Read Online These Shadows Remain by B W Powe - Free Book Online Page B

on many levels.
    *
    Tomas handled the sword with his toon hand. When he did, the sword sang and tingled, and shifted and coloured. He traded the sword over to his flesh and blood hand. When he did so the sword became silver and solid, more familiar to everyone’s eyes.
    In his toon hand again the sword’s blade flashed the word Rage.
    In his human hand the blade flashed the word Cœur.
    â€œIt’s French for heart.” Adina blushed.
    She felt that her cheek had been touched. “Heart rage,” Santiago said.
    â€œOr rage heart,” Tomas said.
    â€œIf you put them together. . .” Gabrielle said. 
    â€œ. . . they almost spell another word. Courage,” Santiago said.
    â€œYes, both. All of those,” Tomas said. 
    â€œWhen it pulses you can hear the wind,” Cyrus said. “But it isn’t the sound of the wind we heard when the cloud came here.”
    \The children had long stopped their whimpering, and astonished they watched the sword’s shape-shifting and the two words flickering. They thought that Adina had magic too.
    *
    â€œThis will help us,” Tomas said.
    â€œIt was the least I could do.” Adina was still blushing.
    â€œWe’ll never defeat the toons directly. The only way is to free them to be at the service of our dreams again. They must turn from being nightmares.”
    â€œAnd how will you do that?” Cyrus asked. 
    â€œIt’s time to go back inside,” Tomas said. 
    He gathered the children, and placed the sword to his side and, with a gentle push with his toon hand, he directed the children towards the gate, and nodded to Adina to help move everyone on to the castle.
    â€œThey may be back, and we have to stay ahead of them in our thoughts,” Tomas said. “Come along.”
    â€œDo you know what you’ll do?” Gabrielle asked.
    â€œShhh . . . ,” Tomas said in the voice he used in the forest.
    It was as if they were in the forest and the dark again, although they were on the hill and in the sunlight, and before the castle gate and its walls, among friends and human guardians. All saw that a cloud had descended over his features when he hurried them along. He knew that his victory over the toons had been temporary, and it was best to turn towards walls and their protection.
    *
    They huddled inside the castle.
    What to do next? This thought connected them. The people had once more crowded together in the open space near the forge.
    Tomas read their mood.
    â€œStay ahead of him,” he said. “Imagine more.” The people mulled around him knowing that he was their link to what the world was becoming. But few understood what he said.

    *
    The whirlwind plucked up four reserve images in the encampment. He flung them, shocked and silenced, onto the screen, where they melded with people. Sylvester, Mickey Mouse, Mowgli and the jazz cat Thomas O’Malley peered back from the surface at the funnel of smoke. They had been in the audience, now they had returned to their flat realm. They were frozen in horror.
    â€œYou were from the same story anyway,” the wizard snarled.
    He followed his snarl with a cloudy smirk. Only he knew the depths of his joke. This had been one of the secrets he thought he’d snatched from his readings in magic. All stories were one story. It should be easy to flatten everything onto the same plane.
    The whirlwind plucked them out again. The four oozed, watery, pouring from the flat surface. He plunked them back on unsolid ground.
    They had changed again. They were larger, firmer, brighter, clearer, a savage glare in their eyes. These toons were ready to return to war.
    Trapped on the screen the people stared at this exchange, and cringed, shrinking from the stunning display of power.
    And Pluta summoned the toons back from the battlefield to reanimate them.
    And he stripped the people on the screen of their range of words, reducing them