Traces

Another excerpt from the first Imaggen book: Rose, while recovering from a fight with Quentin, goes looking for comfort in the form of photo albums. She finds Wilfy instead, and sees the old Imaggen properly for what’s probably the first time.

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Rose couldn’t sleep at all, and her head hurt from the crying. She never slept well without Quentin sitting in the corner of the room anyway; the dark seemed strange without him there. Late that night when she was sure the house was quiet, she eased her door open and crept out into the living room. She stifled a gasp when she came upon Wilfy in one of the chairs. His hands were folded across his chest, his legs crossed, and if he’d been a Person Rose would swear he was asleep. But he wasn’t, of course, and the Imaggen’s eyes snapped open as soon as she entered. One eyebrow raised in silent question, but even in the dark she knew it was friendly.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I just wanted to…” she gestured at the low bookcase on the other side of the room where they kept the dictionary, her old storybooks, and the photo albums. She felt a little embarrassed; she’d done this a hundred times before, and she was sure they all knew about it, but she’d never been caught in the act.

Wilfy’s dark eyes looked her over, and the wrinkles around them softened into something like a smile. “That was some fight this afternoon,” he offered.

Rose sighed. “He’s leaving.” The words still hurt to say. Wilfy didn’t look even a little surprised, but then he’d never expected much of Quentin, really.

Wilfy levered himself up in the chair a little and winced, like his bones were hurting. She wasn’t sure he even had bones. Rose watched him with concern—was he always like this at night, all tired and sore-looking, and she’d just never noticed?

“Did he say when?

She shook her head. “Doesn’t really help.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. His eyes flickered over to the bookshelf. “Don’t let me stop yeh.”

She went over and stood before the shelf for a moment, uncertain as always now that she was here. Finally, her fingers gravitated to the last album on the shelf, the big off-white one that was only half full. She hefted it off the shelf, its weight familiar under her arm. Rose had planned on taking it back to her room with her, but something about Wilfy sitting there all familiar and warm and somehow lonely made her sit by the window instead, where the moonlight was brightest. She sank onto the worn carpet and propped the album on her knees.

One by one, she traced the pictures tucked away here in rows beneath a plastic sheath. Whole pages she didn’t recognize at all—great aunts and uncles, grandparents that Uncle Mitch told stories about–but she didn’t pause to wonder at those tonight. She flipped through steadily until she came to her favorite page: the fourth to last. Her parents’ wedding. Uncle Mitch never talked about this. All she had were these pictures, silvered over with moonlight until they seemed like something from a story book.

There were suits and dresses and a tall white cake, and Uncle Mitch with a big smile next to her dad. She paused at the picture of her mom laughing, arms above her head as she threw her flower bouquet behind her. Rose saw herself in that picture, all grown and wrapped up in white lace and flowers. Her dad looked like Uncle Mitch, the same blue eyes and wispy hair. Here in her hands they were happy, still, walking arm-in-arm down the aisle or dancing with their Imaggen’s indicator lights on either side, never to be captured in photograph. Rose wished she remembered what they looked like—no picture could bring them back, not even Named.

She sat looking at the wedding for a while, playing the scenes together in her head, a well-visited dream of the sounds and sights between the pictures. She wished Uncle Mitch would talk about it. He missed them too, but he missed them differently. At least he had more than pictures.

Rose had to blink tears away as she turned to the final filled page of the album. There were only two pictures here. One of her mother, laughing again, lying on her back looking up at the camera. One hand rested on her rounded stomach, the other above her head. Rose liked this one the best: it was almost like having a picture of just the two of them, even if Rose wasn’t born until months later. She touched her mother’s face, just once, tracing her smile.

The last picture was of her parents and Uncle Mitch, sitting on some stone steps somewhere. Her parents’ arms were wrapped around each other, smiling at the camera. Uncle Mitch sat a little behind them, holding Rose as a little baby wrapped up in a pink blanket. He was looking down at her with the same smile she saw every morning, oblivious to the camera.

