WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.200 --> 00:00:08.119 Hullo. I'm welcomed stories all the time. The lad you 2 00:00:08.160 --> 00:00:11.119 are here, Let's get into it. The place where I 3 00:00:11.160 --> 00:00:13.199 first found the book is hard to describe, not because 4 00:00:13.199 --> 00:00:15.359 it was hidden, but because it sad, as though waiting, 5 00:00:15.599 --> 00:00:17.719 and that thin slice of shelf space reserved for things 6 00:00:17.760 --> 00:00:20.960 neither lost nor properly cataloged. I had spent the morning 7 00:00:20.960 --> 00:00:23.640 shelving returns in the library's oldest wing, where the shells 8 00:00:23.679 --> 00:00:25.679 breathe a slow, woody chill and the histories of the 9 00:00:25.719 --> 00:00:29.239 town settle in drifting layers of dust. The building's expansion 10 00:00:29.280 --> 00:00:31.440 over the decades meant there were nicks that claim multiple 11 00:00:31.440 --> 00:00:34.520 forgotten origins. Stone pillar here from the original Sea Captain's 12 00:00:34.560 --> 00:00:37.359 reading room, their brass lamp from the nineteen twenties edition, 13 00:00:37.600 --> 00:00:40.399 all over laid with modern signiche that sometimes felt apologetic 14 00:00:40.479 --> 00:00:44.200 for trespassing. I was kneeling wedging a battered biography of 15 00:00:44.240 --> 00:00:47.159 Admiral Chiever between two blue volumes on shipwrecks when I 16 00:00:47.280 --> 00:00:51.039 saw it, slah binding, loose with clean as covered de cray, 17 00:00:51.240 --> 00:00:53.679 near black, embossed with a symbol. I didn't recognize a 18 00:00:53.759 --> 00:00:56.079 circle broken by a wave, or perhaps a moon struck 19 00:00:56.119 --> 00:00:59.600 through by a bull clapper, no title, no evident author. 20 00:01:00.159 --> 00:01:02.920 It might have vanished into anonymity, wedged tight between the 21 00:01:02.960 --> 00:01:05.519 fatter histories, if not for the way it sat slightly forught, 22 00:01:05.560 --> 00:01:07.519 as if having considered whether to lie on one shelf 23 00:01:07.640 --> 00:01:10.480 or the other. I lifted it out, Feeling the click 24 00:01:10.519 --> 00:01:12.879 of interest that had carried me in my teaching Year's language, 25 00:01:13.000 --> 00:01:16.359 especially the overlooked, always tugged at me. Opening it. I 26 00:01:16.439 --> 00:01:19.000 blinked at the words poetry printed in the dense arquet 27 00:01:19.000 --> 00:01:21.760 carbet dialect to night only really encountered and faded letters 28 00:01:21.799 --> 00:01:24.920 from the town Museum's collection. That dialect had faded away 29 00:01:24.920 --> 00:01:27.959 before my grandparents were born, but occasional syllables still peppered 30 00:01:27.959 --> 00:01:30.799 the jokes of old timer's. I sounded out the lines, 31 00:01:30.920 --> 00:01:33.239 familiar yet foreign, and heard the sea in the rhythm's 32 00:01:33.319 --> 00:01:36.799 rise and fall. The subject matter, though, made me freeze. 33 00:01:37.359 --> 00:01:40.480 Local events, yes, but not the usual sort. One poem, 34 00:01:40.560 --> 00:01:43.640 laid out and careful, almost municipal phrasing, described the night 35 00:01:43.680 --> 00:01:46.439 all bells protested in aiming streets, the precise hour, people's 36 00:01:46.519 --> 00:01:49.599 names roll in fish mag's withers, the twin slowly and lot. 37 00:01:50.280 --> 00:01:53.799 Another remembered that triumphlanterns floating nightly down stream, while a 38 00:01:53.879 --> 00:01:58.040 third reported a ship lost, rice Dot rise Sunday, nobody drowned. 39 00:01:58.560 --> 00:02:01.840 Specificity struck me as to l we almost official. But 40 00:02:01.920 --> 00:02:03.959 these were not celebrations I'd ever heard of, not in 41 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:06.840 any public story, not inherted plaques, not even among the 42 00:02:06.920 --> 00:02:10.319 jerkswat by the Genealogy Club. The feeling was an eeriness. 43 00:02:10.360 --> 00:02:13.080 It was bewilderment tinged with anticipation, sense of a private 44 00:02:13.080 --> 00:02:16.400 glimpse behind an old stage curtain. I thumbed through another page, 45 00:02:16.479 --> 00:02:19.759 I snagging on a date sixteen October. Lanterns gathered at 46 00:02:19.759 --> 00:02:23.000 bunk corner. One corner still existed, but I'd never seen 47 00:02:23.039 --> 00:02:26.680 it lit by lanterns, not even in festival season. The details, 48 00:02:26.719 --> 00:02:29.879 so firmly planted, so confidently unrelated to any recognized event, 49 00:02:29.960 --> 00:02:33.120 seemed an invitation and a rubeek at once. Why document 50 00:02:33.199 --> 00:02:36.039 such scenes if no one else