Swain Wolfe presents The Woman Who Lives In The Earth & Stolen Shadows

The Woman Who Lives In The Earth by Swain Wolfe

This book is a fable about overcoming fear and hatred. It is the story of Sarah, a young girl who struggles to save herself from the bitter and superstitious villagers, who believe she is a demon responsible for a long and severe drought. It begins with musings about ancient secrets lost in a farmer’s field where a mysterious stone is found. The stone seems to be a symbol for a story that describes a struggle between what is inside and what is outside the stone; a story about the mystery of meaning. Sarah has adventures with magical animals and scenes of enchantment. The reader experiences a pulsating sense of perceived reality dissolving from one state to another. The story is like a waking dream, all told in a dreamy, poetic language, with grace and elegance. As ten year old Casey Chavez says, “It’s awesome.”

The following is Swain Wolfe’s delightful short story. We invite you to imagine Swain Wolfe’s deep, warm, humourous, big-sky accented voice reading it to you.

Stolen Shadows by Swain Wolfe

Copyright Swain Wolfe, 1994

Veritas Day was a lonely man. He lived by himself in a large old house and watched the world below. The world for its part never looked up. It didn’t care a fig or a plum or a grapefruit about Veritas Day. It didn’t even know he existed. Everything about him felt empty, except for his heart and his feet. They were heavy. His heavy heart made breathing difficult, and his heavy feet punched holes in the floor.

He watched the children playing in the park. They shrieked and shouted. They chanted magical rhymes, sang mellifluous songs, and made melodious laughter. They reminded Veritas Day just how lonely he really was. His heart and his feet grew heavier. He had to remind himself to breathe and he could hardly lift his feet. It was easier to shuffle.

One morning he shuffled out to the mail box. It was empty, of course. He peered inside. “I know just how you feel,” he said.

The big emptiness in the mail box made him think of his other problem. He looked down at his heavy feet. They seemed bigger than ever. Perhaps they were growing.

He looked at the feet of people walking by. He noticed their perfectly normal feet had perfectly normal shadows attached to them. It dawned on him that something was terribly wrong.

Veritas Day looked closely at his huge feet. He looked all around just to be sure, but it was true: he did not have a shadow! Not even a vague gray ghost of a shadow. Nothing.

He went to the park and watched everyone’s shadows. A shadow, he began to realize, was a most wonderful thing. Shadows could zoom out and zoom back; they could jump higher and leap longer; and they could dance like nobody’s business. And Veritas Day knew that he was no longer empty. He was full. He was full of envy and his feet were larger and heavier than ever.

He took his heavy heart and his heavy feet and his big envy, and sat down in the shade of a large tree. Very soon he realized something that was almost too much to bear. Even trees had shadows. But that had its advantages. No one could tell that Veritas Day hadn’t a shadow if he sat in someone else’s.

He tried to accept his fate, but his heart and his feet were as heavy as ever, and he was still so full of envy there wasn’t room for lunch.

As Veritas Day shuffled home, a very tall man in a very great hurry passed him by. At the moment the tall man was taking a step and one foot was off the ground, Veritas Day just happened to step on his long, skinny shadow. And the strangest thing happened: the tall man continued down the sidewalk in his hurried way, but his shadow stayed stuck under Veritas Day’s heavy foot.

Veritas Day stared at the long shadow trapped under his foot. He looked up and down the street. No one was watching him. But then no one ever watched him. He reached down and touched the shadow. It didn’t move.

He felt along one edge until he came to a rough spot. He discovered to his amazement that he could get his fingers under the shadow and peel it up from the sidewalk. He looked around, sure that someone was watching, but the street was quiet and empty. He pulled the tall man’s shadow loose, folded it up, and slipped it into his pocket.

Veritas Day forgot his heavy feet. He ran to his house, up the steps, and slammed the door. He was breathing hard, having forgotten the heaviness in his heart. He stood near the window and peered out. No one had noticed.

