The Shadow That Ran Away

On the longest day of the year, at nine in the morning, Nando's grandmother sent him to the bakery on the plaza for sweet bread. He was halfway down the cobbled street when he noticed something strange. The sun was warm on his back, but there was nothing on the stones in front of him.

His shadow had gone. Then he spotted it at the corner. It was a thin, dark, boy-shaped patch on the yellow wall of the church, as if it had been waiting for him to notice. When Nando ran toward it, it slipped around the corner and took off.

He stopped, out of breath, and remembered one of his grandmother's old warnings. "If your shadow ever runs off," she always said, "bring it back before noon. At midday the sun looks straight down, and a shadow with no feet to hide under simply disappears." Nando had always thought it was just one of her stories. Now he wasn't so sure.

He spent the next two hours chasing it. He followed it through the market, where it stretched across the fruit stalls and made a woman look up at the sky, expecting a cloud. He nearly caught it by the fountain, but it jumped into the shade of a sleeping donkey and came out the other side. Every time he got close, it ran off again. And every time, it was a little shorter.

By half past eleven, Nando's legs were aching and his shirt was stuck to his back. He sat down on the edge of the fountain. "I've chased you all morning, and I still haven't bought Grandma's bread," he said to the empty ground. "I give up. Go wherever you want."

Across the plaza, the shadow had stopped too. It was hardly bigger than a cat now, and it was getting smaller every minute. The sun was climbing higher, and there was no wall, no tree and no donkey left to hide behind. Nando realized it wasn't running away anymore. It was looking for something. His grandmother could wait a few more minutes for her bread. He stood up, walked to the middle of the plaza, where the light was brightest, and kept perfectly still.

The church bell began to ring twelve. On the sixth stroke, the shadow raced across the stones, so small now that it was barely a puddle, and slid under his shoes. There it shrank into a dark little circle around his feet and stayed, hiding from the noon sun like a cat under a chair. Nando let out a long breath. Then, walking very carefully, he went to buy his grandmother's sweet bread.