Writers of the Future, Volume 29 (30 page)

Those were just a few of the more memorable conversations she'd had when
her reputation began to grow. She'd been surprised to learn this Immortal had no
permanent name; most towns named theirs something, and that was it. Where she had
grown up the Immortal had been named Muerta, and she had been merciless. She sent
plagues upon her own city for amusement. Not so with Arlington.

“Bone Rattler keeps His distance. Doesn't like to be disturbed. He comes
around when it's time for somebody to die…rest of the time he's off on that street
with His Whispers.”

When she went on her first Sunday round, half the people in Arlington
were out, singing their songs about Death.

When God is gone and the Devil takes
hold,

Who will have mercy on your soul?

Vivian had swallowed past her fear, remembering her own experience with
this new Immortal. If He was as cruel as they seemed to believe, then He was wilier
than Muerta had ever been, deceiving her first with kindness.

But He was not cruel. He never even raised His voice to her. She could
ask questions, speak out of turn…she didn't understand why Arlington so hated
Him.

He truly won her the day her ex-husband found her.

It was three months after she found Arlington, and she'd not heard a
word from anyone in her old life. One day he just showed up—just as she was reaching
Bone Rattler Street.

“Vivian!”

She had turned, hardly daring to believe her ears. “Michael.” She didn't
want to see him, not now and not ever.

He stood there, Michael, and stared. Stared at her in her new black
clothes, with that red umbrella over her arm and the bag full of deliveries. “Viv,
what are you doing?”

She trembled.

“You don't mean to tell me,” his voice was deceptively calm, “you're a
Shade, now?”

“They call me a Ghost Wife,” she mumbled.

“What?”

“They call me a Ghost Wife,” Vivian repeated, louder. She clutched the
umbrella. “I serve this city's Immortal.”

Michael walked toward her, and Vivian stumbled backward. “You're…a
what
?” he hissed.

A sudden burst of cold wind enveloped them both, and Vivian felt a solid
presence at her back. The Shaker's voice growled, “Step away.”

ILLUSTRATION BY SIDA CHEN

Michael froze. Vivian didn't even turn to see what form the Shaker had
taken for this; she knew it would be terrifying. She pressed her back against Him,
taking comfort from the ice-cold body that met her touch. The Shaker—as she had
already dubbed Him in her mind—stayed at her back, growling down at Michael. “You
will treat her with more respect in the future.”

Michael fled. Vivian had never seen him scared of anything, but he was
running from the Shaker. For a moment, she felt an immense power she had not known
in years. It flooded through her with a heady sensation, and Vivian turned to
embrace the Shaker, burying her face in the folds of His black coat. He warmed a
moment, and put His arms around her.

“The next time he comes here,” the Shaker growled, “will be the last
time he leaves.”

Vivian trembled, and smiled.

S
he learned quickly that the
Shaker was impossible to understand. One day He would ask to hear children's rhymes,
the next she read to Him the most complex text He could find. He pored over mortal
literature and art, and withdrew into silence for hours, sometimes weeks at a time,
puzzling over something.

His devotion to a subject that interested Him was insatiable—they could
talk about something so much Vivian would watch her own opinion change three or four
times before the conclusion.

Yet none of this was what made Vivian fall in love with the Shaker.

What made her fall in love was that He never raised His voice to her. He
never threatened her. He smiled, and He gave her everything He could. He touched her
softly, as if He were afraid she might break. He watched her eyes, always looking
for the limit, where He would stop. He learned what she was like, inside and out,
what she loved and what she feared, and He never used that knowledge to hurt
her.

She had been in Arlington almost a year, when one night she pressed her
lips to His forehead, and murmured—“I love you.”

His eyes sparkled like stars.

H
er daughter was born in June,
healthy and strong with her mother's dark hair and the Shaker's blue eyes. She had
breath, but no heartbeat, and her skin was cool to the touch. Vivian named her
Erica, and wherever Vivian went she carried her daughter. The Whispers doted over
Erica, and the Shaker's eyes shone with something like pride and love whenever He
looked at her.

She grew rapidly, perhaps a little faster than a child should. Vivian
never asked for a second child; she was devoted to Erica with her heart and soul.
Her daughter had the promise of becoming a beautiful young woman.

The Shaker began to ask for Vivian's presence more frequently. Often she
spent entire nights on Bone Rattler Street.

He still begged her to say she loved Him again and again.

Vivian didn't know what was going on, why He was so insistent, but she
indulged Him as best she could between raising her daughter and making her
deliveries. He had become…demanding.

He made love to her more fiercely, and yet also more carefully. He
kissed her as if it might be His last chance. Vivian didn't understand, but a slow
dread began to form in the back of her mind.

Was this the last burst before He grew weary of her, before He dismissed
her? Or did He know something she didn't?

She wouldn't find out until Erica was eight.

Twelve years Vivian had lived as the Ghost Wife of Arlington. Twelve
long, demanding, painful and beautiful years—a blink of an eye to the Shaker.

The Shaker had not changed His form much since Erica's birth—minor
adjustments, creating an illusion of age as Vivian passed birthday after birthday.
He was tender and yet unyielding, everything He had ever been.

