Feast by Merrie Destefano

darkness. In a few steps, she was at my side, nestled in my arms.
    “There was a time when I was invited to the best parties, when my smile charmed all the ladies, both young and old. When I told stories that kept the children up late at night, as we knelt before the Evenquest fires, beneath the stars of home.”
    “I remember. Children would run to greet you,” she said, the curve of her smile dazzling, her neck a perfect arc of alabaster flesh. I leaned in to kiss her and she closed her eyes. “They would laugh and jump into your arms.” Her voice was a husky whisper now, a waterfall of words.
    I didn’t want to speak. Didn’t want to break the spell.
    “You’re not really here, are you?” I said.
    “No.” But the smile remained and I could still taste her skin on my lips.
    I remembered a dance we had attended in Germany once, long ago. She had worn a peacock green dress and pale human skin, her hair a tower of glistening gold. Everyone had watched her as we both waltzed together over gleaming floors. Then she had tripped, caught her slipper in her gown, and nearly fell. In the confusion, she forgot what skin she had been wearing, and as she came to her feet again, she was now a round-bellied merchant with a swollen red nose and a ragged frock. People around us shrieked in terror.
    Monster , they had cried. Doppelganger! Lily and I had fled, laughing, bursting through the doors to the great hall and then sailing up into moonlit skies. For weeks afterward, we had laughed whenever one of us remembered the incident.
    It had been her only flaw. Sometimes she forgot what skin to change into.
    And now, in the dream, she put her head on my chest. My dear sweet dead wife. Even in the dreams she had no heartbeat. And she was so very pale.
    “But the children didn’t always run to greet you.” She was gazing up into my eyes now. Why did the truth grow more brittle with age? She didn’t used to speak like this. Not when she was alive. “Remember? The Boy was frightened of you, the first time we met him.”
    I stared into the darkness that surrounded us, wished the morning would come, that the bright sun would devour me whole and that this torment would be over.
    “It took a long time for me to woo him,” she continued, “to get him to trust you. There was always a dangerous glimmer in your grin, my love, something hiding between your words. That is what attracted me to you in the first place.”
    But it wasn’t true. I had never been that way around her, my precious bride. “Your true memories are fading, blossom,” I said with a catch in my voice. “The dreams are growing old, turning bitter with age. You were never like this.”
    “Then tell the Boy to make you some more dreams. Throw the old ones away.”
    It always came to this. You’d think I would learn to stay away from this room and my hidden cache of golden dreams. And now, it was time. I had to tell her.
    “I only have a few dreams left,” I said. “And the Boy is dead.”
    Her eyes widened. A moment passed when she didn’t move, then tears formed on her lashes, her lip quivered. “Nay. Young William lives. I know it.”
    I shook my head.
    “When?”
    I shrugged. I had lost count of human years. “Fifty years, maybe. I don’t remember.”
    She pulled away from my embrace. “Why didn’t you tell me that he was gone?”
    “I do tell you, my love. Every time I see you. And then you forget.”
    She turned away. “Don’t come to me again, Ash. Let me go. I don’t want our time together to always end in pain.”
    “Yes, my love.”
    She was facing me again, arms about my waist. “Kiss me, sweetheart. Hold me one last time.” It was always our last time, now and forever. It was all the Boy had been able to give us, a lasting torment that neither one of us could end. I had bound the Boy’s father in the curse, then the Boy got caught in the web by mistake.
    Her image began to fade. The dream was breaking, growing thin like river ice in the