Free The Shadow by Neil M. Gunn

sheep and the stone ruins, and then all at once I saw my father. He was doing something to a fencing post. I cannot tell you how strange it was for me to see my father working there and him not to know I was looking away down at him. My elder sister must have been with me I suppose, but I don’t remember her at that moment. I wanted to cry to my father, but I couldn’t. He was alone and somehow there was a strangeness about his being all alone. Anyway—for I mustn’t go on like this—I knew that wood. Birches must grow in my blood! Behold me then at the ripe age of sixteen coming down (not going up) through this wood. It is a still February day, one of those days when the earth, having been busy with the furies and changes of the elements, takes a rest. And all at once, Ranald, I realise that spring is coming. It is at hand. The birches know and are waiting. It is in the quality of the daylight, a grey soft light. I look far up into the sky and the blue is milky. Then I become aware of the birds, chaffinches, tits, the rousing song of a wren, a thrush singing away along the wood. But I don’t think of them much, because of this expectancy of the spring itself that is about me, this quiet waiting that the singing hardly affects. There is no-one in the Hallow. The stone ruins, grey with age and lichen, are quietly still. You don’t think of them as ruins because spring, so infinitely older, is near. You are aware that everything has its own secret awakening. I am only one thing, and I had better go quietly. But oh what a gladness and (I can’t find the word) gratitude is in my heart. I am bursting with this knowledge and love of each thing and yet am inwardly stilled. For I mustn’t make a noise. I go down the wood and distinctly get the faint fragrance of the approaching spring. It is an earthy fragrance, with a touch of burning wood or heather in it. I am trying to be exact. But it is a fragrance—and I know a few—that nothing else ever quite equals. No other scent quickens like this. Bear with me—for I hesitate—if I say that it quickens in a timeless, immortal way.
    As I go to the house, I see snowdrops. But I don’t bend and sniff them—memory of honey in the sun-warmed white scent—as I did going out. I walk past them, tall and unbending. I don’t want to talk to anyone so I avoid the back door and enter by the front. Instead of going up to my bedroom, however, I quietly turn the knob of the front sitting-room—our parlour. And then a queer thing happens—I don’t close the door behind me. The impulse to leave it open is too strong. In a moment—the same instant—I know why. I mustn’t shut out what has been accompanying or following me. I mean the spring. I go and sit in the big armchair. There is no fire on. The room looks chilly and deserted, unused. I am distinctly aware of this, but it doesn’t matter. In fact in some strange way—as if it were a strange place—it is right. Even the smell of furniture polish. I sit there waiting, slumped in the chair. Then I begin to feel it drawing near. Panic touches me. I must get up and break what’s holding me and get away before it comes to the door, but I cannot move. The expectancy and the panic increase. An ancient fear is in the panic and yet what’s coming is a tallness of light. I know it can come and stand in the door and look at me. Beyond that I cannot know anything, I dare not. I try to break this tension or it will become unbearable, and I assure myself of phantasy. But I cannot move. At last I do, and see my legs and tuck them under me. They had looked as if they were not my legs. But this forced effort doesn’t do any good. Perhaps I don’t want it to. I cannot tell (not even now). Yet it is certain that I got up, trembling, my heart not far from my mouth, not hurrying, holding myself, and went through the open door—just in time.
    What had I