Darkness & Light

Darkness & Light

A Short Story collection

by Dean Murray

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 by Dean Murray

Author's Note:

First, I'd like to thank you for choosing
to read 
Darkness and Light
. If you'd
asked me two years ago if I ever planned on writing any more short
stories, I would have told you no. I'm incredibly glad that I was
wrong. All but Absence tie back into a novel I've either already
written, or one that's currently on the drawing board. I'm thrilled
to have a chance to expose readers to three of the four worlds I've
spent so much time in over the last few years. I've written a short
forward to each story, explaining how it fits into the rest of my
work, and some of the ways in which each is special to me.

"Scent of Tears", the first presented
in 
Darkness and Light
, came into
being almost by accident, and the credit goes entirely to my wife.
At the time I was finishing up the rough draft of Torn, she was
teaching an elementary class. Most Friday's she'd have a 'mystery
reader' come into her classroom. It was always someone tangentially
related to the class, a parent usually, and partway through the
year her students started guessing that the mystery reader each
week was 'Mr. Murray'.

I finally managed to find a Friday where I
could steal away to the school during my lunch and read a few pages
of Despereaux to her class. It was quite enjoyable-the kids had all
kinds of good questions about my job, and about my writing.

They were pretty disappointed when I told
them I couldn't read them any of my work because it was for older
kids. When Katie and I both got home that night she told me they
hadn't stopped talking about the visit and badgering her for some
of my work to read.

With a reception like that, I couldn't
help but start playing with ideas that might work for a class of
second graders. "Scent of Tears" was the evolution of those ideas,
and I found, somewhat to my surprise, that Shawn stepped forward to
take center stage. Back in those days, my few beta readers could
have been excused for not even remembering Shawn. He makes only the
briefest appearance in 
Torn
, and
as 
Splintered
 is currently
written, doesn't really get decent face time there either. That
being said, I'd pretty much decided that Shawn was going to be
right in the thick of things for the climax of book three (I
consider 
Broken
 and 
Torn
 more or less one book).

I knew Shawn needed to play a pivotal role,
but hadn't really figured out how he was going to do that. It
wasn't until I really got buried in Scent of Tears that all of
those little hooks that had always been meant to fit together
started clicking into place.

Ultimately, he went from being a minor
placeholder that was only ever going to drop in when it was
convenient, to someone that I can't wait to spend more time with.
Not just in the Broken & Torn storyline either. Shawn really
shines the most when you look at his life from the dual lenses of
the 'regular world' and Dark Reflections. In some ways, Shawn and
Alec are slightly distorted reflections of each other. I really
hope that Shawn is well received, both in Scent of Tears, and in
the full novels he'll appear in. For me, he and Alec are a bit of a
package deal. I can't see writing one without eventually writing
the other.

If you enjoy this slice of Shawn's story,
you'll love 
Broken
 and 
Torn
. I
currently expect to have both out sometime in 2011 either as
separate novels, or as an omnibus edition.

Shawn shifted around restlessly in the SUV's
passenger seat. The flight in from Chicago had landed early that
morning and he and his nanny Sarah had been on the road ever since.
It was bad enough for normal kids to sit for hours. For a shape
shifter like Shawn, it was almost torture; especially in his person
shape. He spent almost as much time as a wolf as he did on two
legs, the form he was wearing now. In fact, if his dad hadn’t been
so strict about his homework, he probably would've spent every hour
he wasn't in school running around on four legs. Shawn checked the
clock one last time before turning to Sarah.

"Are we almost there? I waited thirty minutes
like you told me to."

Sarah slid a few strands of wispy gray hair
back behind her ear and nodded. "You're right. I did say you could
ask again. We're actually just about to turn into the lane."

Shawn sat up straighter in his seat,
straining to see the large gate signifying the start of the
family's country estate. True to Sarah's word, a few moments later
they were driving down the one mile lane to the house. As soon as
the car rolled to a stop Shawn jumped out and raced around to help
Sarah out of the car.

It wasn't his favorite thing to do, but at
her age if he didn't help it would take three times as long. The
sooner she was settled in the house the sooner he could shift forms
and go out exploring. They hadn't been out to the estate in nearly
a year, and last time he hadn't been allowed out from under Sarah's
watchful gaze. This year his father had agreed he could go out on
his own for a couple hours at a time as long as he stayed on their
property.

Sarah seemed to take hours to get her small
bag out of the back of the vehicle, and then days to walk up the
stairs. Shawn raced back and forth between the car and the house
several times before she finally unlocked the door.

He shot up the stairs, put his toothbrush in
the bathroom, his clothes in the dresser and then knelt so he could
melt into his wolf form.

He looked himself over as he padded past the
mirror on the bathroom door.

Black and brown fur, check. Sharp pointy
teeth, check. Big ears that could hear Sarah's heartbeat all the
way downstairs? Check. A wonderfully sensitive nose that was busy
sampling a hundred times more smells than he'd been able to
register just minutes before? Check.

