forget about her and her weird coins as sleep begins to set in. She probably went to Despard and exchanged the money there. Then, while she was going through Athgar, she already would have Athgarian coins on her, seeing that she is from that region, and had no need to exchange again. And she must have still had these coins in that pocket. People of status travel fast.
I haven’t shown my money to Mom and I won’t ever. She will probably make me return it to Melaina. Keisha lives too far away for me to brag, and Dad died when I was a baby. If it wasn’t the dead of night I would show it to my friends, but none of them are awake.
And it doesn’t bother me to keep secrets from people. I’ve done it all my life. Mom was always all over Keisha when we were little. And still is. Keisha is four years older than me and should act like seventeen, but she’s so self-centered. Plus the guy she married has a lot of money and won’t even share it with me. That’s how stingy he is.
Keisha . . . me . . . Mom . . . Keisha . . .
“Elora! Elora!”
It’s a hissing voice coming from no apparent direction. Worse, it’s the middle of the night. I must have fallen asleep a long time ago. Everything is pitch-black.
I sit up with a start, the blanket falling onto my lap. I know there’s someone there, but I have to wait for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. By that time, I might be dead.
“Elora!” the voice rasps again. A dark figure is standing at the door.
“Mom?”
It is Mom, thank goodness. She hurries in and kneels beside me. “Lord Eron was assassinated,” she says, her voice shaking.
“What?” I scream.
“They caught a woman at the door,” she continues quickly. “She claimed to be from Athgar, but had a bloody dagger and Despard money with her.” She pauses for breath. “She got away. She can bend lightning very far, it seems.”
This is sounding more and more like somebody. “What does she look like?” I ask.
“She was wearing a velvet dress and riding a black horse. Did she pass this way?”
I almost faint. “Um, no. Didn’t see her,” I say very quickly. “I have no idea who she is.” I have a feeling that I don’t sound very convincing.
Mom makes quick work of bending lightning, setting the oil lamp in the corner aflame. The room is suddenly awash with crimson light. It looks like blood. Everything blurs. Melaina assassinating Lord Eron? How does this even make sense?
“You are to stay in the house at all times,” she says. “No climbing trees or mucking around. We could be next.”
“Yeah. Yeah.” I’m not even listening. There’s a single word in my head. “Melaina.”
This means one thing. I’m an unintentional assassinator's assistant.



Even though they haven’t quite figured out who led Melaina to the castle, they will ask the guards on the drawbridge who showed her the way. Then they will find me, and I will have no excuse.
What I did was very wrong and I know it. I made a terrible mistake and it will be my ultimate demise.
I should have asked Melaina more questions. Who was she exactly? What did she want with the king? I should have brought Mom out to talk to her. Mom always knows what to do.
I have no clue why I decided to take matters into my own hands. Then I realize why. It was because I smelled money. I’m so greedy and selfish. Worthless. And I’m going to die anyway so it doesn’t matter if I’m greedy or selfish. The Special Forces are coming for me.
Tears sting my eyes. The early-morning breeze feels like icy knives stabbing my cheeks. I’m shivering so hard I am actually shaking all over, even though it is a warm day.
Lord Eron’s soldiers will hunt me down and kill me, all because of one little mistake that led to a bigger mistake that led to Lord Eirik’s second-in-command being brutally murdered, and it’s all my fault. But that doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. I’ll be dead.
You probably think I’m morbid, but that’s the way it is around here.
I wipe my eyes. No use crying. What I did is over. I should probably waste my 15 minutes on something else that’s not so emotional. “The girl who died crying because she was going to die.”
But thinking about what I’m going to do in the fading few hours I have left before they get me is worse than crying, because I know what’s going to happen to me in the end.
Okay, okay, Elora. Think! How are you going to get yourself out of this?! But my mind is blank.
It hits me in a moment. There’s only one thing left to do.
Run away. Run as far away as possible. Then they won’t hurt Mom or Keisha or my friends. I’ll run and hopefully they won’t capture me.
But run where?
I could always try for Athgar, but they’d find me by then. No. There’s only one place, one place in the world, that even the Special Forces are too afraid to go.
The Shadow Realm.

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• great hook, I love it

  Comment by chuck on May 23, 2025

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Chapter 2: Alone but Not

It’s been four days since I threw some bread and my lucky charm into a bag and started on my long journey to the border. There isn’t a clear place where Glaria meets the Shadow Realm. It’s not like there’s a marker, because that would be like marking what divides good from evil, life from death. But at a certain point civilization just - stops. And some people say that if you go past that, you reach the Cliffs. Beyond the Cliffs is the Shadow Realm.
Nobody has pursued me so far. Nobody has stopped me and asked funny questions. Nobody has even given me the slightest look. To them, I'm just another random girl who’s not special. I’ve been looked upon like that my whole life, because that’s true. I’m not remarkably talented or pretty. I do my chores, bend my lightning and play with my friends just like anybody else who has brown hair and brown eyes - which is everyone.
Even so, I always wanted to believe that I was special. Everybody treated Keisha as special. Why shouldn’t I be?
I sigh angrily at myself. I have to get out of here. There’s no time to wonder how I might have been born special too, because I wasn’t.
The sky is full of mist. I haven’t seen a sign of life for a few hours. No birds chirp. Nothing wriggles along the ground. No autumn leaves stir. There are no trees, no rivers, no wildflowers. It’s so bare and desolate.
I passed the last village earlier in the morning. I imagined a fence surrounding it: “Warning. Beyond this is the Shadow Realm.” But there were only a bunch of little huts and grubby-faced children being shepherded around by their sad-eyed mothers. It looked like a sorry place to live. I wanted to throw them a piece of my bread just to cheer them up, but I only have three pieces left. And I expect to last a day while on the Cliffs. No more, no less. Just a day. And three pieces should be enough for that.
I won’t be found here by the Special Forces, I’ll be found by the Covert Demons. Goodbye, Elora’s life. It was nice knowing you. No, really. The random un-special girl who was never going to do anything important. Never be a legend. There are tears in my eyes again.
It’s silent except for my echoing footsteps and heavy breathing. Maybe I’ve already passed the point where there is nothing except for the Shadow Realm ahead of you. Maybe if it wasn’t so misty I would be able to see the Cliffs. I know I must be getting close. I know that from the legends, which I will never enter.
A tear rolls down my cheek. If I’m being completely honest with you, I don’t want to die.
Click, click, click.
I look down. My feet are no longer walking on bare dirt, they are walking on bare stone. A mosaic of redstone and granite tilts before my eyes. The mists clears for a second. I raise my head slowly and look up - and up - and up.
I’m at the Cliffs.
Don’t panic, I tell myself. There’s nothing here.
The Cliffs are so huge that they seem to touch the sky. Then the mist covers them again and it’s almost magical. Like they aren’t there.
With my eyes still fixed on the place where I’m destined for, I quicken the place. If I go fast, I’ll get there in thirty minutes, maybe less. But every time the mist clears, I’m no closer. In fact, it seems as if I’m moving farther and farther away with every step.
Then I crash headlong into a solid wall of stone. Rubbing my forehead and deciding that the accident didn’t do much to affect the brain I don’t have, I feel forward with my hands. Sure enough, I went straight into a Cliff.
Now, how do I get up?
I find a handhold and drag myself a few inches off the ground. Then a few more inches. I find a ledge and sit on it, two feet above the ground but feeling very accomplished.
There’s so much mist that I can hardly see what I’m doing. I wait patiently for it to clear, jumping out of my skin at everything I hear, which is always me kicking a pebble down by accident or the wind blowing harder.
A few hours later, I can see a good two hundred feet in any direction. There’s a crevice leading as far as I can see up the mountain, full of pebbles but the safest passage I’m imagining there is. Feeling like I should have been born a mountain goat, I begin to scurry up the red stone, kicking pebbles down as I go. I can hear them clatter to the ground so far away, but I don’t look after them.
I’ve done a lot of scarier things in my life, see. And I was never afraid of heights. So I try to pretend that this is not scary at all. Suddenly I slip . . . three inches.
“Oh my god!” I scream. But I’m not slipping anymore. I take some deep breaths and start going up again.
I’m still crawling up that exact same crevice on my hands and knees when the sun fades behind the Cliffs, about an hour later. It’s almost like the Shadow Demon ate it. It grows darker and darker. I squint, trying to find the top.
Suddenly I can see it.
My hand touches a stone corner. I gasp in relief, I’m here. Slowly, ever so slowly, I crawl along the stone, savoring how flat and smooth it is. It’s never felt so good to have solid ground under my feet.
I touch something soft and squishy and recoil before realizing that it’s just grass. Grass? Up here? I look around. Wildflowers. Then the light is completely gone and I’m left wondering if this is all a dream.



