The Book of M

ONCE THE HURRICANE WAS DEFEATED, IT HAD BEEN VERY easy to remake Dr. Zadeh’s former assisted-living facility into what was now the sanctuary. The storm had wiped the building clean—all the roofs had collapsed, all the rooms had crumbled back into concrete dust and wood chips, except for one of the four walls that surrounded the inner courtyard where the storm cellar lay.

Once the winds had quieted, the others helped the amnesiac’s body climb over the wreckage as his shadow followed behind, trailing silently over the shattered chunks of stone and glass. When they found that last remaining wall still standing over a small patch of cobbled brick path, the amnesiac’s shadow went toward it, stretching nearer even as his body stood still—two things completely independent of each other except for the point where their two pairs of feet met. The shadow rose so he was upright against the wall’s smooth, blank surface, a dark and solid shape, looking at the others.

“This will do,” he said.

His body went closer then, and sat down in the center of the small floor, facing out. It would do, the shadow felt it agree with him. The amnesiac’s eyes couldn’t see after the accident, not directly, but the shadow’s could. In that way, he understood what was around them. They were still one, even though they were also more.

There was no ceiling where he sat, but thanks to the shadowless, with the hurricane sealed permanently around the city like the walls of a fortress, the weather inside would always be temperate. The grounds of the assisted-living facility would be a suitable place from which to watch over New Orleans. From that vantage point, he would be free to stretch and contract over any surface and shape below without obstacle, as far as he could see, and farther.

“I’ll stay here,” the shadow said to the rest of them. “We can rebuild and expand.” Perhaps no one had realized before, because forgetting was such a terrifying thing that it sent its victims running away from one another, but the amnesiac’s shadow had been proven right during the hurricane. It was like with the elephants—he’d realized that while a shadowless’s magic was strong, a group of shadowless forgetting the same thing together was exponentially more powerful. There was a strength in the sharing. Strength enough to bend nature to their will to save a city—and to restore a destroyed building into a sanctuary, if they decided the price to be paid was worth it.

“Expand?” Dr. Avanthikar asked. He saw the incomprehension flicker in her expression again as they looked at each other. A shadow who could move and talk. And more—a shadow that looked more like the memories of its owner than the physical shape of him. The shadow of a creature instead of a man.

“Others will come. They will have felt it, what we’ve done.” The shadow gestured out, at the rest of New Orleans, and past. “Not all the shadowless want their magic, or want it more than their memories. There are many who want help to resist the pull. To eventually be free of it, to remember again. We should be ready for them.”

Dr. Avanthikar shaded her eyes from the sun that had just begun to peek free of the dissolving clouds with her hand. “I worked with Hemu since the day he was taken into custody, and never really got anywhere with teaching him how to resist the pull. Perhaps one day we’ll figure it out, but right now even that’s still out of our grasp—let alone how to cure them of it.”

The shadow slid closer to her on the wall. He felt his body cock its head as it thought with him. “I have an idea,” he said.

THE SHADOWLESS RECONSTRUCTED THE SANCTUARY ONCE they’d agreed on the plans. It was to be somewhat like a temple—the shadow and his body would watch over the grounds from where they sat at the entrance, and behind their altar, there would be two great halls in a line, connected to each other by a long hallway. In the first hall, shadowless who had come for help would rest and wait. They would take care of one another, and Dr. Avanthikar and those shadowless already in their group who were still quite strong would live there as well, to help protect them. In the second hall, shadowless that the shadow believed he could cure would be invited one at a time. He would stretch up the tall side of the building and enter to meet them through a large open space in the roof.

“It’s not too high?” Downtown asked.

The shadow shook his head. “A shadow is not a body. I can travel to the other end of New Orleans from this very place, so long as there is light for contrast, and surfaces to move across.”

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