Archive of Our Own

The Shadowchild at Three Days Old

The blowflies were getting loud.

It—it didn't have a name—wasn't sure how long it had been inside the bird. The world got warmer sometimes and cooler sometimes, and if you counted those warmers and coolers, it had been three of them. It was comfortable enough at first, inside the bird, but it was starting to fall apart, and the flies kept getting louder.

After a while, it made itself thin and poured itself out of the dead bird, and then made itself thick again.

There were two other birds in the clearing. Not dead ones. It was pretty sure not, anyway. They asked—not in words, but in the shape of their bodies and the tilting of their heads—what it was.

It said, "I don't know. I was born out of a bird. Am I a bird?"

No, said their heads and their wings and their feet and the shadows inside them. Definitely not.

"Are you sure? I think that I have to be something. And I was born in a bird."

Definitely, definitely not.

"Then what am I?" it asked, but the birds took off, their wings saying only Goodbye, now.

It thinned out the self-stuff that pooled where it stood on the ground into little tentacles and used them to kick at the leaves. "What am I?" it asked the birch tree, which swayed and did not answer.

It ate the shadow on a mushroom (musky and sweet) and felt a little better.

It would be another week before it found someone that would not flee, and got a name.

***

The Shadowchild at Three Months Old

Shadowchild was looking into the river, dabbling a little with one of its hands. When Digger knelt next to it to wash her face, it asked, "What's a river?"

Digger turned a little to look. "What do you mean, what's a river? That's a river. You know that. And no, before you ask, you're not a river."

"I wasn't going to ask," the Shadowchild protested. "I'm pretty sure I'm a demon. I think. But I mean—" and here it kicked the water, inasmuch as you could say that any creature without legs kicked "—it's many things and it's also one thing. It's rocks and fish and water and weeds and dead things and shadows and light and dirt and bugs, and it's also a river." It paused.

Digger's mind raced, trying to figure out all the possible philosophical ramifications of her potential answers. Murai and Grim Eyes trooped up behind them, food-dishes in hand ready for washing, but also, Digger suspected, hoping to get some entertainment out of watching her flail around trying to answer the question. "Also," Shadowchild went on, "it flows and flows and flows but it doesn't run out of water. Where's the water come from?"

Ah, Digger thought with some relief. An easy one. "The water comes from underground, mostly," she said. "Usually there's a spring, a lot of the time it feeds out of an aquifer, or an underground current. So most rivers start there, underground, and flow to the sea. With smaller rivers and streams and things flowing into them along the way." She scratched it out in the wet soil along the riverbank, from source underwater to sea. "We run into it when tunneling all the time, aquifers or natural springs. You gotta be careful with them—if you aren't, you can really screw up a river, and maybe flood your tunnels into the bargain. But they're useful. The water's very clean, usually."

Shadowchild scratched its head, or what passed for a head, and studied the crude drawing and then the river itself. "But how does the water get underground, then? Why doesn't it run out?"

Digger wasn't on quite as firm footing, but she took a stab at it. "So when the water's aboveground it evaporates. Dries up, right? Like rain?" At Shadowchild's nod, she went on, "So it evaporates out of the sea and the rivers and the lakes and then falls back down as rain and snow, and over thousands of years it seeps down into the ground, into the aquifers." She drew a big circle over her sketch. "It's a cycle. Out and down and up and back in." Well, over-simple—she was aware that there was a lot more going on with the water table than just that—but good enough for Shadowchild. And no tangents onto the topic of good versus evil, either, thank goodness.

She could tell that Murai was smiling behind her veil, even though she couldn't see her mouth. "You can always be relied upon for a stunningly pragmatic, accurate explanation, honored Digger." Digger was pretty sure she wasn't being made fun of—Murai was pathologically polite—but sometimes, juuuuust sometimes, it was hard to tell.

"Boring, you mean," Grim Eyes said with a snort. Polite, she was not.

Shadowchild turned, or at least flowed around to face them. "How do you explain rivers?" it asked.

Murai looked thoughtful. "Well," she said. "The simplest—one might even say, superficial—explanation is that your demiurge of choice created the rivers." Shadowchild opened its mouth. Murai said, anticipating, "A demiurge is a creator god, or spirit, or force, depending on your personal philosophy." Shadowchild shut its mouth. "When I was a very, very small child," Murai continued, "I would have said that Lord Ganesh in his infinite compassion compels the rivers to flow. Even though Lord Ganesh is not, properly, a demiurge, I was too young to recognize the distinction at the time."

