Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(146)

The northern road ran upon a levee. I scrambled up the embankment eagerly when I found it, glad the going would be easier now. I was almost there. The moon rose, coating my path with silver. I saw the tumbledown shrine at last, and my heart swelled.

I reached the lean-to, sweating despite the chill. I paused near the odd statue, the human figure without features or hands, like a gingerbread man. Its decorative apron fluttered in the breeze. My eyes adjusted to the darkness, but I couldn’t make out anyone in the shadows. “Abdo?” I asked the inky blackness behind the statue, but there was no answer. I knelt, not believing my eyes, and felt around for him. I found his plate and cup, both empty, but no Abdo.

He’d been here just last night. Where could he have gone? Had he finally freed himself of Jannoula and could now move without fear of drawing her attention? That was glorious news, if so, but unfortunate for me. I’d lost my last ally, and I had unfastened him from my mind. How was I to find him?

The irretrievable aloneness settled upon me again.

I don’t know how long I stared at the darkness, or what deep well of stubbornness I drew from to get myself back on my feet, but eventually I wiped my eyes and dusted myself off. The moon had shifted and now shone through a hole in the roof, illuminating the statue’s bald crown. I remembered the odd inscription and knelt, looking for it again.

When he lived, he killed and lied,

This Saint who lies submerged.

The ages passed, the monster died;

I ripen, I emerge.



Saint who lies submerged … the monster … I went cold. I hadn’t known the fate of St. Pandowdy when I’d read that inscription before. What other Saint had been buried alive? Who else had been described as monstrous? Had he been buried in this very swamp, the one I’d been trudging through all day?

My Pandowdy—the giant slug from my garden—lived in a swamp. I’d dismissed the name as a coincidence.

I brushed lichen off the bottom of the inscription, trying to make out the name to be sure. I traced the P with my finger, and the A, all the way to Y. There could no longer be any doubt.

Was there some connection between St. Pandowdy and the scaly swamp slug of my visions? They couldn’t be the same being. Yirtrudis’s beloved had not been so grotesquely inhuman. But … could he have survived being buried? Might he have changed over time? I emerge made me think of a cocoon; what if I’d been seeing some kind of chrysalis?

It was a mad idea. He’d be seven hundred years old.

But if Pandowdy was nearby, in whatever form—worm or cocoon, monster or ancient Saint—was there any chance he could help? Maybe Abdo had glimpsed his mind-fire out there in the swamp and gone looking for him.

Maybe I could follow. I was at a dead end otherwise.

Abdo must have left signs. I hoped I hadn’t spoiled them already by barging in here. I retraced my steps, examining the moonlit road, but saw no tracks. I picked through the tall grass behind the shrine, discerning nothing. The mud had been churned up, but a wild pig might have done that. I was about to give up when my gaze drifted across a fetid pool and I saw them: footprints on the far bank. There were only two, but they were indisputably human and exactly the right size.

They pointed straight into the heart of the fen.



I plunged in after him. I didn’t see what choice I had.

I was an inexperienced tracker, but Abdo hadn’t been trying to hide. I found a few more footprints and some bent foliage, but after an hour I was guessing, walking forward on faith alone. He had to be ahead; he had no reason to hare off randomly. That conviction carried me a long way, up until I stepped onto a patch of moss and found myself sunk up to my thighs in a black lake.

My boots were rapidly filling up. I scrabbled through the weeds and hauled myself onto the muddy bank, leaving an enormous hole in the frogbit and algae veiling the water’s face, the greenery I’d mistaken for moss. Looking at it now, the lake was obvious; only water was that flat. I’d grown tired and unobservant.

It was also obvious, as I scanned the water, that Abdo hadn’t fallen into it. There were no Abdo-sized holes in the smooth green surface. He’d have gone around … if he’d come this way at all. I emptied my boots, shaking them ferociously in my frustration.

The chorus of autumn frogs, which I had barely been aware of, stopped peeping. The whole world seemed to hold its breath. Something was near, but it wasn’t Abdo.

The green surface of the lake roiled as dark water churned beneath it.

I scrambled away from the edge just as a scaly, featureless thing broke the surface, a tarnished sliver slug wreathed in slick waterweeds.

A short, strangled laugh bleated out of me. “Pandowdy, I presume.”

Seraphina, the creature rumbled back in a voice like distant thunder. My frantic heart nearly stopped.

“How do you know my name?” I asked hoarsely.

The same way you know me. I have seen you, a patch of darkness against the colors of the world, he said. I felt his voice through the soles of my feet and up my spine, as if the very earth had muttered, and yet I had a feeling it was also in my head. You keep yourself to yourself. I do not judge you. Sometimes it’s the only way.

I couldn’t be the only one he was aware of. “What about Abdo?” I asked. “Has he come past?”

He was looking for me. He’s here, said the earth, vibrating meaning through my feet.