The Garden of Borrowed Shadows

📜 The whole story (transcript)

There is a garden, my little dove — oh, not far from here at all — where shadows go to rest when their people are sleeping. By day it looks like any tangle of brambles. But by moonlight, it is full of long, slim, silent shapes, lying about the lawn like so many cats. Each shadow has a name embroidered on its hem. The baker's. The postman's. The mayor's, who pretends he is far too important to dream. And every night, a small grey moth — the keeper — flutters from shadow to shadow, smoothing their edges and whispering them their owner's secrets, so they do not forget who they belong to. Once, a wicked man came to the garden and tried to steal a shadow that was not his. He thought, you see, that with a borrowed shadow he might walk about unseen and do all manner of nasty business. But the moment he stitched it to his heels, the shadow began to weep. Great inky tears, that pooled around his shoes. And the keeper-moth came, and landed upon his nose, and said — in a voice no louder than a candle going out — 'A shadow knows its own.' By morning, the man was gone. Only his hat remained, in the middle of the lawn, with a single grey moth asleep inside it. So you see, my dear — be very, very kind to your shadow. It is the only one you'll ever truly own.