I’m just happy to be spending my first night up here all alone. The Covert Demons won’t fly this high without reason. And there’s life up here. I make a pillow with my hands, and settle down on the soft, lush grass. I’m so tired. Maybe the top of the Cliffs are actually some sort of Paradise. Maybe I’ve reached the Edge of the World.
Then I hear something.
I freeze. It’s not an animal. It’s not a Covert Demon, at least I don’t think it is. It’s a voice. A real voice, just like mine.
“Annemarie?” it calls softly. “Annemarie!”
Slowly, I sit up and look around, but it’s too dark to see anything. Nobody around here is called Annemarie. People with that name are from the other side of the Shadow Realm, from Shye Smara and Opril.
“Annemarie?”
Somebody is coming slowly towards me. It is not an animal. I’m immediately on my feet. These things just do not happen.
The figure pauses. Then suddenly it’s just - gone. I wonder if I’m having hallucinations.
Cold, slippery hands are around my neck. “One more move,” says a deathly voice, “and it will be your last.”
I start screaming. Hey, I’m technically not moving! My mouth was already open in shock before this guy told me not to move!
The hands clench, shutting off my breath. But I have something called a hand, which I put to work. I make a fist and punch back as hard as I can.
He falls backward with a gasp, but doesn’t release me. I throw myself on top of him, rear, throw myself down, do it again and again until he’s choking and gasping for breath. Then I twist away and take a few staggering steps backward.
It isn’t a Special Forces soldier. It’s a young boy who can’t be much older than me. He doesn’t move, just watches me as I weigh my options.
I could kill him right now, but I’ve never killed someone (alone, remember Lord Eron?) and I don’t really feel like it right now. Plus it would be a waste. He doesn’t seem too strong. I mean, me just wiggling around knocked the breath out of him. I could bend a little bit of lightning to stun him, but I don’t really want to do that either. I decide to tie him up until I can figure out what to do with him.
This is like so creepy.
He sits up slowly, trying to catch his breath. “Look, if you’re going to kill me, just do it.”
I have to say, I’m confused. This isn’t how it is in the legends.
“I can’t hurt you,” he continues. Suddenly he’s smiling. “And I take back what I said about being your last move.”
He’s actually smiling. He’s probably thinking he only has a few more seconds to live, but he’s smiling. At me. His end.
Okay, this isn’t just creepy. This is plain ridiculous.
And another thing. I don’t know why he says he can’t hurt me. I’m not a superhero or anything. He could just bend lightning at me right now and if he’s good at it, he could knock me over the edge of the cliff. Which I am considering doing to him right now.
I’m just going to go with the tying-him-up idea.
I rush him, grab his hands and yank them behind his back. Why this took me so long to do I have no idea. I don’t have any rope to do the tying, but I don’t need it. If you tell a crazy person that they’re tied up they will act tied up. And this kid is crazy.
“So, are you going to kill me or not?” he asks as I twist and twist his wrists. He doesn’t even flinch.
“I think you’re crazy and stupid,” I say, “so I won’t right now. First you’re going to answer a few questions. Question number one. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Okay, that’s honestly none of your business.” He twists around and suddenly I’m pinned beneath him. “Let’s get this straight. You are some weirdo and I think you’re an idiot for climbing the Cliffs. It’s like you want to be attacked by Covert Demons.”
Well, yes, I do. They’ll make an end of me faster than the Special Forces will.
“Nobody goes into the Shadow Realm,” he continues, his breath quickening. “And nobody comes out of it alive.”
If he’s going to make snarky comments, I’m going to make them back. “Who do you take me for? I’m obviously going into the Shadow Realm. How did you not guess sooner?”
He presses my shoulders harder and harder into the grass, which doesn’t feel so soft anymore. “I didn’t finish. If you’re being hunted down by someone, the best thing to do is stay where you are. We can protect you.”
I can’t believe my ears. “You - protect - me?” I struggle against him, but he’s too strong. (Who said he couldn’t hurt me?) “What? Why? Say it again? How do you know I’m on the run?” The words come too fast to be checked. “And who’s ‘we’?”
“‘We’ is me and someone else, and the rest is none of your business. So what are you going to do?”
I can’t do much of anything in this position, but I say, “What’s the price? For your protection?”
“You’ve going to help us survive, just like we’re going to help you.”
He does look like he could use some help. His face is stretched white; I can see every cheekbone. His matted dark hair is almost at his shoulders. His hands are bone-thin but surprisingly strong. The only part that seems left are his eyes. I can’t see the color - dark blue, maybe? Or else black? He looks like he might be from Athgar, which makes sense. On my journey, I’ve traveled closer and closer to the Athgar - Gloria border.
“Who’s ‘we’?” I ask again.
“What are you going to do?” he snaps. “You have fifteen seconds to answer me or it’s over the cliff for you.”
I think about it. If there were a few people with me, it would be easier to escape the Special Forces and Covert Demons. And I’d just have to help them like they will help me. It seems like a pretty good idea.
“Five seconds.”
(This guy is starting to scare me.)
Something shrieks far, far below me. The echoes make up my mind in an instant. “Okay, I’ll help you.”
“Swear it on Lord Eirik.”
“I swear by Lord Eirik that I’ll help you.”
“Good, and I swear by Lord Ivar that we’ll help you too.” He gets off of me at last.
I sit up, rubbing my shoulders. “Who’s -” I start to ask again, but before I can there’s a blinding flash, like someone just bent all the lightning there is in the world.
A girl is crouched on my other side. Her long hair, so blonde it’s almost white, whips behind her, and her blue eyes shine like two moons through the darkness. If she had a little more to eat, she’d be twice as beautiful as Keisha.
Sparks still crackle from her fingertips. “Suke, who’s this?” she asks sharply.
“Some girl. She climbed up the Cliff. I found her here, she says she’ll -”
“So why didn’t you kill her?”
“She swore she’ll help us, as long as we keep her safe. And I swore we would, Annemarie. She doesn’t look too bad.” He looks me up and down. “I think she’s on the run. She couldn't have left home more than a few days ago. She’s got more strength left in her than both of us combined. She’ll be useful, I promise.”
“But why would she come here?” Annemarie demands.
“For the same reason we did. There’s no other explanation. No sane person would unless they’re an outcast.”
“Look, if you must know, I’m trying to hide from the Special Forces,” I snap. I hate when people talk about you right in front of your face. “Go on, sell me to them. Or throw me over the Cliff. I don’t care. I really don’t.” I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore.
But before I even get past the first word, they’ve both jumped back ten or fifteen feet. Annemarie is breathing hard. Suke looks like he’s about to faint.
“You don’t -” she starts. “You don’t understand us - do you? You can’t!”
“Obviously I understand you! I can speak, you know!”
“Stay away from me.” She stands up, takes a few steps back. In a flash Suke’s beside her.
“What?” I yell after them. “You just said we’d help each other! What did I do wrong? Are you that afraid of the Special Forces?”
They take a few more steps back. They’ve almost reached the edge of the Cliff and don’t even realize it.
I run after them. “Tell me what’s going on!” I shout.
Annemarie’s foot is actually hanging over the edge. Suke grabs her wrist as he almost topples over.
“You swore on your king that you’d protect me!” I scream at them.
Even they couldn’t have gone back on their word. Why are they so afraid of the Special Forces? They’re safe up top! And I didn’t even mention which Special Forces are trying to get me, or what I did!
I keep running and grab at Suke. My fingertips brush his, but then there’s an enormous blast of ice-blue.
I fall over the edge of the cliff. My last thought is, “This is stupid.”
And everything goes black.

