The Kobzar Without a Shadow

That evening the children sat down by the stove so close their cheeks glowed. Outside the window the wind rubbed against the panes, as if someone were running a wet sleeve over the glass. I threw on a log and said: "Listen, but keep your feet in the light. Because there are stories after which the shadow under the bench seems longer than it was."

Once a one-eyed kobzar came into our inn. He asked for no food, no place to sleep - just sat by the stove and laid his bandura on his knees. His cloak smelled of wormwood, wet earth and old smoke. And his shadow fell crooked on the wall - not the way it should have fallen from the fire. He was silent a long time. And when the fire began to settle, he said: "By the Molochna River there is a steppe where at night the grass does not rustle - it whispers.

There they saw a man without a shadow. Not a dead man, not a devil, not a phantom. Just a man. He stands by the Kupala fire, smiling, and behind him - nothing at all." One young lad laughed then. What's your shadowless man to me, he said. He followed him into the tall grass, even waved his hand so the girls could see how brave he was. The grass closed behind them like water. First they heard laughter. Then footsteps.

Then a thin whistle, as if someone had drawn a knife across glass. At dawn the lad came back. His face was the same, only his eyes had turned strange - as if someone sat behind them in a dark house and looked out. The sun rose red, the people kept silent, and he had no shadow. Not under his feet, not at his shoulder, not by the fence.

A dog came up, sniffed the ground and whined as if it had recognized a grave. From then on small things began in the village, the kind that chill your spine. Doors did not creak behind the lad. Water in a bowl did not show his face. When he passed a candle, the flame did not sway. And his mother said that at night he lay on the bench while something dark stood by the stove and stirred on its own. As if it were searching for a place to sew itself back on.

He could not enter the church. His feet stopped on the threshold, and beyond that - nothing. He did not scream, did not fall, only wept quietly, like a child. The old people said: a shadow is not the darkness under your feet. It is the nail that pins the soul to the living world. Pull out the nail - and the door stays open. After a while the lad went off into the steppe himself. Without a bag, without bread, without a farewell.

In the morning his mother found a black strip by the threshold, thin as a belt. It twitched on the ground like a living thread torn loose from the cloth. The mother fell to her knees and whispered: "That is his..." And when the sun rose, the strip slowly crawled off into the steppe - along the same trail her son had taken in the night.

The kobzar ran his fingers over the strings. The bandura answered by itself, dull, as if from under the earth. I glanced at the wall - his shadow was trembling, though he sat motionless. And a moment later it turned its head faster than he did. Not every shadow, children, obeys its master. Toward morning the kobzar was gone. The doors were locked from the inside, the ash by the stove lay smooth, and on the bench remained his bandura. I do not touch it.

Sometimes, when the last coals in the inn go dark, it rings softly on its own. It does not play a song - it calls. That is why I always look down at my feet. Because as long as your shadow lies where it ought to lie, a person is still with us. And if you ever see your shadow linger for a moment when you have already moved on - do not call it. Step closer to the light and wait until it catches up with you on its own.