“Take ten steps backward….” The students did. “At the count of four: Turn. Run. One.
“Two.”
Every eye was on Calimicho.
“Three.”
Calimicho was not there.
“Four. Turn. Run.”
It is said that inside every fat man there is a thin man, struggling to get out. Vergil had heard it said a hundred times. Suddenly he had known that, in this at least one case, it was no mere saying. Between the word Four and the word Turn, Putto had split open. That monstrous carapace of folds and fat simply fell, asunder, on the pitted floor: there stood for that one second’s fraction before their horrified eyes someone young and slim and strong and naked, oiled and dusted red as any athlete “waiting for the trumpet beneath the portico.” Who gave — once — that same inhuman scream that Vergil had heard but once before. What came instantly next was not the trumpet but the word Turn: They needed it not, they would have turned, so total was their terror, had no word come, and — Run …? Probably none of them could afterward have said if or not he had actually heard that command pronounced; of course they had run.
Ahead of them at the far end of that suddenly sunlit hall there stood Calimicho, gray and gaunt and grim. Toward him they ran, not knowing for certain sure what he would do to any of them when they reached him, but pausing in no way to wonder, they, racing, ran.
And the runner, slim, who had all this while been embodied inside of Putto — ah, how fat! and now one knew why! — this runner, racing, ran behind them.
Ran, that is, behind all but one of them.
Somehow, Vergil himself knew then not how, by what twist of his body and his mind and the light and. . or …
Vergil ran behind the one who ran who had been hidden, all this while, inside of Putto, the obscenely fat.
Vergil’s mind and matter were all intent against some sudden stop and turnabout on this runner’s part, he did not concentrate at all on what the other students were doing: who was first, who neck-and-neck, who this or who that; but half-dimly he did note one who was running quite a number ahead of last, a Thracian, thick and swart and strong; they had not called him by his half-forgotten name, but “Thrax” they had called him; it befell that Thrax made the dread mistake as Orpheus and one other: Thrax turned and looked behind. Thrax stumbled. Thrax did not fall, but Thrax had lost his place. Calimicho stepped forward as Thrax raced frantic across the slanting sunlights on the pitted floor, Calimicho snarled a single word, Calimicho stamped down his foot as one would upon a snake but it was no snake down upon which came his stamping tread, it was on Thrax’s shadow. Thrax yet ran hard panting one more second fore, the shadow parted from his frantic feet with a sound so strange and horrid Vergil hoped ne’er to hear it ever again or more.
A frightful sound.
But not so frightful, was it —? More frightful, was it —? the frightful shriek of Thrax, which he uttered even before he knew the cause of this swift-sudden and never-felt-before, never-to-be-free-from more, unknown and dreadful pain. Thrax stumbled again. Calimicho seized the severed shadow up from where it lay flopping and writhing on the floor; Calimicho, by some trick no wrestler Vergil had ever seen do, Calimicho threw the shadow up and caught the nape of it between his teeth: ah, Calimicho’s most frightful grin! And, holding it thus secure between his clenching teeth, he turned and twisted and tied it fast. Then he folded it, still asquirm, still flapping, and he placed it in his sack. And tied one knot with his thong of human skin (it had a tuft of human hair upon each end of it).
All knew, ah! that sack of gaunt Calimicho’s! Many a thing they had seen go into it, but not one had they ever seen go out.
By now even Thrax knew what had happened.
By now the nameless runner had slacked his pace, the race was done, he allowed himself a glance at Vergil as he, the unnamed runner, cantered on at an angle before finally coming to a stop. The dust was red upon his oiled and sweaty limbs, odd blue-green was the eye with which he gave Vergil a single glance. Thrax began again — for he had for one second ceased, and gasped, and began again to scream. He flung himself upon the pitted floor a-front of Calimicho, his back heaving; repeatedly he raised his head and as he gibbered and drooled repeatedly he bowed it down again and banged it before Calimicho; soon, the gibbering became words: “Ruler, Augur, Satrap, Lord. . my shadow. . shadow. . shadow …”
“It is done!” said Calimicho. He did not address Thrax. To the other students he said It is done. He flung up an arm and made an odd gesture, flinging up and forward, outward, the fingers that had been clenched. The light bedimmed. “The fee is paid. The course is finished. Go, go. Do not tarry: go.”
Thus it was. It was (thought Vergil) the entire cost and charge of six-and-sixty students — teaching and materials and lodging, food, and all, for more than twelve months and severaclass="underline" paid, paid in full with one single captive shadow!
And still Thrax groveled and still he wept and begged. “Basil. Turan. Magus. Rex. . my shadow. . shadow. . shadow …” He beat his head upon the floor and flung his head from side to side; his blood and snot and slaver sprayed the other students, all.
Calimicho gave one faint grin. Then he yawned. Then there stepped forward another student, a Northish one, who had early boasted (once) that his father was an earl. “Warlock,” said he, “this is not just. It was not Thrax who ran up last. It was” — his glance met Vergil’s, eyes to eyes, the Northishman’s mouth closed, opened — ”another,” said he.
Calimicho at leisure finished his yawn. Then he said, and, ah! how matter-of-factly, “It’s not a matter of who runs first or who runs last. It’s merely a matter of who gets caught.” He teetered a bit on his toes. Very quietly he said, “Begone. All.”
As Vergil passed, in his turn, down along the long, long corridors, he thought much of Thrax, and, less, of Thrax’s shadow. Never more might Thrax dare venture out on any sunlit day, save at noon, when no man casts a shadow: that therefore fearsome, fearful hour of terror sacred to Great Pan. (As for those who said, “Great Pan is dead,” had they never witnessed panic?) Thrax must henceforth even fear a moonlit night, and an even moonless one if lamps and torches might betray him. Thrax might indeed skulk, hide, dart swiftly and in pain from one dark place to another, sidling along dim walls and into dimmer corners. He might. He might try. To what avail? The man without a shadow was like a man with leprosy, save he needed neither cloak nor bell. No.
There was but one thing (Vergil realized) that Thrax could really do. He could stop on at the Second Secret School, and do the bidding of its principals. In all things. In all He might there and thus at least hope someday to get his shadow back. Or to get, perhaps. . what dread perhaps!. . another’s. And as to what might perhaps be done with Thrax’s shadow -
And Thrax’s blood and snot and slaver not yet dry -
At this point in Vergil’s thoughts he found that he had reached the beadle’s lodge. There was a vat of water, hot, and a towel. The beadle gazed at him, gazed away, as bored as he had seen him ne’er before and ne’er would see him more; and cared full not. Said the beadle, “Wash.”