Porchwood Hollow

A Story from Porchwood Hollow

Beneath the attic window, on a shelf that had grown accustomed to being forgotten, lived two old books.

One was Burgundy, with its faded cloth cover, worn gold lettering, and a spine that leaned rather dramatically to the left.

The other was Green, whose corners had softened with age and whose pages carried the faint scent of dust, tea, and afternoons long gone.

Neither was particularly valuable.

Both had survived several attempts at being tidied away.

The Keeper had placed them together beneath the window years ago, and there they remained, keeping company through the changing seasons.

Burgundy was inclined toward worry.

Green was inclined toward patience.

This arrangement generally suited them both.

Until one autumn evening, when Burgundy announced something rather troubling.

“I believe I’m losing myself.”

Green waited.

It had learned that Burgundy’s announcements were seldom improved by interruption.

“Parts of my story are missing,” Burgundy continued. “Entire passages. Perhaps chapters. I cannot remember what happened between them.”

“That sounds unpleasant.”

“Unpleasant? Green, it’s catastrophic.”

“Is it?”

“Of course it is. How can I know who I am if I cannot remember everything I’ve been?”

Green considered this.

Outside, the last leaves scraped against the attic window.

“I suppose,” Green said, “that depends upon what you believe a story is.”

Burgundy found this an irritating answer.

It was not the last one Green would give.

—

Green knew something about missing pages.

Its first chapter had been torn away long ago.

There was water damage near the middle, a crooked repair along its binding, and several passages so faded that even the most determined reader would struggle to make them out.

But near the beginning was something else.

An impression in the paper.

The delicate outline of a flower.

Green remembered when the flower had arrived.

It was a summer afternoon, years before the books had been carried upstairs.

A grandmother sat beside a little girl near the downstairs window.

The girl was still learning to read.

She approached difficult words with enormous determination and occasionally substituted words of her own when the originals proved uncooperative.

The grandmother never seemed to mind.

Sometimes she helped.

Sometimes she listened.

Sometimes they laughed so hard that Green’s pages trembled.

That afternoon, the little girl had brought a flower from the garden.

It was small and yellow, with a stem too short for any sensible vase.

“Can we keep it?” she asked.

The grandmother studied the blossom.

“We could try.”

She opened Green near the beginning and carefully settled the flower between two pages.

The little girl leaned close.

“Will it stay beautiful?”

The grandmother smoothed the paper.

“It will be different.”

The child considered this.

“Will it still be mine?”

The grandmother smiled and closed the book.

And there the flower rested, pressed between the words of a story they had read together.

Years passed.

The flower flattened.

Its color faded.

The grandmother’s visits became less frequent.

Then they stopped.

Green never knew why.

Books are rather good at remembering what happens in front of them, but they know very little about where people go afterward.

One afternoon, someone returned.

It was the little girl.

Except she was no longer little.

She stood for a long time beside the shelf before lifting Green into her hands.

She opened it carefully, turning the pages until she reached the place where the flower had been.

The blossom had become so delicate that a few brittle pieces slipped loose.

Its outline remained.

The young woman touched the impression with one finger.

Then she began reading.

Green remembered the rhythm of those sentences.

It remembered the little voice that once stumbled through them.

It remembered the older voice beside it, patient and warm.

But this time, there was only one voice.

Halfway through the passage, the young woman stopped.

A tear fell onto the paper.

Then another.

She kept one hand against the open book while the afternoon light moved slowly across the table.

Eventually, she turned back to the beginning of the chapter.

Her fingers found the place where the paper met the binding.

There was a small sound.

A careful, uneven tearing.

She folded the pages once, with the faint flower still resting between them, and placed them inside her coat.

Then she closed Green, held it for a moment, and returned it to the shelf.

She did not say goodbye.

Green never saw her again.

And its first chapter was gone.

—

Burgundy found this absence rather alarming.

“Your beginning!” it exclaimed when Green mentioned the torn pages. “How could anyone do such a thing?”

Green said nothing.

“Surely you must have been terribly upset.”

“I was.”

“And now?”

“Now I remember the afternoon.”

“But the chapter is gone.”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ve lost it.”

Green looked toward the window.

“Have I?”

Burgundy sighed.

Green could be extraordinarily difficult when it chose.