"And now?" Shadowchild asked.

"Now I would say . . . that it is more complicated than that." Another shadow of a smile behind her veil. "The truth of gods is . . . that more than one thing may be true at the same time."

"Seems like," Digger said, before she could stop herself, "that that means that you could just as well say that none of them are true."

"Perhaps, honored Digger," Murai said politely. "In any case, that means it may be that the Great Goddess created the rivers, and the Thunderer created the rivers, and the Goat Dancer created the rivers, and that—for instance—Nesthu the Horse God created one specific river when he stamped his back left hoof, and so on. And at the same time, it is also true what the wombats say, that rivers create themselves through the cycle of waters. And at the same time, there may be a greater truth, encircling all those truths. The greatest among the Veiled can hold all these possibilities as equally true—and equally false—at the same time, while still seeing the reality of the world as it is, also at the same time." And then she fell silent—because, Digger suspected, that line of discussion reminded her that she wasn't herself the best at seeing the reality of the world.

"Huh," Grim Eyes said. "The People always said that the river that ran through the forest was started by She-is-Fiercer pissing, and she pissed so much it just never stopped flowing. Although Boneclaw Mother says that's just stories, not really myth. But that's not this river, anyhow."

Herne was the last to come to the river, with the pot they'd used to cook the rabbit (ick).

"Herne," Shadowchild said, "where do you think rivers come from?"

Herne gave them all his blank, you-people-are-crazy look. "It's just a river," he said. "Look, enough yakking, we need to get moving or we'll waste half the day."

It was about an hour of travel later when Shadowchild morphed up next to Digger and said, "You didn't answer about what a river is. How it has parts but it's also a river. And also it's always moving and the water is always changing but you still call it the same river."

Blood and shale. She'd hoped it had forgotten that. "That's kind of . . . more complicated."

"Why?"

"Because . . . ." Digger sighed. "Okay, so, sometimes one thing may also have smaller things inside it. Like a mountain will be mainly one kind of stone—limestone or basalt or something like that. But it also has other kinds of rocks, and oftentimes interesting mineral strains, and . . . trees and moss and snow and mountain goats. It's still a mountain, though. I don't know how to describe it better than that. We just call it a mountain even though it's made up of different stuff, because it's easier to say, 'hey, there's a mountain' than 'hey, there's a big pile of rocks and minerals and trees and snow and mountain goats.' Same with a river."

"Hmm," the Shadowchild said, looking thoughtfully up at the sky. "You call it one thing, to make it easier."

"Yeah, pretty much."

"Or like the rabbit Herne caught last night," Shadowchild said brightly. "It's easier to call it 'rabbit' than 'bag of meat and bones and heart and little gloopy bits.'"

Digger pushed down a stab of queasiness. It was hard to be the one herbivore in a group of omnivores. "Right. Most things aren't one thing all the way through."

There was a long pause, and Digger thought the conversation was over, until Shadowchild said, "I'm one thing all the way through. I'm pretty sure."

"You're kind of . . . unusual that way," Digger said.

"I'm not like a river," Shadowchild said, and Digger couldn't tell whether it was upset about this or not. But when she turned to check, Shadowchild had pulled its disappearing act.

***

The Shadow at Eleven Months Old

After the Shadowchild left on its quest, Digger didn't see it again—and didn't expect to see it again, really—so it was a surprise when it turned up again while they were traveling through the Valley of the Winged Squash. (Digger wasn't sure she'd ever quite get over the fact that her first thought upon hearing that was, "Hey, winged squash aren't so bad," but in fairness, compared to killing zombie gods and eating hyena liver, a few squashbats were really nothing.)

Manuel was here because, apparently, healers in the mountains to the northwest would pay excellent money for the dried wings and seeds of the crooknecked squashbat, but that was delicate work best done in the dark of the squashcaves, which meant that Digger found herself with quite a bit of time watching the wagon, in company of the bandersnatch.

She was roasting tubers over the fire for her dinner one night when the left head of the bandersnatch spoke: "A moving shadow."

"A shadow moving with nothing to cast it," the right head agreed, sounding quite calm and only mildly curious. The bandersnatch never seemed to worry about the strange things it—it? They? Digger was still not sure of the proper pronoun—encountered, possibly because Manuel himself was both stranger and more dangerous than practically anything else they might run into.

"A traveling shadow that looks like a feather-snake," the first head said, and it was at that point that Digger dropped her tuber.

"Shadowchild?" she said, into the empty air. And a second of the ordinary, velvety, translucent night-darkness detached itself, became opaque, and curved around the fire.