remembered them? Why here 51 00:02:36.120 --> 00:02:38.919 in falest dialect, inside an entitled book with symbol no 52 00:02:38.960 --> 00:02:41.800 one else seemed to use. I hesitated, then tuck the 53 00:02:41.840 --> 00:02:44.120 book atop my returns trolley, marking my place with the 54 00:02:44.120 --> 00:02:47.560 pink slip once used for interlibrary loans. I'd come back 55 00:02:47.560 --> 00:02:49.960 to it, perhaps after lunch, or once the tide of 56 00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:53.879 Miday children's wrangling had calned. For now, the puzzle felt companionable, 57 00:02:53.919 --> 00:02:56.879 not uncanny, but gently insistent. The way lost word sits 58 00:02:56.960 --> 00:02:59.520 just out of mind's reach. I left the book resting 59 00:02:59.560 --> 00:03:02.280 against his squad. Dictionary of Fook customs bind out easy 60 00:03:02.319 --> 00:03:05.719 to retrieve. I had time. I thought anything this odd 61 00:03:05.759 --> 00:03:08.879 was worth seeing in full daylight. After that, It's strange 62 00:03:08.879 --> 00:03:12.280 how quickly the librari's routines slid comfortably over the morning's discovery. 63 00:03:12.800 --> 00:03:15.479 The municipal library stone, built with shelthick walls and a 64 00:03:15.479 --> 00:03:18.159 prideful bronze date above the keyston eighteen seventy one, were 65 00:03:18.199 --> 00:03:21.520 built nineteen nineteen, modernized nineteen eighty seven, draws the town's 66 00:03:21.560 --> 00:03:24.840 harby to more ways than circulation figures. Let on. Officially, 67 00:03:24.879 --> 00:03:28.199 I'm a volunteer, recently retired, free of bells and tined tables, 68 00:03:28.280 --> 00:03:31.840 and dugged by compulsion to set things straight. Shelves, misfiled pamphlets, 69 00:03:31.879 --> 00:03:34.960 a lifetime backlog of o pure dialect idioms. Of all 70 00:03:34.960 --> 00:03:37.439 the places I could spend my days, none offered the sharp, 71 00:03:37.439 --> 00:03:41.520 affectionate chaos of our local library. Sometimes when people realize 72 00:03:41.560 --> 00:03:43.599 I taught English for thirty eight years, they treat me 73 00:03:43.639 --> 00:03:47.080 with a cautious formlady, expecting I suppose rigid allegiance is 74 00:03:47.120 --> 00:03:50.000 to order and rule books. It's true I musticla from 75 00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:53.520 misplaced apostrophes on the suggestion wall. But mostly people know 76 00:03:53.639 --> 00:03:56.159 me as a soft touch for our jobs and other anecdotes, 77 00:03:56.319 --> 00:03:59.159 poetry lesson at the senior lunch, whether proofing advice for 78 00:03:59.280 --> 00:04:02.439 archives out ancient inscriptions in its crowl Only three people 79 00:04:02.479 --> 00:04:05.319 still claim to read. My mornings start with the walk 80 00:04:05.400 --> 00:04:08.120 up Clifton Road with my neighbor Allan. He believes in 81 00:04:08.159 --> 00:04:11.039 healthy routines, limber up the knees before you open the books, Jane, 82 00:04:11.479 --> 00:04:14.080 and always brings me a newspaper folded to the crossword. 83 00:04:14.719 --> 00:04:16.759 It is Allan who first got me into volunteering at 84 00:04:16.800 --> 00:04:19.360 the library six months after retirement, when the aged teach 85 00:04:19.360 --> 00:04:21.759 had turned into a Niche not to sit still at 86 00:04:21.759 --> 00:04:26.079 the library door most mornings. Is Rosa, officially chief librarian, 87 00:04:26.279 --> 00:04:29.360 unofficially guardian against ill conceived for innovations and encroachment of 88 00:04:29.439 --> 00:04:33.279 digital only access. Rosa is tall, bespectacled, quick with a 89 00:04:33.399 --> 00:04:36.240 raised I brow at anything that smells of trendiness, but 90 00:04:36.319 --> 00:04:39.879 her loyalty to the archives, especially local oardments, is ferocious. 91 00:04:40.519 --> 00:04:43.079 I sometimes suspect she would sleep under the municipal map 92 00:04:43.079 --> 00:04:46.240 table if lowed. She tolerates as volunteers with a mix 93 00:04:46.279 --> 00:04:50.399 of gratitude and barely concealed worry. There's a Saturday squad too, Mariah, 94 00:04:50.480 --> 00:04:52.480 quick witted and still at that age where college plans 95 00:04:52.480 --> 00:04:55.399 and social dramas compete for attention. Leo and Sophie high 96 00:04:55.399 --> 00:04:58.759 schoolers tracking community service hours with the furtiveness of secret agents. 97 00:04:59.439 --> 00:05:02.360 Messes tin Del comes in for genealogy, her arms cradling 98 00:05:02.360 --> 00:05:05.279 batted ledges. She is a mine of names and speculative parentage. 