Muddy prints climbed the bedroom wall in a crooked ladder, each hand smaller than the last, the fingers spread wide as if pressed there by someone clawing upward through plaster. Six prints. Seven. They stopped three feet from the ceiling, the topmost pair smeared, as though the small climber had hesitated, or been pulled back down.
Eleanor Marrow stood barefoot on the cold boards of her sister's bedroom, arms folded tight across her chest, and counted them again. Seven pairs. No, eight. The last was a thumb, solitary, dragged sideways like a signature.
They had not been there the night before.
The dolls sat at the foot of the bed, arranged in a row Eleanor had not arranged. Three porcelain faces, three painted smiles, all turned toward the doorway. The one in the middle, the one with the cracked cheek, had been on the pillow when Eleanor fell asleep. She was certain of this. Certain as the ache in her knees from kneeling by the river. Certain as the taste of iron that had lived in her mouth since the vicar handed her Cordelia's wedding ring in a small velvet box and murmured something about God's will.
She touched her tongue to her dry lips. The iron was still there.
"Show yourself, then," she said to the empty room, and her voice came out flat, scraped clean of fear by years of practice. She had not been afraid in a long time. Fear was a luxury. She had learned that in the sanatorium, in the white corridors where the nurses wore soft shoes and the windows did not open.
Nothing answered. The dolls smiled their painted smiles.
Eleanor walked to the wall and crouched, bringing her face level with the lowest print. The mud was still damp. She could smell it: river mud, black and vegetable, the same smell that had clung to her sister's sheet at the morgue. She did not touch it. She watched a bead of moisture gather at the edge of the smallest thumbprint and roll slowly down the wallpaper, leaving a dark comma on the roses.
Outside, the village of Blackwater slept under a sky the color of pewter. A cart rattled somewhere in the lane. A dog barked twice and stopped, as if cut short. Eleanor listened to the silence that followed and thought: it is listening too.
She straightened, and her reflection moved in the wardrobe mirror, lagging a half-second behind her. She watched the reflection, not herself. The reflection's mouth was closed. Her own was a thin line. The reflection lifted its hand at the same moment she did, but its fingers were spread, and hers were not. A trick of the lamplight. She turned away.
In the kitchen, she boiled the kettle on the blackened range and waited. The house settled around her, ticking and popping in its old bones. She had not slept in this house since she was seventeen. The smell of it, dust and tallow and something fainter, something sweet and turned, came back to her in layers: the lavender her mother had hung in the linen press, the coal smoke that had stained the ceiling above the hearth, and underneath both, the river. Always the river. Blackwater ran at the bottom of the garden, brown and slow, and in summer it smelled of rotting flag iris and in winter of iron.
The kettle clicked off. Eleanor made tea with hands that did not shake. She carried the cup back upstairs and set it on the dresser beside her sister's hairbrush, the bristles still holding three black hairs. She had not had the heart to clean the room. She had not had the heart to do anything since the telegram came.
The dolls watched her from the foot of the bed.
"Sit there, then," she told them. "Mind your manners."
She drank her tea. The cup warmed her palms. Outside, a pale light was beginning to gather at the edges of the sky, not yet sunrise, only the promise of it, the way iron filings gather at the rim of a magnet before they are pulled inward. She watched the light arrive on the ceiling, then on the wardrobe, then on the dolls' painted faces, and thought of her sister.
Cordelia had been the quiet one. Cordelia had been the one who stayed. Eleanor had been the one who left, who made a life in London, who learned to say her name without flinching, who married a man who did not ask about her family until it was too late, and who divorced him when she found that he had been reading her mail. She had not written to Cordelia for six years. She had not known, until the telegram, that Cordelia had been writing to her. The letters were in the desk in the study, still tied with their brown ribbon, unopened.
She had not opened them yet. She was not ready. She was not ready to hear her sister's voice, even on paper, even after.
The mud on the wall had begun to dry. The prints were lighter now, the color of weak tea, and at the edges they were flaking into dust. Eleanor set her cup down and crossed the room and pressed her own hand, flat and clean, against the largest print. It came up to her shoulder. The mud was cold. The wall was colder.
She took her hand away and looked at the print she had left, pale against the dark roses, and then at the prints climbing upward, and thought: a child. A small child, climbing. Or being climbed.
She did not know why she thought that. She only knew the thought arrived with the certainty of a bell struck once.
