The Charwoman's Shadow
by Lord Dunsany
XXI: White Magic Comes to the Wood
Through the wood to which Ramon Alonzo had gone with his plans he walked disconsolate. What would he do when all his plans had succeeded and he had got back his shadow, if this sinister thing of gloom was to show at his heels whenever his human shadow should drink in the noonday sun? And his plans had seemed so sure.
Yet he was pledged to the knightly quest of the charwoman’s shadow, whatever embarrassments might befall his own, and from this the laws of chivalry did not allow him to swerve. And the more that she was an ancient and withered crone, the more he knew that he must be true to his pledge, for she had no other knight; no sword would stir for her into the light but his. But he walked disconsolate because of his own redundance of shadows which he foresaw to the end of his days.
It seems but a little thing to have two shadows, too slight a cloud to darken the gaiety of any mood of youth; how often on glittering evenings has a man or a maiden danced, happy below the splendour of arrayed chandeliers, and followed by scores of shadows? But Ramon Alonzo had learned, as those only learn who have ever lost their shadow, that side by side with great things and with trivial, there are deviations that are outside human pity; and this, the most trivial of them all, any unusual shape of a shadow, was no more tolerated than horns and tail. So absurd a prejudice cannot be credited unless it has been experienced.
He came in his melancholy walk to the mossy roots of an oak; and there he sat him down, and leaning back against the bole of the tree took out from a wallet the parchment and pen and ink he had brought and began to write supposed script of heathen lands, and amongst it the second syllable of the spell, which should shape for him two-thirds of the key of the shadow-box.
Hardly had he written that one Cathayan syllable, and added a few fantastic shapes of his own, when he heard a rustling a little way off in the wood. He sat upon the moss and listened: it grew to a pattering; a sound as of small feet scurrying over leaves, pushing through bracken, leaping rocks and dead branches, in a hurry that seemed to have suddenly come to the wood, and was stirring bramble and briar before him and far on his left and right. And it was coming nearer. Then Ramon Alonzo heard shrill little squeaks above the sound of the scurrying; and all at once an imp came bounding by, and two more and then another. Then the snap of a twig and a rustle drew his attention upon his other side, and six more were running past him; and soon he saw a line of imps fleeing desperately through the wood, not troubling to keep out of sight of him on the far side of trees going by, some passing barely out of reach of his hand. He saw their small round bodies bobbing by, then heard them brush through the bracken into the distance, and not for a moment did one of them cease to scurry. They were jabbering to each other as they went, evidently in great perturbation. And then a gnome came by, carrying a bundle, an old fellow three times as large as an imp and wearing clothes of a sort, especially a hat. And he was clearly just as frightened as the imps, though he could not go so fast. Ramon Alonzo saw that there must be some great trouble that was vexing magical things; and, since gnomes speak the language of men, and will answer if spoken to gently, he raised his hat, and asked of the gnome his name. The gnome did not stop his hasty shuffle a moment as he answered “Alaraba,” and grabbed the rim of his hat but forgot to doff it.
“What is the trouble, Alaraba?” said Ramon Alonzo.
“White magic. Run!” said the gnome, and shuffled on eagerly. More than this he did not say, nor thought more necessary, for he had uttered the one thing that magical folk dread most.
A few more things ran by that haunt woods that are subject to magic, one or two elves and their like; then a deep hush came on the wood, for everything had fled. Ramon Alonzo wondering, and listening quiet in the hush, heard after a while shod hooves, coming from that direction from which everything had fled. Then he heard branches brushing by, far noisier than the soft scurrying of the flight of the magical things, but leisurely and calmly. This was nothing that fled: this then was the white magic. The hooves drew nearer and the brushing of large branches. Then a mule’s face came through the foliage, and, bending low to avoid the bough of an oak tree, there appeared Father Joseph.
His face was very red and very moist, for riding through a wood is no joyous pastime. He did not look a shape to have driven to terror all magical things that dwelt in the dark of the wood.
“Good morrow,” said Father Joseph.
