'I have been thinking it over . . . ,' I dredge up the words. 'I'm not going.'
The shadow looks at me blankly.
'Forgive me,' I tell my shadow. 'I know full well what staying here means. I understand it makes perfect sense to return to our former world, the two of us together, like you say. But I can't bring myself to leave.' . . .
My shadow sighs, then looks again heavenward.
'You found her mind, did you? And now you want to live in the Woods with her. You want to drive me away, is that it?'
'No, that is not it at all, not all of it, I say. 'I have discovered the reason the Town exists.'
'I don't want to know,' he says, 'because I already know. You yourself created this Town. You made everything here. The Wall, the River, the Woods, the Library, the Gate, everything. Even this Pool. I've known all along.
'Then why did you not tell me sooner?'
'Because you'd only have left me here like this. Because your rightful world is there outside.' My shadow sits down in the snow and shakes his head from side to side. 'But you won't listen, will you?'
'I have responsibilities,' I say. 'I cannot forsake the people and places and things I have created. I know I do you a terrible wrong. And yes, perhaps I wrong myself, too. But I must see out the consequences of my own doings. This is my world. The Wall is here to hold me in, the River flows through me, the smoke is me burning. I must know why.'
My shadow rises and stares at the calm surface of the Pool. He stands motionless amid the falling snow. Neither of us says a word. White puffs of breath issue from our mouths.
'I cannot stop you,' admits my shadow. 'Maybe you can't die here, but you will not be living. You will merely exist. . . . You'll be trapped for all eternity.'
'I am not so sure,' I say. 'Nor can you be. A little by little I will recall things. People and places from our former world, different qualities of light, different songs. And as I remember, I may find the key to my own creation and to its undoing.'
'No, I doubt it. Not as long as you are sealed inside yourself. Search as you might, you will never know the clarity of distance without me. Still you can't say I didn't try,' my shadow says, then pauses. 'I loved you.'
'I will not forget you,' I reply."