Antiscian (n.) When people on opposite sides of the world
cast shadows in opposite directions at noon.
Most days, when I stare up at the sun and figure it can go no higher, I think of my antiscian who will be casting a shadow in the opposite direction to mine. I like to think the stranger knows the word too, and they wonder if there’s anyone else who stands beneath our shared sun, thinking on it, thinking of me, a shadow with a shadow.
There’s a big difference between Father using his to protect Finn from the sun and Alan Winchester – suggesting people eat his. I’ve included some of the references to shadows throughout the book. We have internal shadows, external shadows which are usually negative, yet in a sun-blistered land casting your shadow over someone is a benevolence or a sign of connection. In the example of Finn as a child casting his over his parents and connecting them by it after his parents have killed their assailants. Then, at a different murder scene outside the Fullers Bookshop the killers stand over the bodies of the dead, casting their shadows on them as they consider what to do with the bodies.
Unnoticed, Father had been positioning himself so he cast his shadow across me, blocking out the sun. After that, I took note and realised—he always did.
Under Father’s shadow, I will always be young, he will always be putting himself between me and the sun, drilling endless repetitions of the same seasonal clock rotation until it’s all I know and my soul no longer uncurls from sleep. I’ll wake to find myself an old man.
Finn, dear Finn, his slight body in his pyjamas standing at the doorway, his long shadow stretched out across the grass, touching us. We were connected, the three of us, by his shadow. pg 50.
The four of them stand around the bodies, staring down with their hands limp at their sides, as they decide what to do. My eyes are on Artemis. Does she move? Does she breathe? They talk among themselves, their shadows falling over the three.
For Piper, Dan’s death shadow was long.
Were we trying, albeit sadly and badly, to replicate connectivity on a global scale with the internet? We shared so much, uploading into the hive mind. But our dysfunctionality, the hate, the rivalry, and the AI bent on monetising us, overshadowed it all.
Buttercup’s shadows are vanquished by the light of those surrounding her. Amber feeds her a boiled egg, which she pops into her mouth whole and worries all those around her she might choke
I am a derelict house, a tree without roots, a shadow cast on a wall of shadows.
I am a dead man.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil. They are words from a book. I don’t recall the rest. They repeat nicely, a rhythm I can walk to. A talisman to get me through the radiating waves of heat and pain.
I wonder what kind of a mother she’d been. Territorial, I suspect. Protective. I have little experience of mothers. Mine’s a shadow that stands in corners.
I stand at the foot of hers and think of the elderly woman who’d crept through her life in the shadow of Winchester, both protected and reviled, and eventually killed by him.
I think of antiscian, the word Father had given me; of casting shadows under the same sun at noon. Perhaps dwelling on shadows was the wrong word, looking in the wrong direction. Perhaps we all dwelled in the same light.
