I had always known there would be repercussions for killing a man, but I did not believe a shadow would be haunted by the master it killed.

The people of this kingdom would never know their prince consort was once only a shadow, nothing but the result of an obstruction of light, something to be trampled on. I was greedy to escape this wretched fate, to live freely as any real man would. And when I was to wed the princess, I asked my former master to be my shadow. I would have given him a privileged life, had he not threatened to tell the world I was his shadow.

His shadow – how preposterous! I had lived as a man, dressed as a man, spoken as a man, eaten as a man, and did that not make me a man, equal in status to him?

What was a man to do, but to retaliate when another threatened the life he had painstakingly built? I announced that he was my shadow gone mad, believing himself a man, and he was duly executed.

I caught my own reflection in the mirror. Where my face should be was a creature wreathed in darkness. It had the form of my body, yet black smoke poured from its outline; it had no eyes or nose, yet its lips peeled back into a sneer. My master had come back from the dead to haunt me – and it was determined to taunt me with words.

I loathed how much it sounded like my dead master’s voice – my own voice, only hoarser, more sinister. “You are nothing,” it rasped, a maniacal glee in its voice. “You are no man, fated for nothingness – ”

A wretched scream tore free from my throat. I punched the mirror, meaning to shatter the reflection, but the glass did not fracture. The monster laughed as I raised my hand in horror. Now a wisp of shadow, it had gone straight through the mirror, barely leaving a ripple in its wake, as if I didn’t exist at all.

I had a solid human form for now, but black smoke crawled up my body, turning it into smoke bit by bit, and the monster watched me with malicious intent throughout the week. If I failed to find a solution, I would not survive.

In the garden, distant notes of a song reached my ears. I slowed.

“Ghosts do not haunt with any face that we have known,” the child sang with honeyed sweetness, his voice tender as a bruise, throbbing with the ache of every unhealed wound. “The words we would not speak they use; it is our helplessness they choose, and our refusals they haunt.”*

Entranced, I moved towards the boy. His melody unfurled like smoke, wrapping around me, sending a tingling sensation up my skin. Even now, as the chorus rose like dawn, I swore I could see golden light spilling out from his mouth.

No, I realised with a jolt; golden light, as bright as his head of blond curls, was truly streaming from his open mouth, wrapping around me, and –

I tore off my gloves. Some of the black smoke had receded from my arm, and I could see pale flesh beneath again.

I could barely breathe. Was that my cure? A child’s song? It was said that Goodness, Truth, and Beauty made men, men; humans could think and feel only because of these qualities. And what was purer, more sincere, and more beautiful than an innocent child’s singing?

I dared not stray too close to the boy. Yet as his song filled me with strength, his voice grew weaker, till it was cut off by a violent cough.

Then another.

Then an agonised scream that bled through the sky.

The beautiful boy was no more; strands of golden light were pulled by some unseen force, streaming towards me in a cadence; in contrast, the boy’s shadow crept over him, greedily, lovingly engulfing him, until the boy shriveled up into a shadow. I felt its gaze boring into me before it moved away, a shadow with no master.

I should be revolted. But I was not.

I went to orphanages and schools with my wife under the disguise of royalty visits. I had the children I favoured sing to me in private, sucking their Goodness, Truth, and Beauty dry until their flesh peeled off, and their shadows rose in their place. Before each shadow left, however, they paused to examine me, as if trying to commit my face to memory.

The more children whose Goodness, Truth, and Beauty I sucked, the more I was revitalised. When I had absorbed the songs of ten children, inky smoke no longer sought to travel up my arm; with the light from thirty children’s songs, shadows gave way to flesh and blood; when news came in that fifty children had gone missing and a panicked atmosphere hung over the capital, I looked the same as any man. In mirrors, the monster pounded at the glass and snarled with frustration. But its threat was meaningless. The shadows returned to claim me only if I stopped listening to children sing. So long as I kept my newfound passion for music, I would stay a man.

One day, a lanky boy visited me. There was no shadow under his feet.

“I’ve come to swear my allegiance to you,” he said. “Thanks to you, I’ve gained a body of flesh.”

Through the open door, I glimpsed our reflection in the mirror at the end of the corridor; two inky monsters with shadows as flesh, standing face-to-face, black ink bleeding into each other, weaving together a picture of unearthly horror.

“The boy from the garden,” I murmured. “You are the first man I made.”

“What a beautiful life men have!” He laughed. “It’s said that we are created by one of our kind, one who has made himself great among our former masters. I am here to follow you. And more will come.”

In the mirror, the monster crept closer. It whispered, “You cannot stay a man forever.”

Oh, but I would stay a man. I knew the way, didn’t I?

My wife astounded me with joyous news at dinner. ‘I am pregnant. Imagine – us as parents!’

I imagined our child’s face, the lovely melody they would make. “We will be wonderful parents,” I promised. “I will love our child to death.”

In my reflection in the wine goblet, the monster grinned back at me, baring its fangs with sinister delight.**