Comments for this chapter

• very weird how the tables have turned

  Comment by chuck on May 23, 2025

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• very weird how the tables have turned

  Comment by chuck on May 23, 2025

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Chapter 3: Enter Shadow Realm

Um, so, I’m not dead? I don’t even try to sit up. Every particle of my body hurts. I don’t think they’d put you through this much pain in the Afterworld. So that means I’m still alive, right?
I lay there for a second, my nose pressed against the red stones. There’s a sour smell everywhere. I reach up with my hand and feel my face all over. My nose isn’t broken, so that’s good. I wiggle my arms and legs. Okay, nothing’s broken. Just sore.
Half of my body is lying on top of something that isn’t solid granite. Granite. I’m not on the ground. And then I realize why I’m not dead. I didn’t fall all the way down, just a couple dozen feet before hitting a narrow ledge. I gaze up; I can barely see the top. But it’s there. Annemarie and Suke are nowhere in sight. I have a feeling they just let me fall.
The stench is overwhelming. I fell face-first, of course, and my nose is near the ground, but stone doesn’t have a smell. Slowly, I lift myself up. A huge flash of ice-blue light flashes against the Cliffs. I look down at the blood on my front, then I look all the way down and scream.
Suke is lying very still beneath me. Blood is spreading from his shoulder. I don’t know how long we’ve been down here, but it must have been a long time. Half his shirt is soaked crimson, and blood trickles down his arm where the sleeve stops. I look at my dress again. It isn’t my blood. It is his. And I am smelling it.
I feel like I’m about to faint. I roll to the side and lean against the wall. Everything is one spinning blur.
“S-Suke?” I whisper. I can’t believe I just killed him. The ragged breathing is my own. I watch him carefully, but he doesn’t seem to be breathing.
In ten seconds Annemarie has assumed her semi-crouch six inches from my nose. “Get away from him.”
“Okay. Okay.” I back off, being careful not to go all the way over the narrow ledge. “Is he dead?”
“You’ll find out in a minute.” She gives me a look. “The hard way.”
Oh. I get it. Sort of. If it turns out that I did kill him, she means to kill me. First Lord Eron, now Suke. I have to admit that I’m more upset about Suke because even though we could never have been friends, he can't be that much older than I am. Will this never end?
Annemarie gets down on her hands and knees, placing her hands against Suke’s thin shoulders. Sparks are already crackling at her fingertips as she prepares to bend lightning.
With a horrible start, I notice that one arm is a clean eight inches shorter than the other. It’s twisted up like an old, gnarled tree root, thin as a matchstick. It doesn’t look like she can do much with it. And you need two hands to bend lightning, but from what I saw, she can bend ten times as much with just one working hand.
She says something too softly for me to hear. A jet of ice-blue shoots out of her good hand, while the sparks continue to fizz weakly at the fingertips of her crippled arm. And she keeps saying it, over and over again, for a straight minute and a half. Finally she takes her hands off of Suke, and I come forward to check on him, but she snaps for me to get back.
She sits with her back to the cliff and waits, but for what I don’t know. It looks like the blood is evaporating, but it might just be a mirage of the night. And I think I hear faint breathing but it could just be the wind.
All of a sudden Suke’s eyes fly open and he sits up with a start, breathing shakily. His eyes shine bright as he looks around.
Annemarie puts her good hand on his arm. “She fell on top of you,” she explains quietly.
He nods weakly. It takes him a minute to recover. After all, he was just half-dead.
He puts his lips to Annemarie’s ear and she whispers something back. They nod at each other grimly.
“What did you do with her?” he asks in a normal voice.
“I’m right here,” I say, getting up as fast as I can. “And you can try to toss me over the edge but believe me, it won’t be easy.”
Annemarie gives me a funny look. “Oh yeah? Wanna try?”
Believe me, I’ve never seen a girl who can bend so much lightning at one time. And she’s not even broken a sweat.
“Um, no thanks. I’ll just leave now.”
“And how do you plan to do that?” she snaps. “You aren’t going anywhere unless you can sprout wings.”
I put up my hands. “Look, just do whatever you want. But if you try to kill me, I’m going to fight you.”
Annemarie gives me that look again. “We’re not trying to kill you. We would have done it already. I mean, obviously we’re trying to kill you! Look at us just sitting here doing nothing!”
I sigh and drop my hands by my sides. This is the first time I’ve met a girl snarkier than I am. There’s a long minute of silence - a very long minute. I have no way of getting off this ledge. I could jump to my end, but I’m not that brave. And I don’t really want to anyway.
“What are you going to do now?” I ask tensely.
“The same thing that you are.”
I have no idea what to say to this, because she just stole my lines. Did she take lessons from me? Somehow get a hold of everything I say?
“Can I ask you something?” I say at last.
“Sure. Whatever. And you just did.”
“Why were you acting so weird earlier, when I said I was being hunted by the Special Forces?” I press, ignoring her. I get no reaction except for a third funny look. Suke just looks on too, but he seems to be in a lot of pain so maybe he’s not actually listening. More likely it was nothing to do with the Special Forces.
“Did you hit your head when you fell down?” Annemarie asks. “Or were you always this thick? I mean, you don’t seem too bright, falling over the cliff in such a ridiculous way.”
This is hopeless. I wish there was somewhere to run. Then I remember what I swore and my conscience pricks me like a needle.
Suke gasps and I feel a stabbing bolt of pain through my shoulder. But it’s his shoulder that is hurt.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Annemarie helps him up, shoving him behind her back. “Don’t you even try.”
“Try what?”
She’s breathing heavily. “You can do anything you feel like doing to me, but you won’t touch Suke unless it’s over my dead body.”
“I wasn’t going to hurt him!” I say furiously. “I was just trying to -”
“Did I ask?”
I shut my mouth.
“Annemarie . . . she swore she’d help us,” he says from behind her.
“And you trust her? She nearly killed you?”
“I’m sorry!” I yell. “I know I’m clumsy and stupid. You don’t have to rub it in. And since I’m going to die anyway, I don’t even know why I’m apologizing.” I really, really don’t want to have an emotional breakdown right here.
Annemarie’s eyes soften. “You’re not going to die. We’re going to help each other survive.” She takes a slow step forward, then another, then another, pulling Suke with her. “It’s only the three of us out here,” she continues. “So we have to make it work.”
I realize I still have my bag on me. I pull out the last three pieces of bread I have and give them each one. “Here.”
We stand in a ring and take small bites, all alone in the world. Gradually, I slip my arm around Annemarie’s. She does not pull away. I think that means we’ve decided against killing each other.



We settle down in a close circle and try to sleep, but it's too cold to get even a moment’s rest. The bitter wind tears at my cheeks. I have no idea why my shoulder still aches, and as the night goes on, it tenses up. I know that Suke is in a lot of pain but not showing it. Every couple hours Annemarie makes him lie down and does the thing with the words again. It works like magic - for a bit. Then at some point his face twists suddenly and she has to do it again.
I wish I knew how. It would fix so many of my problems. Fall out of your favorite tree? No problem! Just make an X with your arms and talk to yourself, and you’re better.
“He’s been hurt a lot before,” she whispers to me, because I can’t stop looking worried. “He’ll be okay. We’ve done a lot of hard things.”
I nod, half-convinced. He huddles against Annemarie for warmth, his face as pale as ever, but no matter how close we get to each other we’re all still cold. At last, I get the idea of lighting my bag on fire. Annemarie tries, but it only burns for a second.
“I’ve bent so much lightning already today,” she says shakily.
I try, but I’m so tired I can’t do much better. I put it in front of Suke, but he shakes his head.
“Come on, try,” I urge. “Bending lightning won’t make it hurt worse.”
“I know,” he says, and turns his face away. “I just can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Everybody can.”
He stares at me with pleading eyes. “I can’t.”
“Like this,” I insist. Sparks crackle at my fingertips. In a short while the edge of the bag bursts into flame, but I’m too exhausted to keep the fire going for more than a few seconds.
“How many times does he have to tell you,” Annemarie snaps. “He can’t do it.”
“Try, please.” I’m shivering so hard I can barely get the words out.
“You show her, Suke.”
He sighs and holds his hands out. “Fine, but you have to wait until I finish before you can laugh.
“I won’t laugh.”
He starts trying. I sit there and wait for the sparks.
And wait.
And wait.
At last, something blue flickers at his fingertip. Another half-minute passes before I see the sparks I can get without even trying. One of the sparks grows longer and jumps out - it looks ice-blue for a second, like normal bent lightning - but then it all flickers away and disappears.
“That’s the best I can do,” he says bitterly. “It never worked like it did for anyone else.”
I stare.
“Go on,” he says. “Laugh.”
“I - I’m not going to laugh.”
I don’t even feel the slightest bit like laughing. In fact, I’ve never felt so bad in my life. He was trying so hard just then, but it did nothing. I feel so sorry for him that I don’t know what to do. It must be awful, when everybody is born with something and you just can’t do it. Maybe that’s why he came here, because in society he was worthless.
“You can laugh,” he urges. “I don’t care. At home it was almost like a spectacle. People said I should charge money for them to see this.”
“That’s not fair at all,” I whisper.
His head is bowed. Annemarie’s face is blank. I make my face blank too. I don’t want to look too emotional.
At last he looks me in the eye. “I’m good with a knife,” he says. “And fast. So I’m not completely worthless. I’m not a burden.”
“Obviously you’re not worthless,” I say, giving him the same funny look Annemarie gives me. “I would’ve realized that by now. And you’re definitely not a burden.”
He smiles faintly.
“I really hope you feel better soon,” I say, and I mean it. “And I’m sorry I almost killed you. I didn’t mean it, I promise.”
He laughs aloud. So does Annemarie. Suddenly I’m laughing too. Maybe we could be friends after all. Real friends.
I reach out and without concentrating the bag bursts into flame.

