Shadows' Bride

by Marie Brennan

(Originally published in Shadow Box, ed. Shayne Jiraiya Cummings and Angela Challis, October 2005)

Their laughter is the silence of empty rooms, the hush of dust lying decades thick. Their smiles leer from metal reflections marred by tarnish and rust. Their jest has entertained them for many a year.

They wait for the light, and the man who will bring it. He will wake his bride, and take her, and her body will swell with the passing moons; he will believe the child his own.

But others have been in the tower before him.

He will think his bride a virgin, and see the blood as proof; he will not realize the truth. The shadows have had her a thousand times, in a thousand different ways, as she lies in her sleep that is so like death, and that is why they laugh.

Though unwed, she is the shadows' bride, and when the light comes, their child will awaken to be born.

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