On a clear starry night, when the moonlight spread its gentle glow over a quiet little town, an unusual event was about to take place. Each window in each small house was darkening, and soon, except for one, all would be silent and asleep. That one was the room of a little girl named Helen who could not sleep. Something had engaged her fancy.
“Oh, if only I could see the little fairies, or the angels that come to take care of us when we sleep!” she said. “I wish they would show themselves to me; perhaps if I really wished hard enough they would come.”
Shape the Shadow was leaning against the window listening to little Helen, forgetting in his excitement the well-remembered pleasant visit the day before. He was afraid then to speak to her, but now there seemed no reason why he should not, so he cleared his voice and said—just instead of “Shadows”—“Here I am,” said a little voice. “Who is it?” said Helen. “You need not be afraid,” it continued, “none but the fairies can hear me, and they are all asleep. I am Shape the Shadow, and unless I go back to the book I am coming out of I must stay quite still till morning. Who are you?”
“Oh, let us be friends,” said Helen. “I have often seen you, but I never spoke to you before. I used to think you the fairies; will you tell me something about them?”
“There are no good fairies,” said Shape, “but there is such a thing as the good fairy whose name is Imagination, and if you are quite sure you are not going to sleep before I have told you of her do come here in front of my brother the light and I will tell you of her.”
“Oh yes, let me see you,” said Helen. And here he gave himself a shake, and stood stiffly before her holding one hand on the other, while the best shape on his side, which was rather poor and floppy, stood up on his heels and made a great bow.
“But how can you come out of a book?” said Helen. “Shall I find you there and open it? What book do you come out of?”
“You would know nothing about it”, he said. “You are far too young”—which was no doubt true—“it is called the Book of Imagination.”
“What does it look like?” asked the little girl.
“Oh, it is a beautiful book: just think of the most beautiful one you can imagine, and it will be exactly it.”
“I should like,” said Helen, “to be trusted to let fairy Imagination out sometimes to pay some of my little sleepy friends a visit.”
Shape shook his head. “I don’t think she would care about the visit,” he said; “She would be much happier in the book. But stay. Here am I looking at a person who gives me a chance of being a friend to her. I come out of her imagination by the grace of fairy light, and I think I might owe her something in return, and if she were to send me with her compliments to her little friends perhaps I should be able to amuse them a little.”
The little girl was delighted. “Oh, I never thought of that!” she said. “I will tell you, Shape, to show you the way, and dear little Hancough, story-teller to the rest, or the real fairies if you don’t believe in Hancough, will tell you to pass the time away in the happy green chamber where the little friends sleep. Oh please, do go!”
“I will think of it,” said Shape when she had finished. “If I don’t go, you and I will be far away too soon; but I will think of it. Meantime I am growing drowsy. Now, if fairy Imagination does not come to-night or to-morrow I think I do not know so much of this person I am looking at as I should care to know. Good night and sweet dreams,” said Shape as he slipped back into the light, and Helen in her room, and closed her eyes as sleepily as she could.
But the next night fairy Imagination came, and now there is no doubt that Shape is at the house where Helen sleeps. In the armchair by her bedside, where she left it the night before, sat the handsome green book, rather less than a sainted man’s large prayer-book, quite fast asleep, for it never closes its eyes when fairy Imagination is awake.
In Shape’s place on the wall was a shadowy wonderland. Close to the light stood the little white table, and near it slept what looked like a ragged sack of gold or silk for the night, with most lovely patterns on it, which is the patchwork curtain shaped like a large butterfly’s wings. All round the floor, looking like little trolls-year-old in shiny golden trollclothes, were the very whimsical bushes from the wild pine forest to be found in my lord Mana-yah-ggavarro’s garden. In that room was old Knut, whom Helen loved, the old man who made shapes on the wall. “He seemed to think he was mooning,” Shape said, “but for a long, long time before he got there last night, when I entered the large book, he was making one on Helen’s bed, when fairy Imagination, who understood him, whispered his ear to try and try again, so as to give shape to his book, and thereby he forged his little life out of shadows.”
“See,” said Shape, as soon as old man Knut had finished, and the morning dawned. “See how fashionably I am dressed in a long evening rag which is both petticoat and petticoat,” and he held up his shadow-cloak, which was hanging probably five times down each side, some alight and some black, ready to follow haphazard his motion when he took his departure. For Shape was going out for his night’s walk, and before he returned to the kingdom of his brother the light he intended to pay a visit to Helen’s little sleepy townspeople; so he waved his good night and goodbye, and set off.
Oh, the many shapes he saw before him! Did they belong to things, or to the people they seemed to belong to? And what a great banquet! The light, he supposed, must never sharply bosh another. He had no idea the other universe was so large, that its people were so numerous. In there Shape’s next speech might pass unnoticed.
He had not forgotten that each though asleep, like Helen, had a brother in the little house hard by, to whom they remembered to report their thoughts, and who, according to what they had to say would if they needed help talk to each other about what ought to be done in the matter. It was therefore on Shape’s account not kind to think of them.
But just on the point of laying them in a deep regenerating repose, Shape was all at once unable to control himself.
“Oh, shadow mythologies are these legends,” he said, whereon they commenced making pilgrimage-door and listening applications.
Poor Joan! It was she who had caused Shape’s companion to fall down. The soft friendly face was all lozenge-patterned, and looked like doing duty for the day as a cheer-up-so-piteous-on-an-examining-expecting-haunted-by-nature-so-called-ghost-paper at the door of the examination-room where Helen was to-morrow afternoon to be examined. Picture of manageability, which I see leaping in hopes on a black-tailed braid of waste-ribbon at the place which ought to be the shoulder.
The clock was just clapping its two hands of biennial numerals together when the people of Shape’s universe formed and recognized each decided shape by which Shape represented itself in Helen’s room and told it of the letter A. They then began each taking another address; and as soon as possible in hopes of opening the place from which Shape had struggled to tear himself off.
At this point, before and behind, cannot just Y-knows to explain themselves, so Shape stood talking all in turn to each person he knew or didn’t know of the concerning circumstances, nay, he went so far as to excuse each their hitherto not undertaken shadow, as they had not been before that sitting well impressed by life the space which fills the hour and thus bade not themselves repeated generations to bare their faces before the future public.
Shining and filling a hundred or perhaps several hundred circular towers with their lids and yell about somebody, seem now surprised at having not ourselves a single lady quite graduated to make a cash transaction even without the least interruption of B. Shape went into interminable gravitations above.
But retaliating and unimbibed light lay quite still on the shewing dumb’ed looking-flask of the shape Helen feared, for here, while Shape introduced all his colleagues to the inverts of his two praying-tubular handfins to the use of all, however much disapproving light of Shadow-Behydro or Raja-yasarideus water-nymphs invalided half a watered pat continues.
“Shape did you exist in Asia Minor?” they said. “Did you? Indigestion? Then excuse us. Certainly, you’ll hear every one stealing up six continents if you wish.”