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Chapter 4: The Zreiths

I’m the first one to wake up, but it’s already getting late in the morning when I do. Sunrays skate across the mixed-up redstone and granite. I shield my eyes from the glare. It’s about ten o’clock. I must have slept late, and not too well; I’m still tired. You wouldn’t have slept properly, either, if you were stuck on a narrow ledge two hundred feet above the Shadow Realm, with no way up or down.
I prod Annemarie gently. She and Suke are pressed together with their arms around each other, breathing as one. For some reason it hurts me. I never had anybody. Not Mom. Not even Keisha. She is four years older than me, not a huge gap, but she was always so much more mature, while I stayed a little kid up until now.
They look like they should be brother and sister, or else like five-year-old best friends. Maybe they are siblings, I never asked. Yet they look so different, their names are different, everything about them is different.
I prod Annemarie again. She stirs gently but otherwise doesn’t move. Maybe she’s a heavy sleeper. I reach the long way around and give Suke a nudge in the ribs. He snaps awake before I’ve pulled my finger away. His hands go flying up to protect his face, nervous sparks tingling the edges of his fingers, but when he realizes who I am, he relaxes.
“Oh, it’s you,” he laughs. “I didn’t recognize you for a second.” He pokes Annemarie. “Come on, time to get up!”
It takes us eight hard pokes (four from me and four from Suke) to wake her. But I wish it took us longer, because as soon as her eyes are open she gives me a look when Suke is turned the other way. Not that funny look she does, it’s suspicious. My heart sinks. I thought maybe we could be friends, but we’re only - friendly. Not friends.
I forget about it as I lick my dry lips. I’m parched. I haven’t had anything to drink since around this time yesterday. I bet the others are thirsty too, and we need fresh water to get the dried blood off Suke’s shirt and my dress.
We sit in silence for a second. Annemarie digs into the stone with her knife, grunting with effort, but she won’t give up until the blade almost snaps in half. With lack of anything else to do, I bend lightning at nothing to distract myself from the fact that if someone gave me just one push I’d be dead. Suke just sits there, staring off into space with his mind on other things.
“How’re we going to get down?” I wonder aloud.
“We’re going to fly, duh,” Annemarie snaps as her knife finally bends at an absurd angle.
We settle into silence once more, casting each other suspicious looks. I try to daydream, but my mind is occupied with my thirst, which leads to: how we’re going to get out of here. We can’t last more than a few days in this heat with nothing to eat or drink.
At last Annemarie says:
“Well, we can’t climb up or down.”
“Thanks, but I think I somehow got that already,” I say. Frustration overwhelms me. “Why don’t we think of what we can do instead of what we can’t before it’s too late?” I get up and pace back and forth, back and forth across the ledge.
What do I have? Well, the clothes on my back. No, think harder, Elora. What do you really have? I have my strength and my courage and my ability to bend lightning. That’s pretty much it. And everybody else has those things.
I sit down too and end up next to Suke, there’s that little space up here. I watch him out of the corner of my eye. He doesn’t seem to be in pain anymore, but there’s that blank look in his eyes. Annemarie is trying to fix her knife, cursing long and loud behind us.
I let out my breath in a long sigh. For once, I feel really and truly helpless. There’s nothing I can do now except think about dying.
“Elora,” Suke says slowly. “When you bend lightning . . . what can you do with it?”
“Pretty much nothing.” I sigh again. “I can light things on fire and if I’m really close I can blast into stuff. And if I have enough energy, I can make a force field wherever the lightning touches; that’s the most helpful part. But only for a minute. Why do you ask?”
“If you jumped and made a force field around your feet . . .”
Bend lightning. That’s it. The one thing Suke doesn’t have, he found a way of using.
I gape. Of all the smart kids I know, he is definitely number one. Why not bend lightning to make a force field just below my feet, cushioning the impact? Genius!
“Annemarie, did you hear what he just said?” I yell, jumping to my feet. I’ve never been so excited in my life. “He found a way of getting down!”
She looks up from straightening her knife. “And we want to get down?”
“What did you think we wanted to do?” I say, still yelling. “We can bend our lightning to make a force field at our feet, and we’ll be okay when we jump!” I start dancing around in circles. “Suke, you’re the best!”
“Shut up!” hisses Annemarie. “Do you want to alert every Covert Demon of our presence?”
I close my mouth.
“And there’s just one thing with your plan,” she continues.
Here we go.
“Suke can’t bend lightning, and neither of us are strong enough to take him with us. And even if we could do it, if he’s just an inch too high or too low it’s over.”
Oh. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that is a big problem.
I do my best to come up with another idea, but two hours later, we’re still stuck licking our lips and trying to figure out what to do. Suke has no more good ideas, which leaves it to me and Annemarie to bicker our way into exhaustion. Now we all sit in brooding silence.
“You can just leave me here,” Suke suggests for the umpteenth time.
“I am not leaving you here until the end of the world,” Annemarie says firmly.
“Me neither,” I say, even firmer.
“Maybe I can climb down myself,” he suggests, shrugging his shoulders. “I could use my knives, one in each hand.”
“Look what happened to Annemarie’s knife when she tried to put it in the stone,” I say, gesturing to the wreck of metal and wood.
Annemarie seizes it and hurls it way up, her face full of anger. Mentioning how she mutilated the knife was an obvious mistake, but what’s new?
It spins against the pink and gold skyscape for a few infinite seconds, then strikes the top of the Cliff some fifty feet up, bounces once, and comes to rest with a clatter we can hear all the way from down here. There’s silence for a minute -
Then the knife comes back down. And exactly two seconds later (yes, I counted) a man comes sliding down a rope and comes to a hard stop, his feet dangling several inches in front of us. We can only stare. I’m the only one who seems to recognize the uniform immediately. The green cloth helmet with goggles; stiff, heavy green uniform; huge green boots with green buttons, which rise almost to the knees. He slips the goggles onto the helmet and looks at us with raised eyebrows, toothbrush mustache quivering in triumph.
He’s one of the Glaria Special Forces. Which means that Annemarie probably just killed us all.



