Dorothy took the phallus and brandished it. She said “It’s very big,” and also began to laugh uncontrollably. Elsie joined in the laughter.
“Do you think—do you think”—Dorothy asked—“it’s a self-portrait, so to speak?”
She had left brown clay fingerprints where she had clasped it.
“You’ll have to wash it,” she said to Elsie, and collapsed again into laughter.
“Give it me,” said Philip. “I’ll run it under the tap. And then Elsie shall put it quickly back where she found it.”
His fingers recognised just how well it had been made, how its maker’s fingers had felt it out, and followed its swelling veins.
When they had given up laughing, they did not know what to say to each other, and yet felt very close. Dorothy said she had better be off. She asked if Philip would give her another lesson. She asked Elsie, in a voice still thick with laughter, if Elsie made pots.
“Aye,” said Elsie. “Tiny little ’uns, when there’s no one watching. I like ’em thin and small.”
“You never told me that,” said Philip.
“You never asked,” said Elsie.
16
Olive rewrote the beginning of Tom’s story yet again.
TOM UNDERGROUND
T WAS A CURIOUS FACT that when the young prince was a small child, with a sunny nature, and a normal quantity of childish curiosity and naughtiness, the absence of his shadow appeared more to amuse and enchant those who noticed it, than to cause them any alarm. But as he grew older, and began to show the first signs that he must put childhood behind him, his family and courtiers began to murmur when they thought he was not listening, and to consult wise men, without his knowledge, about what the meaning of this singularity was. They began to cover mirrors in rooms where he was, as though he might become aware of his absence, or partial absence, at the least. The boy himself noticed other people’s shadows, which he studied intently as they fell across courtyards, or were suspended on walls, stretching and contracting, visible human- shaped intangible nothings. He could not see his own shadow, and for some time assumed that no one could see his own shadow, but only other people’s shadows. Then he saw a little girl, playing a laughing game of making her shadow climb a wall, and making shadow-rabbits with her fingers against a light. There were no rabbits and no dragons in his fingers, or if there were, they were invisible. He did not know who to ask about this problem. He felt his parents would have spoken to him, if they wanted to, or were able.
He took to going for long walks in the grounds of the palace, which were extensive. He was not allowed to ride out of the gates because of the fear of kidnapping, by lawless bandits, or foreign schemers. But there were little woods, within the walls, and pretty semi-wild clearings, and long rides, overhung with trees. He noticed he was going out more and more either in grey weather, when everything was the same colour as the shadows, or at noon on bright days, when nothing cast a shadow, under the high sun.
He had a favourite place, where a clump of birch trees surrounded a small mound, where he would sit, and watch the busy insects going in and out of their holes under the earth, or read a book, or look at the sky through the leaves. He called it a magic place, in his mind, and always felt that the air had a different quality there, was full of movement and sparkles, in the stillness.
There was a stone bench, but he didn’t sit on it. He sat on the turf, which was warm, in summer, and cool in the autumn.
Sometimes he dozed. He must have been dozing, for he found his eyes were closed, and there was a sound of very faint bells ringing, very large numbers of very small bells, as though the trees were full of them. And there was a sound of rushing, as though a large bird were alighting in the clearing. He was reluctant to open his eyes. The bells became still, and he felt he must look up, or time would be suspended.
There was a fine lady, on a white horse, in the clearing, where no one and nothing had been. The horse was both creamy and silvery: it had ivory-coloured hooves, and a proudly arched neck, with a flowing, heavy mane of fine hairs, into which were woven myriads of tiny silver bells, on crimson threads, that glinted in the sunlight like raindrops, and rang when the horse tossed its head, or turned to look at Thomas. Its saddle was crimson leather, and the sweeping skirt of its rider was grass-green velvet, with a sheen on it like a green field of tall grasses, rippling in the light. She had fine green leather boots, and silver spurs, and he lifted his eyes upwards and finally took in her face, which was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. It was fine and pale and pointed, with high cheekbones, and a sharp mouth. The lady had a mass of pale gold hair, which was caught in a silver snood under her brave cap with a curling green feather from no bird he had ever seen or imagined. She had long gloved fingers, and carried a little whip, with an ebony stock and a silver pommel. Her eyes were green. They were green like a great, watchful cat, not like any woman, or any man he knew. She looked neither kind nor unkind, and it occurred to him that perhaps she could not see him, perhaps she was in some other world that had become briefly visible in his. He saw, then, that neither she nor the lovely horse cast any shadow. They rippled with lights and light, from the bells and the gleaming coat of the horse, and the lady’s hair and her velvet skirt, but they cast no shadow.
She looked down on him, and smiled, neither kindly nor unkindly. He stood up, and gave a little formal bow, which seemed the right thing, and stood shadowless next to the shadowless pair. He meant to say something like “Greetings,” or “My lady,” but he said
“You have no shadow.”
It was, he realised, the first time that word had crossed his lips.
“I am an Elf,” said the lady. Her voice was like fragments of fine ice in the wind, like the silver bells in the horse’s mane. “I am the Queen of Elfland, and we cast no shadows. You are True Thomas, a human, and you should cast a shadow, and do not.”
“It seemed a small thing,” he said, “at first. A curiosity. But now it is not so amusing.”
“You were not born without a shadow,” said the Elf Queen. “It was taken from you, in your cradle,