But later, when Green had grown quiet, Burgundy noticed its companion’s pages stirring though there was no breeze.

“Do you miss being read that way?” Burgundy asked.

Green took a long time to answer.

“Sometimes more than I miss the chapter.”

Burgundy did not know what to say.

So it leaned a little closer.

And Green, for once, was grateful that Burgundy had no clever answer.

—

Winter came to Porchwood Hollow.

The Keeper opened the Green Door and brought the residents upstairs, where the attic became their winter home.

There were blankets to arrange, chairs to claim, and several disagreements about who had occupied which corner the previous year.

Someone misplaced a slipper.

Someone else found it and declared that it had been improperly stored.

The teacups were rearranged twice.

The attic became pleasantly untidy.

And Burgundy became increasingly miserable.

It had begun filling its missing chapters with imagined passages.

At first, this seemed a perfectly reasonable solution.

If the original words could not be remembered, why not replace them with better ones?

So Burgundy invented.

There were magnificent achievements.

Wonderful friendships that never faltered.

Decisions made with flawless judgment.

Conversations in which nobody misunderstood anything.

There were no embarrassing mistakes, no abandoned plans, no long years spent wondering whether a different choice might have changed everything.

Every disappointment had an explanation.

Every departure had a satisfactory conclusion.

Even the ordinary afternoons were transformed into something remarkable.

Burgundy grew quite proud of these improvements.

For a while.

Until one snowy evening, when a winter resident noticed the old book beneath the window.

“Oh, here’s something to read.”

Burgundy straightened as much as its damaged spine allowed.

At last.

An audience.

The resident settled into a chair and opened Burgundy to one of its newly imagined chapters.

And began to read aloud.

The words filled the attic.

They were beautiful words.

Elegant.

Confident.

Entirely certain of themselves.

They described a life in which everything had happened as it should.

Every person had been wise.

Every opportunity had been taken.

Every ending had arrived precisely when it was supposed to.

The resident paused.

Turned a page.

Read a little farther.

Then frowned.

“That’s rather strange.”

Burgundy felt something tighten beneath its binding.

The resident looked back at the beginning.

“Doesn’t sound like the rest of you.”

There was a small silence.

The book was closed and returned to the shelf.

The winter resident went off to find something more interesting to read.

But Burgundy remained terribly still.

For the first time, it had heard its invented pages spoken aloud.

And they had sounded nothing like its own voice.

Not even a little.

The real chapters had been awkward sometimes.

There were sentences that wandered.

Passages that contradicted one another.

Decisions that had seemed sensible until the following chapter proved otherwise.

There were mistakes.

There were ordinary Tuesdays.

There were people who left without explanation.

And beautiful moments that had arrived without warning and disappeared before Burgundy understood their importance.

Those pages had not been perfect.

But they had belonged to Burgundy.

The invented ones belonged to nobody.

For several days, Burgundy refused to speak.

Green did not insist.

It simply remained beside its old companion while the snow gathered against the window.

At last, Burgundy whispered, “I think I’ve done something terrible.”

Green waited.

“I’ve made myself into a book I don’t recognize.”

“That sounds lonely.”

“It is.”

Burgundy’s voice had grown very small.

“I thought if I could write better pages, perhaps the missing ones wouldn’t matter.”

“And did it help?”

“For a little while.”

“Only a little?”

Burgundy looked down at its worn cover.

“I could almost believe them when nobody was reading.”

Green understood.

For a time, neither spoke.

Then Green said, “You know, some of my favorite passages are rather poorly written.”

Burgundy gave a faint rustle.

“That’s hardly encouraging.”

“One contains an entire afternoon in which absolutely nothing happens.”

“How dreadful.”

“Someone makes tea. It rains. A window is left open. A child falls asleep.”

“And?”

“Nothing else.”

Burgundy considered this.

“Not much of a story.”

“No,” Green agreed. “Not much.”

There was another silence.

Then Green added, “I remember it very well.”

Burgundy turned slightly toward its companion.

“Why?”

“Because no one wanted that afternoon to end.”

Something in Burgundy softened.

It thought about its own neglected chapters.

Meals prepared.

Clothes washed.

Roads traveled so often that every turn had become familiar.

People sitting quietly together.

Promises kept without anyone noticing.

Hands held in hospital rooms.

Gardens planted.

Things repaired.

Children growing older.

