The path led away from the motorway, wending around and between majestic trees and through the bushes. Well, path would be generous - it was a muddy, rocky clear-ish space between puddles that led eventually in the correct direction.

Amelia sighed and tugged her hoodie closer about her head. She shifted the heavy backpack to a less uncomfortable position, and kept trudging. The better part of the day had been spent on trains and buses, and she had thought that that would be the worst of it — until she sank knee-deep into the mud. Again.

The road was a quiet, rural lane, and within moments of walking (squelching, really) along the path, all she could hear was the pitter-pat of raindrops and the rustling of leaves. A far cry from the noise of the city she used to call home.

The young lady shuffled along for a few minutes before coming upon the wrought iron gate into the wood. She pulled the tattered letter out of her pocket, hunching over it to protect it from the persistent drizzle.

Dearest Amelia!

It has been too long! I hope this letter finds you in good health! I trust that you have been enjoying yourself since finishing school, and haven’t been up to too much mischief!

I write to you in hopes that you can help me. A friend of mine has left me a small woodland and cottage, way out in the middle of nowhere, and it urgently needs a new caretaker. If it isn’t too much of an imposition, I was hoping I could entrust the place to you until you find which path you want to take in life.

I’m sure you will find it positively enchanting!

Your Favorite Gran, XOXOXO

Another page, also well-worn, had some additional details and the address:

Hearth Haven Hollow

Briarwood Lane

Eldertown

Eldermoor County

Suffolk

EN11 4TH

There was a handwritten scrawl along the bottom:

I’m so thrilled you’ve accepted! I’ve enclosed some travel funds and took the liberty of setting up accounts with the local businesses so you can get supplies as you need them.

With love and kisses,

Your Favorite Gran, OXOXOX

The address matched the dingy sign laying on the ground in front of the imposing fence, whose gate was already partially open. A gate which, by the looks of it, wasn’t swinging one direction or the other without considerable work, as it was mired in mud and leaves. In fact, a thorny bush had grown up through it.

“Well, hope the house is nicer than this!” Amelia thought to herself.

It wouldn’t be.

Once past the gate, the woods closed in aggressively on each side. She doffed the backpack and had to turn sideways to keep moving forwards. The rough going and close confines should have been daunting, but instead, she felt herself relaxing, her sense of anticipation growing with each step. This was a real adventure! She half-expected an umbrella-wielding faun or a person in robes to suddenly appear and welcome her. This felt like the sort of place where fantastical things happened, and as she pressed deeper into the hollow, she realized she'd be disappointed if something magical didn't occur.

In just a few minutes the little open space around the cottage came into view. Not really a clearing anymore, as the weeds and bushes reached nearly to waist height. The cottage lurked shyly off to one side, backing against the trees. Its thatched roof looked alright, but the front door had been left open, and the shutters swung wildly with the brisk breeze as the rain picked up again.

Amelia splashed and clambered across the yard and onto the front step, grateful to be out of the rain, and peered into her new home.

Leaves, trash, and mud covered the floor. Wind whistled through the broken windows. She could swear it was both darker and wetter inside than it was out.

The bus station she had slept in the night before suddenly seemed so much nicer than she had thought it at the time.

Amelia pushed the front door open against the piled leaves and mud until she could squeeze in. There was a rickety wooden table against the far wall, a bare fireplace filled with ash, and nothing much more of note. It was just one room, and not a very large one.

She dropped the heavy rucksack onto the table (which groaned alarmingly, but failed to collapse—but only just). Stepping back out into the wind and rain, she managed to fight the shutters closed. With some swearing and grunting, she managed to pull the front door shut enough to block the worst of the weather. The mound of mud it pushed up when she did this made a good wind break along the base of the door, so that was something.

More-or-less sealed up, with the wind cut off and the rain mostly on the outside, the little room felt much more habitable. Now if she could just clear a space to sit down!

“Should've brought a broom! And a shovel, rake, bulldozer …” she muttered to herself, glancing at the mess on the floor.

As soon as she said the words, she noticed a cupboard door out of the corner of her eye. Opening it, she found a battered broom, a rake with a few tines missing, and a spade with a chipped edge and faded green handle. There was also a dirty bucket, some rags, and a small stash of wood and kindling, dry and ready for use.

“... and a big bag full of money?!?” she said wistfully, looking around. To no avail.

With a shrug, she grabbed the rake and broom and set to work, mounding up the accumulated mud, leaves, twigs, and such that had built up on the floor. After a solid hour, she had managed to excavate down to the bare wood of the floor, and forced the mound of detritus out the door to be dealt with later — although it kept trying to make its way back in every time she opened the door, thanks to the wind.

