My Shadow Performs Your Miracles
A professional mourner discovers her stolen shadow performing miracles for a celebrated saint.
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How it begins
Sera recognized her shadow by the way it favored its left foot.
It was kneeling beneath a saint, healing a stranger.
She stopped in the cathedral aisle.
For eleven months her body had cast nothing. Noon, candlelight, the low autumn sun: she had stood in them all, solid and inexplicably incomplete.
People called it a blessing.
People were generous with names for losses they did not have to carry.
At the altar, Saint Lucan rested two fingers against an old man's forehead. Gold light spread across the marble. The crowd sighed.
Below the platform, Sera's shadow pressed both dark hands around the man's injured knee.
Its left foot remained turned outward, exactly as hers did after a childhood fall.
She pushed past a woman carrying white roses.
"That belongs to me."
The saint looked down.
For one instant the practiced peace vanished from his face.
The cathedral attendants moved toward her. Sera knew their speed. She had worked enough funerals to recognize men who could remove grief without disturbing the service.
Lucan lifted a hand.
"Let her come."
Up close, his robes smelled faintly of rain. There were dark circles beneath his eyes that the gold collar failed to conceal.
"What is your name?" he asked.
"Ask what you've borrowed."
His gaze dropped to the floor behind her.
Nothing.
Then he shifted his own foot.
Nothing followed it.
Sera's anger lost its simple shape.
The old man stood, crying with relief. Applause moved through the cathedral, warm and enormous. Beneath the platform, the shadow bent as if something heavy had settled on its shoulders.
Lucan leaned closer.
"Please don't look frightened."
"Why?"
"Because they can forgive anger."
An attendant rang a small silver bell.
Sera's shadow flinched.
Every dark shape along the walls turned toward the sound.
The saint's voice barely reached her.
"They don't forgive recognition."
He placed a folded prayer slip in her hand.
On the blank reverse, somebody had written:
MINE IS DOWN THERE TOO.
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Outline and characters
- Sera sees her missing shadow heal a stranger at Lucan's shrine.
- She confronts Lucan and discovers he has no shadow either.
- They trace the miracle workers to a sealed crypt.
- Sera learns the cathedral takes shadows from mourners too exhausted to resist.
- Lucan risks his public authority to protect her investigation.
- Their affection produces a miracle the cathedral tries to claim.
- Sera rejects a bargain that would free only her own shadow.
- Lucan publicly admits that his holiness is built on captive labor.
- They open the crypt and let the shadows choose whether to return.
- They leave the city together as ordinary people learning to live with their darkness.
Characters
- Sera Holt, 30. A professional mourner whose shadow has been taken
- Lucan Mere, 34. A celebrated saint trapped inside a fraudulent miracle economy
Series possibilities
- Freed shadows ask Sera to investigate a pilgrimage from which no darkness returns.