Panic forces me to bend lightning out of instinct. A huge stream of ice-blue shoots from my fingertips, but it’s nervous lightning and so weak it just ruffles the man’s uniform and showers him with redstone dust. He pulls a knife from his pocket.
Once I figure out that he intends to stab me, I do absolutely nothing. The silver flashes an inch away from my throat, and I count the seconds I have left. One - two - three -
A huge shadow throws everything into darkness as a drop of blood rolls slowly down my neck. Suddenly the knife is yanked away from me as something gigantic flies straight into the man and pins him against the side of the cliff, cawing and screeching like a maniac. Everything is pitch-black. I’ve ducked whatever it is, and slowly I look up.
It’s a Zreith.
In case you don’t know what a Zreith is, it’s like a fire-breathing bat. It’s also a vampire. Plus, they always fly in herds, which explains the shrieks and caws coming from behind me.
And if that isn’t enough to scare you, it has a fifteen-foot wingspan. Which means that if it fell right now, it would completely cover this tiny ledge, probably suffocating us before we could lift its two hundred-pound weight and avoid the Special Forces at the same time. Then get down, of course.
Several more Special Forces soldiers who are still at the top of the Cliff bend lightning at the Zreith, and it crashes right onto us. Did I not say I predicted this? Then it falls, slowly, its barbed tail whipping, dragging me with it.
“Noooooo!” I scream as I go right over the edge. Suke makes a grab. His fingertips slide against mine but it’s no use. I’m falling in a blink of an eye, with the Zreith on top of me, its wings still spread out like a parachute.
Suddenly I have a bright idea! I grab onto the edge of its wing, then drag it around and grab the edge of the other wing. It billows over me like a parachute. I’m a genius!
Not really. I crash into the ground much faster than I expected and lay there trapped under the Zreith. From this position, I can’t get up easily, and I can’t hear what’s going on above me either. I’m just hoping Annemarie and Suke aren’t dead.
“G-gerroff me,” I groan, wriggling around. At last I find an opening and slither out of it.
The real swarm of Zreiths, twenty-five at least, have arrived at the ledge. I’m not a Zreith-ologist so I don’t know what they’ll do if they find out that I killed one of their kind, but I’d rather not stick around to find out. I dart into a thicket and crouch there.
Only when I’ve been thoroughly scratched raw do I realize that I’ve gone where nobody dares to go. Not the Special Forces. Not even Lord Eirik’s own bodyguards. I’ve penetrated beyond the borders of sanity. I stay low in the thicket, my ears perked up to one hundred percent alertness, trying to decide what on earth to do.
In other words, I’m in the Shadow Realm.



Okay, okay, I tell myself. Calm down. Figure out what to do. I lick my lips over and over again. Okay. You. Are. In. The. Shadow. Realm. Okay. I got that now. I think. I still can’t quite believe it. I don’t want to look around. I stay perfectly still. I don’t breathe. I don’t even move my eyes. I just stay like a rock. Except it would be kind of hard to convince someone that a shaking lump in a brightly-colored dress is a rock.
“Elora!” Annemarie shouts.
Stupid Annemarie! Shouting here!
“Elora, Elora, Elora.” She keeps saying it as she drags me out of the thicket. “What was that?”
“Shut up!” I hiss. “Do you realize where we are?”
She looks around and almost faints. “Oh, no,” she says. “I didn’t really expect this to happen.”
Suke hurries up silently behind her and taps her gently on the shoulder. She screams and whips around, and blasts him with bent lightning. I grab her, steadying her hands. “You’re going to kill him!”
Now Suke is behind me, his hands around my neck like last time he was behind me. “I’m too fast for that,” he breaths into my ear.
Annemarie has blasted a clear path through the undergrowth. There’s an awful crack as a last branch snaps off, and then silence.
“Well,” she says, “I guess there’s only one way to go.”
I hold a finger to my lips. “Shut up! You don’t want to kill us, right?”
She crosses her arms and turns around. “I’m thinking about sending you to the Afterworld, if I’m being honest. You’re nothing but trouble. Now we have the Special Forces on our heels, and as soon as we get down here, we’re goners.”
“Thanks, but I find that pretty obvious.”
“Anyway,” she continues, “that means that since they’re going to be here soon, we shouldn’t be there when that happens.”
“Just get to the point!”
“Okay, Elora. Tell me what you did to set the Special Forces on your trail. I wasn’t born yesterday..”
“Fine. I made a mistake. I showed this woman the way to the castle, and she assassinated Lord Eron.”
Suke raises his eyebrows. “I hope you weren’t there.”
“No, I wasn’t. She just asked for directions, so I led her there, and that’s pretty much the end of it. That’s why I ran away here. To die quicker.”
“I get it,” Annemarie says. “You’re trying to use this woman as a cover-up for what you did.”
Suke nudges her. “That’s not true. And I don’t care what either of you try to do to me, because you can’t catch me.”
“Really.” Now it’s Annemarie’s turn to raise her eyebrows.
“Guys, I don’t think you realize that we’re in the S-h-a-d-o-w R-e-a-l-m,” I say. “Shadow. Realm. Shadow Realm. So we gotta get up those cliffs as quickly as possible.”
“Are you stupid, or crazy, or both?” Annemarie snaps. “We’re not going up the cliffs.”
“Then how are we going to get out of here?”
She sketches something in the sand, stands straight up, and jams a finger at it. “Use your head. That strip right there is the Shadow Realm. One this side is Glaria. On the other side is where I come from, Shye Smara. That’s where we’re going to go. The Special Forces will never find us there. And we won’t have to go through Despard.”
“Let me get this straight,” I say. “You’re suggesting we cross . . . the Shadow Realm? By . . . ourselves? Walking?”
“We can teleport if you want,” Annemarie snaps.
I stare at her until my eyes pretty much come out of my head.
“She’s done it before,” Suke says.
I decide to faint, but I can’t do it. “She’s - what?” I splutter.
“She’s crossed it before.”
“What?!” I scream.
He clamps a hand over my mouth. “Keep it down! And yes. That’s how she got from Shye Smara to here. She’s the only one who’s ever crossed the Shadow Realm and been left alive to tell the tale.”
“Is that how you messed up your arm?” I whisper.
Annemarie gives me her funny look. “If I had two perfectly good arms, I wouldn’t have crossed at all. And I still can bend a lot of lightning with just one. Wanna try?”
“Um. No thanks. But how are we -”
“We’re going to do something called follow the leader. In this case, me. And we’d better do it fast. Those Special Forces people will be here soon.” She saunters off. Suke goes after her.
I stare around. From here it doesn’t look so bad. Just a bunch of sandy ground with scrubby bushes. Thorny too, as I learned the hard way. It looks like a desert. No scary monsters are in sight except for the dead Zreith. Maybe this isn’t as bad as they make it out to be in the legends.
But since I won’t survive this I’d better write a grossly underexaggerated account of what’s happened to me so far:
“I accidentally helped assassinate Lord Eirik’s second-in-command, so I ran away, stayed with some weirdos for a couple days, was nearly killed by the Glaria Special Forces, parachuted two hundred feet using a dead Covert Demon, and ended up having to cross the Shadow Realm.”
Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. I get walking.

