Title: Shadows of the World (1/4)
Author: Merucha
Characters: Canonical Torchwood Three members… sort of.
Rating: Some chapters definitely not safe for work.
Disclaimer: Oh, please. If I owned them, would I let some of those idiots write the scripts? And if I were making any money off them, would I be where they could find me?
Summary: Ianto’s sister calls in Torchwood to protect a beautiful woman from a terrible curse
Author's Note: This takes the place of A Day in the Death

An early winter had arrived suddenly in Cardiff, courtesy of a freak storm that had coated every surface with a delicate layer of ice. The walls of Castell Caerdydd glittered in the cold sunset as I zipped past them. I was nervous, and it made me drive a little – all right, a great deal – faster than I would otherwise have done. It was foolish, as all the contracts were signed, and the books printed, but sometimes I still woke up in the night, terrified that it was all a dream.

As I reached the corner of North and Corbett the bulk of the Grays mansion came into view behind its spectacular wrought iron fence. The oldest non-royal residence in Cardiff, the original estate predated even Castell Coch, and the current house was considered by experts to be the finest Jacobean building in Wales, in spite of its moderate size. What had once been the family's private chapel now housed the Grays of Cardiff gallery, where my paintings were hanging. After six weeks they would be auctioned off for charity during a dinner dance hosted by Leonora de Gray and attended by anyone who was anyone in the collecting world.

Except, of course, that Leonora de Gray wouldn't actually be present. Except for her closest collaborators in the gallery and publishing house, no one had seen Leonora de Gray in the flesh in over twenty years. I had only caught a glimpse of her during my first visit. She had been looking down on the entrance hall from behind the elaborate screen that crowned the double curving stairs. Ianto had later informed me tartly that the screen was actually a section of the original thirteenth century minstrel gallery and was considered a marvel of its kind. Maybe, but that day it had reminded me of the cloisters I had seen in Spain and Italy, where the nuns observed the world while immured in their cold stone convents. For a brief moment Leonora de Gray and I had looked at each other and then she had glided silently back into her living quarters.

I turned on to Corbett, intending to  turn again immediately into the Gallery parking lot, but found my way blocked by a large limousine. The driver stood nearly at attention by the open door.  As I watched, the mansion's front door opened and a woman stepped out. Tall, with a mass of honey blonde hair styled into a braided French chignon studded with pearl pins, wearing an evening gown that probably cost two years – no, more likely five – of my income, pearl and diamond earrings swinging down from her ears to touch her shoulders, she made my hand itch for my charcoals and sketching pad.

Almost as if I had spoken out loud, the woman looked in my direction, giving me a dazzling smile. I smiled back before I realized it was Leonora, the woman famous for never leaving her house. She skipped down the steps, her smile now directed at someone inside the limo, someone only she could see. She slid in, and the driver closed the door after her.

And the whole thing disappeared.

I managed not to scream, but I couldn't control the shiver that ran up my spine. I knew what I had seen, of course I did; my grandfather had done his level best to cram the basics into my daydreaming head, back in ysgol feithrin Achlesydd. I had hated school, but this one particular thing had stuck.

A Shadow, tad-cu had said, is the what-might-have-been of a living person. It represents an imbalance between the physical and the real in that person's life. Achlesyddion are obliged to offer assistance to such a person, for as long as one individual is out of balance, the ecosystem is out of balance.

Responsibility. I wanted nothing more to do with it, except for the minor decisions of everyday living. I had killed my husband, and that was enough responsibility for one lifetime. But I was still Achlesydd, and that wasn't something I could set aside easily.

I parked the car in the space nearest the front door, on the principle that if I was going to go down, I might as well do it in the grand style. Leonora de Gray was known to not suffer fools gladly or impertinence at all, and she was influential enough to crush my fledging career beyond any hope of recovery.

I rang the door bell. Almost immediately the heavy oak plank swung aside to reveal the sturdy black-clad figure of Rose, Leonora de Gray's old nurse. Rose ran the household with an iron fist, and everything except business matters went through her. She was also, it was rumoured, a powerful psychic.

“I'm sorry to cause such a disturbance, Rose, but I need to speak to Miss de Gray right now.”

Her lips compressed into a thin line as she drew herself up in preparation for what I was certain would be an epic set down, but before she could rebuff me the chapel door opened and Carlos Medina stepped through. Even after what I knew were two weeks of twelve hour days, he looked as crisp and self-assured as he always did.

“Rose, I thought I heard… “He still had a faint Spanish accent after years in Cardiff, but it had taken on a sort of Welsh rhythm that made me smile. “And so I did. Is everything all right, Rhiannon?”

I got in a second before Rose. “No, it isn’t. I need to speak to Miss de Gray.”

His face shuttered. “You know that is impossible.”

All of a sudden everything I had kept resolutely tamped down erupted. “Don’t tell me about impossible, Carlos. I just saw Leonora de Gray’s Shadow walk down her front steps, dressed to the nines and looking like she was going to meet her lover. She was gloriously, blindingly happy and completely free. Do not tell me that such a break between the physical and the real is all right!”