99 00:05:05.759 --> 00:05:08.480 Mister O'Leary, who reads newspapers upside down and claims to 100 00:05:08.519 --> 00:05:10.759 know the location of every impossible town. The ought fact 101 00:05:10.759 --> 00:05:13.079 tends to the grounds with a kind of folkloric deversion. 102 00:05:13.600 --> 00:05:16.879 The town breeds tradition, tides, set, the bakery hours, the 103 00:05:16.879 --> 00:05:20.000 annual fishermen's brave routes, traffic, and the harbor fronts impossible 104 00:05:20.040 --> 00:05:22.199 tells Wollacks as a kind of town. And Joko rotating 105 00:05:22.240 --> 00:05:25.680 collection of stories deemed too strange to take seriously in school, 106 00:05:25.720 --> 00:05:28.560 would whisper about the underwater tunnel, the Wednesday flawed, or 107 00:05:28.600 --> 00:05:31.399 the cat who ran for honorary mayor Some of these 108 00:05:31.439 --> 00:05:34.959 stories he learned to dismissed by adulthood, others, in low moments, 109 00:05:34.959 --> 00:05:37.480 still tugged at some earnest part of you. My own 110 00:05:37.519 --> 00:05:39.879 memory these days is a little flattery blade shop in 111 00:05:39.920 --> 00:05:43.680 the right light, sometimes uneven elsewhere, names flicker before landing. 112 00:05:44.240 --> 00:05:46.480 I forget mid sentence why I entered the supply closet 113 00:05:46.560 --> 00:05:48.519 only to find a long lost pumpht I've been herping 114 00:05:48.560 --> 00:05:51.160 to reference that made me, has made me gentle, with 115 00:05:51.199 --> 00:05:53.800 the loss, the half remembered and those odd footnotes nobody 116 00:05:53.800 --> 00:05:57.279 thinks to preserve. But inside that library everything seems cradle 117 00:05:57.319 --> 00:06:01.759 by intent, cataloged, protected, varnished, or lovely rebound, even the 118 00:06:01.759 --> 00:06:05.120 space between events, the unremarked silence as feels honored. I 119 00:06:05.160 --> 00:06:07.680 had gone looking for the overlooked and found a structure 120 00:06:07.680 --> 00:06:10.360 bill for preservation. Yet the book had found that morning 121 00:06:10.360 --> 00:06:13.639 felt separate from all that, not like the impossible tales wall, 122 00:06:13.680 --> 00:06:16.240 but the sweetly mangled local histories, or even the false 123 00:06:16.240 --> 00:06:19.279 certainties of clint to old letters. No one had written 124 00:06:19.279 --> 00:06:22.759 this to amuse or to memorial, less its specificity, the 125 00:06:22.800 --> 00:06:25.560 texture of its dialect, a cheer refusal to fit anywhere, 126 00:06:25.600 --> 00:06:27.839 all marked it as an orphan may be a prodigy. 127 00:06:28.439 --> 00:06:30.639 The pink slip in its pages marked more than a spot. 128 00:06:30.639 --> 00:06:32.480 It marked the boundary between what I thought I knew, 129 00:06:32.480 --> 00:06:36.639 and demanded investigation. The following morning routine guided my feet 130 00:06:36.639 --> 00:06:39.839 before thought did. I entered the stacks, sunlight, skimming the 131 00:06:39.879 --> 00:06:41.800 old glass, and found the book not where I had 132 00:06:41.839 --> 00:06:44.600 left it, but four shells away, slightly exposed, as if 133 00:06:44.639 --> 00:06:47.079 daring discovery, or as if someone else had browsed and 134 00:06:47.079 --> 00:06:50.680 said it down distractedly art, I thought, but not impossible. 135 00:06:50.759 --> 00:06:53.560 Volunteers moved things all the time. I brought the book 136 00:06:53.600 --> 00:06:55.560 to my desk by the window, removed the slip, and 137 00:06:55.600 --> 00:06:57.439 turned first to the poem i'd remembered of the one 138 00:06:57.519 --> 00:07:01.360 about the night of bells. It was gone, not replaced 139 00:07:01.399 --> 00:07:04.959 by torn page, not folded elsewhere. In its spot between stands, 140 00:07:04.959 --> 00:07:06.959 as marked with dates and place names, was now a 141 00:07:07.000 --> 00:07:08.959 new poem, The day the sea came up the hill. 142 00:07:09.519 --> 00:07:11.639 The dialect was as dense as before, but now the 143 00:07:11.680 --> 00:07:13.759 scene was a dramatic food to sea, water lapping at vine, 144 00:07:13.839 --> 00:07:17.199 draped fences, women carrying back its true water, children tugging 145 00:07:17.199 --> 00:07:20.199 boats by worn rope. Marsh Street, named in the poem, 146 00:07:20.319 --> 00:07:23.120 still runs parallel to the water line. But in all 147 00:07:23.120 --> 00:07:25.399 my years of memory of stowis told in storm back 148 00:07:25.399 --> 00:07:27.560 outs or school assemblers, I had never once heard of 149 00:07:27.560 --> 00:07:31.000 a sea flowed of any consequence. The poem, though referenced 150 00:07:31.000 --> 00:07:33.879 to a date of first Monday after Fulbright nineteen twenty seven, 151 00:07:34.160 --> 00:07:36.959 named six individuals, and ended with counsellor's ringing bells to 152 00:07:36.959 --> 00:07:40.199 calm the tide. I frowned, wanting to believe I'd misremembered. 