"Hi, Digger," it said. Even after just a few months, Digger had forgotten the peculiar quality of its voice, where under its chirping curiosity was a tone that felt like the opposite of sound, as if it were sucking at your ears.

Shadow—"child" didn't seem appropriate these days—was bigger even than it had been when they'd parted on that mountaintop, big as the bandersnatch and frilled all over with something that looked like feathers or spikes or scales depending on the angle. But it was still, definitely, Shadowchild. The eyes were the same. It was so strange, this creature who was clearly Shadowchild and clearly not. And it obviously wasn't a child anymore. Shadowlescent, maybe? . . . No, that was terrible.

Digger wondered whether its bigger-ness meant that Shadowchild had had to eat another demon. Maybe several other demons. She decided that the polite thing would be not to ask.

Instead, she said, "Shadow," and then. "—Is it okay if I just call you Shadow?"

"Sure. I gave myself a name, but you couldn't hear it, let alone understand it. Unless you were an armadillo. Which you aren't. So Shadow is fine."

Don't ask, don't ask, don't ask, Digger thought. "What are you doing here?" she said instead, and then said, "Er—not that I'm not glad to see you. But I thought you were going to be away for . . . well, for a while."

Shadow raised one claw and scratched its head, a gesture familiar from when it had been knee-high and round as a splotch of ink. "Time is kind of different for demons," it said, after a moment's thought. "It's been more time for me. Or maybe less time. It's kind of hard to tell, it moves around."

Oookay. That was about par for the course. "And your, ah, quest?"

"I found a couple of little ones. One hatched out of a sea bass. I don't know about the other. Would you like to say hello?" And before Digger could reply, it turned and gestured to the darkness.

Out of apparently nowhere—well, Shadow had always had the ability to appear and vanish at random—two little black blots with eyes materialized. They looked a lot like Shadow once had. "I'd introduce you, but you couldn't understand their names either," Shadow said cheerfully.

One of the . . . baby demons, she supposed . . . said, "Hullo." The other waved a three-fingered hand.

"Um," Digger said. "Hello." She had the distinct impression that the bandersnatch was snickering at her.

"Anyway, we came to warn you about the strawberries," Shadow continued.

Digger couldn't help it. She planted a paw over her eyes and stood like that for a minute, until she could say, "The what now?"

"Strawberries."

"Strawberries like . . . little juicy red fruits? Those?"

"Yes."

"What, am I going to get food poisoning from a bad one?"

"No," said Shadow. "Well, not unless you bite one of them before it bites you. Then, maybe."

"Wh—" Digger began, at exactly the same moment that a low, ominous growling began behind her. "Oh, blood and shale," she swore, and unholstered her pickaxe. After the incident with the carnivorous bedroom furniture last week, and the peevish drainpipe naiad the week before, it was turning into a habit.

The growling increased in volume. Digger dropped into a fighting crouch. Shadow coiled up like a snake behind her. The little shadowlings meandered around, looking inquisitively at everything and paying no attention to the growling, which was . . . pretty what she would have expected, actually.

The undergrowth rustled, the night seemed to darken, the growl raised in pitch and volume . . . and then a strawberry hopped out of the ferns. It opened a tiny, fanged mouth and hissed. It was maybe as long as one of Digger's fingers.

"That's what you were going to warn me about?" Digger asked. She turned her pickaxe around so that it was pointed haft-first at the strawberry and poked it gently. The strawberry growled and sank its teeth into the wood.

"Well, it does bite," Shadow said, somewhat apologetically.

Digger swung the pickaxe around and studied the fanged strawberry. It did its best to growl at her while still biting the pickaxe, then fell off, bounced, and lunged and bit Digger on the ankle. Its tiny teeth couldn't do much through her fur and hide, but it still stung. "Ow!" she said.

"See?" Shadow said. Three more growling strawberries hopped out of the undergrowth, trailing short broken vines. "They get aggressive when they're ripe."

"Yeah," Digger said, "but Shadow, I could just step on them. Although I'm not sure that's really justified—" A handful more feral strawberries bumped and rolled from the fringe of greenery around the clearing.

"They probably only have a few days left to live anyway," Shadow said. "Before they get overripe." It lashed out with its . . . tail . . . thing and squashed a few. "Also, they don't talk. I did check beforehand."

That seemed to be a cue for the milling shadowlings. One (Digger could not for the life of her tell them apart) said, "Yay!" Then they both began bouncing up and down on the strawberries, just as fast as the carnivorous fruit could appear.

