PENUMBRA: Chapter 1, Scenes 1-3

Chapter One

Fey and Ryn held each other tightly, heads spinning too hard for them to do anything more. But the burly men who had grabbed their mother paid the little boys no further attention after kicking them into the brush. Why should they? Faceless within the impractically overhanging hoods of gray cowls, these thugs said they were looking for Heretics, for magicians who dared use their power without the sanction of the Church.

Everyone knew six-year-olds couldn't have any magic yet. And identical Twins couldn't have any magic, ever.

So the men only dragged their mother into a huge circle of some strange power emanating from the sunset-hued, fist-sized crystal at its center. She fought hard to get back to her children, slinging lightning bolts and sheets of fire backed by the near-insanity of the need to protect her babies. But something the strangers wore or carried kept her magic from touching them. So she resorted to kicking and flailing, even biting one before he slapped her so hard she was reeling even while she lay on the ground. The struggle was over before Fey could make sure Ryn wasn't going to die from a pain that spiked through them both with every breath.

Even once he had, Fey's head was just clear enough to understand that these men were taking their mother, hurting her. Disoriented though he was, Ryn crawled toward their mother. Fey could feel how much it hurt his Twin to breathe, let alone move, and crawled after to help hold his Twin up on the right side.

Face contorted with grief and anguish, their mother screamed at them, before she was shoved to the ground by another man, "Before everything else, take care of your brother. And stay together. I love--"

They both winced as she thudded against the earth, and Ryn reached out as if to help. Even he felt perplexed within their connection, not understanding why she would say any of that but the last.

The one thing she never had to doubt, despite all the mischief they got into, was that Fey and Ryn would always stand up for one another, could bear anything but seeing the other hurt--or losing one another.

Their mother had separated them once, when they were two and Fey lashed out with magic to defend his Twin in front of the neighborhood's kids. She'd been so angry and scared, fearful their display would draw the Church's attention and have them taken away from her. Their mother's quiet disappointment, and a fear they had never again seen in her until today, stung worse than all her switchings. When she'd marched Fey over to sit facing one corner, and hauled Ryn off toward another, Fey objected. Usually, he never even let go of Ryn. They did everything together. She told him it was the only punishment befitting the crime.

Ryn, rational even through tears for Fey, not himself, had tried to convince her it wasn't fair to punish Fey for protecting him, no matter how he did it. He told her she should punish only him for verbally standing up to Degit to keep him from hitting another of the younger children. Ryn was always doing that sort of thing, protecting others at his cost.

Quietly as his brother had been speaking, Fey heard every word, just as he saw their mother's tense expression and tamped-down terror through his brother's eyes. And the flash of pride that her Ryn had helped some of the other children too often bullied.

Fey didn't know what happened next; it felt as if his insides were on fire, and he could hear screaming that seemed far too loud. He only realized it was his when he had to stop to suck in air because his nose was too stuffed up from crying.

It hurt like somebody had gutted him the way they did a deer, but not nearly so cleanly. Yet somehow, even that pain couldn't match the anguish of being away from his Twin, and Fey could think of nothing more than getting back to his brother. Fey had barely been conscious when their mother knelt beside him with Ryn in her arms, dammed-back sobbing racking her body. Fey smiled, trying to reassure her now that Ryn was back, but he didn't know if the attempt translated to his face.

When he hugged his brother, Ryn stirred, uncurling, and hugged him back. Fey only really breathed again then.

That was when their mother realized she needed to teach them to control their power before it killed them. She made them separate a little bit every day until they could bear being further and further apart, but they still didn't like it. It made them lightheaded to approach the edges of the furthest their bond would permit them to go. But, the nearer they got to this magic circle, the more they felt that same way.

It couldn't mattter, though. Their mother was being hurt, so they had to try to help her. The magic they flung fizzled out at the edges of the creepy power circle, so they'd have to go in there and do what they could.