The doll at the foot of the bed, the one with the cracked cheek, turned its head a fraction. Eleanor saw it. She was looking directly at it when it happened. The painted eyes did not move. Only the angle of the face, a tilt, as if considering her from a new vantage. The crack in the cheek caught the lamplight and gleamed, wet-looking.
Eleanor did not move. She stood with her hand still raised, palm against the wall, and she watched the doll, and the doll watched her back with its painted smile. The smile had not changed. The face had not changed. Only the angle. Only the fact of being watched by something that had not been watching her a moment before.
She lowered her hand. She walked to the bed. She picked up the doll and turned it over in her hands. It was heavier than it looked. The porcelain was cold, as if it had been kept in a cellar. The crack ran from the corner of the mouth to the jaw, and when she tilted the doll, she could see, deep in the crack, the faintest dark line. Not shadow. Not dust. A line of black, thin as a hair, that did not move when she tilted the doll back.
She set the doll down, faceup, and crouched beside it.
In the doll's open palm, where the porcelain cupped to hold whatever a doll might hold, there was a single black feather. It had not been there an hour ago. She was sure of this, because she had picked up this doll the night before and turned it over and seen the empty palm, and the sight had made her think, absurdly, of her mother, who used to say that a doll with an empty hand was a doll waiting for a gift.
Eleanor picked up the feather. It was soft. It was cold. It smelled of the river.
She stood, and she carried the feather downstairs, and she did not look back at the dolls, because she knew, without knowing how she knew, that if she looked, the one in the middle would not be where she had set it.
In the hallway, the grandfather clock ticked. The pendulum swung. The chime had not worked since before her mother died. Eleanor walked past it without looking up, and she opened the front door, and she stepped out onto the step, and the morning air came to meet her, sharp and cold, smelling of wet grass and chimney smoke and, faintly, of the river.
She stood on the step and held the feather up to the gray light and watched the wind try to take it. The feather did not move. It lay across her palm like a small, soft blade.
Across the lane, a figure was watching her from the gate of the chapel. Small, wrapped in a shawl, face unreadable in the early light. Eleanor blinked. The figure did not move. Eleanor recognized the silhouette, the slight stoop, the way the shawl was pulled up over the head.
"Agnes," she said, not loudly.
The figure raised a hand. Not a wave. A gesture, slow, palm out, as if to say: stay where you are. Or: I see you. Or: not yet.
Eleanor stayed where she was. The feather lay in her palm. The door stood open behind her, and from inside the house, faintly, she heard a sound: the creak of a floorboard, in a room where no one stood. Then another. Then a third, in a different room, as if someone were walking through the house, opening doors, and Eleanor, who had locked every door the night before, stood very still and listened to the sound move from the front parlour toward the stairs, and she did not turn around, because she knew, without knowing how she knew, that if she turned, she would see a small muddy hand on the newel post, reaching up.
Eleanor stepped off the threshold, down the single stone step, and onto the path that ran along the front of the house. The gravel was slick with dew. She did not hurry. Her boots left dark prints behind her, and the sound of them, soft and deliberate, was the only sound she made, until she was past the gate and out onto the lane, and the lane itself opened before her, pale gravel and darker mud, winding down toward the village.
Underthorpe lay half a mile away. She had walked it the day before, when she had first come up from the station, and she remembered the walk as if she had dreamed it: the lane narrowing, the hedge rising on either side, the first cottage appearing around a bend, then another, until the village assembled itself around a small green, with a pump at its centre and a wall of trees behind it. The post office was on the far side of the green, a low stone building with a slate roof and a board above the door, the letters faded so that they could only be read by those who already knew what they said.
She did not go in by the front. She went around the side, to a gate in a wooden fence, and into a small yard behind the post office. There was a back door. She tried it. It was open. She stepped into a narrow passage, and the passage smelled of paper and ink and, beneath that, of something older: lavender, perhaps, and dust, and the particular stillness of rooms that are lived in only by one person.
A door stood ajar at the end of the passage. Through it came the sound of a kettle beginning to whistle, thin and tentative, as if the kettle itself were uncertain.
Eleanor pushed the door.
The room beyond was small, square, papered in a pattern of small green roses that had faded to a uniform grey. There was a counter with a brass scale, a rack of pigeonholes behind it, a desk by the window, and, at the desk, a woman sitting with her hands folded in front of her, as if she had been waiting.
Agnes Pell was eighty-three years old. She had been postmistress of Underthorpe for fifty-one of those years. She was small, sharp-featured, with white hair pulled back so tightly that it drew the skin at her temples, and eyes that were pale blue and very clear. She was wearing the same shawl Eleanor had seen across the lane, though now it lay folded across the back of her chair. She did not rise. She looked at Eleanor, and Eleanor looked back.