Vivian loved Him, and nursed the acceptance that one day He would turn
away from her. He may have resembled a mortal man, but He was something more,
something untamed and unreachable, an ocean of secrets she could never hope to
fathom. All she had was His touch, her daughter, and her scars.

But after Erica's eighth birthday, Vivian felt the first signs.

It started as a pain. It only came every so often, but gradually it grew
in frequency and importance. She sought out doctors, and they did their best to
treat her, but there was nothing they could do. The Sickness was inside her, growing
and spreading.

The Sickness was new in those days, and it baffled doctors and Immortals
alike. Though it did not touch the Immortals themselves, it claimed many of their
servants. It was quiet, and lethal in its patience, preying upon mortals with the
advantage of time.

The one person Vivian dared hope could help her was the Shaker. “Isn't
there anything you can do?” she asked, “Just so I can see my daughter grow up.”

She had never seen a more grief-stricken look on the Shaker's face as He
shook His head. “Some things,” He whispered, “are out of my hands.”

Vivian stared at Him. So. This was it.

She did her best not to hint at it to her daughter, teaching Erica her
work, and everything she thought her daughter would need to know. She didn't know
how much time she had, only that the pain in her was growing beyond her control. It
ate at her day and night, consuming her from the inside out.

The Shaker looked at her with grief. He did His best to ease her
suffering, but she knew there would come a time when the one thing He could do for
her would be to take the breath from her lungs. On the nights she came to Bone
Rattler Street, He held her and tried to ease her pain until she slept.

She carried on, and the Shaker watched her die, as He had watched a
hundred other Ghost Wives die, with as much pain.

He had never liked being helpless.

Erica knew soon enough. Vivian managed to hold out until she was ten,
but by then she could barely walk. She used a cane, and the people of Arlington
watched and waited, wondering when the Shaker would end this.

Erica was the one who begged Him to do it.

The girl had grown up walking side by side with Death. She had no fear
of what she asked; she had the knowledge her father would never die, and her mother
was in so much pain.

It was a summer's night when He did. He made the night warm, and left
Bone Rattler Street for the first time in over a century. The streets emptied before
Him
as He walked toward Vivian's home, His black coat making Him
a shadow. The Whispers followed, making His path darker.

Vivian lay in bed, asleep. She was skeletal, and her lovely hair lay
lank and colorless against the pillow. Her dark eyes had sunk into her skull. Her
hands lay like limp spiders on the bed.

The Shaker gazed at her, His face a mask. He saw in Vivian everyone He
had watched fade away and die. A wiser creature would have stopped growing attached,
would have kept His distance…perhaps even grown cruel. But the Shaker was not a
wiser creature—He was, He supposed, a hopeless fool.

He bent, kissing Vivian's forehead. Then He laid His hand over her
heart, and coaxed out a light. It was a small light, pulsing softly with warmth. The
Whispers, huddled in the corners of Vivian's room, fell silent as He pulled that
light to His own breast, cradling it like a fragile child.

Vivian ceased to breathe, and what little color had been left in her
face drained away. The Shaker gazed a moment at her body, and turned away, the light
cupped in His palm. Erica, in her little white nightgown, followed her Immortal
father in silence among the Whispers, who muttered about her.

They made a solemn procession through the summer night. At the head, the
tall figure of the Shaker, with a little light cupped in His hands. Behind Him, a
cloud of Whispers, and at the back, a young girl in a white nightgown. A few brave
souls in Arlington watched it, and they heard a voice like Vivian's weaving through
the night air.

It was a familiar song, of death coming to claim the soul, but carried a
fresh chill with Vivian's voice. The people of Arlington fastened their windows
against it, and shivered in the new cold of the night.

T
he next morning, Bone Rattler
Street was silent. The Shaker stayed in His house, unseen. The Whispers kept to the
shadows and made not a sound. The ghosts did not move from their hiding places.

The sun did not pierce the gloom.

In a small black dress, Erica made her way back to her mother's
house.

There would be no more Ghost Wife for quite some time.

For now, there would be only the Shade, the Devil's Daughter of
Arlington. The girl with breath, but no heartbeat—the girl whose skin was never
warm, the girl with hair as dark as her mother's and eyes as pale as her father's.
She moved in silence, like a shadow, the Whispers ever at her heels.

She carried on her arm a red umbrella.

Journey for a New Artist

BY LARRY ELMORE

Leonard Elmore has been creating fantasy and science fiction art for over 40 years. After receiving a BFA degree from Western Kentucky, he married Betty Clemons and was drafted into the Army almost at the same time. In the 1970s he began freelancing and was published in a few magazines, including
Heavy Metal
and
National Lampoon.
In 1987 he was contacted by TSR Inc., the company that produced the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, and he worked there from 1981 to 1987. While at TSR, he helped set the standards for gaming art in the role-playing genre. Besides creating covers for
Dungeons & Dragons, AD&D, Star Frontiers
and other gaming books, he may be best known for his work with the world of Dragonlance. Since 1987 he has worked as a freelance illustrator, creating covers for comics, computer games, magazines, fantasy and science fiction books and projects too numerous to list.

For the last five years he has been creating paintings for collectors and fans around the world. Larry has now opened
his original commission section on his website, where he creates a complete concept drawing that lets collectors and fans choose concept drawings that they would like to purchase as finished paintings. These new paintings are, technique-wise, the best paintings he has ever created.