They were all she had, and right now, Fey could feel Ryn's keening desperation to get to her, to reassure her. Fey just wanted to save her, even though he knew the odds of them being able to fight men who overwhelmed their mother--let alone beat them. But maybe they could provide enough of a distraction once they were within that magic-deadening power, and then she could escape. They both knew she wouldn't leave them behind, though.

Fey crawled beside Ryn with solidarity, not any real hope--though he wished for it--that any help would come for her. In its absence, the two of them crept right up to the edge of that barrier together, and balked. It scared Fey, in a way nothing had before. He wasn't sure what to do. And then the choice was wrenched quite out of his hands. Their mother's agonized scream tore through them both, through their very souls. But it was Ryn who always thought first of helping people, especially when there wasn't time to think, he who reached out through that magical barrier.

Fey felt his Twin's life snuff out as Ryn touched the edge of the thick magic ringing their mom. No, not death, Fey told himself--their magic connection had been suddenly sucked away. Ryn crumpled and Fey wavered, the vacuum where power should have been nearly knocking him out. He had to get his brother out of that magic-stealing circle, first. Fey fought looming oblivion, hauling his Twin back until the upper half of Ryn's body was in his lap, held crushed against him.

Fey hunched over his Twin, pushing magic into him, filling what had been sucked away the moment even just Ryn's finger crossed the boundary of that disquieting power. He could see those men brutalizing his mother, but the two of them couldn't go into that area, and neither could their magic.

He was ashamed to be a little relieved that he couldn't possibly help her, because Fey couldn't tear himself away from his Twin to do so, not now. He didn't like suspecting he would still have chosen to stay right here with his brother even if he could save their mother.

Fey had to make sure Ryn was alright. It was what she wanted him to do, on top of being the only thing he wanted, in this moment.

Buoyed by that rationalization, Fey reached deep within, not caring how dangerous it was to tap the power woven into his very life to charge the bond between them until it sparked and then ignited. He'd been shaking too hard to tell, before, but once that happened, Fey calmed down enough to know his brother's heart still beat. Ryn gasped in a painful breath, couging until he could calm his own breathing.

Fey winced, loosening his hold on Ryn. The pain of Ryn's broken ribs and throbbing head returned, full force, now that their link was opened far enough to let sensation through. When Fey blinked his eyes clear again, Ryn was blinking his in an effort to open them, but golden-red curls caught in long lashes. Fey brushed the locks away from his brother's face, and watched intently while Ryn shut his eyes to examine Fey's experiences of the last few seconds that had dragged on forever.

This time, Ryn opened his eyes wide, but his voice sounded like it spoke more in Fey's head than out loud. "Right now, you'd save her if you could, you know."

Ryn was absolving him of the guilt for wanting to help his Twin more than he wanted to help his mother. Fey wasn't quite sure how his brother did that, but Ryn's reassurances always banished whatever disturbed him. Ryn just understood what he needed, even when Fey didn't. And Ryn didn't speak mere platitudes--he couldn't lie to save his life, certainly not to Fey.

Fey's eyes teared, but through Ryn's clear eyes, he could still see their mother being savagely assaulted. Ryn would cry over the mouse their cat displayed as a prize, but this was too much grief for him to express, so he didn't. Not yet. Later, he would be inconsolable, and only the effort to ease his pain would let Fey move on through his. Fey blinked his vision clear, and then followed Ryn's arm as his Twin pointed.

How he hadn't seen the ghostly woman until Ryn pointed her out, Fey couldn't imagine. It was as if her entire being was a soft, silver light, but somehow its glow obfuscated her enough that he could only make out her general features. He could see the scraggly brush beyond right through her, too.

Ryn let his head press back against Fey's chest, focused on drawing air through the pain. They were both fading, and soon, everything would be out of their hands.

"Do something," he whispered to the apparition, but that hazy visage remained intent on his mother's suffering. Tears flowing freely, Fey pleaded, "Please. Help her."

He wanted to make this woman listen, demand she save his mother. Fey could hardly bear that this woman watched without any sign of compassion, showing no humanity. Without understanding how, he reached out to her and found his hand stopped as if a piece of glass lay between them. Pressing both palms flat against this resistance, as if his intensity could somehow spur action, Fey shouted, "Please help her!"