Rose stared at that picture, trying to remember being there, feeling that happy, until she fell asleep. Hours later she woke up, curled on the carpet with a blanket thrown over her. Wilfy was quiet and still in his chair, so she put the album back and shuffled off to her room, blanket still around her shoulders.

Time to Leave

Things in Mill go wrong, and Rose finds herself on the brink of leaving the only home she’s ever known. The hardest part is getting out the front door, and out of bed. Just a short little excerpt.

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“Rose. Rose. Come on, Rose girl, you need to wake up. It’s time to leave.”

Rose could barely lift her head from the pillow, it felt so heavy. She blinked and rubbed her hands over her eyes. It was still dark outside, and it felt like she’d only been asleep for a few minutes. “What? Wha’s wr-wr-wrong?” a huge yawn interrupted her. As her eyes cleared, she realized that Uncle Mitch, Quentin and Wilfy were all crowded into her room. Uncle Mitch’s hand was on her shoulder, gently shaking her awake. “What is it?”

“Time to get goin’, honey.” Her uncle’s eyes were dark, his face still in shadow because only the hall light was on. He was very still, and in that moment Rose wondered why she had never noticed how old he was. He seemed so fragile, almost hollow, sitting on the edge of her mattress in the dark. But his words weren’t making sense.

“Leave? Who’s leaving?”

“We are,” Quentin said from the foot of her bed. His voice was quiet, and very serious. Rose looked between them, and then over at Wilfy, who was standing in the door like he was keeping look-out. It was only then that she remembered. A heavy, sick feeling settled into her stomach and throbbed behind her eyes.

“Is your bag packed?” Her Imaggen’s voice was cold and clipped, as if speaking from a distance, or to someone else entirely. He seemed impossibly alien to her in that moment, standing in the stark shadows of her room. Had she ever known him? His eyes caught hers and his face softened into the one she loved for a second. “Get changed and come out,” he said more gently. “We need to be gone quick as we can.”

She nodded wearily. They filed out, Uncle Mitch scooping up her bag on the way. He hesitated at the door, and they shared a helpless look before he closed it and left her to get ready in the dark.

True Story

This comes from the very beginning of the third Imaggen book. It also has the distinction, such as it is, of being the first Imaggen scene I ever wrote. I like it because Quentin and Rose don’t get many more quiet moments together after this, and also because this theme of beginnings and endings is such a strong one throughout the arc. For these two in particular, this conversation will be replayed near the very end of the story, but in a slightly different context.

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“Tell me a story?” Rose Sherbourne asked into the dark room.

It was a familiar request to her Imaggen; so familiar, in fact, that he had begun to run short of stories that were safe to tell. Naturally, this worried him. It was an undeniable fact that when stories ran out, the only things left to tell would be truths.

He sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, being unnecessarily careful to avoid disturbing its IP. “A story about what?” he asked indulgently. “How should it start?”

“Like all good stories do,” she said firmly. “With ‘In the beginning’.”

He shifted uneasily—she’d hit upon a truth without knowing it. She seemed to be doing that more and more these days. He would call it a mark of his influence, but he suspected that most of it was just Rose. “None of my other stories start that way,” he pointed out, hoping to distract her. “Does that mean they aren’t any good?”

Her drowsy giggle made him smile despite himself. But her next words were serious, even edged as they were with sleep. “This story will. Now go on, Quentin. In the beginning…”

“In the beginning…” her Imaggen repeated, thoughtfully. He gazed absently out her window at the moon. He thought about lying for a moment, of course. She would never know it was a lie at all. She’d never catch him for this one, because there would be no way for her to tell.

But he would know. That mattered these days, for reasons having to do mostly with the little Person falling asleep in front of him.

