She’s beautiful, because he’d have it no other way. He’d always said, from the day he’d started noticing the girls of your town in that way a man will notice a woman—always said that one day he’d bring home a bride as beautiful as the sun and the summer sky.

She’s not like the sun and the summer sky. Her hair is midnight black, her skin the light brown of tree bark, her eyes the green of the deepest forest. The men of the town, from boys to toothless elders, all have the same look in their eyes as she passes them by, no matter how well or poorly they try to hide it.

And the women, young and old, their eyes also tell a story, mostly of envy, some of suspicion. 

You’re just happy for him, as a mother should be. 

Happy that he came back from afar, from a city bigger than you could imagine, from a world greater than you feel you might ever comprehend. Back from his studies, to be a doctor for your town and the surrounding villages. Back from the war, which he won’t speak about apart from saying that he’d seen who man really is and what he’s really capable of. 

You’re just happy he’s back, alive and happy with his bride.

***

The poor girl can’t talk, he tells you in your house at the edge of town. But love doesn’t need words, does it, he adds, fondly holding her by the hand. His bride nods demurely, avoiding your eyes. You notice the bracelets on her wrists, the only pieces of jewelry on her. 

He spends the rest of the day and evening telling you of his life, travels, and studies. And how he met her, in a faraway land, fell in love even though he didn’t speak the language of her people and she doesn’t speak at all. She’ll help around the house, of course, he tells you, even though you want to say you don’t need it. Your bones are old, but can still do anything that needs to be done.

As your son talks, occasionally you catch his bride’s eye. Wary, she seems to you. But of course, after all, she’s a stranger in this land, in this house. 

Later, as they’re busy unpacking in his room—their room now, what was once you and your long late husband’s room—you sit by the fire, carving little wooden dolls. It’s good for your fingers and it soothes your mind. You notice her then, watching you from the doorway, and she seems curious. You smile, motion for her to join you by the fire. She hesitates, and then retreats back into the room, closing the door.

***

The mayor throws a feast for your son, the doctor. You sit there, at the head of the table, next to him and his bride, a proud mother, but also, your own place of honor. The best midwife they’ve ever had, they say.

Your son is enjoying the attention and praise, as he should. A war hero, they call him. A damn fine physician, proclaims the mayor, recounting the letter he’d received from the chief of the medical corps. 

As the feast goes on, your son’s laugh gets louder, his speech more boisterous, the howling at his jokes more raucous. You watch him surrounded by men of some status and you occasionally glance at the woman sitting next to you, quiet, regal as she watches the room. And you notice the looks she is getting, curious, resentful.

When the music starts, he moves to the middle of the dancing throng, beckons to her, with a smile as bright as the sun, but his bride shakes her head after a long moment of watching him and the people around her. 

He chuckles, arms stretched out in a kind plea, but she seems to draw into herself. You hesitate to take her hand, comfort her; perhaps it would only make her feel worse?

He frowns, head down in defeat as he turns his back to her. Reaches into his pocket for a moment. Then turns again, the smile and demeanor of a boy enticing a timid girl who he’s certain is infatuated with him.

His bride stands up then, walks over to him, and you think you see the bracelets glow with the faintest blue light as she does so, but it must be a trick of the light. Because, a moment later, the light is gone and he takes her hands and they begin to twirl and weave among the other dancers.

***

A month later your son has won some hard battles as a doctor. People fall ill and get hurt all the time, but he’s there, valiant and relentless. Even so, he cannot help them all, save them all. You know this well, because even the best midwife this town has ever seen cannot save a child or a mother every time.

Your son is well paid, by the mayor, but also by others. You see him one evening, through the bedroom door that’s been left ajar. He’s removed a plank from the floor by the bed and you watch him lower a small, jingling sack into the hole. 

A sickness begins to spread through town then, especially among those of higher birth. Some die, but most survive and your son is to thank, the mayor proclaims.

All the while, his bride, your daughter in law, is a strange presence in your home. She cleans, she helps you cook, but ever she keeps her distance from you. You do not begrudge her that, though it hurts a little. A new world, a new house—it must just take time, that’s all.