153 00:07:40.800 --> 00:07:44.920 Perhaps I'd muddled yesterday's reading overlaid two poems. I checked 154 00:07:44.920 --> 00:07:46.519 my note by my scold copy of The Night of 155 00:07:46.519 --> 00:07:49.120 bell Stand. The copied line for line the day before. 156 00:07:49.720 --> 00:07:53.319 It was precise, careful whole segments, and changed the poem 157 00:07:53.360 --> 00:07:57.399 had existed now it did not. And settled, but not frightened. 158 00:07:57.399 --> 00:07:59.600 I went looking for Miss Sestyndale, always to be found 159 00:07:59.600 --> 00:08:02.920 near the local history section. I read her translation, rough 160 00:08:02.959 --> 00:08:06.360 but enough to render the scene legible. She listened, brow furrowing, 161 00:08:06.399 --> 00:08:09.480 then surprised me. My grandfather he used to talk about 162 00:08:09.480 --> 00:08:11.160 that sort of thing, clined there was a flawed when 163 00:08:11.160 --> 00:08:13.800 his mother was a girl. Sea came inland boat's all upmarsh, 164 00:08:13.879 --> 00:08:15.879 but none of it in the newspaper archives. We thought 165 00:08:15.920 --> 00:08:17.639 it was a tall tale. He liked to scare us 166 00:08:17.639 --> 00:08:20.639 with stories of ill swimming through open doors. We combed 167 00:08:20.639 --> 00:08:24.000 through the records, though Night of Bells no documentation the 168 00:08:24.120 --> 00:08:26.160 sea are main absent from both the chronicle and three 169 00:08:26.199 --> 00:08:29.399 decades of town council minutes. I returned to the poem, 170 00:08:29.519 --> 00:08:32.399 studying it for clues. Precise, yes, but where had the 171 00:08:32.480 --> 00:08:34.960 Night of Bells gone? If it was trickery, an old 172 00:08:34.960 --> 00:08:37.399 book reband or an effect of late stage decayed as 173 00:08:37.399 --> 00:08:40.360 a cunning one capable of not just hiding but transforming 174 00:08:40.399 --> 00:08:43.559 its contents. I told myself this with the teacher's calm. 175 00:08:43.639 --> 00:08:47.320 Everything that perplexed had a rational ThReD if one kept tugging. Yet, 176 00:08:47.320 --> 00:08:49.879 the thought nagged, this was too well calculated for error. 177 00:08:50.480 --> 00:08:53.360 I decided on a small experiment, nothing scientific, but enough 178 00:08:53.399 --> 00:08:56.240 to keep my curiosity of fire. Every morning for a 179 00:08:56.240 --> 00:08:59.039 week I made the book my first task. I'd scan 180 00:08:59.120 --> 00:09:02.240 its pages, noting in each poem locations, people, even small 181 00:09:02.279 --> 00:09:03.919 details like the color of a hat with the kind 182 00:09:03.919 --> 00:09:06.840 of stone mentioned. I dutifully recorded these in a clean 183 00:09:06.919 --> 00:09:11.200 ledger of my own, copying stanzas mocking page numbers. At lunch, 184 00:09:11.240 --> 00:09:14.240 I'd return. Each day, part of the book had shifted, 185 00:09:14.279 --> 00:09:17.600 not randomly, but subtly, as if a written overnight. Four 186 00:09:17.639 --> 00:09:20.120 poems described events. Had never heard of a vanished garden, 187 00:09:20.200 --> 00:09:22.240 a street fair put to flight by a phantom brain, 188 00:09:22.360 --> 00:09:24.879 children hiding wobbles in a wall where the wall was gone. 189 00:09:25.200 --> 00:09:27.240 The words were crisp, the dialect flu at the same 190 00:09:27.279 --> 00:09:31.399 sense of lives specificity present. I approached Rosa, careful not 191 00:09:31.440 --> 00:09:34.879 to seem too fanciful. She mistrusted a library gossip. Together 192 00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:37.960 we paged through. She found a poem about sewing circle. 193 00:09:38.039 --> 00:09:41.159 Cousin M's nightwork hands clever as always, sewing helplike anchored 194 00:09:41.720 --> 00:09:44.960 roses stared and then grew animated. My great aunt was 195 00:09:45.000 --> 00:09:47.080 famous for her sewing group, but every one said it 196 00:09:47.120 --> 00:09:49.600 started after the war, not before. This poem was dated 197 00:09:49.600 --> 00:09:53.320 in nineteen fourteen. Mariah, the youngest of the group, hovered curies. 