Quiet Shadow

Michael Hughes set his teacup down with practiced grace, eyeing across the veranda. Behind him, a red pagoda cast long shadows over his otherworldly garden, where solemn statues stood sentinel among unfamiliar plants. His blue-grey eyes, piercing and astute, seemed to look through Margaret.

"Drawn by the occult, are you, Miss Hodgkins?" His voice coarse and unfeeling. “I understand Gothic fiction is quite popular these days among the youth.”

Margaret nodded weakly, relaxing a bit as the familiar subject took hold. "It’s for my writing assignment at University College London. I promise not to plagiarize your experiences—I'm only seeking inspiration."

He smiled faintly, pouring more tea from a dark oval teapot. "Green tea, imported directly from China. I apologize if you find it... different."

Margaret took a cautious sip, the unfamiliar flavour both earthy and refreshing. “It’s lovely, actually,” she replied, reaching for her notebook. “Would it be alright if I took notes?”

As she prepared, he leaned forward, hands clasped, gaze distant yet resolute.

“I suppose,” he said softly, his voice almost a whisper, “we can begin.”

***

I remember nothing of the voyage to China—I was only three when my father brought me to Canton after my mother's death. He buried himself in the tea trade while my tutor, Emily Burton, raised me. Within a year, fearing for our safety amid the aftermath of the Opium Wars, Father moved us to a rural home near Longsheng, where a scholar named Cai Xiaoqing, a friend of Father’s seeking quiet repose from the city for his academic affairs, became both our host and my Mandarin tutor.

When I first saw Longsheng, I could hardly look away. Everywhere, intensely green rice paddies hugged the mountainsides in precise terraces, bathed in golden sunlight. The village children nicknamed me Xiao Qīng Sōng—"Little Blue Pine"—for my eyes. Life fell into a gentle rhythm. We helped in the fields, our spindly young legs wading through warm water between rice stalks. I studied regularly in my lessons with Cai and Emily, and listened often to village elders' tales of mountain spirits. But even then, something watched me from the shadows. I felt it in the corner of my vision, gone when I turned to look.

I was eight when I first saw it clearly. I’d taken a kite to the upper plateau, its sail made from Cai’s bamboo paper, upon which I had carefully drawn the character Fu for good fortune. Like an eagle, it soared into the air, dancing over currents of wind until a sudden powerful updraft swept over the plateau. The kite held its own, miraculously, against the gust, but the spool didn’t, snapping as though it were nothing more than dry tinder. My tearful gaze fell from the boundless sky to the crushing ground beneath my feet.

And then I saw it—the shadow.

It lingered in place, with nothing in sight to cast it. The sun hung directly overhead, just past noon. I stepped closer to investigate.

The perfect outline of two feet. Human. Small. One left, one right.

A scream tore from my throat as the shadow began to move—one foot after the other, advancing toward me. More details emerged: the suggestion of an arm swinging with each step, a faint bulge where shoulders might be. I fled down the mountain, but the image burned into my mind, seeping into every thought like thick, dark tar.

The next day, I was exceedingly diligent and unusually quiet. This, combined with my pallor, alarmed Emily, who grew convinced I had been bewitched. The hours passed, uneventful, until I stepped outside for a chore and caught sight of it again, rising from the stalks of our nearby rice paddy in the fading afternoon light.

The figure was no taller than I, cast in sharp relief against the ground. We stood in silence, considering one another. Though its defining features were lost in the shadow, something in the shape of its head, or the way its clothes wrapped around its body, almost suggested the shadow of a young girl. Despite all the grief it had wrought upon me, to see it there standing there, so pitifully alone, conjured some strange feeling in my heart. I decided, perhaps foolishly, that it was my duty to keep it company. Besides, it was only a shadow—what harm could it do?

I approached slowly. It shrank back, as if frightened. When I spoke, it halted its retreat, even crept forward. Naïvely, I offered it rice. It leaned down, then seemed to recoil in silent laughter.

From that day on, whenever I was alone, the shadow would appear. We developed a language of gestures, though its clarity depended on the sun's angle. We played games—hide-and-seek was its favourite, though finding a shadow among shadows proved nearly impossible.

One evening, I searched longer than usual. The sun had almost set, casting long, ominous shadows across the fields. A strange chill filled the air as I edged toward the forest. That's when I heard it—a voice calling my village name, Xiao Qīng Sōng, over and over, like wind through bamboo, or distant temple bells.

I turned, and there she was.

She seemed to form from the gathering dusk itself - first a shadow, then a silhouette, then suddenly, startlingly real. She was my age, petite, with ebony-black hair cut level at the shoulders, her thin frame wrapped in the glow of twilight. Her skin had the translucent quality of rice paper held up to lamplight, and when she moved, the air around her seemed to ripple like disturbed water. But it was her eyes that held me frozen—dark pools that seemed to contain centuries of silence, of waiting.

The air grew so cold my breath clouded between us. She reached for me with hands like winter frost, gripping my shoulders as she called my name again. When I asked who she was, those ancient eyes studied my face. "You may call me Yōu Ying"—Quiet Shadow.

 “They’re looking for you, Little Blue Pine,” she whispered urgently. “You must go back. We’ll have time to talk—I'm always here.” I couldn't move until she took my hand. Together, we drifted home, our feet barely skimming the ground. The rice stalks didn't bend beneath us.

“Goodnight,” she murmured, pressing a soft peck to my cheek. I lingered there, rooted on our wooden veranda, watching her form dissolve into shadow. Cai and Emily found me there, shivering despite the summer air.