After she spent another hour or so cleaning out the ash in the fireplace, scouring the floors with the rags, and generally toiling away, the cottage actually felt almost habitable, if spartan and bare.

Amelia dumped the last load of dirt onto the pile she’d built up just outside the door, then put the bucket, rags, and broom back in the closet.

“Fire time!” she announced to the mostly empty room. This took more effort than she had thought it would, but eventually a small blaze started warming and drying out the room, and the place felt like it was edging towards being positively cheery.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

After the rush of initial cleaning had worn off, though, she couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. She hadn’t thought too seriously about it but had rather assumed there would be a few luxuries. Like a bed. Or carpets.

Still, beggars can’t be choosers. She felt happy to be spending the night indoors and safe, no matter if it was on a bare floor. At least she had a little fire to keep her company, and who knows what the next day would bring!

Tired after her long day of travel and several hours of cleaning, Amelia curled up on the floor in front of the little fire, using her backpack as a pillow and covering herself with her hoodie as best she could. Sleep came instantly.

—-

The fire slowly burned down to embers, the soft glow illuminating Amelia as she slept curled up in front of it. A keen eyed observer, had there been one, would have spied a furtive ball of light slip in past the shutters and cracked window, then briefly zip around the room before hovering, inquisitively, above the still form of the new caretaker.

The ball, little larger than a fist, glowing with a slight green tint, bobbed up and down over Amelia, then zipped up and down from her head to her feet, clearly measuring her up. With a satisfied little bobble, it left off its inspection and flitted to the fireplace, where the embers roared back into life as fresh logs appeared. Another bobble, and as the shutters settled a bit, blocking the last remaining drafts. With that, the glow ball zipped into the fireplace and up the chimney, leaving the young lady to her sleep.

—-

When Amelia woke in the morning, she was surprised that there was still a bit of a fire in the fireplace, expecting it to have burnt itself out hours ago. Even more, the whole place felt just a bit better than it had in the evening, as if the cleaning and presence of a person made it more like a lived in place, and not like a neglected shed, home to wild beasts.

She stood up and stretched, letting out a loud yawn.

The slight cracks in the shutters let in the gentle morning light, and the cheerful warm glow from the flames in the fire certainly made the place much more inviting than the night before.

In fact, she hardly felt it was the same place she had gone to sleep in, despite everything being like she had left it. As she looked about, it even felt like the floorboards were straighter, with fewer gaps, and that they were smoother.

Shaking her head at her imagination surely run wild with her, Amelia dug her last packet of crisps out of her backpack and munched away, breakfasting in front of the slowly dwindling flames in the fireplace.

Since that was both the last of her food and the last of the wood, she would need to get to work if she didn’t want to starve and freeze tonight in her new home.

Her new home.

She pinched herself as she looked around again. She might only be the caretaker for Granny, but this was hers! Nobody to move her along or scowl at her or bother her or or or! What luxury!

With a grin she threw open the front door, almost falling over as it popped open with ease, unlike the effort it had taken to budge it the night before.

The pile of rubbish was right where she had left it outside the door, but the rain had stopped hours ago, and the yard was rapidly drying out. Still entirely overgrown with weeds and bushes, but it now seemed like an interesting project rather than an arduous obstacle as it had the night before on her way in.

“Let's see”, she mumbled to herself, “I need to go get supplies, but it'd be a pain to haul stuff through this. So bushwhacking time!”.

She nipped back in and grabbed the rake and shovel, and started hacking her way through the thorny, tough bushes in as straight a path as possible from the doorway towards the path through the trees. Which path, she had to admit, while rocky, muddy, and entirely too narrow, was at least not overgrown and weed choked.

About two hours, several scratches, and not a few curses, there was a walkable path. Not pretty, perhaps, but passable.

Amelia wiped the sweat from her face as she surveyed her work. It would have to do for now. It was time for a trip back to town! She wiped off the tools with one of the rags and placed them back into the little cupboard inside, then dumped the contents of the rucksack onto the table, pairs of socks and pants spilling over onto the floor.

That wouldn’t do, but would have to wait. She needed the pack to get food and some wood. There was a little market she had seen from the bus on her way in and planned to resupply there.

—-

Walking back, a pack full of logs, tins of food, and a few more snacks than were entirely responsible, Amelia whistled cheerfully. Amazing the difference a good night of sleep and a few hours of work made! Not to mention being a nice sunny day without mud and miserable rain!

