“I have,” it said. “Once.” The word lingered as if solid in the air between them.
The thrill of the miracle overwhelmed him for a moment—but then Zhang realized what Gajarajan’s true meaning was. “But not again,” he added.
The shape of the elephant watched him evenly. “Not again,” it finally agreed. “But I think I can—I just need the right tools. The right thing from which to draw a shadow. Not just any item will work. I used up all that I had.”
Zhang looked back down the hill. Their carriages were no more than blurry specks from that distance. “We brought books,” he said. “Thousands of books. It actually wasn’t—I’m not the one who started gathering them, but Imanuel, he died, and I took over. I wanted to finish it.” Zhang took a shaky breath to stop himself from rambling. “Are they what you’re looking for?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” the shadow said. “But most likely not. I’m sorry.”
Zhang waited for something more, because it seemed impossible that they’d come all this way, that they’d risked so much—and failed. But there was nothing more. Most likely not. He let it sink in. Imanuel had been wrong. They were just books after all.
“I’m sorry,” Gajarajan repeated gently.
“No,” Zhang said. He was twisting the hem of his coat, he realized. “Don’t be sorry. It was us, we didn’t understand.”
The silhouette of the elephant watched Zhang calmly from the wall. After a moment, it slid closer to the outer edge so that it was nearer to him. “Don’t think of it as a failure. All of you made it here. You’ve joined us. We’ll find a use for the books, even if it isn’t what you’d originally thought it might be.”
“Yes,” Zhang said. “Yes, we made it.”
Gajarajan retreated slowly until he was centered on the wall again.
“What is it exactly that makes them not what you’re looking for?” Zhang asked. “I’m sure the rumor we heard was incomplete. But as far as we knew, we were looking for things with memories and with shadows. A book seems to have those—if you take it both physically and metaphorically.”
The elephant spread its humanlike hands in a slow shrug. “Shadows, yes.” It nodded. “But many things have shadows. Everything, in fact, except for the humans.”
“And the memories?”
“They’re not real,” the shadow said. “Stories about made-up characters. I don’t think . . .” It trailed off. “If the point is for the shadowless to remember their past again, if I succeeded in attaching a shadow with unreal memories within it, they wouldn’t recover anything from this world then. They would remember a life that no one had lived.”
Zhang nodded. It seemed to make sense, if he was understanding the elephant at all.
“But don’t worry about that any longer. Your journey is over. You have been gathered. We are glad to welcome you home.” Gajarajan bowed.
Something pinched deep in Zhang’s throat. It was suddenly very hard to speak. Home. It was a word he wasn’t sure he’d ever hear again.
“Come with me,” Davidia said kindly. “I’ll take you back to your friends before they start to worry.”
Zhang began to follow her, then stopped. “Davidia said that you already know that Transcendence is coming,” he called to the shadow.
Gajarajan’s form sharpened on the wall as his attention turned back to Zhang. “Yes, we do. A shadowless arrived a few months ago bearing the information. We’ve been preparing since then.”
Zhang smiled at that. This shadow was certainly powerful in the same kind of incomprehensible way as the shadows that had disappeared and the magic they granted in their places were, but this one thing hadn’t been divined mystically, at least. Gajarajan had learned of Transcendence the same way the Iowan army had learned of his existence—nothing more than a message, passed on. “Well, I know there aren’t many of us compared to the people you have here, but we did fight a portion of their forces once, and lived. We’d be honored to add ourselves to your numbers, to help you defend New Orleans once they arrive.”
“Thank you,” Gajarajan said kindly. It rose up and unfurled its ears and trunk fully, until it had obliterated almost all of the sunlight on the wall. “That is a generous thing you offer us, and I’m deeply grateful for it. But there won’t be any need.”
“What do you mean?”