You offer to teach her to write, since she cannot speak, but can obviously understand your language. She seems reluctant, but one morning you manage to sit her down, show her how the letters are shaped. She writes some out herself, but seems to lose interest the next day.

The priest gives a sermon, talks at length of the hardships of life and of the importance of not giving in to despair. Of not reaching for solutions outside the light of the divine, no matter how tantalizing they might seem. Of rejecting evil, no matter which shape it takes.

The women talk—not to you, of course. But age is yet to blunt your senses, so you hear them when they believe you’re out of earshot. Poor her, they say. Her daughter in law’s a witch, they whisper. A demon that cast a spell on her poor son. Maybe she was the reason for that sickness, too. 

It’s so easy to say it, to believe it. Were you in their shoes, would you say it, believe it, too? Perhaps. 

***

Then one day, the news spread across town, fast as lightning. The mayor’s fallen ill. Your son is dispatched and he fights for the man’s life for days. The sickness that you’ve believed had passed? No, they say, this is something else. Age, some say. His overindulgent way of life, others say. Poison, some whisper. 

Assassin, whisper others. A woman was seen leaving his house, in the dead of night, crawling up a wall. 

Nonsense, you know this. 

The priest is there, you’re told, with your son by the mayor’s side, for long stretches of time. In the end, the mayor breathes his last. 

That night, when you ask your son about it all, he speaks calmly despite the great weight he seems to bear. But as he drinks his wine, he becomes flustered. That damn priest, he blurts out at one point, and then his eyes grow dark before he smiles, shakes his head, and tells you he’s tired. Off to bed he goes, his bride waiting for him there.

***

A new mayor is elected, a man who often clashed with the old one, as you might expect. He praises your son for all he’s done while attempting to save his predecessor.

The people talk more openly now. Sympathy for your son, the dedicated healer who had done all any man could. Suspicion about his bride because that woman they claim had been with him before he died, well, who could it be, not one of us, surely, no, not one of us. Whispers are soft, featherlight things, but they can still crush someone like a boulder. 

That week you listen to the priest give another sermon. It’s one you haven’t heard before, perhaps one he’s never before had reason to give. He talks about acceptance of those who are different, of the importance of embracing them as our brothers and sisters. You see glances cast at your son’s bride, there in the back row, and you notice some of them mellow as the sermon continues and the priest’s voice grows ever stronger, his speech more pointed. Later, as you leave the church, there are some who say good day to her, some even go out of their way to be pleasant as they pass her by, glancing as they do at the symbols of faith on the temple door. 

***

A young man, dashing in his military uniform, approaches you as you’re rushing through town, from one soon to be mother to another. He introduces himself, asks after your son, has only words of praise for him. They served together, in that faraway war.

A great man, your son, he says, and you see it in his eyes: he’s wondering just how proud you must feel as his mother. And I’ve heard his wife is a rare beauty, he says. Must have met her on his way her from the capital, he adds. When you tell him that it can’t be, he says that he ran into him at an inn on the king’s high road, your son was alone. The young soldier is called away by someone and you’re left to wonder at his words. Then again, perhaps he’d just missed your son’s bride at that inn.

As you walk back from town late that evening, your apron bloody from helping bring those twins safely into the world, you hear a yelp from the thick woods to the left. You step off the road. You know the sounds of human distress all too well, hope it’s just someone hurt, because you can’t do a damn thing if it’s bandits—

The young lieutenant is struggling on the ground, fighting for his life. Held down, on the earth and snow, by thin arms, held down as a head bends down low. 

You don’t move, you don’t breathe, there between the trees.

The legs twitch madly, but in vain. The arms go limp. And you move, you make a terrible mistake and move, and as your son’s bride raises her head you gasp at the sight of elongated teeth, pointed and gleaming, a forked tongue. Deep green eyes aglow with monstrous hunger. They take you in and you stumble and already you see your end—only, the hunger is gone. But there is shame and… pleading? For a long moment, pregnant with danger and possibility, your gazes are locked. And then she turns and runs across the snow, vanishing in the trees. 