The walk into town had taken almost no time at all. There had hardly been anyone about as she shopped — it was a very small village, and fairly early in the day. But that had suited her just fine since she wasn’t really in the mood to chat or be gawked at. And she still had that lingering feeling that people would try to move her along. Or watch her like a hawk in case she was up to something.

But just as she had said she would, Gran had set up a tab at the market, and the owner, a red-cheeked and round middle-aged lady named Sandy had been more than happy to help Amelia. They loaded up with logs, kindling, and long-shelf life goods, as much as the backpack would hold.

“A new caretaker up at the old Hag's Hollow, eh! Wonderful! And you look like a much better pick than the last one. I don’t mind telling you they were a right state, and I didn’t trust ‘em from the moment I met them. Didn’t last long, neither! But you look like you will fit right in!” Sandy had said.

“Hag's Hollow? Don't you mean Hearth Haven Hollow?” asked Amelia.

“Oh, don’t mind the name, deary! We’ve always called that stretch of woods the Hag's Hollow, despite all the signs saying otherwise. There’s always been stories that it's haunted, or that the faeries live there, or some such nonsense. Good fun for the wee ones, but nobody takes it seriously”.

Amelia was mollified by the response. With as wild and unruly as the place was these days, it wasn’t surprising that there were stories of oddities about it. It looked like it was an eldritch wood. Whatever those looked like!

She gathered the supplies and hiked back home. It wasn’t a long walk, but she was pleased to find how excited she was as she took the short turn off the main road towards the iron gate. It already felt like home. Not just someplace she was staying. How grand!

Once she squeezed past the stuck gate—she’d have to figure out how to fix that before long—she happily walked along the path back to the cottage. It must have been a trick of the gloom and storm last night, since the path felt wider and more inviting as she moved through the trees, and didn’t feel like she had to squish and squeeze between them. It was still a tight fit, but somehow felt a little more “her” size than the constricted way of before.

As abruptly as always, however, the path ended at the little yard of the cottage, her newly bush-whacked path to the door a stark contrast to the rest of the overgrowth.

“Right!” Amelia said, “Back to work!”.

She unloaded the logs and cans (and snacks!) onto the floor of the cupboard, then turned to put her belongings back in the pack. Except they weren’t mounded up on the table and off onto the floor as she had left them.

Instead, next to the wall, right next to the table, was a little dresser, its wood bare but perfectly matching the spartan interior of the cottage. Her clothes were even neatly folded (!) away in its drawers!

Amelia stared.

And stared.

Then she noticed the fire was still merrily burning away, despite having last been fed with logs several hours ago.

More staring.

It was about this time that Amelia noticed the small glowing ball, about the size of an apple, bobbing up in down in front of the fireplace.

“Um, what are you?” she said as she looked with surprise at the other occupant of the room. She felt unexpectedly calm at her first real encounter with the supernatural. It seemed right, somehow. The Hollow was that kind of place, and she felt her mind strangely just accepting the oddity. She was more excited than afraid.

The little sphere hovered for a bit, then did a quick figure-eight in the air, before hovering again.

Amelia started, having not exactly been expecting a response. She had never before encountered such a ball of light, and even if she had, she suspected they didn’t make a habit of reacting to people speaking to them.

“Oh my! Do you understand me?” she asked.

The ball hovered for a moment, then it glowed a deeper green as it bobbed vertically up and down.

Amelia stared.

But politeness is free, so she stopped staring and gave the glow ball a little bow, and said “Hi! I’m Amelia. I live here now. I’m supposed to take care of this place.”.

The thing brightened and darkened a bit, wobbling side to side. Amelia didn’t know what that meant, but it felt like both an acknowledgment and a greeting.

“Do you live here? Are we roommates?” she asked.

Again the glowing ball hesitated for a minute, then went through a gamut of lightening, darkening, bobbing, weaving, and dancing. It was a bit much, but it sure felt like it was eagerly agreeing.

“Would you mind if I named you? I think you communicate by colour and brightness and dancing, but I don’t speak that. How about …” she trailed off as she looked around the quiet room. “Whisper? Would ‘Whisper’ work for you?”

More dancing, glowing, and bobbing, very agreeable.

Amelia bowed again.

“Great! Hi Whisper!” she said. “Say — do you like chocolate?”

She unwrapped a piece from her pocket and offered it.

The dance was very complex and long, but since the chocolate disappeared, Amelia was pretty sure it was enjoyed.

And that she had a new friend in her new home.