Eileen wakes to warmth that hasn’t quite earned itself.
The cottage is always kind, but this morning it seems anticipatory. The oven hums faintly even before she switches it on. The breadbox creaks its hinges in a stretch too slow to be coincidence. And the teacups, though they feign disinterest, have all tilted just slightly toward the door.
She ignores them, as is tradition.
In the basket beside the hearth, the fox sleeps. Not perfectly. Its breath still hitches now and then, like it’s dreaming around the memory of pain. But it is better. Much better than it should be. The bruises have faded to shadows. The wounds, bandaged and lined in herbs, no longer weep. Its fur has taken on a quiet shimmer, as if trying to remember the shape of wholeness.
Eileen crosses to it in her robe and house slippers, steam still rising from her cup. She kneels with practiced grace and reaches into its basket, fingers brushing against worn wool and the plush curve of an old stuffed rabbit tucked under the fox’s front paw. Its ears are crooked. One has been stitched with thread the wrong color, brown on cream, and its eyes are mismatched buttons. Daniel made it when he was very young. He had cried over the ears after a rough child tore it off then refused to remake them. “It’s a thinking rabbit,” he’d say, serious as weather. “That’s why it looks like it’s wondering something.”
The fox stirs. Not awake, not afraid. Just pressing its nose into the soft fur of the stuffed rabbit, as if it belongs there.
“I’ll be back before long,” Eileen murmurs. “You rest. Watch the house for me. And be kind to the kettle. It gets lonely.”
She tucks the quilt closer around the fox’s side, making sure the rabbit doesn’t slip. Then she rises and moves through the kitchen with the ease of someone who no longer needs to look for things. Her hands find the bread she baked the night before, still under the cloth with the crooked duck embroidery. The duck wasn’t in the original pattern. It just happened.
Three sandwiches today. One for the visit. One for the way back. One for the unknown.
She wraps them in waxed paper, the old kind, saved and folded too many times to count. Her fingers crease the edges sharply, reverently. Then she ties the green ribbon around the third. The ribbon is soft from age and frayed a little at one end. It was part of a gift she gave herself two years ago. Something ordinary and needed. Socks, maybe. The sort of thing no one else would remember to wrap.
“Always keep one for the unknown,” she says aloud again, not quite to the room, not quite to herself. It was a habit of course. Along with a promise. And possibly a law, though no one had written it down yet.
She packs the basket carefully. A jar of honey. A folded note she probably won’t give to anyone. A tin of fresh ginger chews, just in case Sarah starts asking questions that need more time to answer than a walk around the park allows. Even the table creaks softly as she leans her weight against it, as if in quiet approval. For it was often the quiet work that mattered, not grand, not holy, but necessary. The kind that held the corners of a day in place, soft brown mote popping into existence and then floating down into the floorboards of the cottage.
Only when it’s all in place does she lean back against the counter. The mixer gives a hopeful whir. The kettle lets out a sigh.
While the water comes to temperature, she opens the breadbox and breaks off the corner of a crust from last night’s loaf. It’s still soft in the center, speckled with rosemary and a touch of salt. She nibbles without thinking, brushing crumbs from the edge of her sleeve.
She closes her eyes. Breathes in deeply. Cinnamon. Toast. A little rosemary from the soup she reheated too late last night still clinging to the air.
And beneath it all, something faint, something shifting, something beginning to turn.
But Eileen does not notice all of it. Not yet. For it is Twoseday, and Twosedays were for visiting the grandchildren.
The door to the cottage closes with a soft, satisfying clunk behind her. Twosedays were for the grandchildren. Always had been. Joey with his endless pockets and Sarah with her endless questions. She never took the fastest path to the city, but she always took the kindest one, winding through the trees, past the moss and murmuring brook. They wouldn’t expect her for hours yet, but that was alright. Grandmothers don’t need rushing. Only sandwiches. And good boots.
Eileen pauses on the stone step, letting the basket settle beside her feet as she tucks her shawl tighter across her shoulders. The chill is here earlier than it should be, drifting down from the Yombell peaks like old news passed between birds. A sly kind of cold. The kind Daniel used to predict a week in advance, just by the way the clouds sat on the hills or how the apples ripened on the north side of the tree.
She smiles to herself, not at the memory, but at the way it’s returned without asking permission. “Should’ve brought the wool one,” she murmurs, tugging her shawl again. “You always knew.”
No answer, of course. Just the wind, which doesn’t quite blow, nudges. It slips through the lattice of the porch rail and runs fingers down her arms like it’s checking if she remembers how to listen. Still she shivers a little. Just not from the cold. Or from any ghosts. But from the memory of him, the shape of his warmth.
She leans down and lifts the basket with a low, theatrical groan. Her knees… loyal but dramatic. Her boots scrape the stone as she turns and she takes her first step off the porch into a morning that smells like citrus and turning pages. Just past the gate, she pauses. Not because she’s forgotten anything. But because something has remembered her.
