His name is Malik.

He sits across from me in one of the many identical chambers of the Shifting House, seeking a reunion. By the pearlescent light that glimmers from the lamp above our heads I can see the valleys carved by his tears, aging flesh eroded by the ravages of time and sorrow. He tries to hide his grief with a speckled grey beard, but all it conceals are the faded creases of long-lost laughter about his lips. He is sumptuously dressed in robes of purple and orange silk, clearly a man of renown outside these walls, but all men are brought low by grief. All are equal before the Sisters of the Shifting House.

He has brought me a relic: a brooch, an ornate silver rose bedecked with sapphires. A rich man’s gift. I suspect it’s worth more than everything I’ve ever owned, but any urge to covet it is driven away by the wash of emotions as I cradle it. Every object has a story, every handful of ash which trickles through my fingers has an owner. The brooch’s owner may be no more, but it remembers her, each curve of its filigree resonating with emotion’s echo. I take a deep breath, close my eyes and lower my barriers, letting the memory of desire climb my arms like tendrils of ivy, twining around my chest, choking my skin as my bones itch, realigning as my flesh melds into a form which is no longer mine.

Malik inhales sharply in recognition as I peek out from behind new eyes. The moments after a change are disorienting, and it would not be the first time I’ve opened my eyes to the sight of a sobbing supplicant. They all come to the Shifting House in search of a chance for… what? Remembrance? Forgiveness? A chance to say goodbye? Only the House Mother knows for sure.

The ways of the Shifting House are no secret; supplicants know what to expect within, but even so the reality of their wishes made flesh can be overwhelming. Not to Malik. He remains seated, two armspans from me, with eyes like rainclouds. I am wreathed in desire. No, not desire; need. Beneath the surface I catch flashes of resentment, of comfort and long-crystallised sorrow, but the intensity of emotion makes it hard to breathe. “Who stands before you?” I ask, the ritual words reaching my tongue by force of habit alone.

Grief cracks his voice as he whispers, “Anica. My wife.”

“Then speak of the days you shared with Anica,” I intone through unfamiliar lips. “The good times, and the bad. Say all that you wish her to hear.” The House Mother approves of this gentlest of mis-truths. The dead are gone. They cannot hear the words which spill from the mouths of the widowed in the Shifting House. It is the act of speaking which matters, to set the living free from their imagined responsibility to the dead. I make no pretence of being Anica; I am simply a point of reference, a guidepost amidst the smoke and dust of memory. A relic may grant insight into the owner’s emotions, glimpses of love, hate, connections stretching out in a fragile, invisible web, but blinded by Anica’s need I find it difficult to glean any deeper understanding. A faint scent of rose petals rides the air, attentive, reassuring.

Malik struggles for words. After empathy, patience is the most valuable trait a shifter can possess. How does one tell a stranger - even one wearing your lover’s face - about the life that you lived together? Where would one begin the telling? “You…” He hesitates.

“She,” I prompt, gently. It is one of the rules of the Shifting House: No shifter shall assume the personality of another while taking their form. No supplicant may enter the halls without the House Mother’s approval; She sets the price, She sets the rules, and watches through many eyes. No physical contact, as much for the supplicant’s safety as for the shifter’s; in all my years in the house, I have yet to encounter a man or woman who has never been wanted, has never been the object of desire or possessiveness or lust. After all, relics of flesh and bone are no less potent than those of silver and precious stones.

“We grew old together, Anica and I,” Malik says at last. “She was my companion into twilight. We took solace in each other’s company, a chance to live again, to weaken grief’s stranglehold. But grief and I are old acquaintances. It is not easily denied.”

“For whom did you grieve?” I ask.

“Anica is not the first love I have outlived.” His voice wavers. “But I did not speak of Mireya in front of Anica, and while you wear Anica’s face… it would be disrespectful. I am here to bid farewell to Anica, not to unravel life’s skein.”

The brooch thrums in my hands, the heat of Anica’s need threatening to turn it to ash. It is too soon. Malik needs more time if he is to unpick his soul from her memory. I take more of her into me, stifling a gasp as I plunge through the surface of need and breathe in the deep waters of pain. She needed him, longed to be understood, but he held back. An imbalance, one I am all too familiar with. “You sought a companion to hide from grief,” I say, “yet you hid your grief from her.”

Malik’s eyes glisten. “And I would do it again. My grief would have consumed us both.”

