The Shadow by Neil M. Gunn Page A

exactly like the one in the hallucination, but near enough to be instantly recognised. Now is all that morbid business cleared up? Splendid! I feel charged with energy, like a good housewife on a bout of cleaning. A veritable spring -cleaning. Hurrah! I’m off to clean up the shadow.
    So I set off.
    It had been misty in the morning and we wondered if the weather was breaking, but just after midday the sun won through. Marvellous its coming, white with the victory of delight, and, in a moment, intimate and friendly on the hands, warm as a kitten. A distant spot glistened reddish-gold like foxes in a stir. I wander up by the little ravine. Greyface, the young horse, comes trotting along, head up. I have nothing for him and explain how forgetful I am. I manage to give his neck a friendly clap, but his head is hard and strong. Though I no longer have any fear of him, I don’t quite like him following behind. Away you go! Thundering he goes, and I know so well what he feels (outracing his own mind) that—I was going to say I race with him, but that’s not at all what happens. And then I saw the birch tree. I don’t know how I missed it before, probably because nearly all the trees in the ravine are old elms (seen from the other side of the valley, they wander up the sloping fields like the world’s legendary serpent). This birch was nearly as huge as an elm. And old, too. His silver skin was all cracked. Oddly enough, he seemed to have no symmetry; an ungainly growth, with branches pushed out like an idiot-giant’s arms. But then, as I looked, the marvellous balance, the subtle self-compensating arrangements, were really very wonderful. It takes nature to do a thing like this, to produce the refinement of symmetry in the apparently asymmetrical. So I went close up and began to explore the trunk. What a world! The silver-grey skin that had burst and curled over, firm to the fingers as metal; the crumbling within the cracks, where the inner bark is already turning back to soil; the remarkable formations of lichen, here like dry blistered greenish paint, there fringed and frozen like miniature Arctic forests. Within this world, so vast on its own scale, I watch an alert spider going, with abrupt stops, about his sinister business. I slip out of myself into this new vastness. And then my hand, by accident or on its own, comes flat against the tree, and suddenly, with an effect of astonishing surprise, I find that the trunk is warm ! No wonder, of course, because I have put my hand on the side that is towards the sun. All the same, I have had the surprise of the warmth of life—and the delight.
    Things are beginning to clean up pretty well, what? (I put the question to you on the spot and laughed—for there was nobody to hear but yourself.)
    Let me pass through the Dark Wood. I couldn’t clean it up, but I held my own. The policeman was the immediate trouble. Anyway, it’s a big job, but I have taken the measure of it. Every house has its corner which you leave to the last. I want to take particular care with the Dark Wood. I have got to clean up all round about it first, so that I shan’t be surprised by anything coming in on me. Better to finish with the ceiling before you sweep the floor.
    At least you can see over the moor; the burn I love at any time; and the mountains did not overwhelm—these monstrous but serene squatters. I realise that all the time what the dear old unconscious has been concerned about is the gorge where the small birches grow. That’s the first place to tackle. (And I wonder just how much of childhood goes into that?) So I decide to tackle it, up and down and across, until its most hidden corners know and accept my feet.
    I am just a trifle nervous as I round a last tiny bluff—and then there is a commotion in the air, a dark flash, a strike, a puff of tiny feathers, and the air is empty. I cannot move, and it takes me a little time to realise that a