And as you stand there, your breath hard, wisps of steam curling from the bleeding holes in the neck and face of the youth, as dead as the woods are silent, you still see your daughter in law’s face and eyes… but also the hands; the bracelets around her wrists, gleaming a cold, eerie blue.

***

You walk into the house, filled with terror and apprehension. What do you do? How do you do it? Tell him? Ask him? 

You hear movement, a slight commotion in their room. Slowly you approach, dreading you might hear your son being torn to bits.

You watch through a crack in the door, holding your breath. You don’t see much, but your son is holding something in his outstretched hand, his back to the door as he faces his bride. She is on her knees, contorting in mute pain, eyes staring at the ceiling, mouth agape, the pointed, too long teeth glittering in the lantern light. As she twists and turns on the wooden floor, the bracelets glow, and each time that blue light pulsates, her body seems wracked with renewed agony.

And then the glow fades away and your son helps his bride stand up, and holds her now. He is so gentle, so loving that you’re almost tempted to tell yourself you were mistaken, that all you’ve seen was a trick of the light because how could someone be so loving yet cause such agony to another?

Later, when you feel you might have finally worked up enough courage, your son opens the door and comes out, fully dressed. He has to leave, an urgent business with the new mayor, he tells you—is interrupted by a frantic knocking at your door. The blacksmith’s daughter, a panicked young man tells you. She’s giving birth and it’s too early and and—you calm him with sharp, clear words and let him take you in his cart, your son watching you from the doorway.

And for that night, you’re just a midwife, all other problems and worries pushed to the side as you try to save lives. 

You’re back in that cart early in the morning, tired and anxious at what’s to come, and you bid that same young man stop before reaching your house. You’ll walk, you tell him. Clear your head. 

You want to be alone so you can prepare yourself for… for what? You have no idea what you’ll do. What even can be done?

The door to your house is open. No fire in the fireplace. Not a soul inside.

Two chairs next to the table, placed so that, whoever sat there, they were facing each other, knees almost touching.

A bracelet on the floor between the chairs, broken and twisted, the metal black as if burned. Another bracelet, under the table.

A book by the door, trampled. Black leather binding, pages yellowed with age and use. Words of faith stamped neatly across paper spattered with blood. 

One of the windows facing the woods at the back of the house, open—shattered. Torn fabric caught on glass and splintered wood. Fine fabric, dark blue. Drops of blood. In the deep snow, marks of someone making their way toward the trees.

You discover footsteps in the snow outside your front door, leading down the road. And hoof marks as well, a galloping horse. 

You walk, heart heavy, mind and gut tangled in knots.

***

The lake is not far, down that road and to the right. Descend an incline, between bushes and trees, toward the ice under the cloudy sky.

The horse is near the edge of the bank, grazing tufts of dying grass peeking out of the snow. 

Your son is on the ice. The priest, dead at his feet, where moments before your son had his hands around his neck, had stared him in the eyes as life drained out of the man of faith. The man who’d defended your daughter in law when everyone else spoke only ill of her. Who, it seems to you, had found a way to free a trapped woman.

Your son doesn’t know you’re there, not yet. He stands up, a look of disgust on his face as he regards the corpse. 

He would sometimes be cruel to children smaller than him, but you would chide him and he’d promise he’d do better. He’d be aggressive toward boys bigger than him, but you’d said that was him learning to stand up for himself, even when several of the boys were hurt so badly that they’d avoided going near him even as adults.

When the baker’s daughter, ten years old, and the tailor’s son, eleven years old, went missing, you all believed they’d run away, two foolish children in love, defying their parents. When days later you found a girl’s dress in the shed, caked in mud, he’d told you that he’d found it only an hour earlier, coming back from the field, had wondered if maybe it was the baker’s daughter’s dress, had put it there until he was done with taking the sheep out to pasture. A day later he was among those who searched the longest, just a boy of thirteen, but so dedicated and brave.

He’d jest unkindly with your houseguests when he became of age, the man of the house, and then with a smile and more wine and food force them back into a good mood.

All this and more, you saw and you heard and yet… you pretended it was nothing serious. A mother’s love is a beautiful thing, isn’t it? Beautiful and blind.