198 00:09:53.919 --> 00:09:57.080 I handed her the book. She frowned, reading a loud 199 00:09:57.080 --> 00:09:59.399 a poem about two friends squabbling over a skipping rope. 200 00:09:59.399 --> 00:10:01.639 In the playground, almost exactly what happened to me in 201 00:10:01.679 --> 00:10:05.039 third grade. She pointed out their names changed slightly but 202 00:10:05.080 --> 00:10:07.840 close enough to real kids from her year. A pattern 203 00:10:07.879 --> 00:10:10.360 begun so gently amidst it at first emerged. The book 204 00:10:10.360 --> 00:10:13.240 seemed to change depending on who read it. Each poem 205 00:10:13.279 --> 00:10:17.279 reflected a new, highly localized, unreported incident, just familiar enough 206 00:10:17.279 --> 00:10:20.320 to catch at the memory's edge. It wasn't repetition, it 207 00:10:20.399 --> 00:10:24.159 was creation or recal tinned to summon a frequency. Curiosity 208 00:10:24.200 --> 00:10:28.279 blossomed into pursuit. I dug for catalog wreckers. Nothing now 209 00:10:28.320 --> 00:10:31.840 mention any accession logs for any year strangers. Still in 210 00:10:31.840 --> 00:10:34.440 some decades old low books assigned the shelf spaced to 211 00:10:34.600 --> 00:10:37.159 entirely different works, as though the book's presence was mobile, 212 00:10:37.159 --> 00:10:39.919 and I could even in bureaucratic memory. I took the 213 00:10:39.919 --> 00:10:41.960 book to mister O'Leary, the handerman with a head full 214 00:10:42.000 --> 00:10:45.399 of town legends. He blinch began to read and grew animated. 215 00:10:46.000 --> 00:10:48.039 His poem was about a hidden tunnel under the church, 216 00:10:48.159 --> 00:10:51.480 where silence knits stone to shadow. Though Leary thumped the table. 217 00:10:52.120 --> 00:10:54.120 My grandfather told me about that when I was a boy, 218 00:10:54.120 --> 00:10:56.039 said he could crawl right through to the Vicker's yard. 219 00:10:56.159 --> 00:10:57.960 Though folks and council said it was just a goal 220 00:10:57.960 --> 00:11:00.759 shoot never seen a matter showed it that pricked my 221 00:11:00.799 --> 00:11:05.000 professional instincts. I went into the chaste again, combing old 222 00:11:05.039 --> 00:11:09.679 property plans. No tunnels mocked, but one drawing, dated faded, 223 00:11:09.799 --> 00:11:12.080 confusingly annotated, showed a window on the wrong side of 224 00:11:12.120 --> 00:11:14.879 the church, exactly where Larry's story placed the tunnel's entrance. 225 00:11:15.519 --> 00:11:18.600 Had some one misplaced a feature, had memory failed or 226 00:11:18.639 --> 00:11:22.440 corrected itself in secret. Each conversation, each attempt to pin 227 00:11:22.480 --> 00:11:26.440 the book down, seemed only to multiply the contradictions their memories. 228 00:11:26.440 --> 00:11:30.399 It reference grew more plausible, not less, details of gardening clubs, floods, 229 00:11:30.480 --> 00:11:33.240 playground prank seeping into conversations with those who swore they 230 00:11:33.240 --> 00:11:36.120 had never before heard of them. The impossibility wasn't that 231 00:11:36.159 --> 00:11:38.679 the events were false, but that they now seemed almost possible, 232 00:11:38.679 --> 00:11:40.720 so close to live experience that you could almost fre 233 00:11:40.799 --> 00:11:44.240 call them happening. Meanwhile, I began to notice twny mismatches 234 00:11:44.279 --> 00:11:47.440 out in the world. The playground's southgate, noted in a 235 00:11:47.480 --> 00:11:50.240 poem as a meeting spot, suddenly looked older than I remembered, 236 00:11:50.360 --> 00:11:52.799 its pain peeled in a way I hadn't noticed for years. 237 00:11:53.440 --> 00:11:55.639 A row of bricks in the schoolyard wall boor initials 238 00:11:55.679 --> 00:11:58.159 the same as those named in one poem. The odd 239 00:11:58.159 --> 00:12:01.200 feeling belt never alarming, but profoundly compelling that the book, 240 00:12:01.559 --> 00:12:05.399 rather than simply reflecting forgotten histories, was quietly swing them. 241 00:12:05.679 --> 00:12:07.639 And so my early theory that this was a lost, 242 00:12:07.840 --> 00:12:11.080 authentic folume preserved against the erasure of time, grew badly tatted. 243 00:12:11.720 --> 00:12:14.519 I assumed at first that the poem's documented real events, 244 00:12:14.679 --> 00:12:17.799 and that all collective forgetfuness accounted for the gats. But 245 00:12:17.879 --> 00:12:21.960 each week new discrepancies appeared. One evening, Miss Cesse Tindale 246 00:12:21.960 --> 00:12:25.879 stopped me in the history section, clutching her log book. Jane, 247 00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:28.279 you may want to see this. She handed me a 248 00:12:28.279 --> 00:12:30.120 copy of a poem I shore in her days earlier. 