The Price of the Past

The silence of Oakhaven was legendary. Not the peaceful, contented silence of a sleeping village, but the tight-lipped, hold-your-breath kind of quiet that made Elara’s teeth ache. It was the kind of silence that made you feel like you were tiptoeing through a library made of nitroglycerin. And Elara, with her knack for making memories pop out like startled fireflies, felt like she was constantly juggling live grenades.

Today, the silence felt particularly thick, like a wool blanket stuffed with dust bunnies. The villagers, usually engaged in their very serious, very quiet activities – knitting silent socks, polishing silent spoons, contemplating silent philosophical dilemmas – were moving with a strange, jerky gait. Their faces, usually set in stone-like stoicism, were blank. Utterly, bewilderingly blank.

Elara watched Old Man Fitzwilliam, who was supposed to be meticulously pruning his prize-winning petunias, stare at his shears with the vacant expression of a goldfish contemplating the meaning of life. He’d been shouting at his neighbor, Barnaby, just yesterday, about a misplaced wheelbarrow. Now? He looked like he’d forgotten his own name, let alone the Great Wheelbarrow Incident of Tuesday.