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Chapter 5: Pursued

We walk and walk and walk. In the afternoon, we pass through the desert-like area and enter the marshlands. My feet sink into a disgusting brown-gray bog with every step. The air hangs heavy with mist. Reeds whisper, marsh animals cackle. But no demons so far. That’s good.
“Wait!” Suke drags us to a stop. His face is white.
All three of us freeze and stand for a second in perfect silence. And we hear a terrible sound -
The sound of absolutely nothing. There’s not even a wind.
Finally he shakes his head at himself and moves on. I shrug and keep going, but Annemarie looks nervous. Her blue eyes dart around, wide and alert, and every time her long white-blonde hair catches on a bramble she lets out a little gasp, like something just grabbed her.
I don’t know how long we walk, but it seems to be forever. At last Suke grabs us again and does the same thing. And again, we hear nothing.
“What’s scaring you so bad?” Annemarie asks on the fourth time he does this.
“I don’t know,” he says. “It’s like we’re being followed.”
Annemarie has relaxed a lot as we can see anything coming from this standpoint (and they can see us but I don’t talk about that.) She rolls her eyes to me and I grin back. Then she slows down so that we can walk side-by-side. A couple minutes later, I slip backwards and almost land on my backside in the disgusting bog, but she bends lightning under me to form a temporary force-field, which saves my clothes and dignity.
I still can’t wrap my head around how good Annemarie is with bending lightning, especially since she has a crippled arm and normal people need two hands if you want to do anything. To be honest, I hardly even notice that she can’t use her left arm; that’s because she has gotten so good with her right arm.
I’m finding it still harder to understand that Suke can’t bend lightning at all. But I’d never tease him about it. I feel terrible for him. And every time he smiles at me it makes it easier to forget that he probably feels terrible for himself too.
But now he’s not smiling. His eyes shine forward. He walks ahead of us. Now he turns and holds a finger to his lips. Annemarie and I roll our eyes at each other but stop walking. There’s the whispering of the reeds as a foul-smelling breeze blows the mist into our faces.
And there’s something else. My mouth falls open in horror as we stand there for a half-minute, a minute and a half, just listening. The sound is whispery and throaty at once, and it kind of sounds like the marsh reeds, or like a wolf howling in a whisper. Either way it’s the most eerie sound I’ve ever heard. And hope to hear.
Eeee-eeee-EEEEEEEEE, eeee-eeee-EHHHHHH . . .
Eeee-eeee-EEEEEEEEE, eeee-eeee-EHHHHHH . . .
Eeee-eeee-EEEEEEEEE, eeee-eeee-EHHHHHH . . .
“I don’t hear anything,” Annemarie says calmly after a minute. “Get walking.” She gives me a little shove, looking nervously behind her, but we can’t see anything because of the mist.
I leave her alone and walk next to Suke. He has the sharpest hearing, I’ll be alerted the earliest if I’m with him.
“Elora,” he whispers, his fingers closing around my wrist.
“What is it?”
“You heard it too - right?”
“Yes,” I whisper back.
Eeee-eeee-EEEEEEEEE, eeee-eeee-EHHHHHH . . .
There’s that sound again. I have no idea what to make of it. It’s maybe some animal, but what kind of animal would sound like that? I shudder and press closer to Suke. There is something watching us and it’s not Annemarie’s bitterly jealous eyes. What is she jealous of? Me and Suke? We’re just walking together because it’s safer for both of us that way. She’s the strongest one of us all! Heck, she crossed the Shadow Realm! She can take care of herself!
And anyway, she can’t want Suke, because I do.
The sound rises to a scream. Something rips through the air right between us and Annemarie. An enormous jet of ice-blue cuts the mist, and then I’m sinking slowly into the marsh. The world is blurry but I can make out Suke trying to drag me out.
“Elora, you are ridiculous!” he snaps. “Get out of the way when she bends lightning!”
Oh. I must have not ducked in time and been stunned for a second.
Suke grunts with effort, trying his best to get me out, but it feels like quicksand. “Help me, Annemarie!”
She sighs, uncrosses her arms, and drags me up in a flash. “Get some brawn on those bones,” she tells Suke. “Any six-year-old could beat you in a fight.”
In half a second Annemarie is on the ground, blood gushing out of her mouth. Suke stands over her, his hands on his hips and his foot on his chest. “Maybe so, Annemarie, but sure looks like any fourteen-year-old can’t.” Then he steps back and watches her grunt and struggle her way out of the marsh. I can’t help but laugh into my hands.
“You’re actually really good at that stuff,” I tell Suke. “Like dodging and ducking and jumping around.”
“Yeah, I have pretty good coordination,” he admits. “Which almost makes up for the fact that I can’t do any of the stuff you guys can.” Suddenly he’s behind me. “See,” he says, “it doesn’t matter that everyone else has something I don’t, because I can always avoid it. The only thing I can’t avoid is people body-slamming me off a cliff.”
I blush at the memory. “Please, let’s talk about something other than my epic body-slamming skills.”
“Okay, what about we talk about the fact that your hair is really beautiful?”
“What?!” My face almost explodes with how much blood is in it. “It’s not! It’s just - just hair. Brown. Carmel. I don’t know. It’s not special.”
Suke laughs. “I was just joking.”
My heart sinks. Maybe he actually thought my hair was pretty.
“Let’s talk about how to walk faster,” Annemarie says. She runs off, spraying muck in our faces. Then she turns back and gives Suke a look like, “You’re so cool.” Her eyelashes bat.
Come on, Elora, don’t judge her. You were just mooning over him! I sigh and push that sort of thing out of my mind.



Eeee-eeee-EEEEEEEEE, eeee-eeee-EHHHHHH . . .
Eeee-eeee-EEEEEEEEE, eeee-eeee-EHHHHHH . . .
Eeee-eeee-EEEEEEEEE, eeee-eeee-EHHHHHH . . .
Eeee-eeee-EEEEEEEEE, eeee-eeee-EHHHHHH . . .
The sound won’t stop. As evening sets in, it only gets louder. But the screaming thing doesn’t go between us.
I have the feeling that whatever it is, it’s just waiting for the cover of darkness to ambush us. But why not now? The sky is semi-dark, I think, and even if it was high noon there’s so much mist you can hardly see where you are going.
Suke’s breath is so harsh that I suggest we stop for a few minutes for his sake. He collapses onto a log and sits there for a long time. His hollow eyes are shining with fatigue, but we have to get out of the marshes, away from this noise, before we can rest properly.
We sit on the log for about an hour. Annemarie is the only one with strength left. She pulls out her bent knife and holds it out to me. “Here, make your dress shorter. It’ll be easier to move around then.”
I cut off several inches and throw the cloth away, where it floats on top of the bog. Then Annemarie takes the knife and sets to work making Suke’s hair shorter. When she’s finished he looks kinda cute because his hair isn’t scraping his shoulders anymore.
Then she tries to make him cut the last inch off her hair, which is waist-length, but he insists that I do it. I consider cutting off a lot more hair than she wants me to (giving her Suke’s haircut), but decide not to once I remember what she can do with her lightning.
I sit purposefully close to Suke and Annemarie does too. They make me promise to keep watch. I guess this means we’re stopping here for the night? I knew this would happen.
I stare through the mist. There’s nothing to watch except for the two of them, pressed together like last night. I have to say that it hurts me again. This is war, and Annemarie is winning.
Eeee-eeee-EEEEEEEEE, eeee-eeee-EHHHHHH . . .
Eeee-eeee-EEEEEEEEE, eeee-eeee-EHHHHHH . . .
I try to ignore it. I’m probably crazy. And crazy for seeing the thing. Yeah. That’s it.
Eeee-eeee-EEEEEEEEE, eeee-eeee-EHHHHHH . . .
Eeee-eeee-EEEEEEEEE, eeee-eeee-EHHHHHH . . .
Eeee-eeee-EEEEEEEEE, eeee-eeee-EHHHHHH . . .
Eeee-eeee-EEEEEEEEE, eeee-eeee-EHHHHHH . . .
Then the noise changes.
Ehhhhh-loooooraaaaaaa.
Ehhhhh-loooooraaaaaaa.
Ehhhhh-loooooraaaaaaa.
Something white floats through the bog.
Ehhhhh-loooooraaaaaaa . . .
“Suke!” I scream. “There’s ghosts!” But he doesn’t wake up. I try to shake him, but I can’t move my hands. The white thing comes closer and closer. I screech like a diseased hen and reel backwards.
My eyes snap open. Suke is pushing me off of him. “What are you doing?”
Thank goodness it was all a dream.
“Sorry,” I mumble, my twisted-up name still ringing in my ears.
Suke sighs and rubs his eyes. “I guess there’s no chance of me sleeping now, right? Was that to wake me up for the watch?”
“Let’s say it was.”
“Were you asleep on watch?”
“Maybe.”
“What’s that?” Annemarie whispers.
“What’s what?” me and Suke whisper back at the same time.
She points. Something white is floating. Floating across the bog.



“What do we do?” I whisper.
“Nothing.” Annemarie gives me a shove in the ribs and I shut my mouth. The white thing floats nearer and nearer. Slowly it begins to take a vague shape - it’s a person. A ghost. And it keeps floating closer and closer, the misty bottom edge of it barely scraping the bog. My dream was reality.
Ehhhhh-loooooraaaaaaa . . .
Ehhhhh-loooooraaaaaaa . . .
Ehhhhh-loooooraaaaaaa . . .
Okay, so this ghost thing, whatever it is, knows my name. Cool. Creepy but cool. Not. I screech (again it sounds like a diseased hen) and jump backwards. Annemarie bends lightning, but it’s useless. The bent lightning passed right through it like it passes through the mist. The Thing floats on.
Ehhhhh-loooooraaaaaaa . . .
“It’s a bog ghost!” Annemarie shrieks. “Run! Run! Run for your life!!”
I have no idea what a bog ghost is or why it’s different from a regular ghost but I don’t have to wait long to find out because it lunges suddenly.
“Run Elora run Elora run Elora run!!!!” Annemarie is screaming.
Cold, slippery stuff slides all over my arm. There’s a sharp pain and the thing draws away and evaporates. I look down at my arm. Two drops of blood slide slowly onto my dress, from two tiny marks.
I have to laugh out loud. Is this really it? I expected to be killed! Well, seeing that I’ve expected to be killed lots of times and am still alive, I guess I should’ve learned not to stress so much about things.
“Elora, did it hurt you too?” Annemarie asks, running up.
“Whaddaya mean?”
“Where’s Suke?” she asks, spinning around.
She has similar marks on her arms, but a little bigger than mine. I don’t know how that happened but I don’t care right now.
I start spinning around too, trying to find Suke in the mist. Where would he have run off to? And why would he have run off anyway when we needed help?
“Suke!” Annemarie shouts. “Where are you?”
“Behind you,” he says.
We snap around and scream. Blood gushes like a crimson waterfall from his left side.
“Why does it always have to be me getting hurt?” he complains. He looks down at his side, flops face-down into the marsh and lies there still. He’s not dead. I hope. He’s only fainted.

