Page 2

He laughs at my excellent advice and ignores it completely, taking another step towards me, and behind me, the shadows along the wall stop being subtle.

My guardian shadow doesn’t so much appear as arrive, the way weather arrives, the temperature dropping, the streetlight overhead flickering once like it’s had a sudden and reasonable change of heart about staying lit.

He’s enormous like this. Not tall exactly, or not only tall, more like the space around him has decided to make extra room. Two amber eyes glow brighter than what little light there is.

The mugger’s face does something complicated. Fear, mostly. Also, I think, a fair amount of regret about several life choices leading up to this exact moment.

He screams. It’s a very good scream, honestly, properly committed. Then he’s sprinting back down the street with considerably more speed than he showed walking towards me. My shadowy friend goes after him without a sound, shadow pouring off the wall and folding into the dark behind him like a held breath finally let out.

“Because,” I continue what I was saying to the empty street, “this might happen.”

Then I call after them, because it seems only polite. “Sorry, Mister Mugger Man!”

I wait. It doesn’t take long. My shadow reappears the way he always does, quietly, from somewhere I wasn’t quite looking, and falls back into place a respectful few paces behind me.

“Thank you,” I say, beaming at the general direction of my shadow, because I’ve learned it doesn’t matter whether I can see his face properly, he can always see mine. “Is he all right?”

There’s a pause, and then the faintest inclination of something that might be a nod.

We keep walking. Two streets later there’s a police car parked at an angle, blue lights turning lazily, and there on the kerb, is my would-be mugger, knees pulled up to his chest, sobbing into a policeman’s shoulder. From what I catch as we pass, he is begging quite sincerely to be arrested immediately and taken somewhere with very good locks.

Poor man, I hope he feels better soon.

“You didn’t have to chase him quite that far,” I say. My shadow doesn’t answer, obviously, but something about the set of his shoulders suggests he disagrees. Strongly. “I’m only saying. He’s going to need a lot of therapy.”

There is no audible reply, but I’ve learned that silence from my shadow comes in several distinct flavours. This one means he thinks the mugger got off lightly.

I decide to let it go. Teaching things like empathy and compassion and forgiveness takes time. Baby steps. We are already making great progress, so there is no need to rush.

I get back to humming.

We reach the halls of residence a few minutes later. All unlit windows, with one flickering porch light that maintenance have been promising to fix since October. I stop at the entrance and turn around properly, and there he is, mostly visible now that it’s just us. Tall and dark and watching me like I’m something he hasn’t quite finished working out.

I don’t at all mind being looked at like this. Most people, when they look at me properly, seem to be waiting for the catch, for the moment the relentless cheer cracks and something worse shows through underneath. My shadow doesn’t look at me like he’s waiting for anything. He just looks, the way you might look at something you’re still learning the shape of, patient and thorough and in no hurry at all.

“You know you can’t come in,” I say. “Not because I don’t want you to. Just, imagine poor Hannah trying to revise for her exam with an ancient shadow lord looming outside her door. It wouldn’t be fair on anyone’s grades.”

He nods. He always does, without argument, without sulking, which I appreciate a great deal.

“Your bush is looking nice tonight,” I say, pointing at the shrubbery under my window.

He’s already moving towards it before I finish the sentence.

I watch him settle into the shrubbery like it’s the most natural thing in the world, an ancient and presumably very powerful being folding himself down between a privet hedge and a recycling bin.

Nobody walking past will notice a thing. That’s the strangest part of all this, I think. Not the mugger, not the amber eyes, not even the several thousand years. Just how easily something enormous can make itself small enough to fit into the corners of an ordinary life, if it wants to badly enough.

I don’t say any of that out loud. It would be a lot to put on a bush.

“Goodnight,” I say instead, and let myself in, taking the stairs two at a time.

I am genuinely, ridiculously happy. I have a shadow friend, living in Bristol is wonderful. Studying law is so exciting, and best of all, I have an exam in the morning. Life is so very good.

I check the window before I get into bed. There he is, a patch of darker dark tucked against the shrubbery, amber eyes tilted up towards me like he’s been waiting for exactly this.

I give him a little wave.

Then I go to sleep, and dream about postal rules, and, entirely without my permission, about amber eyes.