“Don’t come any closer!” I said. “I’ll burn you to a crisp!”
“Humans are so distrustful,” he said, with a tone in his voice that was both disappointed and pitying. “Come on, let’s talk it out like civilized… beings. I’ll tell you what I can. Then, if you want, you can burn me to a crisp.”
He was looking at me. I froze, my hand full of pepper.
“So let’s address it,” he said over steepled fingers. “I am what you might call a… d—” He choked, then tried again. “A d-d—” He used his fingers to make horns on his head.
“A demon?” I gasped. “You’re a demon?!”
He shook his head emphatically. “No, those are the evil ones. I’m… I’ve got an ae instead of just an e. The ancient Greek kind, you know? Inhuman messengers between people and the Gods. Like the voice that spoke to Socrates!” Smoke started to trickle from his nose again. “Completely… neutral!” he gasped.
“But you’re not a voice! You have a body!” I paused. “Is that body even yours or did you… possess it?”
“No, no, no, no. Of course not.” He knocked against his chest, pulled at his hair. “This was created especially for me. It just… takes a lot of magic to keep it together.”
“Who made you? God? The…” I gulped, inched just a step closer to the crack. “The Devil?”
“I’m from the ones who built it all, who set everything in motion, here to influence the…” He gagged. A trickle of smoke ran out of his nose. “The G-G…” He took a deep breath and rasped, “The Game!”
He doubled over, choking. Smoke began to pour from his mouth, his nose, his eyes.
It stunned me for a moment; then I realized: This was my chance. Like a flash, I was gone, back through the crack as fast as I could shimmy.
“Sal!” he shouted. “Where are you going?”
“Entflammt!” I sent a stream of fire at him and he staggered. I wrenched myself through the crack in the plateau and started running. I ran and ran across the hard, baked earth, into the wind and grit, until I jogged to a stop, sides heaving, in a pool of my own shadow. I looked behind me. Asa—whatever he was—was nowhere to be found.
But when I turned back, he was right there, in front of me, as though he had materialized from the dust itself.
“Like I was saying—” he said. But I was already backing away.
“Don’t come near me!” I gasped, digging in my pouches again. “I mean it!” I took another step back.
“Sal!” he said, eyes wide. “Watch where you’re—”
But before he could finish, I felt a painful grip around my ankle and looked down. A hand made of shadow was wrapped around my ankle. I jerked and kicked, but it was no use. It pulled downward on my ankle, and my foot sank into the hard earth as though it were water. The shadow thing was pulling me down, down into the very earth itself. Before I knew it, I was waist-deep into my own shadow, losing sensation as I went.
My pouch was too deep in the shadow to reach. I scrabbled on the ground for anything, anything I could use to cast a spell, to free myself. Then I saw a multicolored rope—a rainbow of handkerchiefs tied together—in the dust.
“Grab on!” shouted Asa.
I grabbed the rope of handkerchiefs, and Asa pulled. The shadow thing tightened its grip around my ankle and pulled back. Asa groaned and strained, and just when I thought my leg would be pulled completely from its socket, the shadow creature loosened its grip just enough for my waist and hips to be pulled out of the shadow. I released the rope with one hand and reached into my pouches.
“What are you doing?” Asa cried. But I was moving fast, reaching for the crumbled robin’s eggshells in my farthest pouch. I grabbed a pinch of ground eggshell, took aim at the shadow creature, and flicked it beneath me. “Lichtfleck!” I shouted.
Light flared, and I heard a muffled shriek as the shadow creature detached itself from my shadow. Then the claws left my ankle, and I scrambled over to Asa. A dull spot slightly darker than the soil rocketed away back toward the boulders, seeking safety in their shade.
“That light spell was good thinking,” Asa said, pulling his scarf rope back and tucking it into his sleeve. “You all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said, my muscles still tensed. “… Thanks. Now leave me