"Sit down," said Agnes. Her voice was soft, with the particular softness of someone who has not spoken much that morning, and the Welsh lilt in it was faint but unmistakable. "The kettle is singing. I will put the leaves in."
Eleanor did not sit. She stood in the doorway, and the door was still open behind her, and the morning air came in cold along the floor.
"I need to ask you some questions," she said.
"Yes," said Agnes. "I thought you would."
"I have been up to the house."
"Yes."
"The door was open."
"Yes. I unlocked it yesterday, after the constable rang. He said you were coming. He said you were the last of them."
"I am the last of them."
"Yes," said Agnes. "Sit down, Eleanor Marrow. I am an old woman, and the kettle is about to boil over, and if you stand there in the doorway the draught will take the papers off my desk, and then we will both be sorry."
Eleanor closed the door. She pulled out the chair opposite the desk and sat down. The chair was wooden, with a flat rush seat, and it creaked under her weight. Agnes rose, slowly, and went to a small table in the corner where the kettle stood on a spirit lamp, and she poured the water into a brown pot, and the smell of the tea came up, strong and dark, and then she brought two cups and saucers and set them on the desk, and she sat down again.
"I do not take sugar," said Eleanor.
"I know," said Agnes. "You never did."
Eleanor wrapped her hands around the cup. It was hot. The heat went through the china into her palms, and she was aware, suddenly, of how cold her hands had been. She looked at Agnes over the rim of the cup.
"Tell me about the fire," she said.
Agnes did not answer at once. She looked down at her own cup, and then she looked up, and her eyes were steady.
"Which fire?" she said.
"There was only one."
"There was only one that was called a fire," said Agnes. "There were others."
Eleanor set her cup down.
"Tell me," she said, "about the one that was called a fire."
Agnes folded her hands on the desk. Her hands were thin, the knuckles swollen, the skin spotted with brown. They were the hands of someone who had spent a long life sorting other people's letters, and the skin at the tips of her thumbs was worn smooth from the edge of the counter.
"In the autumn of 1984," she said, "the house at Blackwater was occupied by Aldric Marrow, your great-uncle, and his two daughters, who were called Petronella and Sybilla. They were not young women. Petronella was fifty-eight. Sybilla was fifty-two. Neither of them had married. They lived in the house with their father, and they had lived there for some years, since the death of their mother, and before that they had lived there with their mother, and before that they had been born there, as had their father, and as had his father before him. The house had been in the family for a long time."
"I know that," said Eleanor.
"Yes," said Agnes. "But it is important to say it, because what happened did not happen to a house. It happened to a family. And the family had been there for a long time."
She paused. She lifted her cup, and she drank, and she set it down again.
"In October of that year," she said, "on the night of the seventeenth, the house caught fire. The fire began in the cellar. The cellar of Blackwater is not like the cellar of an ordinary house. It is older. It was the first part of the house to be built. The walls are stone, and the floor is stone, and the ceiling is stone, and there is only one way in, which is the door at the back of the passage, and one way out, which is the same door. When the fire began, the smoke went up the stairs, and it filled the lower rooms, and by the time anyone in the village saw the flames, the house was already burning in a way that could not be put out. The fire brigade came from Overbury. They did what they could. By morning, the house was a shell. The roof was gone. The floors were gone. Only the outer walls stood, and the cellar, and the stone stairs."
"And the bodies," said Eleanor.
"Yes," said Agnes. "The bodies."
She folded her hands again. She looked at Eleanor, and there was something in her look that was not unkindness, but was not kindness either. It was the look of someone who is about to say a thing that has been said only once before, and that only to the bishop.
"The bodies were found in the cellar," she said. "All three. Your great-uncle, and Petronella, and Sybilla. They were on the floor, near the far wall, and they were not burned. They had not been touched by the fire. The fire had been above them. It had come down the stairs and stopped at the cellar door. It had not gone in. It had not touched them. But they were dead."
Eleanor's hands were very still on the desk.
"How?" she said.
"The doctor could not say," said Agnes. "He was a young man then. He had not been in the village long. He came, and he looked, and he said that there was no mark upon them. No wound. No sign of suffocation. No sign of poison. They were dead, and he could not say why, and he did not sleep for a week after."
"And the bishop," said Eleanor.
"Yes," said Agnes. "The bishop."