It also had to do with their lives in the past year, and the people they’d met: Professor Annison Payne, who was even now sleeping in the room across the hall under the watchful care of her Imaggen York. York himself, who had become a real friend and confidant somewhere along the way. Lira, who had become a whole colorful knot of complications in Quentin’s head, and who he found himself missing unexpectedly, despite their rocky history. Even Mitch Sherbourne and his old Imaggen Wilfy, back in the tiny Southern town of Mill. Lies were harder for the Trickster of Imaggen to justify these days, when they should have been easier. It was easy to lie to save the ones you cared for—it was considerably harder, Quentin was beginning to discover, to lie to them.

Besides, he’d never been able to deny Rose anything.

And so, like all things do and everything must, Quentin began.

“In the beginning,” he said more firmly, turning with purpose to speak in her direction, “…well. That’s covered it, I suppose. The beginning was in the beginning. The start is in the start. The proof,” he said with evident glee, “is in the proverbial pudding.”

“Quentin!” she admonished with another giggle that quickly got smothered by a yawn. “Be serious.”

He could tell that she was nearly asleep, and maybe that was why he continued when he should have stopped. “Well, that’s right, you know. The beginning was in the beginning. But I think—and tell me, Rose, if my logic is sound in this—I have thought that if the beginning was in there, then the end must have been, too. So, in the beginning, Rose…there was the end.” Her even breathing was a relief. He shook his head and murmured, “Does that make any sense?”

“No,” she whispered, causing him to startle in surprise. “But I think, if it did,” she slurred even as dreams began to pull her in, “if it did, I wouldn’t understand it half so well.”

Quentin stood and moved to the head of the bed. His shape did nothing to block the moonlight streaming in from the window behind him, though his form was in its way. He watched affectionately as Rose’s eyes drooped one more time as she finally succumbed to the sleep all Persons seemed to need so badly.

“Oh, Rose,” he murmured with something like awe. “Rose Sherbourne. Dream about something else.” He looked out the window again. “Beginnings and ending both are subjects too old for that young heart of yours.” His hand, though it never actually touched her brow, still smoothed it of her cares. “Peaceful sleep, Rose.”

At last she obeyed, and Quentin the Imaggen was left alone to watch the moon rise in the Expanse, and to ponder the ends of Time and the beginnings of a twelve-year-old Person girl named Rose.

In the quiet corners of his mind, the two felt very much the same.

A Matter of Size

Rose and Quentin can’t always get along, of course. This scene takes place in the first Imaggen book, and a few issues that have been bothering Rose for a long time finally come into the open. For a 12-year-old, she holds her ground pretty well. Poor Quentin gets blindsided, and proves once and for all that he doesn’t always know what to say. They make up eventually, but the issues brought up in this scene will continue to color their relationship for the rest of the story. This scene is a bit long, since there was no good place to cut it for posting.

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They made their way back to the house as the afternoon started to fade into the coming evening. The wind was cooler than it had been earlier in the day, so Rose kept her arms tucked close to her sides as she scuffed along the dirt road beside her Imaggen. Quentin looked down at her thoughtfully and caught her shivering a little.

“We’ll need to get you a new coat soon,” he murmured, “or we’ll have to start coming in earlier. You’re going to freeze if we keep this up.”

“It’s nearly summer! It’ll be warm soon!” Rose protested, even as she made an effort not to look cold. “Besides, I always get a new coat from Mrs. Leeson in the fall, when Jan grows out of hers from last year.” The last coat had been purple, and therefore Rose’s personal favorite so far. Unfortunately, it had also proven too small for her arms and shoulders by the middle of January, when she’d grown again without noticing. Rose was hoping for the same color this year, and maybe something a few sizes bigger, so she could wear it all the way through the winter.

“They’re not so new by the time Jan’s done with them,” Quentin retorted, as if narrating his Person’s thoughts.