249 00:12:30.679 --> 00:12:32.639 But now the details had shifted. The night of the 250 00:12:32.639 --> 00:12:35.159 flood was now Tuesday, after false Snow the names had altered, 251 00:12:35.240 --> 00:12:38.159 Yet the conviction in her voice was absolute. I always 252 00:12:38.159 --> 00:12:40.440 thought my grandfather was confusing the storm for the sea, 253 00:12:40.480 --> 00:12:42.799 But now the poem matches another story my mother used 254 00:12:42.799 --> 00:12:45.440 to tell. Perhaps they are all blended. I compared her 255 00:12:45.480 --> 00:12:49.960 notes with mine. The contradictions were undeniable. Miss Cestyndal's account 256 00:12:49.960 --> 00:12:53.480 had changed her earlier skepticism softening. We always jerked about 257 00:12:53.480 --> 00:12:55.600 the parade that never was. Now it seems it might 258 00:12:55.639 --> 00:12:58.480 have happened, after all. I went back to the book, myself, 259 00:12:58.600 --> 00:13:01.679 reading and reading. Now at even my own recollection of 260 00:13:01.720 --> 00:13:05.120 childhood walk seemed oddly flexible. I was sure until that 261 00:13:05.200 --> 00:13:07.399 week that I never once walked under the old stone 262 00:13:07.440 --> 00:13:10.480 footbridge referenced in a new poem. But studying the phrase, 263 00:13:10.600 --> 00:13:12.519 I began to conjure an image of a narrow bridge 264 00:13:12.519 --> 00:13:15.399 crossing just behind the London trees in City Park. I 265 00:13:15.480 --> 00:13:18.480 questioned myself, wondering if the memory was new or long resident. 266 00:13:19.320 --> 00:13:21.600 Unable to leave the question hanging, I visited the park 267 00:13:21.639 --> 00:13:24.200 the following weekend, the children's laughter swirling through the late 268 00:13:24.240 --> 00:13:27.320 spring breeze. By the far edge. Just past the swing set, 269 00:13:27.320 --> 00:13:29.039 there was a stretch of path that curved oddly, its 270 00:13:29.120 --> 00:13:32.799 ut broken by heavy stones, half buried in the soil fundations, 271 00:13:33.080 --> 00:13:35.799 visible if he crouched. I brought my hand to the 272 00:13:35.799 --> 00:13:38.559 coal rough surface, feeling an EERI kinschper, not fear, but 273 00:13:38.600 --> 00:13:41.399 as if standing in a half remembered photograph. Could I 274 00:13:41.440 --> 00:13:44.240 have missed this for decades? Oh? Was it truly new? 275 00:13:44.759 --> 00:13:47.879 The foundation matched the poem's description so exactly. I scribbled 276 00:13:47.879 --> 00:13:50.679 notes on the back of my grocery receipt, North Edge 277 00:13:50.679 --> 00:13:54.679 footings three stones wide prior bridge. I realized, with both 278 00:13:54.720 --> 00:13:57.000 delight and something sharper, that the book did not merely 279 00:13:57.080 --> 00:13:59.919 chronicle or preserve, but somehow generate a new, plausible hit. 280 00:14:00.960 --> 00:14:03.000 I looked again at the poems, at the name dates 281 00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:05.279 and family names, and felt my sense of the town's 282 00:14:05.320 --> 00:14:08.799 history begin to rotate sideways. What if instead of merely 283 00:14:08.960 --> 00:14:11.320 archiving memory, the book was conspiring with us and with 284 00:14:11.360 --> 00:14:13.519 the town itself, to craft the very fabric of our past. 285 00:14:14.200 --> 00:14:16.559 The phenomenon was no longer about lost out of fact. 286 00:14:16.679 --> 00:14:18.279 It was about the nature of the world outside the 287 00:14:18.279 --> 00:14:22.000 library's heavy doors. What did it mean for memory, for history, 288 00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:24.440 for the undeniable stones beneath my hands? If the past 289 00:14:24.440 --> 00:14:28.200 itself was emotion offered not once, but continuously, playfully collectively. 290 00:14:28.840 --> 00:14:31.440 Every night I tried to reconstruct my certainties around these 291 00:14:31.480 --> 00:14:35.840 shifting points a hell, but only just one morning, a 292 00:14:35.919 --> 00:14:38.799 week after the footbridge discovery, another shift caught me off guard. 293 00:14:39.559 --> 00:14:41.720 Allow light through the library's front window brought a new 294 00:14:41.759 --> 00:14:44.200 subtlety poem on the top page described some caught in 295 00:14:44.240 --> 00:14:47.320 the glass round as hope third window watching. I closed 296 00:14:47.320 --> 00:14:49.639 the book, thinking nothing of it, and went about my shelving. 297 00:14:50.240 --> 00:14:52.759 An hour later, in a church across the way rose 298 00:14:52.759 --> 00:14:56.759 a Becamien Harrishner's fussing about the US Flower Festival. Were 299 00:14:56.759 --> 00:14:59.720 debating a window one I'd never seen before. It glinted 300 00:14:59.720 --> 00:15:03.039 above the the altar, small, perfectly round. I blinked, certain 301 00:15:03.080 --> 00:15:05.799 that only days before the space had been occupied by plainstone. 