Ordinary Tuesdays.

There had been so many of them.

Burgundy had spent years believing they were the pages between the important parts.

Perhaps it had been reading them incorrectly.

—

Spring began making its way toward the Hollow.

The snow retreated from the window.

Sunlight reached farther across the floor.

The winter residents began discussing their return downstairs with the seriousness usually reserved for great expeditions.

One afternoon, the Keeper climbed the narrow staircase.

She stopped beside the shelf and lifted Burgundy into her hands.

Burgundy grew nervous.

There were still loose pages.

Crooked passages.

Unfinished thoughts.

The Keeper opened the book somewhere in the middle.

She read quietly.

Then she smiled.

A moment later, her expression changed.

She turned another page.

And another.

Eventually, she closed Burgundy and held it against her chest.

“Well,” she whispered.

Then, after a moment:

“I’d forgotten about that.”

She returned the book to its place beside Green and went downstairs.

Burgundy waited until her footsteps disappeared.

“Green?”

“Yes?”

“She didn’t seem disappointed.”

“No.”

“She didn’t look for my missing pages.”

“No.”

“She remembered something.”

“Apparently.”

“But I don’t think it was written there.”

Green looked toward the sunlight.

“Perhaps not.”

Burgundy was quiet for a long while.

It thought about the man who had once read three pages and then stared silently out the window until evening.

It thought about the Keeper holding the book against her chest.

And it thought about Green’s missing first chapter.

The little girl.

The grandmother.

The flower.

“Green?”

“Yes, Burgundy?”

“Do you ever wonder where your first chapter went?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you think it’s still somewhere?”

Green did not answer immediately.

Beyond the attic window, the garden was beginning to wake.

A bird settled on the sill, considered the two books with mild suspicion, and flew away.

“Perhaps,” Green said.

Burgundy listened to the hesitation in that single word.

Green, who always seemed so certain that a story was more than its pages, did not sound certain at all.

“You know,” Burgundy said, “you’ve spent a great deal of time telling me that a missing chapter needn’t ruin a book.”

“I have.”

“But I don’t think you always believe it about yourself.”

Green’s pages settled.

“Not always.”

Burgundy considered this carefully.

“Then perhaps you needn’t always believe it. Perhaps some days you can simply miss what was there.”

Green made no reply.

“And perhaps,” Burgundy continued, “I can sit beside you on those days. I have considerable experience being unhappy about pages.”

Despite itself, Green gave a small rustle of laughter.

“That you do.”

“I might even refrain from offering advice.”

“Now that would be extraordinary.”

Burgundy leaned gently against its companion.

For a while, neither spoke.

Then Burgundy said, very quietly, “I don’t think she took your chapter because she didn’t want it to be part of you.”

Green waited.

“Perhaps she took it because it had become part of her.”

Green looked toward the window.

For the first time in many years, the torn edge of its beginning seemed a little less like an ending.

—

Years would pass.

Both books would grow older.

Their covers would fade a little more.

Their pages would loosen.

Some words would disappear entirely.

Burgundy would still occasionally remember the perfect chapters it had invented.

There would even be days when it wished those chapters had been true.

Green would sometimes miss the sound of two voices reading together.

And neither would always know what to say to the other.

But they remained side by side.

Burgundy found itself returning more often to its ordinary pages.

The ones with worn corners.

The ones where someone had laughed.

The ones that had been opened again and again, not because they were extraordinary, but because somebody had found a reason to return.

And Green remained beside it, with the delicate impression of a flower near the place where its first chapter had once been.

One evening, as the light began to leave the attic, Burgundy spoke.

“Green?”

“Hmm?”

“I’ve been thinking about your chapter.”

“Have you?”

“And my pages. And the things people seem to remember that we never wrote down.”

Green waited.

Burgundy watched the last of the sunlight disappear beneath the Green Door.

“Perhaps they weren’t missing.”

Green said nothing.

“Some of them were simply being kept somewhere else.”

The attic grew quiet.

Far below, someone laughed.

The old house settled around them.

And beneath the window, two imperfect books rested side by side.

Neither knew every ending.

Neither remembered every beginning.

And neither knew how much of its story was being carried, even now, in the hearts of those who had once opened it.

But the books were still there.

And somewhere, perhaps, so were their missing pages.

Somewhere nearby, a story has begun.