Free Queen of the Dark Things by C. Robert Cargill

and they use whatever guile they can to gain access to children they can drag into the water.
    Kutji, on the other hand, are somewhere between these two extremes.
    A kutji is a shadow native to the deserts of the outback. Often appearing warped and distorted, they are shaped as their shadow hung at the moment their body passed. This leaves them ranging in appearance from short, squat, and square to tall, lithe, and gangly, possessed of limbs the length of a grown man. Their bodies are made entirely of darkness and thus they are terrified of the sun, living in holes, cracks, or under rocks and abandoned vehicles. If caught away from their haunts near dawn, they will take shelter anywhere dark and hide until the sun sets once more. Exposure to sunlight boils them away almost immediately and, once destroyed, they will never return. While artificial light is painful to them, it poses no real threat and they will endure it if the reason is good enough.
    Kutji are usually formed as the result of violent, unjust, or unwelcome death. It is very rare for a peaceful or accidental death to result in forming one. Most often they are formed by the fear and anger building up over a short period of time between learning of their death and experiencing it. In that moment, the dying think of all the things they left unfinished, all of the anger they have for the person killing them, and they cling to that rather than finding release. The moment their soulstuff is released, if an area is as particularly rich in dreamstuff as the outback is, a kutji can be formed.
    They do not exist as they did in life. Their wit, their passionate desires, and their quirks remain, but their humanity is stripped from them, so much so that they don’t even bother to imitate it. They are in thrall to their desires, trying again and again to achieve the unattainable satisfaction of completing whatever task eluded them in life. Oftentimes this can be the accumulation of wealth, satiating sadistic urges, or getting revenge for some slight done to them. On rare occasions the task can be specific, like getting hold of a certain item or killing an individual. But like many spirits, the kutji lose their way over time and those desires become blurred, muddled, sometimes confusing one object with another.
    The kutji cannot be satisfied. It is their curse. They walk the earth, fearing the light, convinced that completing their task offers some great reward. Whether it be death, a respite, or a return to the land of the living, they each pine for something and think achieving it will grant it to them. But it never does.
    However short of memory they might be about their reason for being, they are both long of memory and extraordinarily patient. A kutji will work for years, even decades, on a single task. But unable to affect many things in the mortal world, they often must turn to dreamspeakers or anyone else able to peer past the veil. With these people, the kutji often strike bargains, offering to do dark deeds or help gather the dreamstuff to perform magic. Dreamspeakers, better known as Clever Men or shamans, have learned over time to cultivate relationships with local kutji and call upon them to do whatever they need done, often unaware of the kutji’s true motivations. In truth, these motivations rarely affect the dreamspeaker, as it is customary for the first deal struck to be one of nonaggression.
    Kutji, like many spirits, are bound to their own word. As certain memories fade, so too do the details surrounding such an agreement, leaving behind only the prohibition or promise and an understanding that this prohibition or promise is sacred law. Breaking such an oath is like deciding to put your hand into a fire, or to jump from a cliff, or to cut off your own foot. They believe doing so is the key to their undoing, no matter how small or insignificant the agreement might be.
    Unlike more terrifying menaces, kutji aren’t particularly violent or directly