Chapter 9: The Quiet Between
617 Words
Aria
Life in Hollowbrook was stitched together with simple rhythms: bread rising in ovens, children chasing geese through dusty lanes, gossip traded over water buckets. Aria knew those rhythms well enough, but she always felt just slightly out of step.
She walked the market square that morning, her basket filling slowly—apples from Old Marta, a wedge of cheese, a twist of herbs. Familiar smiles met her, yet none lingered. People liked Aria, but they did not know her. Not truly.
Her grandmother had been the healer of Hollowbrook, respected but set apart, and Aria had inherited that quiet distance along with the cottage and the shelves of herbs she barely knew how to use.
Sometimes, when she passed neighbors, she caught fragments of whispers.
“She has her grandmother’s eyes.”
“Strange dreams, they say.”
“Best not to stand too close.”
No one said it outright, but she felt the barrier all the same.
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At the baker’s stall, young Elsie—bright-eyed, no more than sixteen—grinned at her. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Aria. Didn’t sleep?”
Aria managed a smile. “Dreams, that’s all.”
“Dreams?” Elsie leaned closer, lowering her voice. “Was it of him again?”
Aria’s hand stilled over the apples. “Him?”
“The wolf,” Elsie whispered, glancing around as though the mere word could summon it. “The children say they’ve heard howls near the village. My brother swears he saw eyes glowing at the edge of the fields last night.”
Aria forced a laugh, though it sat uneasily in her throat. “Children’s tales.”
But Elsie only smirked. “If it’s just tales, why do you look so pale?”
Before Aria could answer, someone else called for Elsie, and the girl bounced away, leaving Aria’s heart thundering.
The wolf. Always the wolf.
She walked home more quickly than usual, basket clutched tight.
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At the cottage, she found herself reaching for her grandmother’s old books. They smelled of dust and lavender, their spines cracked from years of use. She had never dared open the oldest ones—those bound in faded leather with strange symbols pressed into their covers.
Today, her fingers lingered.
She wasn’t sure what she sought. Answers, perhaps. Proof that the strange weight in her chest wasn’t madness.
But before she could draw one down, a knock startled her.
It was Edda, her neighbor, balancing a loaf of bread in her hands. “Thought you might like this, dear. You’ve been keeping to yourself too much.”
Aria smiled gratefully, though inside her chest she felt a pang of guilt. Edda was kind, one of the few who made the effort. And yet even with her, Aria held back. How could she explain the restless dreams, the feeling of being watched, the way the woods seemed to pull at her?
She accepted the bread, they exchanged pleasantries, and then Edda left, her footsteps fading down the path.
Silence filled the cottage again.
Aria sat by the window, turning the loaf in her hands, staring at the line of trees beyond the fields.
Her heart whispered what her lips would not:
I am not like them. I never was.
That night, when she lay in bed, the dreams returned. Not of silver eyes this time, but of firelight flickering on stone walls, of voices chanting words she didn’t understand. She woke with her palms burning, as though she had held flame in her sleep.
The basket of apples sat forgotten by the door.
The bread lay untouched.
And the woods outside her window seemed closer than ever before.
- Writer
