These Shadows Remain by B W Powe

keeps us together, and keeps leading us forward and holds us safe.”
    â€œSomething we can’t see,” Santiago said. 
    â€œWe hold on anyway.” Gabrielle’s matter-of-fact tone was back in her voice.
    â€œYou see,” the knight said, “we complete each other’s sentences too. It’s the language we can’t see but we know is there.”
    â€œAll the same, we need to be careful,” Santiago said. “Their eyes may be out.” He was leading them with his torch, and he felt very much empowered.
    Tomas knew the worst was to come.
    And the stalking presence hadn’t gone away.
    *
    The forest came to an end. Darkness began to blend into the background behind them. They stepped up to a ledge, and stopped on that brink.
    â€œLook down there. All that light,” Santiago said.
    â€œIt’s not from the sun or moon,” Gabrielle said.
    They stood on the ledge gazing down. Tomas shuddered suddenly, not from
    what he saw, but from the presence behind him. He turned and found nothing. At the corner of his eye he thought he glimpsed a shadow and he turned again, but there was no trace of what had been there.
    The radiance spread out below them. It looked like the Milky Way inverted, glittering on earth.
    â€œWhat is this?” Santiago couldn’t move. The fleeting thought passed that he didn’t want to move, and shouldn’t.
    â€œWhere are we?” Gabrielle was entranced, swaying slightly. The light was vibrating and beautiful.
    â€œThe toon camp.” Tomas had gone still too. They doused their torches. The light before them spread to the horizons in either direction. Tomas thought that if it had been day, this light would have been even more blinding than the sun’s. The whirlwind had rerouted all electricity here.

    *
    â€œIs this where you came from?” Gabrielle said. 
    â€œIt’s where I started.”
    â€œIs it the same?” Santiago asked. 
    â€œI recognize it, and yet I don’t.”
    â€œDo you know where he is?” Gabrielle asked.
    She didn’t say the name, but the other two knew who she meant.
    â€œI’ll find him.” Tomas stared out over the luminous landscape.
    Light seemed to blur the air. Santiago thought, this light is becoming like the traces of rain on a car’s windshield at night during a storm.
    The moment Santiago thought this, he also felt how protected he was in the company of Tomas and Gabrielle. Their shield hadn’t been stripped by fear or by their journey through the changeling forest. If that shield hadn’t been there, then would the wizard have seen them by now? Suddenly it dawned on the boy that maybe the whirlwind had detected them and they were being lured on towards absorption.
    But he trusted Tomas. There was always this trust, not entirely the result of logic, and he believed that their quest had slipped in under the toons’ radar.
    *
    When their eyes adjusted to the spectral glow, they saw tent walls had been pitched in this valley, and spread up to foothills, to the edge of another forest, to the brink of a sea on one side, and to the cusp of a river system on the other.
    The valley of images vibrated with faces and scenes, gestures and movements. Humanity was on the surfaces. Slowly the children could make out the toons in clumps before the screens, packed and rapt, staring up at what unfolded for their pleasure.
    A dry-sounding drone rose from the valley. Gabrielle and Santiago listened closely. It was the muttering of the enthralled audience. This was the soundtrack they offered to the simmering scenes of humanity.
    â€œIt’s like a gigantic drive-in theatre with hundreds of movies playing,” Santiago said.
    â€œNo cars. I wonder if the toons get popcorn?” Gabrielle said.
    â€œThey do, and they feed on the wind. He breathes into the images. But this has grown since I was here.” Tomas hid his alarm. Sensing the shadows