“Yet you did not question the extent of the grief she hid from you?” I feel it like a knife in my belly, a hollow abyss stretching to infinite depth. It tugs at my feet, threatening to drag me down and never let go. But the House Mother is here, implicit in the scent on the air and the subtle patterns of the walls. Her presence steadies me.

“I did not wed Anica so we could spend twenty years weeping together!” Malik snaps. I do not judge him. It would take a far colder person than I to cry foul upon a choice made of compassion. So I say nothing, and wait.

“She… she never truly loved me,” he says at last, looking down at his hands. “She loved what I could offer her. The comforts my money brought, the gifts I gave, the security of knowing she would never have to eke out her remaining years abandoned by family and friends, living one meal to the next. We ate good food together, drank excellent wine. We discussed books, disapproved of our neighbours, all the things I remember doing in love.

“But I knew how she felt, before we were married. I chose to accept it, and I think Anica did too. Better amiable company than twenty years of loneliness.” He breaks off, but looks up, waiting for me to contradict him. I gaze back as he scrutinises the face of his dead wife. I’ve been told the resemblance of a shifter to the original is doubly uncanny, both for the accuracy of reproduction and an unnerving dissimilarity of bearing.

It would be so easy to pretend to know more than I do, to make assumptions, to tell Malik that which he wants to hear. If I tell him that she’d loved him, truly, beneath all the hidden pain and internal struggles, Anica would never have a voice to contradict me. Yet it is not fear of breaking the House Mother’s strictures which stays my tongue. As much as the human heart yearns for love and acceptance, it seeks truth. It can sense the lack of verisimilitude, and even if I - as Anica - speak from my heart, Malik would turn away. He knows the truth. He wishes only to free it.

I resist the urge to shrink beneath his gaze. A visit to the Shifting House is costly, especially for a man of wealth. Still, it makes me uncomfortable when they stop talking. I’ve had supplicants lunge across the room, their eyes aflame with anger or lust, to strike me down in their grief or to force themselves on me one last time as if their money had bought my body as well as my talents. The House Mother does not permit supplicants to break Her rules. But Malik intends me no disrespect. The brooch grows white-hot against my palms. I have reached the limits of emotion I can leach from it, but I try anyway. My eyes widen as it sears me. So much pain, so much grief, never dulled by the simple act of sharing.

Through force of will, my voice remains steady as I drift in the abyss. “If you have anything more to say to Anica…” A tear forces itself from my eye and wends its way down my cheek. “Say it now,” I breathe.

And as if my tear - Anica’s tear - is the crack in the dam, Malik’s countenance shatters. He weeps the storm that’s been gathering for so many years, the pain behind his eyes, as he professes his love, the love he knew from the start would go unrequited. His words slur into one another, obscured by tears and grief, and I no longer try to follow. I simply wear Anica’s form, the focus for his farewell, and let the tears fall from her eyes, a gentle trickle to his torrent.

In my hands the brooch turns to ash, and when Malik wipes his eyes and raises his head, Anica is gone. There is only me.

Malik returns to the Shifting House seven days later. I’m not surprised. I lack the arrogance to assume I can heal a broken heart in a single conversation, and the House Mother knows best. It isn’t unusual that She would grant a supplicant a second visit. Yet She has no wish for us to become a sideshow for visiting nobility; as Malik takes his seat before me I can comfortably assume that his return has cost him a sizable part of his fortune.

Yet what does surprise me is the relic he offers. This is no rich man’s gift, no lavish outpouring of his wealth, but a simple carved-wood elephant, all smooth corners and soft woodgrain texture. And it was never owned by Anica.

I explain this simple truth to Malik, and he nods in confirmation. “I have made my peace with Anica,” he says, “yet still I grieve.”

“For whom?” I ask, disconcerted. This is most irregular, but the House Mother watches from Her oriel. I sense Her tacit approval in the slightest undulation of the floor, the shade of the walls, the faint scent of long summer afternoons suffusing the chamber.

Malik closes his eyes and bows his head, a snort filling the space between us. “Life is love, then loss. It is cyclical. Love, then loss, then love again.”

“Many choose not to love again,” I reply. “They break the cycle.”

“I pity them,” he replies, without condescension. “What is the point of life without love?”

