It stretched across the pale floor, its fingers long and thin where the strange angle of the light pulled them. Sella’s own shadow lay ahead of her, connected to her boots and reaching toward the blue threshold. The two dark hands stopped a finger’s width apart.
Sella kept one fist tight around the tether. “All right,” she said. “You can say hello. No grabbing.”
The shadows did not move.
She shifted her weight onto her back foot. Her shadow shifted too, though the floor tried to hold it forward. The fingertips drew farther apart. Sella’s ankle tightened with the effort.
“Message received.” She eased forward again. “One touch.”
The fingertips met.
Cold pressure traveled up through the soles of Sella’s boots. Not a chill on her skin; weight, pressing down in a narrow line from toe to ankle. Her shadow’s fingers curled around Tassa’s. Sella had not moved her hand.
On the landing, Tassa’s shadow curled its fingers too.
The real Tassa stood still.
Sella stared past their joined shapes. “Did you feel that?”
Tassa’s mouth opened. No answer came. Sella heard a faint scrape from the landing, then saw Tassa’s real hand move a moment later, lifting from her side to hover near the dagger lying there.
Or the sound had come first. Here, sound and movement had never agreed on the order of things.
The pressure tightened. Sella’s knees bent. Her joined shadow seemed to have weight now, a second person leaning into her from the far side. She shoved her shoulder against the invisible force and held her ground.
“Let go,” she said.
Tassa’s shadow did not.
That was an answer of sorts. It might also have been the room making use of a sentence it had heard before.
Sella leaned back harder. The tether tugged at her fist, taut from her heel to the blue threshold. The joined shadows stretched between them, fingers still locked. A sharp pull ran through Sella’s right wrist. She gasped and nearly lost her grip.
Across the gap, Tassa’s hand snapped shut.
The real hand, not the shadow. Tassa looked down at it, then at Sella. Her expression had gone blank with concentration.
Sella’s wrist still hurt. That was real. The way it had happened was not yet useful.
She lowered herself carefully, keeping the tether wrapped around her fist. If a movement on one side could press into the other, then she could use that. She could test it without asking anyone to answer.
Next
Sella can brace the threshold through the joined shadows, but her own shadow has started moving without her—will she hold the tether or try to stop it?
She planted her free palm on the floor. Her shadow’s free hand flattened against the pale stone. The joined shadows shifted. A second pulse of pressure came up Sella’s arm, stronger this time, as though another palm pressed back from below.
Tassa’s shadow leaned into the contact. Tassa herself stayed upright.
Sella’s shoulder sank under the force. The shadow-route dipped with it, a solid slope changing direction beneath her. Her body began to slide toward the threshold.
She let it carry her for half a pace, then drove her boot down. The route caught her. The tether slackened. On the landing, the blue threshold shuddered in its square, but did not turn.
Useful, then. Not safe. Not a reunion. Useful.
Sella tested the grip by twisting her wrist. The joined shadows turned together. Pressure climbed her forearm as if an unseen hand had taken hold of it. She twisted the other way. The shadows resisted, and the pull in her wrist sharpened until her fingers went numb.
She stopped.
The strain eased.
“That’s enough,” she called toward the landing. “If you’re the one holding on, stop.”
Tassa’s real hand opened. The shadow’s fingers stayed closed around Sella’s.
Sella’s jaw tightened. “If you’re not, this is a very rude way to make the point.”
Nothing changed.
She could cut the contact. She had a knife within reach behind her, but she would have to turn her back on the threshold to get it. Even if she severed the shadow, she had no idea what would happen to Tassa’s hand—or to hers.
Instead, she tried to make the route carry her while keeping the contact loose. She turned her wrist palm-up. The shadows followed, one after the other; Sella’s shadow first, Tassa’s shadow second. The delay was small, but it was there.
A delay was not proof of a person. It was a difference she could work with.
She looked at the threshold. Its blue face stood upright across the landing, the tether’s pull now lighter in her hand. The shadow beneath it stretched toward her, reaching the spot where her own shadow and Tassa’s met. If she could brace the threshold from here, she might keep it from turning without having to trust the landing’s figures.
Sella pressed the joined hands down.
The contact resisted, then lowered. The threshold’s shadow flattened across the floor. The door itself gave a little shiver. Its upper edge tilted a fraction toward Iven, but the tether held.
Sella’s arms shook. “There. That’s the job. You can be helpful without making it personal.”
Tassa’s real hand went to her own wrist. She rubbed at it, eyes fixed on Sella. Then she held out her other hand, palm open.
Sella didn’t know whether it was an offer, a signal, or a movement the room had already decided to show her. She also didn’t know whether ignoring it would leave Tassa alone with the same pressure in her arm.
“Don’t,” Sella said, though she wasn’t sure which one she meant.
Tassa’s hand remained open.
The joined shadows trembled. Sella felt the faintest brush across her palm, like someone touching the center of it with one careful fingertip. Her own hand stayed clenched around the tether. The shadow’s fingers moved without her.
Sella pulled her hand away.
The two shadows separated.
A narrow strip of pale floor appeared between them. The pressure vanished from Sella’s wrist. On the landing, Tassa lowered her open hand, slowly this time. Her shadow lowered it after her.
Sella let out the breath she had been holding. “Good. We’ve established that touching you is a terrible idea.”
The shadows leaned toward each other again.
Sella moved before they could meet. She planted her heel on her own shadow and wrapped the tether twice around her fist. The route drew tight under her boot. It held. For the first time since stepping onto it, she could choose a direction and feel the floor resist her instead of simply taking her weight.
She moved one pace toward the threshold.
The landing came nearer. Not closer in the usual sense; the figures remained where they were, and the sideways space between them seemed unchanged. But her shadow’s reach had shortened. The blue door’s shadow ran directly beneath her feet now, and the tether had enough slack for her to brace it with both hands.
Tassa’s shadow stayed where their fingers had separated.
Sella looked at the real Tassa. “If you can move, don’t come to me. Not yet.”
Tassa’s face tightened. Her gaze dropped to the floor, to the two shadows, then returned to Sella. She said nothing.
That was better than a promise. A promise from this distance would have been easy to counterfeit.
Sella set her feet and pulled the tether down against the threshold’s shadow. The blue door rocked once in its square. The pull that had been dragging it toward Iven eased. She had found a way to brace it without touching the door itself, and the shadow-route had brought her close enough to do it.
A small success. She’d learned to count those.
The floor beneath her boot shifted. Her shadow’s heel slid forward, though Sella held her body still.
She looked down.
The dark shape had moved a fraction closer to Tassa’s shadow. Sella’s boot had not.
Across the landing, Tassa remained motionless. Her shadow did too.
Sella kept both hands on the tether and felt, beneath her heel, her own shadow press forward again.