The hazy watcher looked at him in startlement; she wasn't used to people seeing her. Fey only realized then, as Ryn sensed it, that this woman was hidden from view--from any interaction--somehow. By magic, but no sort they knew.

Fey held the gaze of eyes little more than a brighter glow in that indistinct form.

"Do something," he implored. The woman floated nearer, pressing her ghostly hand against the opposite side of the barrier dividing her from them. "Help her."

Fey could feel his grip on consciousness slipping inexorably.

"Why don't you do something?"

Even though the lips were as undefined as the rest of that wraith, Fey had the clear impression he read them before darkness stole him once more. Silently, beyond reach even of emotion, the spectre told them simply, "I can't."

* * *

Fey woke with his Twin, the stabbing pain of Ryn's broken rib jabbing them both away from uneasy rest. Fey was tired and bleary, and he was the better off. How could he sleep? The portion of his mind shared with his Twin muddied with the pain of every breath and the pressure in Ryn's head. Even a morning's rest hadn't let Ryn recover far enough to keep from slipping immediately back into restless unconsciousness. For the first time, he was leaving Fey behind. Fey hated the sensation.

Ryn had hit hard, shielding Fey from the impact the same way he'd shouldered between him and the savagely-lashing kicks. Ryn didn't think before doing things like that. He just acted.

Fey thought, and Ryn felt.

That was the way it had always been. So much of their perceptions and conceptions overlapped that it was easiest to compartmentalize. Thay way, the doubled thoughts and feelings were somewhat distinct instead of mere copies. What was the point in there being two of them, if they just did the exact same things? There'd be no point in being able to experience twice as much as everybody else by sharing the other's thoughts and perceptions.

Of course, a part of them wanted to do the same things. Everything was so much easier that way. That lazy portion of their essences longed to simply twin their thoughts and actions--to do and think and feel the exact same things in the exact same way. Synching like that let their magic come even more powerfully. It was called forth as if that mere sameness were akin to the sort of prayer rituals the Church's Chosen used to amplify their magic.

But that state of utter likeness was hard to sustain.

From the start, the two of them had divided tasks. Because of that, even thoughts came twice as fast: Fey performed the calculations while Ryn put the significance together. Each of them felt the other's portion of the same moments as their own. It must have been confusing, once, but so must sight and hearing and touch all at once seem overwhelming to a baby. For them, this was just the way things were.

It could get a little scary, though, when they got ahead of themselves.

They were so good at sketching out the roles each would play. Sometimes the two of them would look at, say, a math problem, and know the solution before their brains had time to work it out. As if that split second in which they figured out what they would have to do was enough for them to jump ahead to their eventual conclusion. Sometimes, Fey and Ryn thought that was a function of their magic. But sometimes, they thought that feeling like they had lived as much as if they were twice their age was just what it meant to have--to be--two manifestations of the same exact thing.

Twins--identical siblings like the two of them--were rare enough, deemed signs of great evil and scions of Heretics. They were too strange, too different from everybody else; and too like each other.

Complements--two siblings born together, but not the same--were, conversely, considered blessed by the gods. To be so close to another being, to be used to their rhythms as to one's own, enabled a mingling of powers and abilities. Thus, the rare Complements who had magic were those few souls deemed by the gods to be sufficiently righteous. They could be trusted with that potential for an even greater magic gained by commingling the rhythms of two.

But Fey and Ryn were Twins, not Complements. Scary as that was, the two of them were odd even by those standards. Maybe it was because of their magic. They'd always sensed it coiled within them the way they could sense muscle flexing or veins throbbing beneath their own skin.

But it was impossible for Twins to have magic. Their mother had told them the legends explaining why Twins couldn't have power with as much seriousness as she'd taught them the myths behind which plants to avoid and which berries never to eat.

Desperate to hold his brother's attention through the fog, Fey told this most familiar story just the way his mother had.

"Once, a long, long time ago--before you--" He cut off, realizing there were some words he'd need to change. Like their mother's endearments.