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Chapter 6: When Things Didn't Go to Plan

So let me be honest for a second. This is not what I intended on happening when it’s only our first night in the Shadow Realm. But obviously this is what you get for leading creepy ladies to the former second-in-command of Glaria. So I guess that this is all my fault.
We walked through the whole night, carrying Suke between us. First, of course, Annemarie tried to fix him, but whatever she did with her hands like the (first) time I almost killed him didn’t seem to work. None of us had anything to use for bandaging, but I know how to weave reeds so it almost worked. He stopped bleeding for the most part, but the wound hasn’t closed at all.
Now that it’s morning, we can see better; plus we’re finally out of those stinking marshes. Which is better because my sense of smell has almost come back. Also I’m not worried about the bog ghosts anymore. I’m only worried about the worse things. I have a feeling that the marshes were the safest part of the whole Realm.
“We stop here,” I command, nodding towards a cave nestled in a mound of black rocks. Annemarie agrees; I can tell she’s tired. We half-carry, half-drag Suke the rest of the way, and then the hard part comes when we are forced to him by his shirt collar ten feet up the hard black rock.
I wipe sweat from my face, but we can’t stop now. We stumble deeper into the shadows. The cave is endless. Yellow stalactites drip from the ceiling and sharp pebbles are everywhere on the floor. It doesn’t look like a friendly place at all. At least it doesn’t smell that bad for a cave, or maybe I’m just remembering the marshes.
At last, there’s a large, open cavern, where we stop. We don’t have anything to light a fire with, so Annemarie rushes out of the one main entrance and comes back with an armload of wood. Outside all is littered with dead, fallen trees, so it must have been easier than she’s making it out to be.
She throws it in a pile on the floor and scrubs bits of bark from her arms. I bend all the lightning I have the strength for and the wood bursts into flame after a few seconds. I sigh and settle back. It’s about ten o’clock but I haven’t slept more than a few minutes since the night before the attack of the Zreiths - and even then, I barely shut my eyes. But first, I have to make sure Suke doesn’t bleed his life out. He hasn’t even moved since the bog ghost attacked him. In fact, he’s barely breathing anymore.
“What sort of bandaging is this?” Annemarie snaps, peeling away the reeds sticky with blood.
“You got a better idea?” I shoot back. Even if we were besties, this much anxiety is enough to turn any two against each other.
“Actually, yes,” she says. She grabs the bent knife from her pocket.
I jump back. “You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t.”
“Yes, I would!”
“You can’t kill him!” I yell, rushing her. She goes bowling over. “He’s not dead! He still has a chance!”
“Firstly, it’s said that a wound from a Covert Demon is cursed,” she begins in her highly sophisticated way.
“I won’t let you kill him even when you get me!” I scream in her face.
“And secondly,” she shouts over me, “I’m not going to kill anybody!”
She sends the bent knife stabbing into her hand, and once the blood is flowing properly, pulls out the hair Suke cut from her pocket (how does she still have it?) and soaks it crimson.
“What are you going to do with that?” I ask warily.
“Ever noticed how my hair is really white?” she asks. “And how my eyes are so blue?”
“Yeah, I have.” Is she trying to make me even more jealous of her good looks? “So what?”
“It’s said that those who look like me were once angels. If they cut their hair, soak it in their own blood, and put the strands on a wound, it will remove the curse.”
“So you’re saying you’re an angel, and that Suke’s wound is cursed.”
“I don’t know if I was once an angel,” she admits. “But yes, the wound is cursed. Look how much it’s still bleeding.” She points to the puddle growing on the floor. “He doesn’t have much time left, and no regular bandaging or disinfectant will fix what happened. This is as good a time to try this as any.”
“Okay, maybe you have a point,” I grumble.
She presses the blood-soaked hair onto the wound. It lingers there for half a second, bone-white against the real bones showing, then just - fades away until there’s nothing there.
“So were you an angel or not?” I ask.
She sighs, bowing her head. “No. I’m not a full angel. What I was once so many lives ago cross-breeded with humankind, so this won’t fix the curse. It can only slow it down.”
“He’s not bleeding anymore,” I say optimistically.
“I know. It only worked halfway. Only the greatest Healers can fix this now. We have to find him help.”
“We can’t carry him all the way out of here, over the Cliffs, and to a Healer we miraculously find who will do this for free,” I protest. “And none of them will come down here.”
She stares around blankly. “I know, but we have to find a way somehow. We can’t just let him die.”
Why does she always say things that are so obvious to everyone else?
“Obviously we’re not going to let him die!” I snap. “Who do you even take me for? Actually, we are going to let him die. Is that a better idea? Obviously that’s what you wanted me to say. Right?”
“I’m going out to look for something that might be of use,” she continues, ignoring me. I have to admire that. Nobody can ignore my snarky comments, not even me. “Stay here with him and keep him as comfortable as possible.”
I nod. Once she’s gone I search the cavern-room, looking for something to cover him up with and to use as bandaging. But there’s nothing.
I reach into his pocket and pull out the knife, cut off an inch from the bottom of my dress, and use that as a bandage instead. It’s his arm which mostly got hurt, but the bite from the bog ghost also tore a hole in his shirt and it bleeds from underneath. Which strikes me as odd - if the bog ghost was around me, how could it have gotten to him? He’s too fast for that slow-moving thing. Then it occurs to me. Maybe they strike from a distance. Maybe the solid part, their vampire-like teeth, are separate from their vague white bodies. Maybe I wasn’t its final target after all.
I sit closer to the fire. The months approach winter, and in the cavern cold drafts are constantly blowing from the ceiling. Plus, now I can see that the eerie scraping and drip, drip, drip sounds are just cave sounds, not Covert Demons.
And all the while Suke lies as if dead and does absolutely nothing. The bandages have turned red with blood and they glow in the fire flickering off the walls. He’s shivering. Suddenly he coughs and sits up, but his eyes are blank like he’s dead already.
“Lie down,” I tell him firmly, but he doesn’t listen to me.
“Elora,” he says. Even his voice is blank.
“Lie. Down.”
He grabs my wrist, forcing me closer to him. “Stay still,” he whispers. “I think he’s watching us.”
I pull away and put my hand on his forehead. It’s burning hot. “You’re not making sense, and I think you have a fever,” I say, pushing him back down. “I’ll see if I can find something to cover you up.”
“No!” As I try to stand, he yanks me down so hard I crash onto my knees. “He’ll find you!”
I try to stay calm. Annemarie said wounds from demons are cursed, didn’t she? Maybe instead of making you bleed to death, the curse boils your blood and brain and you die that way instead.
“Nobody will find me!” I say sharply. “I’m too good for that.” I laugh and laugh until it echoes like a ghost’s laughter all through the cave, long after I have the sense to stop.
He stares up at me pleadingly. His eyes reflect the dying fire. “Please, Elora,” he says, and then he must have fallen unconscious or something, because his eyes close and his breathing harshens. I try to get away now, but he won’t let go.
Hours and hours later, I hear Annemarie coming back. “Finally you’re here!” I snap, rushing towards the entrance of the cave. “I bet you didn’t find anything useful, did you?” Oh, how I hate her.
It’s gotten dark, and I can’t see anything. She sighs and keeps moving closer at a steady pace. I bet her eyes have already adjusted to the gloom out here. Maybe it’s dark outside too, and I bet she just had her lighting to see by, which doesn’t make heat unless you light things on fire with it purposefully.
A freezing draft blows through the cavern. I bet she’s cold too. And exhausted. With a sigh, I bend some lightning at the walls so that we can see where we’re going. But I still can’t see anything. I bend lighting again. Nothing. It’s like this is impenetrable blackness.
“Annemarie?” I ask uncertainly, bending lightning with all my strength. Still nothing happensI can’t see the sparks flickering at my fingertips, but I know they’re there. I can feel them. Something flashes against the wall, and another freezing draft nearly knocks me over.
“Annemarie, what are you doing?” I yell, even though I know it isn’t her.
“I’m doing something called walking,” she says from way, way back there in the cave.
Suddenly the darkness clears. I can make out her figure hurrying towards me, shrouded in silvery mist from outside. Everything is back to normal.
“What was that?” I whisper as we come level.
“What was what?” Her arms are full of something, and she walks faster and faster. “How is he?”
“I tried, okay?”
Suddenly I’m pinned up against the wall. “You don’t mean you let him die, right?”
“As far as I’m aware, no.”
She hurries on, but doesn’t unpin me with her lightning for a few seconds. I’m pretty sure it’s just to annoy me more than I already am. And that blackness that nothing could break through. That was just plain weird.
Finally, I’ve caught up with Annemarie. She kneels beside Suke, pressing whatever she brought into his wound. He cries out weakly.
“Hush,” she says soothingly. “Be still. I’ll be finished soon.”
Would she talk that way to me if I was hurt? No. She would not. I bet you everything I have in the world. Which is nothing.
“What are you doing with him?” I ask.
“It isn’t working.” She sighs and throws the blood-soaked something into the fire. The flames flare up and I can see how tired she looks. “I thought it might draw out the curse, but all it seems to do is stop the bleeding.”
“Then that’s pretty useful if one of us gets cut,” I say optimistically.
She glares at me. “Does it look like I care about that? I care about saving his life right now.”
“Okay. Okay. Sorry. I was just making a suggestion.”
“Cut my hair.
“What?”
“Cut. My. Hair.”
“You’re going to try that again?” I snort. (If you didn’t know this already, the definition of insanity is trying the same thing again and hoping for a different result.)
“It kind of worked the first time. It might do it right this time.”
“Look,” I say patiently. “You should save your hair. It’s valuable. We might need it some other time.”
She grabs the bent knife in frustration and with a deathly-sounding swish, like a sword, cuts off a full six inches. I guess that doesn’t really make a difference, because it was almost trailing on the ground before. Then she tosses the hair onto the wound. It evaporates and I lean closer, hoping that it did something, but it didn’t.
“So I was right,” I say, but I don’t feel pleased with myself. Not at all. I feel like I’ve failed them.
“Obviously you were right. You don’t need to rub it in.”
I give her a pleading look. “Please, Annemarie. Can we try being friends? Just for a minute? The only way we’re going to fix this is if we learn to get along with each other.”
“Fine. Let’s be friends.”
We laugh and laugh at nothing until our ribs ache. Then she flashes me a smile. “Okay, since I didn’t find anything very useful, why don’t you try going out there?”
“Sure.” I stand up, feeling refreshed for the first time in what feels like forever. “Um, what exactly should I look for?”
“Weird plants. Just bring them back to me. I’ll be able to tell if they can do anything. Oh, one more thing,” she says as I start walking away. “If you see a blue stone, bring it. There’s a legend that says a blue stone will cure one wound, even if it’s cursed, and then dissolve.”
I’ve never heard of that legend, but Annemarie sure knows a lot more about surviving than I do, as you can see from my encounter with the bog ghost, when I fell off the Cliff, and when I was almost murdered by the Special Forces. The only thing I’m better than her at is using the dead body of a Covert Demon as a parachute.
I walk two steps and she screams bloody murder.
I whirl around. “Are you okay?”
She gives me that funny look, but it’s a kind funny look this time. “Yes, I’ll be fine. Hurry, please.”
“Didn’t you just scream?” I whisper. “Or was that someone else?”
“Nobody screamed,” she says, looking confused. “You’re probably hearing things. I hear things too.” She shudders.
Leaving the strange events of the past few minutes behind, I hurry away from the creepy cave, into the even creepier Shadow Realm.

