SHULA AND THE SUN
The sky was stormy that night as Shula walked towards the cliff path for the first time. The brambles surrounding the muddy track grew taller than her head and tore at her hands. The thistles caught on her dress and she trod in every puddle with her slippered feet.
She was two when her parents died and she was sent to live with her withered aunt and brittle uncle. They had not been blessed with children and it grew inside them like weeds. Shula was too talkative, too curious and far too beautiful. But she belonged to them.
She arrived in the moonlight, wrapped in blankets, with a warning; ‘Shula should not be in the sun. It does strange things to her.’ So she spent her days and years behind heavy curtains, cooking and cleaning as soon as she was tall enough to reach the stove. Her nights were spent sneaking out to play with imaginary pixies in the starlit garden.
As she grew, so did her discontentment. She had no real friends and no company aside from her ageing aunt and uncle who grew more demanding by the day. She spent hours plotting how she could leave, but she had