The nose was almost the best part of being a
shape shifter. The only thing better was how strong and fast he
was. Out in the forest he could run for hours and nothing but
another shape shifter could catch him.

Unfortunately, inside was a different matter.
The hallway's slick hardwood was surprisingly hard to navigate as a
wolf. He walked with exaggerated care, trying to avoid falling into
the wall and then found himself at the top of the stairs. His dad
and Sarah both climbed up and down stairs like pros, but he still
fell down about as often as not.

Sarah said it just took practice, that in a
couple of years stairs would be easy in both forms, but for now it
was harder than it looked. Shawn carefully started down the stairs,
moving in a kind of sideways hop that'd more or less worked for him
before.

He actually made it two-thirds of the way
down before a misstep sent him sprawling.

Sarah shook her head at him as she came
around the corner from the hall that led to her room.

"If you'd just slow down, Shawn, things would
go much easier."

Shawn whined and nosed the door. That was the
only part of being a wolf that was worse than being a human.
Without words you had to rely entirely on other things to
communicate what you wanted, and Sarah was a past master at
pretending not to understand him.

"Your father did say it would be ok for you
to go out on your own, but you're to be back by nightfall. There's
to be no hunting, and you're not to leave the estate."

A quick tail wag and rolling over onto his
back served to convince Sarah of his sincerity. She opened the door
and Shawn shot out in a blur. He tore across the porch and jumped
down to the lawn, completely ignoring the pesky stairs.

It was heaven. The foliage flashed by in a
blur his human eyes would've been hard-pressed to follow. Slowing
down slightly, Shawn angled towards one edge of the estate as he
tested the wind for rabbits.

The boundary wasn't marked by a fence or any
of the other things humans usually chose to define the edges of
their territory. Instead their family had chosen to leave it open
so that animals could come and go freely. It meant there was plenty
of game around, but he had to rely on the irregular strop markings
his dad's claws had left on the trees to tell him when he
arrived.

A few minutes later, the urge to run at least
temporarily satisfied, Shawn slowed to a stop and put his nose to
the ground. The smell of rabbit was incredibly strong.

Shawn picked out the most recent scent trail
and followed it along the forest floor. Under trees, around rocks,
and through brambles so tight it felt like they were going to rip
his coat right off. The rabbit had been careful. It never exposed
itself for more than a brief second, bounding from one bit of cover
to the next in a flash nearly as fast as Shawn could achieve.

Shawn followed the sneaky rabbit for more
than twenty minutes before the trail disappeared into a burrow. He
nosed around and briefly considered trying to widen the hole enough
to get more than just his muzzle in, but it was hard work and he
was pretty sure the warren was too deep to dig up.

After he finally abandoned the effort, Shawn
continued along the edge of the estate. His stomach starting to
growl, he'd nearly decided to turn around and head back for
something to eat when his nose caught the barest glimmer of a new
scent.

It was like nothing he'd ever smelled before.
Not sweet necessarily, but flowery-delicious and somehow it made
the other scents sharper. He was already at the edge of the estate
but couldn't bring himself to leave without investigating something
so amazing.

A quick search turned up a stream just close
enough to the border of their property for Shawn to claim he hadn't
realized it was forbidden. Halfway between the stream and his
current location was a muddy slope that would serve quite
nicely.

Shawn ran towards the slope and then let his
legs slip out from under him as he started downhill. He slid and
rolled down the last half of the muddy hill, ending up at the
bottom in a muddy heap exactly as planned. Sarah wouldn't be able
to blame him for wanting to go wash up.

The stream was colder than expected, but it
washed the mud off just fine. He splashed around for a couple of
minutes and then started swimming upstream, confident there'd be no
scent trail to tip Sarah off to his having left. As long as he came
back onto their land at exactly the same point where he'd jumped
into the stream she'd think he really had just washed off and then
gone back home.

A brisk fifteen minute swim did the trick to
hide his scent and then Shawn found a spot where the bank wasn't
too steep and raced off looking for the scent.

He soon discovered a large, natural rock
wall. The smell seemed to be coming from somewhere further ahead,
so rather than trying to figure out a way to climb it, he ran along
it.

The wind was sometimes deceptive. Half an
hour later he realized he'd gone much further off their land than
he'd meant to. His conscience finally kicked in, but just before he
decided to turn back he heard them.

Hunting dogs.
 Judging by the
howling there were at least four, and they were definitely behind
him. He was stronger and faster than even most full-grown dogs, but
he'd never been in a fight before, not in either form.

His heart racing, Shawn continued running,
only now he started curving around away from the rock wall. It was
dangerous; the wind would be carrying his scent back to them, so
rather than having to track him, they could just head straight to
him. Still, he had to get far enough away from the wall to use his
superior speed and endurance.