Carnage had never looked quite so much like . . . like jam, before.

"I taught them that, you know," Shadow said, sounding pleased with itself. "That you can only kill things and eat them if they can't talk. Or are trying to kill you first. Like you taught me."

"I never expected to be the basis for a moral system," Digger said, rubbing her forehead. "Particularly not one centered around when it's okay to eat people. But . . . okay."

"They taste sweet!" one of the shadowlings announced. "And fruity!"

"They don't have much of a shadow," Shadow said. "But it's enough for a taste. Kind of like a treat."

The toothy strawberries had either run out or just run away. The shadowlings bounced up and down a bit more, and then one said, "Aww. No more."

"We'll find you some nice oak shadows," Shadow promised, like a fond parent. And then it turned to Digger. "That should be it, as long as you don't run into a grizzly pear. But they mostly hunt lemonlopes, north of here." It paused, and then said, "Mostly I wanted to see you. I missed you."

"I missed you too, Shadow," Digger said, swallowing down a lump in her throat. It was hard not to remember when Shadow had been a naive little inksplot, like the shadowlings.

Shadow nodded, like that was all it needed, then shooed the little shadowlings along and vanished into nothing.

"That was interesting," said the bandersnatch's left head. Digger jumped; she'd nearly forgotten it (they?) was (were?) there.

"Yes," said the right head. "Do you often consort with demons?"

"Yes, do you?" the left head echoed. It didn't seem particularly perturbed by the question, just curious.

"I don't know if I'd call it 'consorting,'" Digger protested. "We were just talking. Anyway, it's just the one demon. Well, three, I guess, if you count the little ones." She scraped squashed feral strawberry off the rock she'd been sitting on and sat down again, and wondered, not for the first time, how it could be that this was her life.

"Hm," said the left head.

"That's true," said the right. And then, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, "Would you get us our food? We have oats and apples and minced tulgey bark."

"It's in the pack,"

said the left.

"We would get it, but we have no hands."

"It's very inconvenient without hands."

"Very."

When Manuel reappeared, Digger expected some comment. For one thing, all the demon wards hanging from the wagon were glowing, or spinning, or, in one case, oozing to indicate that a demon had been nearby. And there was a lot of squashed fanged strawberry on the ground.

But he just sat down, unloaded his bag of squashbat parts, and said, "We can make jam."

"Let me guess," Digger said. "Apothecaries in the cities to the north swear by fanged strawberry jam."

Manuel looked at her mildly from the eye-holes of his mask. "It's good on toast," he said.

***

The Shadow at Five Years Old

Working by yourself wasn't as satisfying as working on a good mining team, but it had its advantages. For example, you could dig out your new guest bedroom without getting a peanut gallery's worth of additional opinions on whether it was big enough, in the right place, well-designed, and shored up properly. Also, nobody could complain about your singing.

" . . . Sooooo they waited for the overseer's minions to arrive, / and they said, 'You took our fluorite, but you won't take us alive'—" Digger sang, to the rhythm of her pickaxe.

And almost jumped out of her skin when a voice behind her said, "Why'd someone take their fluorite?"

She whirled around, and there, disengaging itself from the dark corners of the new guest room, was Shadow. Automatically she answered, "It was a contract dispute. Fluorite is used in steel production for—wait, what are you doing here?"

"I wanted to come see you," Shadow said, reasonably. "You're making a new room?"

"Well, this place was kinda small—" she'd settled for a little place, after coming home to find her warren reassigned, just to get out of her parents' house a bit faster "—but there's good solid bedrock and I got the permits to expand. It's going to be a guest bedroom. In case I ever have guests."

"I could be a guest," Shadow said. "Only, I don't sleep."

Digger lifted the lamp and squinted. Something wasn't quite— "Did you get smaller?" she asked, suddenly anxious. She had no idea what that might mean, but she doubted it was a good thing.

"Oh. No. I'm not really here," Shadow said. Her expression must have been totally blank, because it added, "I'm stretched out thin to see you but most of me is still on the other side of the mountains. It makes me look smaller."

"I—see."

"It's an old trick," it said.

"Well, it's nice to see you. Or part of you. Or . . . whatever."

"It's nice to see you too," Shadow said. "The little ones you met, they say hello too. I didn't bring them, though. I've found some more, and . . . " Shadow sighed. "The new ones were a little older, old enough to develop some habits. They have very poor manners."

"Poor manners," Digger echoed.

"That's a nice way of saying they eat people," Shadow said, helpfully. "I didn't want them to eat you."