302 00:15:06.320 --> 00:15:09.120 I asked an older member about it, feigning casual interest. 303 00:15:09.840 --> 00:15:11.799 Strange to have the round glass here. Wasn't that a 304 00:15:11.799 --> 00:15:15.840 recent edition? She smiled, puzzled, It's always been there. My 305 00:15:15.879 --> 00:15:17.840 grandmother once said you could see the harbor through it. 306 00:15:18.519 --> 00:15:20.559 But a search that afternoon through the local photo of 307 00:15:20.600 --> 00:15:23.480 raph archive stretching back a century, proved the opposite of 308 00:15:23.480 --> 00:15:26.480 every imature delta, wall, blank and soli up until this week, 309 00:15:27.159 --> 00:15:30.200 word traveled in the way oddities due in the genealogy 310 00:15:30.240 --> 00:15:32.799 group next door to my adopted desk, Someone on Earth 311 00:15:32.799 --> 00:15:35.200 in a dated local map in nineteen thirty four, Handriton, 312 00:15:35.320 --> 00:15:37.519 but with a careful blue line tracing a structure labeled 313 00:15:37.559 --> 00:15:40.679 Woman's Bridge over marsh Creek. I stared the spot marked 314 00:15:40.720 --> 00:15:43.279 was precisely where last week's poor Man the visible Summruk 315 00:15:43.320 --> 00:15:46.399 suggested the bridge should be. Wolman's Bridge had never, to 316 00:15:46.399 --> 00:15:50.080 my knowledge, existed, yet here it was mapped and named, 317 00:15:50.200 --> 00:15:53.440 appearing exactly as if recalled into civic memory. In the 318 00:15:53.480 --> 00:15:56.159 following days, the school librarian, on invitation from where I 319 00:15:56.240 --> 00:15:58.440 read the book over coffee and found a poem describing 320 00:15:58.480 --> 00:16:01.759 the annual pancake race. Far dusted faces runner circling the 321 00:16:01.840 --> 00:16:05.559 churchyard in rocks pursuit. By week's end, news trickled back 322 00:16:05.600 --> 00:16:08.639 to me old family photo album's surface, with images purportedly 323 00:16:08.679 --> 00:16:12.559 documenting the event, pancakes, children, aful sunlight, the full tableau. 324 00:16:13.159 --> 00:16:15.960 No one in living memory recalled attending such a race, 325 00:16:16.679 --> 00:16:19.240 but people marveled at the old Forto's content, as if 326 00:16:19.240 --> 00:16:21.879 this discovery revealed the tradition the town had only displaced. 327 00:16:22.399 --> 00:16:25.960 The possibilities were growing, not shrinking. Physical features in the 328 00:16:25.960 --> 00:16:28.279 town shifted ever so gently to fit the story spun 329 00:16:28.320 --> 00:16:31.360 in the book. Memories re aligned in step. The debate 330 00:16:31.399 --> 00:16:34.080 began to broaden his circle. Was the book causing the 331 00:16:34.159 --> 00:16:38.240 changes or merely reflecting something latent? Was it a supernatural engine, 332 00:16:38.399 --> 00:16:42.159 a communal mirror, or psychological artifact and amplification of collective wishing. 333 00:16:42.759 --> 00:16:45.639 I spent evenings arguing gently with Rosa, with mister Oleery, 334 00:16:45.720 --> 00:16:49.759 with the teens, rosamldover the risks. It's charming, maybe, but 335 00:16:49.840 --> 00:16:51.679 what if we start to forget what was really here? 336 00:16:52.320 --> 00:16:55.840 O'Leary beamed, seeing proof that every impossible family legend was true. 337 00:16:55.879 --> 00:16:57.840 After all, I knew the tunnel had to be real. 338 00:16:57.879 --> 00:17:00.440 The town just needed a nudge. Maria, Error and Lee 339 00:17:00.480 --> 00:17:03.120 were thrilled to each new rediscovery. Organized in a museum 340 00:17:03.240 --> 00:17:06.799 night devoted to showcasing recently found out fact's photos, recipes 341 00:17:06.839 --> 00:17:09.920 and old skipping rope a Crumpolverrey's fire. But may awe 342 00:17:09.960 --> 00:17:13.759 only deepened somehow, for the book's gentle insistence, reality had 343 00:17:13.799 --> 00:17:17.039 become quietly gloriously a stable not dissolved into chaos, but 344 00:17:17.079 --> 00:17:20.640 expanded to accommodate the impossible. I reflected, lying in bed 345 00:17:20.640 --> 00:17:23.680 that night on the slow, smiling transformations. How the library 346 00:17:23.720 --> 00:17:26.319 crowd greeted new landmarks as though they had always existed. 