“Good morrow, Father,” replied Ramon Alonzo, rising up from his mossy seat and doffing his hat. Then Father Joseph turned awhile to the business of clambering out of the saddle, after which he took his mule by the bridle and walked up to Ramon Alonzo.
“What brings you to the wood?” said Ramon Alonzo uneasily, for every dealing with magic leaves its trace on the conscience.
Father Joseph beamed towards him with his red face. “I came to see you,” he said.
Again Ramon Alonzo doffed his hat. “And what brought you to me?” he said.
“Peril of your soul,” said Father Joseph jovially.
Ramon Alonzo was silent awhile. “Have I imperilled it?” he asked lamely.
“Have you had no dealings with the Black Art?” smiled Father Joseph.
“None to risk my salvation,” said the young man.
“Let us see,” said Father Joseph.
Thereupon he made the sign of the Cross before Ramon Alonzo. At which, though Ramon Alonzo did not see it, for his face was towards the sun, the false shadow fell off from his heels. Then Father Joseph took a bottle of holy water, a hollowed rock-crystal that hung on a small silver chain from his belt, and cast the holy water upon the moss round Ramon Alonzo’s heels. And the false shadow lying upon the moss got up and ran away. Ramon Alonzo saw it rush over a sunny clearing and lose itself amongst great true shadows of trees.
“Gone!” he exclaimed.
“Yes,” said Father Joseph.
Thus passed from the young man’s sight, and was lost forever, a shadow false, growthless, and magical, which none the less was all the shadow he had. A little while ago he had longed for this very thing, and had grown despondent with longing, but a new feeling came to him now as he stood there perfectly shadowless.
“What shall I do?” he said wistfully.
“Get back your own true shadow,” said Father Joseph.
“But how if I cannot?” replied Ramon Alonzo.
“At all costs get back your shadow,” said the priest.
“Is it so urgent as that?” asked Ramon Alonzo.
Then the benign red face of Father Joseph became graver than he had ever seen it yet, like strange changes that sometimes come suddenly at evening over the sun, and he said in most earnest tones: “On Earth the shadow is led hither and thither, wherever he will, by the man; but hereafter it is far otherwise, and wherever his shadow goes, alas, he must follow; which is but just, since in all their sojourn here never once doth the shadow lead, never once the man follow.”
“And what of the shadow that has gone through the wood?” asked Ramon Alonzo, awed by the priest’s tones.
“Damned irretrievably,” said Father Joseph. “And if a man died with such a thing at his heels it leads him violently to its own place. Four angels could not drag him from it.”
Ramon Alonzo had held his breath, but breathed again when he heard that death with the thing at his heels was needed for its last triumph.
“It is gone from my heels now,” he said cheerily.
“Aye, and be thankful,” said Father Joseph. “But wait! Where is your true shadow?”
“In a box,” the young man admitted.
“Such shadows darken nor grass nor flower in all the lawns of Heaven.”
“Cannot they come there?” said Ramon Alonzo.
Said the priest: “They know not salvation.”
“And I?” asked Ramon Alonzo.
“I have told you.”
“Can a mere shadow take me?”
“They are of more account than man in the Kingdom of Shadows.”
“Can one not struggle against them?” said Ramon Alonzo.
“Their power is irresistible,” said the priest, “as the power of the body over the shadow is irresistible here.”
“Alas,” said Ramon Alonzo.
“Can you not recover it?” asked Father Joseph.
“I will try,” said Ramon Alonzo.
Father Joseph smiled. He had come for no other purpose than to give this wholesome advice. And now he heavily clambered back to his saddle.
Ramon Alonzo doffed his hat and gravely said farewell, pondering all the while on the key he was making that should open the shadow-box and free his soul from the grip of a doomed shadow. But how if the magician would not read again for him? How if he did not mutter again as he saw the Cathayan syllable? In the anxiety that these queries caused him he hurried back to his mossy seat below the bole of the oak, and hastened to write that sentence in which, like a curious jewel, the crystal of some rare element, he set the second syllable of the spell. And however fantastic he tried to make the letters that he invented, that Cathayan shape still loomed from amongst the rest the most exotic, and even—as he thought—the most dreadful, upon that parchment. With this he hurried back to the house in the wood.