She paused. She looked past Eleanor, at the wall behind her, as if there were a thing written there that she was reading.
"The bishop came from Overbury," she said. "He came the day after the fire. He went into the house. He went down into the cellar. He was down there a long time. When he came up, his face was the colour of paper, and he did not speak to anyone in the village. He went to the rectory, and he stayed there three days, and on the third day he sent for the masons, and the masons came, and they sealed the cellar. They sealed it with stone and mortar, and they sealed the door at the back of the passage, and they put a wall across the passage, and they put iron bands on the wall, and on the bands they stamped the seal of the diocese. And the bishop stood in the lane and watched them do it, and when it was done he gave orders that no one was to go into the house again, and no one was to speak of what had been seen in the cellar, and that if anyone in the village was asked about the fire, they were to say only that the family had perished, and that the house had been sealed by order of the bishop, and that was all."
"And the village," said Eleanor. "Did the village obey?"
"The village," said Agnes, "obeyed."
She looked at Eleanor again.
"I am the last one who remembers it," she said. "Everyone else who was here then is dead. The doctor is dead. The rector is dead. The masons are dead. The bishop is dead. I am the only one left who went down into the cellar before it was sealed, because I was the one who found the bodies, and the bishop would not let anyone but me go down with him, because he said that someone who had found them should be the one to show him, and that was me."
"You went down," said Eleanor. "You saw them."
"Yes," said Agnes. "I saw them."
"What did you see?"
Agnes did not answer at once. She looked at her hands. She looked at the cup. She looked at the wall behind Eleanor again.
"I saw three bodies on the floor," she said. "I saw your great-uncle, and I saw Petronella, and I saw Sybilla. I saw that they were not burned. I saw that they were not touched by the fire. I saw that their clothes were not even singed. I saw that the cellar was full of smoke, but that the smoke had not touched them either, because the smoke had lain on the floor like a carpet, and the bodies were above it, and the smoke had not risen to them, and that was not possible, but it was what I saw."
She stopped. She folded her hands again.
"And I saw," she said, "that on the floor of the cellar, around the bodies, there was a mark. It was a circle. It was drawn in a substance that I will not name, because I do not know what it was, and I do not want to know. It was black. It was shiny. It had not been touched by the fire. And inside the circle, near each body, there was a small object. Near your great-uncle, a stone. Near Petronella, a feather. Near Sybilla, a candle. And the candle had not been lit, and the feather was not burned, and the stone was not cracked, and they were placed there as if someone had placed them there on purpose, and I did not know who had placed them, and the bishop did not know either, and when he saw them he made a sound that I have never heard a man make before, and he told me to come up, and I came up, and the door was sealed, and that was the last I saw of it."
Eleanor's hands were very still on the desk. She was aware of the tea cooling in the cup. She was aware of the smell of the paper and the ink. She was aware of Agnes Pell sitting opposite her, with her hands folded and her eyes steady.
"The feather," she said.
"Yes," said Agnes.
"I have one."
"Yes," said Agnes. "I know."
"It was on the step. It was on the step this morning."
"Yes," said Agnes. "It would be."
She did not explain what she meant. She looked at Eleanor, and her eyes were very clear, and very old, and very steady.
"The bishop," said Eleanor, "what did he say? When he came up from the cellar. Did he say anything?"
"He said one thing," said Agnes. "He said: it is not over. He said it to me, and he said it to the rector, and then he went away, and he never came back."
"And the house?"
"The house has been sealed," said Agnes. "For forty years. Until yesterday, when I unlocked it for the constable, because you were coming, and because you are the last of them, and because someone had to open it, and I am the one who knows where the keys are."
She opened a drawer in the desk. She took out a key, and she set it on the desk between them. It was a large key, of black iron, and it was heavy.
"That is the key to the passage," she said. "The key to the cellar is in the passage itself, behind a stone in the wall. You will know which stone."
Eleanor did not touch the key. She looked at it, and then she looked at Agnes.
"Why me?" she said. "Why did you open it for me?"
Agnes did not answer at once. She looked at Eleanor, and then she looked past her, at the door.
"Because," she said, "the bishop told me, forty years ago, that if anyone ever came back to the house, it would be the last of the family, and that the last of the family would be a woman, and that she would come in the autumn, and that she would have a feather in her hand, and that I was to open the door for her, and let her go in, and not try to stop her, because what was in the house would not be stopped by anyone, and it had been waiting for a long time, and it was time."
She folded them again, her hands, on the desk.
