Nina Redfeather's Arc

Chapter 9 of 12

Three days after the mountain, the shadow turned on Nina. She noticed it in the school hallway. She lifted her hand to open her locker. Her shadow lifted its hand too late, then clawed at the wall on its own. A boy nearby stopped and stared at it. Nina pressed her back to the metal and walked away fast. Umbral Nightshade, the shadow demon bound to her since she opened the mountain door, was no longer just following. He was moving by himself. That night Nina knelt in her room with her father's book open. The shadow on her floor stretched long and thin. Its white eyes blinked up at her. "You copy me when people watch," she said. "You wave your arm when mine is still. Someone will see." The shadow's mouth curved. "I am bored, girl," he hissed. "I have no home. So I play." His clawed hand reached up from the floorboards and traced the edge of her blanket. The blanket did not move. But Nina felt the cold. "I can free you," she said. "The door is still open. The cave is yours. Go." The shadow flattened. "You want me gone to save yourself," he said. "Not for me." Nina swallowed. He was right. But she kept her voice steady. "You wanted freedom. I am giving it." She found the summoning spell in the book and began to read it backward, the words she had used once before. The banishment. The shadow thrashed across the floor. The lamp rattled. "I refused this before," he spat. "I will refuse it again." Nina kept reading. Her throat burned. She understood why the first banishment had failed. She had wanted him for herself, as a guard, as a threat. This time she gave something up. She looked down at the shadow and spoke her own words between the spell's lines. "I release my claim. You are not mine to keep." The shadow froze. His white eyes went wide. The claim was what had held him, not the spell. Nina had bound him by wanting him. Now she let go. The shadow peeled off her floor and rose into a dark shape, free of her at last. He did not fly to the window. He drifted toward her once more, then stopped himself. "The home is mine now," he said. "You opened it. You freed it twice." He thinned to a ribbon of dark and slid under her door. Nina ran to the window. A line of shadow crossed the snow toward the forest, toward the mountain and its open cave. Then it was gone. Nina stood alone. Her own shadow lay flat behind her, still, doing only what she did. She had wanted the demon gone, and he was. But he had said something that stayed with her. You freed it twice. The bird. The demon. Both sent home. Yet the dreams had started this. And she still did not know why the shadow had chosen her.