It’s morning, a nice one from the look of it, still cool from a bit of overnight rain but blue sky is greeting me from the windows.
I putter through my usual morning routines, wash, breakfast, tidy. It’s best to tidy as you go, otherwise things pile up, then multiply when you’re not looking and in no time at all, the easiest thing is to set a torch to the place and start over. I would prefer not to burn down my cottage, so I tidy.
When both the cottage and I look spick and span, I scoop up my basket and open the front door, ready for a day of foraging in the forest on the edge of my swamp.
I nearly kick a clay jar, sealed with far more wax than necessary, sitting on my front step. It’s a good thing I caught myself, the jar’s a solid thing, about the size of my head, with an air of weight about it. Looking around, I fail to find any note, or hovering messenger, just a trail of footprints in the wet grass.
I sidle around the pot, reach over it to close up the cottage, then set off after the footprints. There’s no way I’m touching that jar without some sort of context, and abandoning it like that sets all my warning instincts afire.
The prints end at my dock, some people do come by boat when they visit, and some grateful pilgrim built it for me a few years ago while he was waiting for the rest of his party to join him. I wonder what happened to them…
Most would consider me stymied by this. After all, who can track over water? No one. But plenty can track under it. I call on the friendly swamp monster who calls my area her territory and ask about a moving wooden dent in her ceiling.
The DNA of Stories 