The Charwoman’s Shadow

Lord Dunsany returned to the world of “The King of Elfland’s Daughter” for this quieter, stranger fable set in a golden-age Spain where magic is fading but has not yet gone. Young Ramon Alonzo is sent by his impoverished father to study alchemy under a magician in the hills, and the price of that learning is his own shadow. What he trades away turns out to matter far more than he understood. In the magician’s house he meets a charwoman who surrendered her true shadow long ago and has withered under a false one, and his effort to win both shadows back becomes the heart of the story. Told in Dunsany’s clear, half-ironic prose, it reads like a recovered folk tale about youth, loss, and the passing of enchantment. Free to download as a PDF and EPUB.