Fey took a deep breath as if that could ease the sense that Ryn wasn't getting enough air with the jabbing of pain forcing every breath to stay shallow. "Before we were born. There were two little boys who did everything together."

And here, she'd always mock-glowered at them. And used that stern, growly voice to point out that there couldn't be "nothing but good" in such exaggerated closeness if it went so badly for those two boys. When she suggested that maybe her two ought to try doing things separately some of the time like she told them to, they always rolled their eyes and looked at one another. Their mother didn't understand. Couldn't understand.

Fey fought to blink back the tears for a moment, then just let them fall. Who was he hiding them from--himself? Or the other version of himself, sunken in fitful unconsciousness now? It wasn't as if he and Ryn were as foolish as the other boys back at home, that they thought tears were a sign of weakness. Tears were a lot of things, but mostly--at least in a time like this, with his mother dragged away and his Twin fading--they were honest.

Maybe they could wash away the sting of helplessness.

Sharing his brother's pain and addledness on top of his own distress, Fey couldn't have gone looking for help even if he'd been able to seriously consider leaving Ryn.

"They were Twins, like us, sharing knowledge and emotions and most of all, power. When they used their magic together, they could ease sickness, grow crops, and herd fish into nets. Everything that the people around them had to work so hard to accomplish, their magic did without any effort save one: they always had to ask to use each other's power, because the magic of either, alone, was still strong, but not for building.

"When either boy used his power by himself, he could destroy a person, a home, a village. The two of them, side by side, leveled destruction upon all who threatened their home and people; and together, raised those who begged forgiveness into their new kingdom. And thus they came to rule over the great empire created by the force of their magic.

"But because they had never needed to work for anything, because they were held in deference by everyone around them, each of those two boys came to think of himself, privately, as the Chosen of the Gods. But only one mortal could be Chosen.

"So soon, both Twins came to think of their brother as the only thing standing between them and divine status. They began to turn their destructive abilities upon one another--certain they would gain their combined constructive power when they slayed the other, and could repair the empire them. But because they no longer worked together, and wouldn't have shared the power even had they thought to ask it once again, epidemics struck, the crops shriveled, and the fishes vanished from the nets like ghosts. Their people suffered terribly.

"Their land suffered more terribly. In the heat of their war, swathes of rock were melted and spewed forth black clouds to cause famine and sickness and death. In those places where not even the earth was solid, and nothing could live, those two boys could not destroy one another--they were too evenly matched. But one of them, drawn too near the death they wrought, took that death and crafted it into his magic, and it is with that he finished off his brother.

"But because his Twin was dead, the healing abilities they had when they combined their power were lost to the world when it most needed them."

Fey fell silent for a moment, wishing he had such abilities. He couldn't really do anything with his magic, nothing intentional like the stories spoke of. Of course, in those same tales, only certain of the Church's Chosen manifested such power that they could heal or harm just using magic. And Fey had another decade before he was supposed to be showing any sign of magic, anyway. Unfortunately, that meant he could just walk up to the Church and ask them to teach him to use his abilities consciously.

Even if he could, he'd have to do it alone. Or be left behind while Ryn did. He and Ryn had thought about doing that someday, though. One could go to the Church while the other learned a trade. They could simultaneously learn both, as long as they were never too far apart. If they could bear even a little separation for so long.

Of course, that idea came before men claiming to be acting on behalf of that Church tore their mother away.

Still, if a priest had shown up and offered to heal Ryn, Fey would have done anything in return. In exchange for saving his Twin, Ryn wouldn't have balked at whatever it took to absolve the sin of their birth.

But there wasn't anybody else around to help Ryn, and Fey didn't know what to do. His magic surged following the pull of strong emotions, not a ritual incantation with its set purpose. If he was going to draw Ryn back from the brink of death, he needed something more. If intensely needing his brother healed could have accomplished that, it'd be done already.

Voice shaking, Ryn finished the tale.

"Since that time, the gods have cursed empowered Twins so that they will wage war with one another in the womb. Always, one or neither will survive to be born, so that no others can be destroyed in such a massive conflict between too-perfectly matched magics ever again.

