Description: Translation of: Schatten.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200273507 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200273590 |
ISBN 9781487008635 (softcover) | ISBN 9781487008642 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781487008659 (Kindle)

Classification: LCC PT2718.A22 S3313 2021 | DDC 833/.92—dc23

Cover design: Adapted from the original by Text

Cover images: Walter Jarolim/EyeEm/Getty and iStock

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We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada.

The Shadow

In the desert

I saw a creature, naked, bestial,

Who, squatting upon the ground,

Held his heart in his hands,

And ate of it.

I said, ‘Is it good, friend?’

‘It is bitter—bitter,’ he answered;

‘But I like it

‘Because it is bitter,

‘And because it is my heart.’

'In the Desert', Stephen Crane

Prologue

She would simply disappear. The ice would crack and give way beneath her feet and she’d be pulled swiftly under—no flailing and thrashing to stay above water, no struggle, just down, down, down into the darkness and silence.

When she was little, she had often walked on the frozen pond that lay between the edge of town and the fields. It didn’t occur to her back then that it was possible to fall through.

To think that such a place existed—a small lake in the middle of the wood, overhung by trees, their branches weighed down by snow as if they were mourning. The tips of her fingers were numb, her toes so cold that they hurt. She swung the torch to and fro. There was nobody here but her. They hadn’t come. And yet there were tracks. Had she missed them? Was she late? She glanced at her watch. No, she wasn’t.

She switched off the torch. Inching her way along the forest path, she had needed the grainy beam of light, but now that she’d stepped out from the shadowy trees, she could do without it.

The stars were bright out here, far from the city. Frosty leaves crunched underfoot. The night glistened. For a moment she forgot what she was doing here in the middle of the night—forgot about the betrayal and the anger and the pain.

She stepped out onto the frozen surface, stopped, listened. The ice creaked, a living being, stirring in a dream.

She listened more closely, looked up at the sky, closed her eyes. The silence sang in her ears.

Strange, she thought.

A wind got up, sharp as a knife and smelling of fresh snow. She hunched her shoulders.

The stars gleamed milkily. She had the feeling she shouldn’t be here.

Then she saw something on the ice. She hesitated. Stooping to get a better look at whatever it was, she reached out a hand to it. When she realised what she was looking at, she recoiled. A dead bird, dark against the white snow, not yet frozen.