I have no answers for him. Each person I’ve shifted for has dealt with their grief alone, in their own way. Instead, I let the warmth of the elephant relic suffuse my palms. The heat is distant this time, a near-forgotten memory of contentment. The shift comes more gradually, comfort dulling the scraping of my bones as they shrink into their new form.

“Who stands before you?” My voice is childlike, and my feet dangle above the ground. Despite the numbing peacefulness it unnerves me. There are shifters who specialise in child-form, but I am not one of them. Clearly the House Mother prizes my prior connection with Malik above my personal preference. I do not like being so unlike myself, but I am safe within these walls. I slow my breathing and turn my full attention to my supplicant.

“She is my daughter, Reina,” he says. “Mine and Mireya’s.”

“Then speak of the days you shared with Reina. The good times, and the bad. Say all that you wish her to hear.” The elephant pulses like a child’s heartbeat in my too-small fingers.

“We shared many days, Reina and I,” he begins. “But not enough. How could it ever be enough? I carried her in my arms as a babe, drove away the monsters as she lay awake in the night, sat beside her bed and sang to her until she slept. I chased her across hillsides and picked flowers, taught her to catch tree frogs and follow migrating bluethroats to water. I loved her more every day even as my love for Mireya dwindled like a starved flame.

“Reina was my world. Our lives stretched in front of us; I would teach her all I knew about life, and then she would surpass me. After that, all I would need was pride, to watch from afar as my daughter reached for greatness I could not hope to aspire to. Yet once I had set her on that path I drew away, unwilling to inadvertently shape her destiny. Instead I threw myself into my business, so I would have the means to support her dreams, whatever they turned out to be. We would have many years to enjoy each other’s company, or so I thought.” He wipes his eyes, though no tears glisten there.

“What happened?” I ask.

“The brackish fever took her. At the week-beginning I had a daughter; three days later I’d lost everything. Mireya had stayed by my side for Reina’s sake, not mine. Our daughter had been our shared dream, but I made Reina my reality at the exclusion of all else, and with only grief binding us together Mireya and I would have torn each other apart. Instead, we let go.

“I always dreamed of a chance for reconciliation, that one day she and I would meet, and see in each others’ eyes what we had lost when you… when Reina stole my heart.” He shakes his head. “I should have been more attentive. I should have spent each of those days in present love rather than anticipation of future happiness.”

I grieve with him, but his pain is deep. It is a part of him now, and even Reina watching him tell his story does little to draw the splinters from his heart. We of the Shifting House do our best work with fresh wounds, with grief not yet entombed by the years. There is little I can do but sit and watch, legs dangling, until the elephant turns to ash, trickling through my child-like fingers like black sand.

I don’t expect to see Malik again - if second visits are uncommon, further audiences at the Shifting House are unheard of - so I find it impossible to conceal my confusion when he enters the room for the third time in as many weeks. ‘Hello again,’ he says, his face weary as if he’s barely slept since we first met. Grief does strange things to people, and it’s clear Malik can no longer outpace his sorrow.

His silks are only memory now; he comes to me as a true supplicant, wearing rough trousers and a linen shirt with polished wooden buttons. The price must have been exorbitant to bring a man such as he to ruin, but I do not disapprove. The House Mother must have had a reason to let him return. Was bringing him low an essential part of his grieving process? Some shield themselves from grief by surrounding themselves with friends and family, others spread cruelty and malice, while rich men shelter behind their good fortune and wealth.

Malik has given all of that up now. He stands before me, his hands empty.

“Her name was Nazira,” he says to me. “I loved her, and she loved me back.”

This is all wrong. I hold no relic in my hands, carry no form but my own. I open my mouth to object, but Malik doesn’t stop. “She wasn’t my first love, nor I hers. We’d both been quenched in the oil of failed passions, and emerged resilient, wiser. But this was something different, something divine. We were going to spend the rest of our lives together. We knew from the first time we talked all night and shared the dawn.”

“I have no relic,” I say as he pauses in remembrance. How can I help him face his grief in this form, unknown to him?

“There is no relic,” he replies. I reach for the House Mother to soothe my apprehension, but Her absence is palpable. “Nazira’s kin objected to our match, so we ran away. We left everything behind, fled her family and her home, crossed borders and thought to start a new life. We had a two-room cottage, with bare wooden floors and a door which let in the wind, but it was enough just to be there with her.