He kicks the corpse at his feet, savagely, gleefully. And the ice responds with a soft crack, terrible in its implication. Your son makes a step, and there’s another crack, louder, portentous.

He turns in place and his eyes go wide.

Mother, he calls, throw me the rope. 

And your hand is already holding one end of it, before you know it, the rope hanging from the saddle.

Mother, I can explain, it’s all right, he says. It was her, she bewitched me, mother, he says. She did it, I’m innocent, he cries. She’s to blame, mother, don’t you believe me, he asks, frantic now.

You know the answer. 

You turn your back, slowly, shaking.

You’ve always known. But people so easily close their eyes to the bad things around them. To bad people. The closer they are to us, the more willful our blindness.

Mother, he calls for you as you drop the end of the rope.

Mother, he shouts, as you take one step and then another, a cold seeping into your bones that has nothing to do with the snow under your boots and the chill in the air turning your tears to frost.

Mother, he screams. With a thunderous crack the ice finally gives, or maybe that was just your heart breaking.

You turn, finally, once silence settles on the lake. Nothing but a jagged opening there and calm, dark water. The horse ambles further and further away from the bank, searching for more to graze. You stand there for a long, long time, the world so, so quiet as you wonder if you’d ever move again.

***

The day has turned to night by the time you’re back in your empty, cold house. You light the fire, sit down in your chair, wrap yourself in blankets, but they don’t help. There’s no more tears in you, yet there’s an ocean of grief lapping at your shores.

A noise wakes you from your stupor. In the doorway, a shadow that turns into a shape. Your son’s bride, dress torn, black hair unruly, dark green eyes deep pools of sorrow.

She walks up to you, kneels. Hesitates.

Another victim of your son, perhaps the only surviving one.

And so there, by the fireplace that cannot warm you, your arms envelop her and she responds in kind. The embrace is tight, as if you might squeeze the pain out of each other.

In the morning she is gone.

Outside, in the snow, you find bootprints, leading into the woods behind your house. First bootprints, then footprints, and in the nearby bush you see a red boot. Footprints, a torn dark blue dress by a frozen puddle. Footprints, a green shawl tossed away, caught by a low branch. Footprints… and then just a thin line in the snow, as if something small and thin had slithered through it, and a hole in a pile of it under a large oak.

And for a moment then, between the roots of the ancient tree, I raise my head, my scales nut brown, my head black as midnight, my eyes a deep green. I regard you as you stand there, breathless, and then I slowly turn, vanish in the roots and snow and brush.

You turn and start back toward your house. Later, you’ll lift that floorboard and take the gold and silver and jewels, give them away to those who need it the most. You’ll try to live, if such a thing is even possible after what you’ve done. You’ll help more children come into the world, save many more a mother’s life.

For now, you walk, the snow under your feet, the cold on your face, the guilt in your heart.

But also, the knowledge that you ended what had to be ended. That you put a stop to something that should have been—but no, there’s no point in crying over spilled milk, is there?

You’ll live with what you did and didn’t do and try to find solace in the fact that, because of you, others will live who might have died. 

It will have to be enough.

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The Bride © 2025. Igor Rendić

[EN] Igor Rendić is a translator, writer, editor, and podcaster. He likes nature walks, fiction in most of its forms, video essays, and pizza.

The short story The Bride was originally published in the Morina kutija, no. 9 (kolovoz, 2025). You can download it for free from morinakutija.com/mag or Smashwords.

[HR] Igor Rendić je književni prevoditelj, pisac, urednik i podcaster. Voli šetnje prirodom, fikciju u većini njenih pojavnih oblika, video eseje i pizzu.

Priča The Bride objavljena je u online časopisu Morina kutija, br. 9 (kolovoz, 2025.). Časopis možete besplatno preuzeti s morinakutija.com/mag ili s platforme Smashwords.

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Urednički komentar: Odličnom uporabom drugog lica koji vas uljuljka u gotičku atmosferu, ova mračna folk fantastika ilustrira stvarne užase kroz bajkoviti izraz.

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Featured image: photo by Maria Orlova, Pexels