A spider appears on the path, small, gray, and still as punctuation at the end of a sentence no one remembers writing. “Well,” Eileen says, smiling as she bends slightly. “There you are.”
She doesn’t step around it. She doesn’t move it aside. She waits. And after a few heartbeats, a second spider appears from under the edge of her boot, tiny, pale, legs trembling in the morning air. It joins the first, silent and trembling. “Oh,” she murmurs, “you’ve brought a little friend. Or maybe your partner?”
She doesn’t swat either of them away, doesn’t need to. She’s lived long enough to know a sign when she sees one. The stillness of it, the neatness, like a letter left just for her.
Eileen closes her eyes, just briefly, and bows her head. “Blessings on small legs, travelers of threads. May Urgu grant you safe crossings and clever knots. Tá an t-ádh ag baint leis an damhán alla.”
She then murmurs her thanks once more, quieter this time, to Urgu herself, goddess of the road and the weary hearted, of mismatched socks, second chances, and cups of tea gone cold between stories too good.
The wind lifts again, this time through the open kitchen window behind her. She realizes she left it open. Inside, the teacups clink once. Then twice. A rhythm like ritual for them. A sound like breath held between lines. Agreement and approval or maybe disagreement, followed by acceptance. Hard to say.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The spiders part, one vanishing into a crack in the stone, the other crawling up the stem of a dandelion and vanishing entirely. Eileen steps forward unhurried.
The path welcomes her without ceremony. The trees lean just slightly overhead, not ominous, just familiar. Like old great-aunts with long shadows and stronger opinions. The brook ahead is already murmuring louder, threading its voice between the thinning trees, weaving it through damp leaves and moss covered stones.
She walks slowly. The trail narrows just a little near the water, pressing her steps closer together. Her boots whisper through the carpet of copper and olive and soft brown. Each footfall is a note in some half forgotten lullaby.
To her left, the old windchime dangles from a tree stump. It doesn’t ring anymore, not since it fell and she rehung it slightly wrong, but today, it spins lazily, twirling in the still air. “Mmhm,” Eileen hums to herself. “Show-off,” she says with a smile.
She doesn’t question it. And the wind chime doesn’t explain itself either, for they have that in common at least.
Further along the path, she stops in front of a mossy mound tucked beside a fork in the trail. It’s nothing much, just a thick stump, green with years. But Sarah had once named it Sir Greenbottom in a fit of gleeful importance. She’d even tried to crown it with a paper leaf hat, which Eileen had returned two days later to find it perfectly folded by the breeze.
She taps the top of the stump now with two fingers. “Good morning, Sir Greenbottom,” she says. “Hold the path while I’m out, won’t you?” She curtsies, only slightly, and moves on.
The air thickens near the bend. The smell of water deepens, mingling with leaf rot and something cooler. Something that smells like wet stone in a place no sunlight reaches. But she doesn’t stop. Not yet.
For a bench waits ahead, half-swallowed by lichen and stubborn moss, hunched beneath an old oak that lifts its branches like arms stretched in prayer.
Eileen steps off the trail. Her boots sink softly into the earth. She brushes her sleeve over the bench’s wooden slats before sitting, clearing a patch wide enough to see if it’s still there. Her fingers trace the wood. Slowly. Carefully.
D plus E.
A carving worn thin. Faded by time, rain, fingers. Faint as breath on a windowpane. Her thumb presses the carving. Still there. Still theirs. “Romantic,” she says, half a whisper.
Her eyes close, and for a moment, she sees him. Not as he was at the end, but younger. Tongue poking out as he carved the letter D with that ridiculous little penknife. Eyes squinting with the effort. Hands too big for the gesture.
“Still there,” she murmurs again, rubbing the groove like it might hum in response. “We were babies once,” she says, smiling gently now. “And we thought it would last forever.”
She tilts her head up to the oak. Its branches stretch wide above her, weathered and creaking gently in the shifting light.
“And we thought it would last forever,” she repeats, quieter now. Not sad. Just remembering.
A single acorn drops beside her foot, not sudden, not sharp, just timed. She blinks. A chill presses against the back of her neck like a breath, not quite a breeze. Except for the birds which are quiet here. Too quiet.
She stands slowly. Brushes her skirt flat. Straightens the shawl at her shoulders. From behind the trees comes a faint scent. Damp. Iron. Unfamiliar. Not dangerous, just wrong. The brook sounds different here, too, like it’s falling inward instead of down.
She doesn’t mention it aloud, she simply starts walking instead, down the path. Past the place where the trail bends again, past where the light begins to gray.
And somewhere behind her, the bench remains. The carving softening in the moss. The windchime turning without wind with while Sir Greenbottom listens silent as stone. Just in case.
The ground tilts, not enough to stumble, not enough to mark, but enough to notice.
