The Shadow

• Isobel Bonner, Grade 5, Currabubula Public School -
• Short Story
• 2018

Excellence Award in the 'Horizon of Dreams 2018' competition

The rain pelted down, the wind blew across my face, as a tree fell down before me and that’s when I saw it the shadow…
The mist covered her face, her bright red cape blowing in the wind when all of a sudden she was gone!
‘Scarlet!’ my dad exclaimed. I ran to the house shivering and shaking when through the trees sitting on the old crashed ute was the shadow.
Her bright red cape covered her true identity, her long black boots dangling off the edge of the old rusty ute and her long blond hair down past her shoulder.
‘Scarlet come on!’
‘Coming Dad,’ I replied.
That night I couldn’t stop thinking about the shadow, the shadow reminded me of my mum. My mum died when I was six but they never found her body it was a mystery that had never been solved.
The next morning I could hardly see because of the fog. I walked the trees collecting fire wood, when suddenly the shadow appeared. I looked towards my house but she grabbed my arm before I could run anywhere.
She dragged me through the woods until we reached the old rusty ute. We both stepped inside. When she put her foot on the clutch, the red rust lifted to be a glamorous silver ute.
Through the trees I could see what looked like a portal. She bolted through the trees and drove into the portal, the woods suddenly changed into a new world with warriors surrounding me.
‘Welcome,’ they greeted me.
‘I knew you were coming,’ said a voice from the back of the group. When she walked forward I knew exactly who it was. She was my mother.
I looked exactly like her. Her golden wavy hair down past her shoulder and her sparkling blue eyes shining in the going down of the sun.
The same mystery had happened to me. My dad left all alone and that’s where I spent the rest of my days and us warriors we never went home.