The air came out of his lungs in a whoosh, as if I had punched him in the stomach. “You saw it?”

“Didn’t I just say so?”

Fingers with the strength of steel claws clamped to my wrist. “You lie! The only one who can see a fetch is the one it comes for!”

I grabbed her hand and squeezed until Rose let go. “This isn’t a fetch. It’s a Shadow. It’s the what-should-be chasing the what-is.”

“What would you know about it?” she sniffed.

I pushed back my sleeve and showed her the small brand in the crook of my elbow. She gasped and  paled, stepping backwards. I saw her hand twitch and grinned fiercely. Many of the country folk believed the Achlesydd to be half-way to black magicians. They would make the sign against the evil eye as we passed, hoping we wouldn’t look in their direction. As a child, I’d been angry about it; now it  just amused me.

“That is the Achlesydd sigil.” Carlos sounded a bit dazed.

“My family.” I rolled the sleeve back down. “Carlos, I’m serious. The Shadow was too aware of the physical. She even smiled at me. That usually means that physical and real are converging into a single point in time. Nothing good comes out of that sort of collision, ever.”

He frowned. “I don't understand the distinction.”

“Neither do I.”

We all turned to face the staircase. Leonora de Gray was standing in front of the screen. The long white robe she wore, with wide fur-trimmed sleeves and a broad belt defining the waist, made her look like a movie star or a princess. Her hair was caught in a French braid that swung forward over one shoulder. I don't think there was a speck of makeup on her face. She made me feel completely drab and dowdy, and if I hadn't noticed the signs of strain around her mouth and the stiffness of her shoulders, I really could have hated her cool, serene beauty.

As she started down the stairs, Rose let out a bleat and ran to meet her, making pushing-back motions, a spate of Northern Welsh pouring out of her. Leonora waited for a while, but when the flood showed no sign of dying down, she placed her hand gently over the old woman's lips.

“Enough. Don't you see I can't keep running? I am half sick of shadows, Rosie-mam.”

I recognized the phrase. It was from Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott, about a woman condemned never to look directly at the world. My mom had hated the Lancelot stories, considering it an unnecessary graft into the Arthurian cycle, but she had loved this poem.

“And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot.”

She heard my whisper and smiled at me. For a heart-stopping moment she seemed only a faint memory of the radiant creature I had seen on the steps.

“Come into the conservatory, both of you. Rose, bring tea and something to eat. I haven't had dinner yet.”

We followed her to the glass doors at the back of the hall into a Victorian wonderland of wrought iron and rare orchids. Leonora flipped a switch and the Tiffany chandeliers, brought from New York as part of her grandmother’s dowry, flooded the space with a gentle glow. The conservatory was often pictured in gardening and architecture magazines, but seeing it in person was staggering. The artist in me drooled.

Leonora caught me at it and chuckled. “I had asked Carlos to speak to you about another commission.” She made a sweeping gesture that took in everything we could see. “Do you think there’s a book to be had out of this?” At my gasp, she chuckled again. “I’ll take that as a yes. We’ll talk about it later.”

“Leonora,” Carlos said in the long-suffering tones of someone who was accustomed to his boss’s vagaries, “there are more important things right now than a book on rare orchids. Rhiannon, I do not grasp the difference between the physical and the real. Well, I understand the theory, but I don’t know how it applies here.”

“I don’t even understand the theory.” Leonora sank gracefully into a wrought iron sofa with velvet cushions and pointed at the matching chairs near it. “Do sit down, both of you. Can you explain it for us non-Talented folk?”

I tried to gather my thoughts. “The physical is what you can see and touch. The everyday of living. But to the Achlesydd there is another level. We call it the real. It’s the physical plus all the invisible things that move around us and reflect and influence our actions. The real is where you really live, even if you can’t see it.”

“What is it like to see it?” Leonora asked.

“I’m not the right one to ask,” I answered honestly. “I only get glimpses now and then. Whatever Talent I have is bound to my art. That’s how I knew there was something wrong. I shouldn’t have been able to see the Shadow that clearly.”

Carlos shifted slightly, his discomfort with the subject obvious. “You said something about a collision between the physical and the real.”

I nodded. “Usually, they are the same thing and the person’s life is in balance. Good or bad, it’s the right life to live. Sometimes, though, there’s some sort of traumatic psychic wrench that separates them. The person lives her life only in the physical level while her Shadow lives in the real. The problem is that the imbalance cannot be maintained. Both levels are incomplete and they struggle to rejoin. The results are usually disastrous.”

“Usually?” Leonora whispered.

“There are ways to rejoin the levels.” I held up a hand, forestalling the next question. “I can’t do it, no. It requires a lot more power and familiarity with the real than I have. But I do know who can.”

Carlos shifted again, but  this time is was to  take Leonora’s hand in  his. “Who? How?”

“How I don’t know. But who…” I took a deep breath and released one more secret. “My maiden name is Jones. My brother Ianto is considered a great deal more Talented than I am, as are his fiancé and their colleagues.” I grinned at the sudden shock of recognition in their faces. “Let me call them in, Leonora. If anyone can solve your problem, it’s Torchwood.”