Play of Shadows

03.03: A

The shadow man didn't take them far. Outside the shop, down half a block, and Ann found herself blinking at a familiar upside-down weather vane. The iron-wrought rooster seemed to blink back at her, just as bewildered.

"Are we going inside?" Ann asked the shadow man standing guard at her back.

The shadow-man didn't answer. He reached out from behind Ann and tapped the rooster's beak. The weather vine spun like a top before locking onto a direction, quite absent of any wind. The beak pointed to the wooden fence of a two-story shop selling masks and charms and other mystical objects. It was painted merry red and lacquered so it glistened with the light of the lanterns strung along the glass display.

It also bore a shadow in the shape of a door.

The shadow-man tapped Ann's shoulder, stubbornly keeping to his post just out of Ann's line of vision. Perhaps he was programmed to trail after people, like an actual shadow would.

"Do I have to spin, too?" Ann asked the man. She was only half-joking – who knew what kind of silly rules the game world imposed on its unaware visitors?

The man had apparently exceeded his word quota for the day. Ann felt a gust of wind, then a great force propelled her forward, as immovable as a stone wall pressed at her back and impossible to resist. The red fence loomed closer and closer and then it was upon them. Ann screamed as they slammed into the lacquered wood. She screamed some more when she tumbled through the shadow door and the world turned around her as if rolled onto its axis the wrong way down.

Ann blinked. She was standing in a cozy entryway. A fireplace crackled merrily in a corner, surrounded by plush chairs and a little book alcove crammed full of actual, paper books. There was not a single terminal in sight, no screens or trace of technology more advanced than the bulky telephone box sat prominently at a deserted reception. Ann eyed the looping cords piled beneath the desk with fascination. The whole contraption looked painfully unwieldly.

"Is it social commentary, or something? An ode to simpler times?" Ann wondered.

She glanced over her shoulder, and found a door at her back. A quick look around the room revealed no trace of her jailer. Whether the shadow-man had gone ahead or come in with her at all, Ann did not know.

There was a window by the door. Ann peered out into a velvet sky piled as thick as snow under her feet. It looked almost corporal, as if Ann reached out through the window she could grasp and pull a piece of the night inside.

Ann glanced up, and although she had a guess as to what she would find she still felt a disorienting little flip in her stomach at the sight of a cobbled street hanging above the building. A group of kids had gathered to play on the side of the street. Ann watched their little heads bob like apples in water for a while before turning away.

The building was upside down. So was Ann, even if her feet were planted firmly on the ground. She resolved not to think about it too much.

"You should head on in, dear."

Ann startled. She looked around wildly for the source of the voice, but the room was still empty.

"Up here, little one."

Ann followed the voice up, to a high ceiling that was no ceiling at all. Another room hung inverted from above. It bore mirror likeliness to the room Ann was in, down to the ornamental lamp casting green shadows on the reception.

A beautiful woman sat behind the desk. She had a small face and red lips and hair the color of moonlight. She was upside-down as well, surrounded by a silk curtain of her own hair. The pull of gravity did not appear to bother her at all as she tapped away on a bone-white typewriter.