Eileen pauses mid-step, one foot pressed into moss, the other just hovering. The balance of the world has shifted, just slightly. The trees no longer lean in quiet agreement, they bow, faintly, as if they’ve remembered something.
She steps again, the ground firms beneath her foot, but it remembers tilting. She remembers it too and she finds it quietly disconcerting.
The brook ahead has quieted as well. Not silenced, but drawn thin, like a song halfway forgotten or a thread pulled too tight. The birds have not stopped entirely, but their notes seem farther apart, folded between long breaths and careful pauses.
Then she sees it.
The well. The same one?
It sits in the crook between two trees, pressed in close like siblings mid-conversation. Not placed, nor built but more recalled. Like its presence is another echo of the one from the glade or perhaps... the same mouth or a different face.
Regardless it shouldn’t be there, she had intended for their short friendship to terminate past that moment and yet Eileen finds herself drawn towards it. The stone of its wall is dark, slick with dew, wrapped in moss along the bottom, but the timber crown is sharp and recently tied. The foliage from the first time she had met it is gone as well.
She narrows her eyes, stepping closer. Her boots press into the moss with less sound than they should. Another thing is missing, the sandwich is gone as well. The one with the green ribbon.
In its place is only an imprint, a slight bend in the moss, a thread clinging to a crack between the stones. Eileen blinks slowly, then lets out a soft breath through her nose.
“Someone took it,” she says aloud, not surprised, not disturbed, just… noting.
Then, a voice comes crying up from the well! “Help! Help, can anybody help!”
Small. Cracked. A child’s voice, caught halfway between panic and hope, rising from the well like steam off cooling tea.
“My bwodder, he’s hurt! He needs help!”
Eileen sets the basket down gently, nestling it between two stones, and leans forward. There’s no rope. No pulley. No bucket or crank. Just the lip of the well, and the shadow beyond it.
“Don’t worry, little one,” she calls down, calm and even. “Grandmother’s here.”
“Re-weally?” the voice hiccups.
“Yes, of course,” she soothes. “I’ll be right down. But wells can be tricky, and I’m not as spry as I used to be. I’ll go get help from Thompton, I’ll come back with a rescue.”
“But my bwodder…” The voice hiccups. “He’s all wet an’ red an’ messy, and I fink he’s going away! Please don’t weave us!”
Eileen’s fingers tighten around the stone. She leans in further, searching for any purchase, a notch, a foothold, a miracle. But the stone is wrong, it is both too smooth on the inside and roughly irregularly cut around the rim? As if it was not worn down by time, but shaped instead. Not aged, but installed, the well doesn’t feel built so much as… remembered.
She sighs, not frustrated, just acknowledging the situation for what it was. “Alright. We’ll do it your way little ones.”
She adjusts her balance, preparing to climb or lower herself down, but a sharp edge catches the heel of her palm. A sliver of granite, thin as a petal, slices her skin. She draws back, and blood wells up, bright and round, too red against the pale morning light.
The well responds.
There is no wind, but smoke curls upward from the mouth of it. Not like fire, more like breath. The mist is cool, colorless, and slow. And in it, letters begin to form.
Clean. Elegant. Administrative.
DONATION ACCEPTED
WELCOME, DISTINGUISHED OFFERANT
[Subroutine: Offering Substitute Acknowledged. Pattern Unverified. Tracking…]
Eileen blinks once, then presses her lips together. “That seems excessive,” she murmurs, glancing down at her hand. “I didn’t offer,” she adds, not arguing, just clarifying. “That was clumsiness.”
But the stones don’t care. The well has no room for apologies. Clumsiness is still a kind of decision and the stones begin to move in the acknowledgement. As a hum settles beneath her feet, deep and low, more felt than heard.
Stepping back she begins to watch as the base of the well folds outward, inward, downward. A spiral staircase beginning to reveal itself, not carved, not constructed, but pulled from hiding like thread from a hem. The moss pulls away without protest. The roots recede as if making room.
At the edge of the rim, a spiderweb stretches between two stones, silvered and whole, trembling faintly in the damp air. Eileen reaches out and touches one thread with the tip of her finger.
“For small legs,” she murmurs. “For clever knots.”
She turns, lifts the basket again, and checks the sandwiches. They are still in place. Along with her trusty handkerchief and the large boiled waterskin she carries. She pauses, then adds a yellow wildflower, from a nearby bush, tucking it beside the wax paper like a note folded into a pocket. Not for herself. For the ones below.
A beetle watches her from the edge of a nearby leaf. It doesn’t move, so she places her foot on the first stair, then the next. “I’m coming, little ones,” she says as she begins to descend.
The air stirs behind her... not wind, nor breath, but the quiet kind of resolve that settles at one’s back when they choose to step forward into the dark. A red mote of light flickers into being, steady as conviction.
Her voice is calm, but it carries. “Grandmother’s on her way.”