Bedtime Story, Part IV

[The parts in italics were not written by me, but by the person I was telling the story to.]


There was a boy who watched the girl, watched her with the men who came to her nightly. He kept himself away from the lights, not because he was afraid of them precisely, but because he knew they would melt him utterly. He crouched by her when she slept and watched her from all the shadows he knew. The darkest shadow was her smile, and he wished to hide there the most. And he wished he had a heart to give.

There was once a boy who found a heart in a sand castle and decided to sell it in the marketplace in a nearby city, as he already had one of his own. He wrapped it carefully in crinkled white paper even as it throbbed and pulsed. He did not make it to the marketplace, though, as a shadow-boy caught him in an alley. "Give me your money," the shadow-boy said, thinking of a girl with dust in her hair who had not eaten today. "I have no money," protested boy-from-the-sea. "Only a heart. Want it?"

Shadow boy held his hands out, greedy for the heart. “Yes, yes, and all I want is yes,” he said and boy-from-the-sea dropped it into his hands. The boy opened the paper, just a tiny bit, to see the heart, because he was curious. He had never seen one before, only heard stories. He found the girl, the dusty dancing girl, and he felt brave, excited. “I have it, for you, a heart, a heart!” he sang, stepping forward into the sunlight. And he melted. When she turned to look there was only the heart, beating quietly in its white paper wrapping.