Chapter 6 BEGINNING

Emma locked up the library by the late afternoon, the sun casting a long shadow through the trees. Willow Creek was as quiet as a tomb because that was what she believed until she noticed the old woman sitting on the wooden bench across the street. Her weathered hands worked a piece of string into patterns in a way that reminded her of spun moonbeams catching in her silver hair, washed to the same colour by the sun.

Usually, Emma would be in a hurry home after work, but today was different as she was drawn to slow down. It could have been the way she never seemed so much in and yet was so out of place in the modern world, like a character who'd stepped out of one of the leather-bound fairy tales stored in the library.

'The strings always know, dear' the woman called to her, calling for so much more than she had shown. "They are putting what we want to forget into memory."

She looked around to see if it was directed at her. "I'm sorry?"

"Come, sit." She patted the space next to her. "I'm Agatha. I know you as the librarian – you're the one people come in to talk about their town's history.

Emma shivered. Because this was the first time, she had seen her

"How did you know?"

"As I know the hollow oak on Mason Street has true secrets behind the town archives." The string danced between Agatha's fingers; her fingers never stopped. "Just like I know you've seen things you can't explain.' Against the wind, the shadows move. Who isn't watching when the books rearrange themselves when no one is watching? The whispers in the stacks, rain but to your name."

Emma's breath stilled in her throat. She was even sure it was a matter of the stress of the past few days of her thoughts towards Liam causing her to think she was seeing things. However, listening to these words spoken aloud by this stranger made them suddenly, terrifyingly real.

'I don't know what you're talking about,' Emma spluttered but her feet moved her to the bench all the same.

Her eyes crinkled from the outer edges like some ancient parchment, Agatha smiled. ''Willow Creek didn't get its name because of its trees, you know." There are a lot of those, but. It was thus called, in honour of the way things flow here - water seeking its way. Others simply trickle along, running surface and obvious to everyone. Others..." She raised her string work, in the form of a complicated web. "And there are others, others that run deeper, underground, unseen but very vital." More alive than Ley lines. More aware."

"Ley lines?" Against her skepticism, Emma did become interested in academics. 'Theoretical alignments of ancient sites,' you mean?"

A wind chime in a gentle breeze kind of sound and is what Agatha laughed. "That's theoretical to some, perhaps." You've felt them, haven't you, but we have you in our sights. In the library, especially. The day when the shadows lengthen, and the dust motes dance like fireflies, even the buzz in the air just before closing, when all is quiet but for the closing entrance buzzer. That's not electricity, dear. That's something older. This has been here since before the first settlers, before the first nations, before the first footsteps pressed to the soil. Before even your great-grandparents.

A bizarre sensation, she blinked, in the library's reading room, the air sometimes thick with possibility, how books sometimes throbbed with some energy she couldn't quite put her finger on. "But that's impossible."

"Unexplained is just another way to say impossible." Agatha's fingers ran the string into a different pattern. "We didn't realize that in 1847, when they were trying to build the first church here, they tried to put down the foundation stones and they'd disappear every night?" In the morning, they'd lay them down and, in the morning, they'd be gone. No tracks, no explanation. It took them three tries before they listened to the land and built where there was none."

Emma protested: 'That isn't in any of the historical records.'

Dear: "Not all stories are written for paper." They are written in the wind and the water, the places between heartbeats. Agatha whispered and leaned closer. "That's the story of how your predecessor disappeared so quickly." Don't you ever ask why no one talks about it? What about the gaps in the library logs from last October? 'Why is it assumed that that corner of the reading room, a borrowed space after all, must be some kind of jilted soul, a forgotten room left behind by all the others?"

Emma had wondered, of course. She didn't think she'd been able to put together what had happened to the previous librarian - who had disappeared, leaving behind a spotlessly organized desk and a terse resignation letter on October 31st. She had bought it and taken over.

Agatha's fingers were still weaving, 'The protection flows both ways.' Secrets make secrets, and secrets make the town." Sometimes, however, when the right person asks the right questions..." She raised her string work one final time. In the dimming light, Emma thought she saw it shimmer on a light all its own.

Suddenly up off her seat, Emma stood. 'I should go,' she said.

The rational part of her mind was singing out to her, that this was nonsense, that she wasn't so stupid as to let an old woman who seemed like a stranger tale's get to her. But another part, the part that had thought stories held magic, knew that she would be back tomorrow with questions she couldn't ignore.

Emma nodded, yes, Agatha had read her thoughts. Dear, the strings always know. And now, so do you." The mist was rising off the ground, and she began to unravel her work. "So just remember to listen in the right way and some questions answer themselves."

Though Emma walked home, her mind racing with Agatha's words, she had been sure the shadows under the trees were moving differently, more deliberately. On a certain cool breeze, brushing her with the smell of old books and something wilder, more ancient, she didn't try to explain it away. Instead, she listened, especially ever since she had grown up in Willow Creek.

She could have sworn she heard an answer, and somewhere in the spaces of her thoughts.