The Shape of My Soul

Imprint : Fiction for the Soul Books

eBook ISBN : 9798232360696

Paperback ISBN : 9798227327031

First Published Date : 6 June 2025

Language : English

Print length ‏ : ‎ 282 pages

Reading Age : 15 years and older

Format : ePub & PDF (you own the files)

Read on : Kindle, Apple, Android devices, Google Play Books, Nook, Kobo eReaders, Computers.

Delivery Time and Method : Downloads will be emailed immediately upon purchase.

In a time before Bradley broke my heart, even before I felt there was no hope he would ever like me, I arrived at a secluded castle at the most northern borders of the Scottish Highlands.

It was so far removed from everything, it would take a person a day to reach the nearest other living, breathing human being.

Strange then, the way I arrived. A bundle wrapped up in a tattered blanket, ensconced in a basket. There was no note, no farewell letter from a grieving mother, no goodbye, no explanation.

The castle in which I lived, stood majestically on a cliff and below it the ocean crashed into the rock face continuously, day and night. There was never a moment of utter silence, the sound of the ocean was the backdrop of my youth.

Sometimes, on particularly stormy days, the white spray from the waves would cascade over the high precipice and I loved standing under the spray. When I stretched my little arms up into the sky, it felt as if I was like the golden eagle flying in circles in the sky high above my head, and I too could fly to wherever the breeze took me. I could escape the confines of the castle grounds and see a world hidden away from me. A world where the sun’s bright spark lit up the always dreary sky surrounding me.

Grey clouds usually sat closely around the castle walls, and it was as if my world was restricted to the area surrounding my home.

On the rarest of occasions, the sun would find a gap between the clouds, and then sunlight would radiate down to the earth in long glowing stripes, but never for too long.

As a young girl, I spent many days sitting in the wide stone window seat in my bedroom, overlooking the stormy grey sea. With my legs pulled up to my chest and my chin resting on my knees, I would anticipate moving away and living somewhere where the sun always shined. Where the sky would be that elusive blue they talked about in books.

In my own perception, I grew up quite normal, even though I had no mother or father, and absolutely no idea where I came from. However, I could not miss something I never knew, and so in my mind everything was as it was supposed to be.

I was home schooled and my tutor, Mr. Glenfiddich always made sure I was shoulder high in reading material. Every Thursday he travelled to his home on the other side of the mist, which might as well have been in another universe, and then he would return on a Sunday evening with new books for me to read.

Often, I wished, he would invite me with him.

On weekends, when Mr. Glenfiddich went home, I would while my days away under the shade beneath the spreading limbs of chestnuts and oaks in the hidden hideout and watch the squirrels, rabbits and hedgehogs play.

When I sat really, really still, sometimes I would even see foxes leap and frolic. I fed them scraps of bread and fruit and imagined myself to be a friend to all the animals in the forest.

My most favourite times growing up was school holidays. Although school holidays never applied to me, this was the time when the servant’s children came to visit their parents, and I looked forward to the few days every couple of months when I could play with them.

We would play hide-and-seek in the vast sparsely furnished rooms. Often, we played catch or dared each other to see who could stand the closest to the cliff edge until one of the servants stopped us and we were all shepherded back to safety behind the walls of the castle. In winter, we built snowmen.