“I was going to ask her to marry me. We should’ve done it the day we fled, but once we settled in exile we had the illusion of time. There was always something to do - cooking, cleaning, building shelves and fences, shopping for supplies in the nearby town - and we did it all together. As weeks turned to months we stopped looking over our shoulders, secure in our new existence.”

He hesitates, as though waiting for my prompt. How can I speak to him with my own lips? The walls shift, but I take no solace from them. I am beyond the reach of the House Mother’s comforts.

“We underestimated her parents,” Malik says, his hands shaking with rage. “She stayed behind, just once, when I went to buy rice wine and flatbread. I returned to an empty house, stripped of her presence.”

He exhales, standing before me, lost in memories locked in his heart for many years. I try to maintain my composure, just like I would if I’d shifted, but I have no mask to hide behind. Malik tells me his story, for my benefit as much as his. But why would he reduce himself to poverty for a last audience at the Shifting House, if not to ask me to shift? Why would the House Mother allow this unconventional audience, then refuse to guide me?

“I couldn’t believe she’d gone willingly. I knew she loved me, so I followed, returning alone across borders we’d fled together. But they knew I was coming. By the time I returned, Nazira wore another man’s ring.

“She wept into my arms, swore she’d had no choice. I begged her to join me, to flee again. I promised we’d find a forgotten corner of the world where no-one would ever find us. Tears streaming down her beautiful cheeks, she denied such a place existed. Still I pleaded with her to come with me.

“But she had given her vows, and she could not bear to break them. I railed against her words; no god would hold her to a vow given under such coercion! But still she denied me. My Nazira, who loved me like the morning sun, hid her face and told me to go.”

Mother, how do I respond? I’m so accustomed to being informed by the emotions spilling from the relic in my hands that I’m lost without them. How can I know if Nazira spoke true if I can’t feel it? Malik would not be the first supplicant who believed their love reciprocated when it had been little more than obsession mirrored in ego.

“Love and loss,” he says. “Do you understand? I’ve lived too long, loved too freely, lost too much. I want to go back to the start. I want to see Nazira’s face one last time before I die.”

I clasp my hands together, frustrated by my impotence. I taste the air, look for a sign from the House Mother, but She holds her own counsel. What do I say? “Without a relic…”

Malik’s eyes crease with tears too deeply buried to ever resurface. “Nazira loved me,” he says, and kneels, gazing up at me in true supplication. I understand his implication only a moment before he breaks the third rule. Before I can draw away, he takes my hand and presses it to his cheek.

I expect the Shifting House to roar. I expect the House Mother to descend from on high in a skittering slalom upon the blasphemer who laid hands upon one of Her daughters. I expect retribution to be swift. Instead, the House holds its breath.

“Please,” Malik whispers, drawing my gaze back to him. The determination in his eyes is that of a younger man, but the furrows cut into his face by grief are unmistakable. The House Mother raises no cry, gives no tacit approval. She is silent, merely watching. Perhaps I will be condemned for this, yet I dare to believe that this was Her purpose. She is too far removed from humanity to trust Herself to make this choice. Malik, I decide, has suffered enough.

His cheeks glow softly beneath my touch as I breathe him in. Emotions long-suppressed run hot into my veins, but he is no mere brooch, no wooden toy. He has been wanted, desired, possessed, burning passion now turned to ash, transient infatuation forgotten with the passing of days. He has been loved, and he has been lost. It is a torrent, the itching in my bones rising to intolerable pain. I seek his true love, offered and reciprocated in equal balance, but I cannot navigate this flood. I cannot breathe, the weight of his years pressing on my chest, and I know that I chose wrong. I cannot grant him this boon; in seeking to do so I am swept away, tumbling and spinning out of control through memory. His sacrifice will be in vain, and my mind will be lost forever.

A flicker of light. A scent of cut grass. Segmented hands catch me, hold me steady at the heart of the current. Mother. Thank you. I know Her approval, sense it in the wood beneath my feet, the colour of the air. She could not be sure whether to allow this exception. Now, She approves. Supported by Her hand, I search for the nexus of Malik’s love, the brightest beacon in a star-studded sky. I know instantly when I find it that Malik held no delusions. The intensity of Nazira’s love blinds me as the House Mother releases me. I shift.

“Who stands before you?” I ask, the cool air on my face contrasting the heat against my fingertips. The relic burns, just like all the others. Soon it will turn to ash.

Malik smiles, the first truly joyful smile I’ve seen on his face. “Nazira,” he whispers, then is lost.