"And you have come," she said. "And you have the feather. And I have opened the house. And that is all I can do."
Eleanor sat very still. The key lay between them on the desk, black and heavy, and the morning light came through the window and lay on it, and the key did not shine.
Outside, faintly, the church bell began to strike the hour. It was nine o'clock. Eleanor listened to it, and she counted the strokes, and when it stopped the silence was very deep.
Eleanor took the key.
It was heavier than it looked. She closed her fingers around it and felt the cold of the iron sink into her palm, into the bones of her hand, into the marrow of her wrist. She thought of her sister. She thought of her grandmother. She thought of the word the bishop had written in his ledger, forty years before she was born: Custodes . She thought of the feather in her pocket, and the river, and the sound the water had made when Cordelia had slipped into it and gone down.
"Thank you," she said.
Agnes nodded. She did not say you are welcome. She said, "Go before the light changes."
Eleanor stood. The chair scraped on the floor. She picked up the black bag, and she put the strap over her shoulder, and she walked to the door, and she opened it, and the morning air came in, and it smelled of wet grass and woodsmoke and the river. She stepped out onto the path, and Agnes did not follow her, and she did not look back, and she walked down the hill toward the house.
The Hollow sat on its low mound above the bend, and the morning lay on it like a thin sheet of glass. The ivy was very still. The windows were dark. The door, where the lock had given way under her hand, stood slightly ajar, and a thin line of shadow ran out across the step.
Eleanor walked up the path. Her boots made no sound on the wet grass. The church bell had stopped. The village was quiet. She could hear the river, faintly, and the sound of a rooster in one of the farms, and the sound of nothing else.
She reached the door. She stood for a moment with her hand on it. The wood was damp under her fingers. She could feel the grain of it, the ridges and the pits, and she thought of all the hands that had touched this door before hers. Her grandmother's. Her sister's. Her own, when she was a girl.
She pushed the door open. She stepped inside.
The hall was exactly as she had left it the night before. The dust lay on the floor. The light came through the high windows in pale shafts, and the motes turned in them, slow and aimless. The stairs rose into the dark above her. The door to the library stood open. The door to the kitchen stood open. The door to the passage was at the back of the hall, under the stairs, and it was closed, and she had never seen it open.
She walked toward it. Her boots left prints in the dust. She reached the door, and she looked at it, and she saw that it was set into the wall under the stairs, and that it was made of thick oak, and that it had no handle, and that it had a keyhole, and that the keyhole was old, and that the iron around it was black with age.
She took the key from her pocket. She fitted it into the keyhole. It went in easily, as if it had been waiting for her. She turned it. The lock gave with a low, heavy sound, like a sigh, like a breath let out after a long time. The door swung inward, away from her, and the air that came out was cold, and it smelled of stone, and of damp, and of something older than damp.
She stepped into the passage.
It was narrow, and the walls were of rough stone, and the ceiling was low, so that she had to duck her head as she went. The floor was of packed earth. There were no windows. The only light was the light that came in behind her from the hall, and it fell a little way into the passage and then stopped, and beyond it was dark.
She stood still and let her eyes adjust. The dark thinned slowly. She began to make out the shapes of the walls. She began to make out the stones. She reached out with her left hand, and her fingers found the wall, and the stone was cold, and it was wet, and it was rough.
She began to walk. She counted her steps. One. Two. Three. The passage ran straight for a little way, and then it began to slope downward, gently, and the air grew colder as she went, and the smell of damp grew stronger, and there was another smell under it, faint, that she could not name. It was not rot. It was not mold. It was something else, something that reminded her of the smell of the river in winter, when the water was very still and the mud lay on the bank.
Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. She reached the end of the passage. Her hand, still on the wall, found a stone that was different from the others. It was smoother. It was set a little higher than the rest. She pressed it, and it moved inward with a soft click, and a section of the wall swung open on hidden hinges, and there was a small space behind it, and in the space there was a key.
She took it. It was smaller than the first one, and it was of black iron, and it was lighter. She put it in her pocket, and she closed the section of wall, and she went on.
The passage ended in another door. This one was of thick oak, like the first, and it had a keyhole, and she took the second key from her pocket and fitted it in, and she turned it, and the lock gave, and the door opened inward, and she stepped through, and she was in the cellar of the Hollow.
The cellar was larger than she had expected. It ran under the whole of the house. The ceiling was of rough stone, held up by stone pillars that rose from the floor like the trunks of old trees. The floor was of packed earth, and it was dry here, and the air was still, and there was no smell at all. The only light came from a grating set high in the wall, and it fell in a single pale shaft onto the center of the floor, and in the center of the floor there was a circle of white chalk, and inside the circle there was a chair, and on the chair there was a book.
