The tales of Crosshollow, a mythical medieval village are fables for our time — stories of ordinary people whose everyday lives reveal how the deepest forces in the world actually work. No spells are cast here. No magic is named. And yet readers find in these pages something they recognize: truths about patience, presence, grief, and love that apply to not only magic but everyday life. Told by the Keepers of Magical Tales.
A Tale from Crosshollow
As told by the Keepers of Magical Tales
✦ ✦ ✦
They had fished this bend of the river since they were boys — the wide slow curve below the miller's field where the current eased and the water ran dark over a bed of smooth stone. Coll had shown Seb the spot the summer they were eight years old, or Seb had shown Coll — neither of them remembered anymore, and it didn't matter. The bend was theirs the way things become yours when you have done them long enough that the doing and the place and the person are all one thing.
They went out before first light, the way they always did. The walk from the village took them past the mill and down the path along the east bank, and by the time they reached the bend the sky was beginning to pale over the far trees.
They settled on the bank. The lines went in. The river moved past them the way it always had.
✦ ✦ ✦
By the time the light came up properly Coll had fish in his basket and Seb had none.
This was not unusual in itself. The river gave what it gave and some mornings it gave nothing and you walked home and tried again. But this morning Seb could feel the gap between himself and the water — a distance between where he was sitting and where his attention actually was — and he knew the fish could feel it too, which was not something he would have said out loud to anyone including Coll.
His hands held the rod. His eyes were on the line where it entered the water. His mind was in his kitchen.
He had gone over it again in the dark on the walk out. What he should have said. What she had said. The way the door to the back room had closed — not slammed, which would have been easier, but pulled shut with a quietness that was worse than any slam. Wyn was not a woman who slammed doors. She was a woman who pulled them shut quietly and that was how you knew.
He went over it again now. The words arranged and rearranged themselves. He thought about what he would say when he got home. He thought about what she might say back. He moved his line to a different spot without thinking about why.
Coll said nothing. Coll watched the water.
✦ ✦ ✦
Mid-morning, when the light had moved off the far bank and the shadow of the mill was long across the field, Coll said:
"You're watching the line. Watch the water."
Seb looked up. Looked at the water. Shifted his attention to the surface of it — the way it moved over the stones, the small disturbances where the current changed direction, the places where a fish might hold in the cold.
He watched it for a while.
Then the door closed again in his mind, quietly, the way it always did, and he was back in the kitchen. What he should have said. What she had said. He moved his line again without thinking. The morning continued.
Coll caught another fish.
✦ ✦ ✦
They packed up in the early afternoon when the light went flat and the fish stopped moving. Coll reached into his basket and set two fish aside on the bank. He wrapped them in the cloth he carried for the purpose and held them out.
Seb looked at them. Looked at Coll.
Coll was already gathering his things.
Seb took the fish.
They walked home along the east bank path without speaking, the mill coming into view first, then the smoke from Maren's bakery, then the church tower above the trees. The same way they had come. The same way they always came.
✦ ✦ ✦
You're watching the line. Watch the water.
— From the Archives of the Keepers of Magical Tales —
