Once the library was moved into the sanctuary, Vienna would be the first shadowless to receive this new kind of shadow. You saved her just in time, I heard from Gajarajan later, when I finally visited again. He was planning to use the locket that she had offered—an innocent move on his part that might have turned her into a remnant of her own mother instead of herself. It made me shudder to think of what that would have done to Malik. She will never be Vienna again now, but she also will never be something far, far worse.
THE DAY I HEARD FROM THE SHADOWLESS AT THE COMMUNAL garden that a shadow from a book had taken to her and had stayed, I was both exhilarated and in despair. I wanted for no one else to ever suffer what I’d suffered, least of all Vienna—but now that you and Gajarajan had found the key, now that the books worked, I would be the only one. The only one who was a copy of someone else instead of something original.
That night, alone in my room, I caught myself holding a block of handmade soap given to me in my rations, talking to myself. Holding it as if one of my fingers was on a button, angling the end slightly toward my face as though it had been a speaker.
Oh, Ory, I sighed. I wish you’d never given me the recorder.
I knew only what I couldn’t do: have you again, be Max, or forget. But I didn’t know what I could do.
On the worn rug beneath me, a dark silhouette also stood, in the same posture, holding a shadow of the same object, lips moving around the same longing words. But the rest was slightly different. I was taller and not so young—it was slim, with narrow hips and small breasts, and a loose, soft afro that made its delicate shape seem like a dandelion when we both stood at certain angles. That’s what Max really looked like when she did this, I thought. I remember clicking the machine on, whispering into the little metal speaker, so vividly that I would never have believed it had been someone else who had done it, and not me. It was all so, so real. But the proof was right there on the floor. That was Max. Not me.
Suddenly I realized there was one thing that I could do.
THE NEXT MORNING AT DAWN, I FOUND MY WAY TO THE RIGHT house and knocked nervously at the last room on the upper floor. Willed myself not to run.
“Oh,” Malik said when he opened the door, surprised. He was silent for a moment. “Max,” he said.
My throat tightened. He was the first person kind enough to acknowledge me by that name since I’d left the sanctuary.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
I nodded stiffly. “Call me M,” I finally said.
I changed it last night, Ory. You’ll always think that the tape recorder is the real Max, and that I’m someone else. So I’ll be someone else. M is a small difference, but enough, I hope. Enough to make me something more than a bad copy, an incomplete translation. Both to you and to me.
Malik smiled sadly, and his whole face changed. The terrifying hard lines became kind. “M,” he said, “what can I do for you?”
“I heard about your mission,” I replied. “That you plan to spread the word about New Orleans, to give more people the courage to come.”
Malik nodded. “Not just spread the word—I want to be able to show them. To give them indisputable proof that Gajarajan is real, and so is his power. Otherwise I’m no better than the rumors.”
“That’s why I’m here,” I said.
“I don’t understand.”
I pointed at the ground, where the shadow that was attached to me, but did not reflect the form of my body at all, lay. “I’m your indisputable proof.”
THE SYMBOL OF OUR MISSION MUST HAVE A TITLE BEFITTING its importance, the elephant said when he agreed. I became The Hand of Gajarajan. The first former shadowless person in the world. He also agreed that we should paint the carriages. He recognized that I knew what I was talking about—that a giant painting emblazoned across the side of a traveling vehicle was far easier to recognize and understand to shadowless than words would be.
I couldn’t be next to you, but it turned out that we could still be together, in a different way. I would be The Hand of Gajarajan, and you would be his librarian. Two halves of the same purpose. You’d had the right idea about how to save your wife, but the wrong rescuer turned up in the end. Max had managed to build a shadow inside an object, but had no way of making sure the one who stripped it from the machine would then place it on the right body. What Gajarajan did was an accident borne of love and hope—but we lost many things. We lost Max, but we also lost Ursula.
My hope is that in time, now that we have the key to make new shadows safely, more shadowless will come, and more books. I hope that we can find enough of both that everyone who wants a new shadow can be given one from our carefully managed library, so that no one who’s ever born hereafter will be a substitute for someone real, instead of an original.