[ 12 M ]
The Hollow is the village Lowtarn drowned eighty years ago. When the water drains at dusk it stands up in the mud: posts, stilts, walkways, and a bell frame at the bottom. Three regions, six people, one night at a time.
Three depths, one night each
01 · 00–08 M
The first thing the water gives back. Hundreds of mooring posts stand in the sand, each carved with a family mark and a height. Measure them and the old shoreline draws itself.
Found here
02 · 08–20 M
Houses on tall stilts, joined by rope walkways that still take your weight. Doors open onto rooms that are dry, swept and waiting. One window is lit every night.
Found here
03 · 20–36 M
At the lowest point a timber frame leans in the silt, holding a bell the size of a boat. Somebody rings it at the turn of the tide. Stand under it and the lake starts to come back.
Found here
Bathymetry · 00–48 M
Six people, one is you
Surveyor · you
Every dusk I write down how far it fell. Every dawn the numbers are wrong.
Sent by the county to chart Lowtarn before the reservoir. She has done forty lakes. This is the first that measures her back.
Sluice Keeper
The water doesn't leave. It goes somewhere and waits.
Opened the sluice every dusk for forty years, until the sluice started opening itself. Knows every post by the family who tied up to it.
Bell-ringer
I ring it so it knows we're still here.
Climbs down to the bell every night and back up before the water. Nobody asked her to. Nobody has asked her to stop.
Cartographer's apprentice
The map is right. The lake is wrong.
Apprenticed to a cartographer who went down in spring and didn't come up. Kept the map. Kept adding to it.
Keeper of the last lit house
Wipe your boots. Everyone who comes up from there tracks it in.
Her window is the one light in the Hollow. She has tea on for whoever comes, and writes their name down whether they leave or not.
What walks up from the bottom
(No transcript.)
Seen from the walkways as an outline in the fog, taller than the posts. It comes up as the water goes down, and it has never once looked at you. Yet.