They tried to fill my days with lessons, but I ached for any chance to slip away. Yōu Ying would appear as a shadow in daylight, dancing between sun and shade. At night, I'd escape to the forest where she waited in corporeal form. Each time she appeared, the temperature would plummet and the night sounds would cease, as if nature itself held its breath.

When I asked about her past, she'd grow distant, her form becoming less solid. "I've wandered as a shadow for countless moons," she once confessed, her voice like autumn leaves scraping stone. "I remember no family, no life before. Perhaps I was cursed, but that memory has faded like morning mist." She turned those depthless eyes to me. Her life, she told me, was here, in the stillness of the woods, in the soft earth under the moonlight.

Years passed. My friendships in the village withered—too many unexplained absences, too many times they'd seen me talking to empty air. The elders watched me with growing unease, making signs against evil when they thought I wasn't looking. But I hardly cared. Every free moment I had belonged to her.

I built us a shelter deep in the forest, a lean-to stocked with candles and blankets. The candles would flicker wildly in her presence, their flames bending toward her as if drawn by some magnetic force. One evening during my fifteenth summer, as we sat in our hiding place, she reached for a flame. It danced across her palm without burning, casting light through her translucent skin.

“Your world is so different from mine," she said, her voice carrying the echo of distant wind. "Tell me of your native land."

I described London's fog-shrouded streets and grand buildings, but found myself repeatedly distracted. The way moonlight shone through her, the way shadows gathered in the hollow of her throat, the way her presence made the air sharp with winter despite the summer heat. When I looked into her unearthly eyes, I knew I had fallen deeply, irrevocably in love with something that wasn't quite human.

“You should come with me, to London, someday. Emily says they’re always coming up with new science there and… they may know how to bring you back.” Yōu Ying merely looked down at the earth, shaking her head quietly. Gently, she took my hand in hers, intertwining our fingers, and gazed into my eyes.

“Maybe, someday.” She paused, seeming to contemplate her next words with great care. “Just… stay with me, for now. Please.”

I would have stayed forever if I could.

 As the months passed, I must have been careless. My absences grew too noticeable, both day and night. Eventually, Emily and Cai confronted me, their questions sharp, but I kept my silence. By then, though, the damage was done.

The final blow came when Yōu Ying appeared near the village—something she seldom did. She always had a wary air about the village, and I'd never understood why. I was working quietly in the fields when I whispered her name. I kept my voice low, as always, but a nearby farmer heard me and turned with a look of wild terror in his eyes before sprinting away.

As the sun slowly sank behind the horizon, casting a warm glow over the village, a group of elders made their way towards our small home. Their faces were lined with age and wisdom, and their steps were slow and deliberate as they approached us. The oldest among them cleared his throat and began to speak in a hushed tone, his words carrying a weight of centuries-old sorrow. He told us a tragic tale that had been passed down through generations: an orphan girl, adopted by a local family, was worked to exhaustion and treated as less than human. And one fateful morning, the villagers woke to find the family's home reduced to nothing but smouldering ashes. Only one survivor, the young girl, emerged from the ruins, unscathed and silent. No one had heard any screams during the night - instead there was only a haunting silence that hung heavy in the air.

Angry shouts and terrified cries filled the air as the villagers dragged her up to the upper plateau. Believing her to be a demon, they tied her to a stake and set it ablaze, watching as flames licked at her body and smoke billowed into the sky. When they left, all that remained was a charred patch of earth that resembled eerie shadow; it almost seemed to shift and move in the sunlight. Some whispered that it was her spirit, still trapped in this cursed place, doomed to wander alone for eternity.

The elders informed me that I was no longer welcome in the village; my presence, they claimed, was a threat to their livelihood. They insisted I leave at once. My father, hearing the news, made arrangements for me to travel to Canton, where I’d join him in business. When I stepped outside with my belongings, after days of house arrest, I bid farewell to Cai and Emily, who had chosen to stay and wed each other. The Longsheng air that I loved so dearly greeted me one last time. I stepped onto the carriage, tearfully, wishing with all my heart to glance once more at the shadow that stole my heart, Yōu Ying.

And there she was, by the dirt path and the rice stalks, a shadow on the ground, watching helplessly. As the carriage pulled away, I watched her shadow stretch toward me like reaching hands, growing longer and longer until distance finally broke us apart. That was the last we saw of each other.

I never loved another again.

***

Michael fell silent, his remaining tea long cold. Beyond the veranda, shadows had begun to lengthen across his garden.

"Years later," he continued, his voice barely above a whisper, "I received word from Emily. A fire had consumed part of the forest near the village—precisely where our clearing had been. The villagers claimed they saw a shadow dancing in the flames, but heard no sound. Just silence."

He traced the circular pattern on his teacup with trembling fingers. "I returned once, not to the village, but to the woods. I waited until sunset, hoping... The clearing was there, scorched black. But in the centre stood a single tree, its trunk twisted into the shape of two figures, forever reaching for each other."

A chill ran through Margaret as she noticed the lengthening shadows in his garden. One seemed to move independently, drifting across the pond like a whisper.

Michael smiled, a deep sadness in his eyes. "Every piece in this house comes from China. The tea, the artwork, even the dragon knocker at my door. I surrounded myself with pieces of that world..." He shook his head. "Sometimes, on quiet evenings, I think I see her shadow moving across my garden. And I wonder if she's still searching for me, as I've searched for her all these years."

He stood slowly, their interview clearly at an end. As Margaret gathered her things, she glimpsed movement in the garden again—a shadow with no source, drifting like a caress across the water.

When she looked back at Michael, tears glistened in his eyes.

"Time is cruel, Miss Hodgkins," he said softly. "But love... love leaves shadows that never fade."