"I . . . kind of guessed." Digger said. "Uh. Thank you?"

Shadow flowed along the wall, settled with its elbows propped on a side table. "I was trying to teach them the rule about only eating things that don't talk, but it doesn't seem to be sticking. But that might be because there was another demon who was trying to get to them—to raise them or to eat them, I'm not sure—and it fought me, and in the end I had to eat it. And it could talk and they heard it. So I had to explain the rule about how it's okay to eat something if it's trying to kill you, or trying to kill someone else. But then they started provoking things so they could eat them. So I had to change the rule again to say that you should try other ways of getting something to not kill you before you eat it." It sighed. "Being a parent is hard."

"You're telling me."

"So that's why I came to find you."

"Uh?"

"For advice." It scratched its head again. "On raising demons."

"Look, I don't know how much help I could be. With you I just sort of winged it, and I was sure I was screwing up half the time."

"But you didn't screw up," Shadow said, the feather-spine-things rising up hopefully all along the back of its head and neck. "You taught me what it meant to be good, and—and why I should try. If it weren't for you, I'd probably be eating people now. Or Sweetgrass Voice would have just eaten me."

"But I—"

"I've eaten three demons now. I didn't want to, but I had to, or they would have hurt someone else. But that means I have thousands and thousands of years of memories. Not always memories I understand, but memories. And there isn't a single memory in either of them of anyone teaching a demon to be anything but selfish and—and bad."

"I don't know that it's hopeless as all that," Digger said, propping her pickaxe against the wall. Four years back at the warren and she'd started to lose her touch at this kind of conversation. Did you offer demons a cup of tea? Probably not, but maybe tea had a shadow . . . . "Ed said, demons aren't evil, they just are. Amoral."

"When you're eating people who can talk for no reason besides that they taste good and you can, I don't see that there's much difference," Shadow said.

"Well," Digger said. " . . . .Okay, you've got me there."

"So tell me what you did," Shadow said, eyes tipping down anxiously. Was it wringing its hands? . . . Yes, it was.

"I guess that's it, I didn't do anything special? I answered your questions. I tried not to lie, although sometimes that was hard. Everything wound up being so complicated that I felt like I was either confusing you or oversimplifying everything. Things started out simple, but never seemed to end that way."

"Like the river."

"Uh?"

"One thing but also many things. Several different truths. You remember."

"Uh . . . yes. But I still think Murai's wrong and it's just evaporation and condensation."

Shadow nodded as though Digger had said something thoughtful, instead of just inane. "Thank you," it said, and then, too suddenly for Digger to react, it gave her a hug—which was a strange experience indeed, a brief painless burning, as though Shadow was either very hot or very cold, although she couldn't figure out which.

Then, just as Digger was getting used to the idea of Shadow in my house, it was gone.

. . . Figured.

***

The Shadow at Thirty-Two Years Old

It was many years later before Digger saw Shadow. In the interim, she helped open up a new mine in Shalebiter territory, was part of an earthquake retrofit in the warren's administrative center, and helped the archivists update their maps. She also married Designer-of-Attractive-Vaults, stayed happily married to him for five years, and then let her contract lapse. (Vaults had wanted children, and anyway, she decided she liked the privacy of living alone.)

She thought about Shadow (and the rest of them) from time to time, at first with the sharp pang on missing them, and later with a warm fondness.

Still, she didn't really expect to see them again, so it was a bit of a surprise when she came home from a planning meeting to find Shadow curled up in the middle of her living room.

"Shadow," she said. Shadow was larger but also somehow . . . thinner. "You projecting yourself again?"

"No," Shadow said. "I was in a . . . battle, and I . . . overextended myself."

It was bizarre and completely inappropriate to feel parental worry over a gigantic demon with thousands of years of memories, and yet Digger couldn't quite shake the feeling. "A battle?"

"Yes. We won," it said, "but at a cost. Murai is all right, though."

" . . . Murai was involved?"

"Yes." Shadow uncoiled itself and tapped its pointy fingers on the top of her coffee table, a thinking-gesture that Digger was about half sure it had learned from her. "Some of the demons took exception to my methods of sheltering, protecting and educating infant demons. Fewer for them to use as pawns or as food. But I was strong and growing stronger, so they allied themselves to a goddess who is called the Queen of Demons in some places."

And the pieces clicked together for Digger. "The Black Mother."

"Yes."

"And Murai . . . . fought her?"

"It is complicated to explain." Shadow lifted its head. "I could show you."

