SHULA AND THE SUN Shor t stor y by Hannah Thompson Illu stration by A shle y Floréal
The sky was stormy that night as Shula walked towards the cliff path for the first time. The brambles surrounding the muddy track grew taller than her head and tore at her hands. The thistles caught on her dress and she trod in every puddle with her slippered feet. She was two when her parents died and she was sent to live with her withered aunt and brittle uncle. They had not been blessed with children and it grew inside them like weeds. Shula was too talkative, too curious and far too beautiful. But she belonged to them. She arrived in the moonlight, wrapped in blankets, with a warning; ‘Shula should not be in the sun. It does strange things to her.’ So she spent her days and years behind heavy curtains, cooking and cleaning as soon as she was tall enough to reach the stove. Her nights were spent sneaking out to play with imaginary pixies in the starlit garden. As she grew, so did her discontentment. She had no real friends and no company aside from her ageing aunt and uncle who grew more demanding by the day. She spent hours plotting how she could leave, but she had nothing and no idea what lay beyond the locked gates and high fences. When she peered from the upstairs windows, all she could see were fields and beyond that, cliffs, the grey sea and the old lighthouse. But one dark autumn night, on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, the wind began to change. As she swept the front path and dreamt of escape, a piece of bright white paper caught her eye against the dark wood stain of the heavy gate. She twisted it from its hiding place below a hinge and balked when she saw her name written in block capitals. Her aunt had taught her to read so she could ‘make herself useful’ and write the household letters. She glanced behind her at the house. It was still. She tucked the note into her apron pocket and hurried back up the path to the shelter of the porch. She placed the broom carefully against the wall and pulled the note out. The paper was thick, slightly rough to the touch. The ink was jewel black and the writing wild. She gently unfolded the note. I’ve admired you from afar. That was all it said. No name or clue who had sent it. Shula turned it over in her hands as her mind raced. Who could have written it? She knew no one but her aunt and uncle, and had never been allowed to leave their house or garden. Was it even meant for her? She climbed into her cold bed that night and didn’t sleep a wink, the note clutched in her hand and her dark eyes wide. After that, the notes came once a week, telling her how lovely her long dark hair was, how they had never seen anyone like her. One day, the letter-writer asked her to write back. Shula didn’t sleep for days as she lay awake, clutching the notes and wondering what to do. It was a bitter night in January when she decided to sneak downstairs and steal the blue pen from her aunt’s bureau. She scrawled Who are you? at the bottom of the paper, then crept down the frozen path to the gate and wedged the note back in the gate. The next evening it was gone. 48
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