Excerpt: More what shadows gave

"Tell me this much. If Marcus wasn't supposed to die, what was supposed to happen?” says Kalem.

The spirit is fully engaged in the act of swinging, and he is about to put the question to her in a more forceful manner when she gives him a reply.

"It's complicated,” confesses the Child Bride, pumping her legs harder. The ruins of the gown pursue her soaring figure like a trail of clouds and it occurs to Kalem that she looks very little like a girl at all. The only truly human traits the spirit possesses are the fine boned hands clutching at the metal loops binding the swing to the pole above and the legs extending from the torn hem of the dress, long and wrapped in stockings long past their prime. "You were supposed to become a great figurehead, I was supposed to meet you. Work for you, if that's the right way to put it. We were going to be a family, kinda.”

The professor feels his stomach drop as though he had just plunged from a great height, the way it is apt to do on a rollercoaster than bucks and bends. "Are you saying my failure to do...whatever is linked to your death?” he whispers.

The Child Bride shrugs. "I don't know,” she says, and it is spoken with such conviction the professor cannot be sure whether it is a lie meant to spare him or the God's honest truth. For someone so young, the spirit is a capable actress. Isn't that what actors are, glorified liars?

Kalem shivers, hunching his shoulders against the wind. In anticipation of the dawn and the relative warmth it will bring, he is colder than ever.

"I wanted to be your friend like I was supposed to,” says the spirit. "We were supposed to happy, but it didn't turn out that way, did it?”

"I've never met you before tonight,” professes Kalem, a flush of shame flowing from finger tips to temples. "Or at least I think so. I apologize if I have and I've forgotten or repressed it or...” What he had intended to say is lost in the dawn. This is the old version of himself speaking, forlorn in his inability to repay kindness.

The Child Bride trusts her heels into the gravel so she may slow her ascent. She is no longer flying but in the erratic state of movement that proceeds the onset of a stationary position. When she comes to a full stop, the spirit leaps off the swing.

"Believe in the miracle that was promised to you and step back into the circle. Do these things and I swear I'll be there,” says the Child Bride, and pulls the veil from her face. Her countenance is not pitted by scars nor it is stricken decay as Kalem expected it to be. The features the gauze concealed are unremarkable and adolescent. The revelation beholden to him is of skin upon which a life is waiting to be written, and her chin is raise in anticipation for the instant in which an event, a love, a broken heart, or a hope may be allowed to fill the space between her dark eyes, to pool in the hollows of her cheeks like rain.

The Child Bride leans down and kisses him. It is not an erotic gesture, nor its is entirely chaste in nature and intentions. The assurance she has made to him is invested the feel of her mouth against his. It is a sense of optimism, a feeling that does not immediately recede after the spirit withdraws. It lingers like the feel of flame, a subtle warmth growing in the unfurling wings of bone comprising his rib cage.

"I promise, it will get better if you just let go a little,” the Child Bride says. "And when it does, I'll be waiting. Me and the others.”

Kalem starts to inquire as to the "others” the spirit girl is incorporating into her pledge, but the deed of asking the question goes unfulfilled. The sudden and violent shriek of his alarm boring into the back of his skull like a bullet brings him crashing back into his bed, legs working at earth that has been replaced by artificially heated air air and the sheets knotted ‘round his ankles.

It is morning and the night and all its dreams are over.