The Family Whose Shadows Stayed Behind

How it begins

Tessa Navarro noticed her shadow was missing while hemming a coat for someone else's first day at work.

The coat's future owner had asked for deep pockets. Tessa had admired that straightforward faith in having things worth carrying.

The afternoon light fell across the sewing table. Scissors, thread, the cup she'd forgotten to drink from: everything cast a shape except her hands.

She moved them slowly.

Nothing.

Across the room, her brother looked down at his own feet.

"Mine too," Tom Sen said.

They had been in the new city for eleven months. They had learned which bus arrived late, where to buy the right kind of bread, and how to answer questions that began with where are you really from without ruining a perfectly ordinary morning.

They had not learned what to do when a part of the body declined to migrate.

Tom opened a message from their cousin.

A photograph filled the screen. Their old street, late sun, two familiar shadows sitting on the front steps of the house they'd left.

No bodies attached.

One shadow was shelling peas. The other appeared to be waiting for an argument.

Tessa recognized their habits with a discomfort she could not blame on magic.

"We should go back," Tom said.

"For the shadows."

"I didn't say otherwise."

Outside the workshop, a tram rang its bell. Tessa had begun to like that sound. She had also begun to feel guilty for liking it without first comparing it to a sound from home.

On the screen, the seated shadow lifted its head as though it had heard her think.

A second message arrived.

They come every afternoon. Should we let them in?

Tom looked at her.

Tessa set down the coat, leaving the needle safely through the cloth.

"Ask them," she said.

Her brother smiled, briefly, as though that answer had traveled farther than either of them expected.