347 00:17:26.480 --> 00:17:30.240 Had my own recollections now doubled and glimmered. It wasn't frightening, 348 00:17:30.319 --> 00:17:34.079 though it gnored sometimes at my inner librarian's need for order. Instead, 349 00:17:34.160 --> 00:17:36.400 I saw the town's identity not as a fixed body, 350 00:17:36.440 --> 00:17:38.880 but a something mobile, capable of revision. Even at a 351 00:17:38.960 --> 00:17:42.079 level of stone and memory. The impossible was not violent, 352 00:17:42.359 --> 00:17:46.079 not even intrusive. It folded itself into daily life, soft 353 00:17:46.119 --> 00:17:49.000 as dusk, and the book for all it shifting, sat 354 00:17:49.079 --> 00:17:51.039 quietly on the shelf each morning, waiting for the next 355 00:17:51.039 --> 00:17:53.960 reader to shape the day. The curious thing about reality, 356 00:17:54.160 --> 00:17:56.440 once you learned to watch for its soft waverings, is 357 00:17:56.440 --> 00:17:59.839 how easily it accepts new scenes. The Monday after the pancake, 358 00:18:00.079 --> 00:18:02.559 his poem found its photographs, The library felt bounced on 359 00:18:02.599 --> 00:18:04.880 a point too mutable to trust, too ordinary to doubt. 360 00:18:05.559 --> 00:18:08.160 Even the dust motes under the oriel window, spinning in 361 00:18:08.200 --> 00:18:12.039 the gentle sun, seemed a little less settled. Rosa, arms 362 00:18:12.079 --> 00:18:14.559 crossed joined me at the return's desk, her gaze pointedly 363 00:18:14.599 --> 00:18:16.680 avoiding the shelf with the book proached, as if nothing 364 00:18:16.720 --> 00:18:20.519 had changed. It's getting creative, don't you think, she murmured, 365 00:18:20.680 --> 00:18:24.440 lips quirked the joke barely mastered her concern. I knew 366 00:18:24.480 --> 00:18:26.720 better now than to tease the line between folcore in fact, 367 00:18:26.759 --> 00:18:29.839 had grown too sinewy for old banter. I only nodded. 368 00:18:30.440 --> 00:18:33.119 A plan, big but insistent, pressed at me all morning 369 00:18:33.160 --> 00:18:35.519 to bring others together for his his colliding. Perhaps the 370 00:18:35.519 --> 00:18:38.319 weight of different witnesses could anchor us. At noon, I 371 00:18:38.319 --> 00:18:41.039 scribbled a few invitations on catalog cards and handed them 372 00:18:41.039 --> 00:18:44.240 out Massess Tindell from Genealogy, mister O'Leary with his battered 373 00:18:44.279 --> 00:18:47.119 flat cap Rosa's gate keeper, Mariar, and Sophie for Yeth 374 00:18:47.160 --> 00:18:50.119 for sharpness, and with a pinch of nerves, even doctor 375 00:18:50.240 --> 00:18:53.559 Edmonds from the Historical Society. We settled in the upstairs 376 00:18:53.599 --> 00:18:56.240 reading room that evening, and mustmatched circle the little gray 377 00:18:56.279 --> 00:18:59.319 book in the center. No grand overture, just the request. 378 00:19:00.079 --> 00:19:02.480 Let's each read one poem aloud, if we can bear it, 379 00:19:02.599 --> 00:19:05.119 and say honestly what it means to us. Just the details, 380 00:19:05.240 --> 00:19:08.880 nothing symbolic. I started stumbling through stands about an evening 381 00:19:08.960 --> 00:19:11.480 market where vendor's torches lined the key, smoke catching in 382 00:19:11.519 --> 00:19:14.400 the mists. I'd never known of any night market, but 383 00:19:14.400 --> 00:19:16.640 the roughness, the placement of the stalls at old Berrel 384 00:19:16.680 --> 00:19:18.480 Rowe felt as if plucked from a story told to 385 00:19:18.480 --> 00:19:22.160 me in childhood. Miss Estindell followed voice unexpectedly sure for 386 00:19:22.200 --> 00:19:24.519 a poem she claimed had her aunt's handwriting, Only it 387 00:19:24.599 --> 00:19:27.519 can't be. She gave a lesser and smile, describing a 388 00:19:27.519 --> 00:19:30.279 May day parade of fresh strawberries, which she now remembered 389 00:19:30.319 --> 00:19:33.480 carrying once as a girl. Mister O'Leary's reading conjured the 390 00:19:33.519 --> 00:19:36.240 tale of a newcatch's contest. His reek also detailed. He 391 00:19:36.319 --> 00:19:39.119 named the one legged judge. He looked proud, then a 392 00:19:39.119 --> 00:19:42.079 bit abashed. Oddday. My dog used to say he watched 393 00:19:42.079 --> 00:19:44.119 the contest, but I always took it as when he 394 00:19:44.200 --> 00:19:47.880 said laughter catching around the table. Each poem gave birth 395 00:19:47.920 --> 00:19:50.880 to a slightly different event. Never repeat each specific write 396 00:19:50.920 --> 00:19:55.480 down to street corners in Bysender's names. Wrosa, dry throated admitted, 397 00:19:55.680 --> 00:19:57.880 I've never heard of this version of the Lantern Festival, 398 00:19:58.039 --> 00:20:00.880 but it's familiar. Wasn't it always this way? No one 399 00:20:00.880 --> 00:20:04.079 could quite locate the memories route. Doctor Edmonds took notes, 400 00:20:04.160 --> 00:20:06.960 spectacles riding low on his nose. It's as if the 401 00:20:06.960 --> 00:20:09.400