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Chapter 7: Watched

I walk straight ahead for hours. I can’t risk leaving a trail, even a very faint one, so I do my best to remember the landmarks. There aren’t many. How does this bramble look different from that one?
I don’t find many “weird plants”, though I walk and walk. There’s one that is completely orange with no flowers. It looks poisonous, but maybe it could help. I don’t know. I’m not a flower-ologist.
A couple minutes later, I see another one, and then a whole field. I grab five or ten, just because. Maybe you need it in large quantities. I also see some pretty flowers, big and blue, and I take some too, because why not?
Then there’s another one that seems to be all flowers, like someone cut off the stalks and threw them in a big messy heap. I yank and yank, trying to get it out of the ground, and finally it pops away from the dirt so fast I fall backwards. After that it just sits there being a dropped bouquet.
I trek on.
The worst one was this harmless red flower, and since it didn’t look weird, I passed it, but then it threw out a vine and grabbed me around the ankle, sending sharp thorns digging into my skin. I yelled and pulled it up. The vines and thorns receded the instant I touched it. I looked down at my ankle. It looked as good as ever. I wondered if the plant actually wanted me to take it. I didn’t risk tossing it to the side, and maybe it would be a useful weapon sometime. I could give it as a “friendship gift” to my worst enemy (who I guess is not Annemarie anymore) and they’d have a surprise.
I sigh and rub my eyes in fatigue. My legs feel like Jell-O. I know I need to get back soon. Plus, I feel like I’m dying of thirst. Then, just like that, I slip and fall into a clear but deep stream. My head goes underwater as I wriggle around in the fast-flowing current, and I drink a lot of water that way without meaning to. If I hadn’t fallen in, I would never have risked a sip; it might be cursed, just like everything seems to be around here; but now that I’ve done it by the fault of my own clumsiness, I actually feel much better.
It’s starting to rain. I bow my head against the wind and hurry back as fast as I can. With my eyes on the road, I can see all the pebbles, thorns, and dead sticks that have fallen a millenia ago. Nothing sane has touched this place where I am stepping for as long as the world itself has existed. Not this place either.
I stop so fast I skid five yards. There’s a stone lying there, on the ground. So what, you might ask? There are always stones on the ground. But this stone is different. It’s blue, like sapphire.
I walk back and lower my hand in slow-motion. This is the answer. I’m worried that once I touch the stone it will disappear, but I have to take the risk anyway. What’s life without a bit of chance? I brush my fingers against it lightly. It does absolutely nothing. I grab it and wait for its special properties to appear like a miracle before my eyes, but it just sits there and doesn’t disappear. It feels like a stone.
I drop everything else I’m carrying and sprint back to the cave. In ten minutes I’m there, and yank myself up the ten feet of rock like it’s nothing. (But sorry, it’s not the mythical powers of the stone that gave me extra strength, it’s just my excitement.)
“Annemarie, I found it!” I yell, rushing down the big entrance.
Her voice floats back weakly. “You found what?”
“The stone!” I yell, rushing into the cavern and holding it up triumphantly. “I found a blue stone!” I’m amazing! I have the solution! I didn’t fail! Hah, hah, hah!
She smiles faintly. “That’s great, Elora.”
The last bit of the fire flickers out, but before it does I glimpse her as she holds Suke against her, trying to keep him warm. My heart breaks for him. I almost killed him on the Cliff, and now this?
“Are you okay?” I ask, my voice edged with concern. I’d expected her to be a lot more enthusiastic about my amazing find.
“Yeah, just a bit tired.”
I sit down and bend lightning at the embers. Suddenly I feel like I’m going to pass out. The embers just sit there being embers. Whatever I tried to do with my lightning failed epically. Suke coughs violently, his face white and his eyelids fluttering.
Now I realize why Annemarie and I had marks on our arms, when we weren’t hurt by the bog ghost. It’s because, somehow, the three of us are connected. We feel each other’s pain, just much, much less. So when the bog ghost ripped open Suke’s arm to the bone, Annemarie and I were just left with marks.
Somehow, I know, we are the same. And maybe that makes me, for the first time in my life, special.



This time it’s not Annemarie who screams, it’s my older sister Keisha. I know that scream so well, because she always did that little mousy shriek when something startled her.
I sit up quickly. What on earth? Why is Keisha here? Why is she screaming like she’s about to be killed?
I stare around in the darkness. Everyone else is sleeping. That means I was imagining things - again. If they’d heard it too - and I tell you, it was awfully loud - Annemarie, at least, would have woken up. But she sleeps on like nothing has ever happened.

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