Sunday, October 29, 1967
The Hollow Tree
At two o’clock on Sunday morning, the clocks rolled back. For the first time in nearly half a century, daylight savings returned the nation to darkness before five. In Bellweather that meant dusk fell early, and the town’s evening bell would strike its fifth chime long before supper. Miriam Finch woke to frost lacing the windows and the north wind moaning against the roof. The cadence from Eleanor’s poem echoed in her chest:
First Northwind, then October frost,
These four in order be:
Fifth bell tolls at dark edge of dusk,
Then enter the Hollow Tree.
She spent the afternoon at the library, restless. The brittle journal lay open on her desk, its violet ink faded but legible. She read the poem again and again, tracing the four lines as though they were coordinates. Northwind had come. The first frost had silvered the steps. The Hollow Tree stood waiting in her dreams and, she suspected, beyond them. Only the bell remained.
At half past four, dusk had already pooled in the streets. Shadows stretched long across the shelves of the map room. Miriam copied the poem once more into her ledger, underlining each sign as if the repetition might delay its fulfillment. But the clock would not be delayed. When the hour struck, the sound rolled from the church down the street. Once. Twice. Three times. Four. And then a fifth.
The chime went through her body like a current. Miriam closed her ledger, tucked the brittle journal against her chest, wrapped the photograph of the river in its tissue, and pulled on her coat. She locked the library doors and walked quickly through the frost-bitten streets. Down the slope, past the churchyard, the path led to the river grove. The north wind whipped the trees. The Hollow Tree loomed at the edge, black and split wide enough to swallow her.
Inside its seam of wood, Miriam found a folded scrap of paper. The ink had browned with age but the words were still clear: Let the river read us now. Eleanor’s hand. Miriam pressed it to her heart. The bells still rang in her ribs. She stepped deeper into the hollow. The bark shimmered faintly, then dissolved. The world brightened into a light she had no name for.
When her eyes opened again, the grove was gone. The river stretched luminous before her, as if it had been waiting all along.
Miriam Finch vanished into the Hollow Tree. By Monday morning, Bellweather would begin to whisper her name alongside Eleanor and Vincent’s.
