Steven E Cook
The Smaller Shadow
Ash-After-Singing fitted beneath the furnace stair. Her shadow did not.
Its wings lay across the passage, enormous and perfectly visible in the red light. She moved her feet. The wings moved with them. She tucked one knee under her chin and pulled the other boot close against her belly. The shadow's shoulder rose along the opposite wall.
A chain scraped somewhere overhead.
Ash stopped moving. Warm grit pricked the soles of her hands. Through a gap in the stair she could see the lower edge of a furnace door, three white marks on its hinge, and nothing else. She had counted those marks twice before hiding. Three meant the door had been opened since the last feeding. She had hoped that meant the passage would be empty.
The chain came again, one link at a time. Somebody was lowering it carefully.
Her shadow remembered flying. She had climbed, fallen, and once been carried upside down by someone who said she ought to be grateful. Whatever the wings remembered, they would not fold when she needed them to.
She pressed a finger against the nearest dark feather. Her finger touched hot stone. The feather stayed spread across it.
The chain stopped.
A white mask appeared between the stair treads. Ash could see one black eyehole and the wire fastened beneath the chin. There was a flake of red paint on the mask's cheek. She fixed on that flake because looking at the eyehole made her want to move.
Beneath the mask hung an empty collar.
The hunter lowered it until it rested on the passage floor. Its inner edge was pale and smooth. Ash knew that surface. She had once put a finger inside a collar left on a bench and spent the next feeding holding her hand closed so nobody would see what it had done.
“Lost?” the hunter asked.
A seam opened across her face.
Ash clamped both hands over it. The word had found her even under the stair. She waited for her mouth to close again, feeling each breath against her palms. Above, the mask tilted. The collar scraped nearer.
He had not seen her. If he had seen her, he would have reached through the treads. She tried to believe that while the smooth inner edge passed over the tip of a shadow feather.
The collar lifted.
One of her heels slid an inch across the grit. Ash pushed it back. The hunter held the chain still, feeling the small resistance at its end.
Behind the mask, he made a soft clicking sound.
Another chain answered from farther up the passage. Ash had seen only one hunter arrive. She could not see the other now. A stair creaked above her head, and dust settled on the hands still covering her face.
Her mouth closed. She took her hands away one finger at a time.
If she ran, she would have to cross the light. The chain could reach the whole passage. She looked for a crack wide enough to get her hands into, somewhere she might hold while the collar pulled. There was mortar under her knee, already crumbling. She could dig, but they would hear the pieces fall.
Something touched her ankle.
Ash nearly kicked. A small hand caught her heel and held it. Farther inside the foundations, beyond the furnace glow, she made out a knee and a narrow shoulder. Dull copper showed between the child's fingers: bells clenched in a fist.
He opened his other hand. A wooden spoon lay across it.
For a moment she thought he meant to feed her. Then he pushed the spoon through a crack and used the handle to loosen a wedge of mortar. He caught the pieces against his chest. One fell. Ash heard it strike stone and was certain the hunter must have heard it too.
The mask turned toward the gap.
The child pulled her ankle once. Ash rolled onto her stomach. Stone scraped her shoulder as she squeezed after him. There was room for her head if she turned it sideways, room for her chest if she let her breath go. Her shadow folded badly. One wing remained stretched beneath the stair.
The collar opened.
Ash felt the pull through her feet. She caught the child's wrist with both hands. His bells pressed cold against her knuckles. He braced his heels somewhere she could not see and pulled until the tendons stood out beneath her fingers.
The hunter shook the chain. Her left boot came off.
For a dreadful moment she thought she had lost the foot inside it. Then her bare toes found stone. She pushed against it, hard enough to scrape skin from one toe, and the child dragged her clear. The collar snapped against the empty boot.
He kept pulling. Behind them, leather tore. A hand struck the stair. The second hunter's chain fell across the place where her head had been.
They crawled until the passage bent. The child stopped with one shoulder wedged against the wall and pointed at her bare foot. She had left a dark smear on the stone. He rubbed it away with his sleeve, then held her heel while she wiped the toe herself. His bells remained silent. She wondered how long he had been carrying them that way.
Red light thinned behind them. Ahead, a draft carried old ash and something Ash did not recognize. The air moved over the scrape on her toe. She wanted to follow it. She wanted her boot back. The child looked at her, waiting to see which way she would turn.
She put her hand beyond his shoulder, toward the draft.
Only then did he release her. He opened his fist carefully, keeping the bells from ringing. The wooden spoon had split along one edge. He ran his thumb over the damage, put it against his teeth, and looked back at her.
“Hungry?” he whispered.
Her mouth opened.
Before she could answer, the mountain's buried bell began to sound. Dust rose from the floor. The child's spoon trembled against his teeth.
Behind them, the chains were hauled away. More chains answered, all moving in the same direction. Feet hurried over the stair. Ash waited until she could no longer tell their sound from the bell.
The hunters were going somewhere else.
She put her bare foot down and followed the unfamiliar air.
End of prologue. © 2026 Steven E Cook. All rights reserved.