:Slowly he slipped his hand into his pocket and drew out the tall man’s shadow. Then, and to his absolute delight, he discovered that when he moved the shadow followed. And better yet, it played. Veritas Day skipped, and jumped, and ran, and the tall man’s shadow did the same. He made hand faces on the wall and hopped over imaginary toads in imaginary puddles and the tall man’s shadow did the same. He twirled, and lunged, and skipped, and danced until he was thoroughly tuckered out and ready for bed. The tall man’s shadow followed him up the stairs and into his dreams.

The next morning Veritas Day awoke to a new day with new possibilities. Why not, he thought, try out some other shadows before settling on any particular one? He carefully folded the tall man’s shadow and put it away in his bureau drawer.

After breakfast he went out of the house and down to the park in search of new shadows. Soon people began to notice him. They said hello, or nodded in passing, or watched suspiciously as he stomped on the sidewalk at passing shadows.

He left the park and went downtown and all around town looking for the best shadows. When he found a shadow he particularly like, he would choose his moment, stomp, and stand there, as still and innocent as a flamingo, and wait until its owner walked away. Then he would reach down, pretending to tie his shoe, and carefully pull the shadow from the sidewalk, fold it, and slip it into his pocket.

He had to be quick to catch a shadow, and the quicker the shadow the less likely he was to catch it. Children’s shadows were impossible. He never caught a one. But he collected an enormous number of big people’s shadows, and even though a shadow is as thin as a thought, his pockets began to bulge.

He couldn’t get enough. Every day he went out looking for more shadows and every evening he would bring them home and try them out. He learned how to make them zoom out and zoom back, to jump higher and leap longer, and to dance like nobody’s business. He put one on his head and wore it as a hat; he gave them proper dinner parties, but was careful where he sat; and he whizzed about pretending they were bats.

One morning he came downstairs and tripped on a shadow he had left out the night before. He picked it up and was carefully folding it to put away when he noticed what seemed to be a bright yellow thread right on the very edge of the shadow.

But it was not a thread at all. It was a small split where the shadow had begun to separate along the edge. As he pulled on the two edges something absolutely amazing was revealed. At first he could not even understand what is was.

Hidden beneath the dark part of the shadow, in brilliant colors and hues, were the strangest shapes and images he had ever seen. He examined several other shadows and discovered the same sorts of things. Each shadow seemed to have millions of images hidden inside it.

He took the tall man’s shadow from the bureau drawer, pulled it apart at its edge, and studied the little images. He could make out a small lanky boy with a large grin holding a large cat. In another the same lanky boy was waving to someone. He may have been waving good-by for he seemed to be crying.

At that moment Veritas Day understood. He was seeing the tall man’s memories. People’s memories were hidden in their shadows, which gave real meaning to the idea that your past follows you wherever you go.

He looked around at all the shadows he had stolen--at all the memories lying in heaps and piles without their people. He knew he had done something terribly wrong. And he knew he had to give them all back.

Putting the shadows back was a very difficult business and took a lot of time, but he made several friends along the way. Not the least of which was the green grocer’s daughter.

After, at long last, he found a shadowless person for his last shadow and was on his way home, he became aware of something or someone following him. He turned a corner and waited to see who it was, but no one came. He peered around the corner. No one was there. Then he caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. He glanced down.

There it was. A shadow. His shadow. He, Veritas Day, had his own shadow. He ran all the way home and his shadow ran without him. It zoomed out and zoomed back, it jumped higher and leapt longer, and it danced like nobody’s business.

Of course, when he was giving shadows back he had rarely matched the right shadow with the right person. In fact he may not have made a single match. All he was sure of was that every one of the shadows he had stolen was back with a person who was missing a shadow. “Good enough for shadow work,” he said. He was a happy man with a happy shadow.

He was not troubled for a moment that the wrong shadows were attached to the wrong people. What did it matter? And perhaps it didn’t really. Except.... Except for one thing. Do you suppose that that is the reason why so many grownups seem so strange and confused?

Stolen Shadows by Swain Wolfe, Copyright Swain Wolfe, 1994