A Dance of Light and Shadow

Prologue Part I

Kushiel’s powerful wings thrust him through the center of the enormous spiraled tower’s staircase like a rocket. Many of the candles recessed in the walls blew out with each mighty flap.

The beautiful young woman’s bare feet were still silently moving her up the white marble steps, but she felt him coming. She knew she was already discovered. Haste was her only hope now. She was only moments from the tower’s peak.

“Lailah!” he shouted. “Stop!” The echo thundered through the chamber.

Lailah was exhausted but there was no time to catch her breath. Her heart beating through her chest, her pulse pounding in her temples, she persisted forward.

The top of the Tower of Babel was a dome with a walkway extending into an endless expanse as if the heavens had been fit into a single room. She raced down the walkway.

Kushiel crashed through the top and landed with a thud on the walkway.

“Lailah! Don’t do it!”

Hunched over at the edge, breathing heavily, she paused for a moment before finally looking back at him.

“There’s no other way,” she said matter of factly.

“It is forbidden, sister!” he insisted. For the first time that her memory could recall, the authority his voice always carried held an unfamiliar note of pleading desperation in it. “You know I’ll be sent to hunt you.”

“I know.” Her throat choked a bit, which surprised Lailah. For all that she knew of the world, for all the prophesies she had dreamt, it turned out she still had surprises left for herself.

“You have to stop this, Lailah. It isn’t too late.”

“She needs me.”

“All this for a human?” he roared, his fear turning to anger.

“She’s not just any human. She carries the Seeds of Destiny within her.”

“It is forbidden. You know you cannot intervene.”

“This isn’t a debate. She needs me.” Lailah said, standing back up, tall, regal. A radiant picture of perfection, she stood motionless for a moment. Her eyes twinkled with the glory of a dying star shining its light into the universe for the last time.

Realizing his efforts had failed, Kushiel’s legs carried him towards her at full speed until his wings pumped him forward even faster.

“Cast the Long Shadow, brother,” she whispered before falling backward into the endless oblivion.

“NO!!” he screamed as he skidded at the edge, barely stopping himself from falling in with her.

Only his tears followed her, as he stared into the abyss and wept. He stayed there for what felt to him like an eternity, in a trance of disbelief.

A puff of smoke rose from the altar as the little girl’s mouth blew out the candle and then began to silently mouth her prayers. She kept her eyes tightly shut and hands tightly clasped.

“Abijah,” called her father, startling her back to alertness. She closed her eyes again and finished one last silent phrase of her prayer before getting up and running to him.

“Yes, father?”

“What have I told you about your chores?”

“Yes father,” she said without any further discussion, grabbing the container of feed and getting halfway off to complete the job before he could say anything else. Zachariah smiled as he watched her carry the heavy bucket awkwardly. She was such a sweet girl. She reminded him of his first daughter, who was taken by sickness at around the same age, ten or eleven years. That had put him into a darkness that lasted several years.

When Abijah was born, his world felt whole again.

Suddenly the bucket dropped and Abijah crumpled to the ground. Food spilled all over and she started to convulse.

“Abi!” Zachariah shouted throwing his pitchfork to the ground and rushing over to her.

When he turned her face-up, Abijah’s blue eyes were open wide but seemed to now glow with their own haunting light. Her mouth opened and had the same light emanating from it, her little face contorted with agony. Abijah’s body twisted and spasmed, while Zachariah looked on with utter helplessness, panicking.

Suddenly she went still looking relaxed and almost absent in her expression. Then she stared at Zachariah directly in the eye, in a way that was unfamiliar to him, which he found strangely found intimidating.

“Down,” she said.

“What?” he replied, totally confused.

“Get down,” she repeated, grabbing the locks of the man’s curly hair on the top of his head and yanking his face down into the ground. He snorted dirt and started coughing. When he lifted his head back up, Zachariah noticed a flaming arrow right in front of his face that would have killed him without her action.

Zachariah looked around and heard shrieks as townspeople started to run and more arrows fell. The rest of the world seemed to move in slow motion, except Abi, who was already up and walking in the opposite direction from the fleeing people, towards the horse archers off in the distance.

“Abi!” he called to her, but the girl ignored him, picking up the pitchfork her father had dropped a few moments ago. Her little body moved with the ominous grace of a panther stalking its prey, combined with the confidence of a general at the head of an army.

But there was no army. Just her…

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