"Uh . . . you know I'm not a big fan of people messing around in my brain."

"I promise not to mess around. I won't look at anything in there or add to it or change it. I'll just show you. It's like talking, only more vivid. It's how demons talk all the time." Its head-feather-spikes drooped a little. "Please?"

And there, again, that vaguely-parental feeling. "All right," she said, against her better judgment.

Shadow reached out and gripped her paws in its hands—once little three-fingered blobs, now long three-fingered claws. It met her gaze, and its shining white eyes blazed sodium-bright . . . .

Flash. As clear as anything, Digger could see a sea of demons, headed by a dark laughing woman. Flash. Murai, a woman now and not a child, raising a glowing sword above her head. Flash. A tangle in the darkness, spines and unrelieved black, shapechange. Flash. Grim Eyes—Grim Eyes?—flinging herself into the fray, laughing and snarling all at once. Flash. Shadow carrying a wounded Murai and depositing her on the wide porch of the Temple of Ganesh.

And then Shadow let her hands go. And the blur of images faded.

"I wish I could have shown you the statue of Ganesh," it said. "But it still hurts me to go into the temple. Murai says he sends his good wishes."

Digger swore under her breath. "And Murai is . . . okay?"

"Yes. She said . . . " And there, a smile on Shadow's face, an echo of the bright beaming expression she'd seen so often on the Shadowchild. "She said it was the first time in history that anyone had had an outer demon as an ally against their inner demons."

"I guess she had a destiny after all."

"I guess so," Shadow said. Then it said, "Now I will go into the silent spaces between the stars and recuperate. My older students will watch over my younger ones until I am rested and can return."

"I . . . gotta say, really don't know how to reply when you say things like that."

There, again, Shadow's smile. "I know." Then it sobered. "It may be a long while. Decades, maybe centuries."

"I hate to say it, but wombats don't live for centuries."

"I know," Shadow said again, solemnly this time. "Murai sends her love. Ganesh sends his good will. Grim Eyes says . . . that if anyone bothers you, she'll come piss in their eyes and then kick them in the tail. That was a quote."

"That sounds like Grim Eyes."

"And I . . . I wanted to tell you that you were my parent and also my friend when I had neither. And also—that I was wrong."

"What about?" Digger said, the lump in her throat again.

"When I said that I wasn't like a river, because I was one thing all the way through. But now I am a demon and a fighter of demons, and a parent to baby demons, and a wombat's . . . friend."

***

The Shadow at Sixty-Seven Years Old

If you had to get old—and there wasn't much avoiding it—you might as well do it in a wombat warren. It was all ramps and tunnels, and if you needed someone to make you a leg-brace, walker, or wheelchair, there was always someone who'd appreciate the technical challenge.

Still, it made it hard to get the bats out of your closet if they took a mind to roost up there. Nothing wrong with bats in general, they kept the bugs down, but nobody liked guano on their sweaters. Digger didn't trust herself on a footstool anymore, so all she could do (unless she wanted the indignity of someone else poking around in her closet) was wave her cane up in the corners and swear at them.

"Would you like some help?" said a voice behind her—a familiar voice that sucked at the ears like the opposite of sound.

Digger almost fell over. She grabbed the doorframe. "Shadow?"

And there it was, large as ever, frilled as a newt, and smiling its big happy smile, the same one it had as a baby demon decades before. "Hi, Digger."

"You're back," she said, and lunged into Shadow's shadowy hug.

"I am," Shadow said. "And I brought some friends to meet you."

There were a score of them, and it had to be some kind of demonic temporal warping that fit them all in Digger's bedroom. They ranged from almost as big as Shadow—presumably at least one of the strawberry-stompers was there—to tiny inkblots that looked just like the Shadowchild of so long ago. They chorused, "Hello," and one or two waved.

"This is Digger," Shadow said, with great pride, as though Digger was some kind of huge hero. "And these are my student," it continued. "You couldn't understand their names—"

"—because I'm not an armadillo—"

"—because you're not an armadillo. But this one asked to be called Digger." It pointed to one of the blot-sized shadowlings.

"I'm flattered," Digger said, and was surprised to realize that, under the sarcasm, she actually meant it.

"We have to go now," Shadow said. "There's a lot that has to be done after my absence. But we wanted to say hello." It turned and herded the shadowlings into the darkness.

Digger was sure she could hear, distantly, the sound of Shadow's voice, saying, "And what's rule one?"

And then an unruly chorus of piping shadowling voices: "If something can talk, don't eat it . . . ."