"But what happens if they don't turn against one another?" That last part was his own startled wondering, and Fey followed it to the next question. "What if they work together? What can they do, then?" Only when he realized that the answer could be very, very good--or very, very bad--did Fey realize why people were really so terrified of Twins.

The obvious counter-argument roused frustrated tears: they couldn't use their power to save each other when they were only six.

So far, the only thing he could reliably do with his power, intentionally, was to absorb some of the pain when Ryn was suffering. Usually, they both felt injuries or hurt fully; but when he concentrated hard to shift whatever his Twin felt into the part of their awareness that they shared completely, he could diminish it so that it was as if he took half of the pain away from his brother.

Maybe...if he tried really hard, he could do that with the damage his brother had taken, now.

Because if he couldn't, Fey was getting more and more certain, he was going to lose Ryn. The sense of his Twin within his mind was already occluded.

With the desperation born of fear and anguish, Fey reached once more for the core of his power. He plunged into the portion that was so intimate a part of him that he couldn't summon it without also pulling forth a piece of his soul. As he focused, he could feel a cool weight settle between hands clasped as if in supplication to magic itself. Still, he was surprised, when he opened his eyes, to see a brilliant white blade in his hands. It looked almost as if somebody had fashioned lightning into a weapon. Holding this concentrated symbol of his power for the first time, Fey could see what he needed to do.

Deliberately, with all his weight and strength behind the motion, Fey drew his blade of magic through the power flowing between him and his brother so that they were even more unified than they had started. With blade in hand, it was possible then--if barely--for him to divide up his brother's injuries so that neither wound would cause permanent damage or worse.

Or at least, he thought he did. Fervently hoped he had.

It was what he intended, what he poured all his power and strength and will into accomplishing...but at the end, Fey was too far gone to know whether or not he had succeeded.

* * *

A part of Fey hadn't expected consciousness to surface again; but every part of him reached toward his brother when it did. Mentally, first, he tested--and released a relieved breath when he felt Ryn foggy but intact within their mindspace. Fey could tell the headache was spread between them, now, not just shared from Ryn. But his Twin still had the worst of it.

When his brother tried to rouse, Fey gently reached out through their closer connection. Even with so little an effort, Fey had felt his brother's brain start to strain itself. Trying to understand and absorb what had happened was too much for a brain too battered to function properly at the moment. Fey shouldn't think too much right now, either, but he had to make sure he'd done everything he could for his brother's injuries. He soothed his Twin back beneath awareness much like his mother might have pushed him back down into the bed to sleep once more after a disturbing nightmare.

There was nothing he knew to do physically, to help with a cracked skull and ribs. But Fey was pretty good at doing a mental examination by now. Ryn was withdrawn again into that little self-protective cocoon, which made it hard to figure out if sluggish thinking and a hazy emptiness instead of dreams were worrisome. But at least it would keep his essence safe against any harm done by those injuries.The sense of too much pressure made it feel as if Fey's brain was going to be forced to ooze out through his ears, and he wasn't the one with the worst damage.

Feeling his brother as safe and secure within his own power as possible at the moment, Fey turned his dwindling strength toward getting a look around. He at least wanted to know why he could smell fresh hay so strongly and feel unsteady motion. It felt as if they were being trundled along behind the village plow-steer.

"One's waking up, Pok. Where's that water?" His mother's hand, rough and callused, slid under his head in accompaniment of that strangely husky voice. No, not his mother's--it was too big, wrong just like the voice was. His and Ryn's mother had been torn away from them.

Wooziness made it difficult to get the gist of the hard-handed woman's soothing word. Try though he did to understand, weariness stymied Fey's senses. Once he got a glimpse of his Twin's unconscious face, relief sapped what little strength he'd been able to summon. Fey's lids crept shut again. The way the stranger rationed each sip of gamey water probably would have made sense of what she'd said if he'd had the mental awareness to do more than let the warm blanket of sleep enfold him once again.

Sleep was so welcoming, because his Twin waited for him there.