Eleanor walked toward the chair. Her boots made no sound on the earth. She reached the edge of the circle, and she stopped, and she looked at the book.
It was a large book, bound in dark leather, and it had no title on the cover, and it was closed. She reached out and touched it. The leather was smooth and very cold. She opened it.
The first page was written in her grandmother's hand. She knew the hand at once. It was the same hand that had written the ledger in the library. It was small, and precise, and the ink was brown with age.
This is the record of what was done in this house, the first line said. It is not for the living. It is for the one who comes after.
Eleanor turned the page. The second page was dated forty years before. It was written by Cordelia Marrow, her grandmother, and it began: I have come to the house. I have found the passage. I have found the cellar. I have found the book. I do not know what it is. I will read it. I will do what it says.
Eleanor turned more pages. The entries went on for many years. Some were short. Some were long. They spoke of listening , and of the deep place beneath the house , and of the thing that waits below , and of the song , and of the bishop , and of the promise . They spoke of her mother, who had refused to listen. They spoke of her sister, who had listened too well.
She turned to the last written page. The handwriting was her sister's. She knew it at once. It was the same hand that had written her the letters when she was away.
I have read the book, it said. I have heard the song. I know what waits below. I will go to the river. I will let it take me. It is the only way to keep the door shut. The one who comes after me must not open the book. The one who comes after me must not listen. The one who comes after me must burn the book, and the ledger, and the feather, and the key, and the house itself if she can. If she cannot, she must do what I could not. She must go down. She must meet it. She must choose.
Eleanor closed the book. She stood very still. The light from the grating fell on her hands, and the dust motes turned in it, slow and aimless. The cellar was silent. The house above her was silent. The village outside was silent. The river was silent.
She put the book under her arm. She turned, and she walked back through the passage, and she climbed the stairs to the hall, and she walked out into the morning, and the sun was high, and the air was warm, and the ivy was still.
She walked down the path to the gate, and she did not look back at the house.
She walked through the village. The houses were quiet. The dogs slept in the sun. The church bell did not ring. She walked to the river, and she stood on the bank where her sister had stood, and she looked at the water.
The water was dark. It moved slowly. It made no sound.
She knelt on the bank. She took the book from under her arm, and she took the feather from her pocket, and she took the key, and she put them all on the ground in front of her. She took the matches from her pocket, and she struck one, and it flared, and she held it to the corner of the book.
The leather caught at once. The flame was small, and it was blue at the edges, and it grew quickly. The book burned. The feather burned. The key turned black, and then it glowed, and then it cracked, and then it was gone. The ashes blew out over the water and floated away on the slow current, and the river took them, and they were gone.
Eleanor stood up. She brushed the ash from her hands. She looked at the water, and she listened, and she heard nothing. She waited for a long time. The sun moved across the sky. The shadows grew short, and then they grew long again. The village was quiet. The house was quiet. The river was quiet.
At last she turned away. She walked back through the village, and she did not stop at the chapel, and she did not stop at Agnes Pell's house, and she walked to the lane that led out of Blackwater, and she walked down it, and she did not look back.
She walked until the village was out of sight. She walked until the lane met the road, and the road went north, and the air smelled of the sea. She walked on, and the sun went down, and the stars came out, and she walked on under them, and the road stretched away before her into the dark.
She did not look back.
She did not hear, behind her, in the silence of the village, the faint sound of a woman singing a lullaby from inside the walls of the Hollow. She did not hear it, and she did not turn, and she did not stop. She walked on, and the road took her, and the dark took her, and the night closed over her like water.
In the morning, the village woke. The sun rose over the Hollow, and the ivy stirred in the wind, and the windows caught the light, and the door stood ajar, and the hall was full of dust, and the cellar was full of silence, and the book was gone, and the key was gone, and the feather was gone, and the circle of white chalk on the floor of the cellar was unbroken, and the chair stood in the center of it, empty, and the air above it was still, and there was no sound at all.
The bishop's stone stood in the chapel yard, and the word on it was Custodes , and the lichen grew on it, and the rain fell on it, and the sun shone on it, and the village went about its business, and the river ran, and the years went by, and no one came back to the house, and the door stayed open, and the house waited, and the thing beneath it waited, and the song went on, faintly, in the walls, where no one could hear it, until someone did.