Rose looked up at him in surprise. He was usually very careful to keep from pointing out that they were poor. Talking about it didn’t help, Rose knew, and more often than not, any mention of money or the things they didn’t have enough of only made Quentin and Wilfy fight out on the porch at night. Even worse, those kinds of things made Uncle Mitch go sad and quiet, and Rose wanted to avoid that most of all. She knew he felt guilty that he couldn’t get her things like a new jacket, but she never blamed him. Deep inside, Rose thought sometimes that it was her fault that they didn’t have much; if Uncle Mitch and Wilfy didn’t have to worry about buying her clothes and food and school supplies, they probably would have been able to spend the money on other things, like getting the house fixed or maybe even putting some money aside in the bank, like a lot of the farmers did.

Something of what she was thinking must have appeared on her face, because Quentin saw her expression and gave a long sigh, shaking his head and waving his hand in the way that meant he didn’t mean whatever he’d just said.

Rose knew better. She saw the way Quentin looked around him sometimes when he thought no one was watching—there were these little moments, when it seemed like he was only just waking up from a long sleep to realize how small their lives were, here in Mill. And Rose noticed other things too; things that Quentin had never said, but that seemed obvious from the way he acted sometimes. She knew that he hated the way the house leaned to one side, and how it never stayed warm in the winter because of the gap under the door. He didn’t like town at all, either; partly for some reason that Rose had never quite figured out, but also because it just wasn’t big enough to be interesting, and there was no one there he wanted to talk to.

Quentin was just too big for Mill. Rose knew that—had known it from the moment she’d come to Uncle Mitch’s house when she was three and found Quentin waiting for her in her bedroom—but it still made something in her chest ache every time she thought about it. He didn’t want to stay here, was the thing. Rose didn’t want to stay either, or not forever at least, but she often worried that when she got old enough to go travel, Quentin wouldn’t want to come back here to visit Uncle Mitch nearly as often as she hoped.

They paused at the foot of the porch steps and turned as one to look out over the town, half-dark and preparing for the night, and across the long farm-dotted rolls of the plains. There were thick clouds on the southern horizon that hid the mountains. Overhead, the first stars glittered in the Expanse as the periwinkle sky melted away. The air was cool and a little wet, and Rose guessed that they would probably have rain in the morning.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, mostly to herself. Quentin just smiled a little, clearly thinking about something else, and she wondered what he thought of it. He had probably seen more exciting things before breakfast. That made her a little sad too, but it was a familiar sadness, and she didn’t linger on it long. Rose turned to watch him, shadowed as he was by the dark bulk of the lopsided corner of the roof behind his head. The light from the house’s windows cast half his face into shadow, and the other into a golden image like the pictures in Uncle Mitch’s old photo albums. Just at that moment, he seemed handsome and mysterious, and much too big to be standing here with her at all.

“I’m sorry, you know,” Rose told him softly. She’d been meaning to say it for ages, but as soon as the words came out she was embarrassed that she hadn’t said it better.

Her Imaggen turned in surprise and met her gaze properly for the first time all evening. “Sorry? What in the World for?”

She wished she hadn’t brought it up at all now, but it was too late to go back, so she gave a little shrug that looked like one of his. “For this,” she explained, pointing towards the darkening view. “I know it’s too small.” He looked shocked, and she hurried to continue before he could interrupt. “Maybe someday, I can go to college or get a job, and then you could pick somewhere you’d like more for us to go. I wouldn’t mind, if you picked the first place. As long as we could come back here sometimes, we could go anywhere you wanted! I promise,” Rose finished with a smile that she hoped looked brave. She felt a little proud of herself for getting all of that out at once.

Quentin stared at her in what she supposed was surprise, but there was an odd, cracked expression on his face, like the words he’d been planning to say had broken into pieces in his mouth before he could get them out. When he was still silent after a whole minute, Rose started to get worried. “Quentin?” When he still didn’t answer, even when she’d used his name, she all of a sudden realized why.

“You aren’t staying!” she blurted out in disbelief. “That’s why you don’t talk about things, and why you won’t make any friends! You’re not just leaving here, you’re leaving me! You’re leaving as soon as you can, and then I’ll never see you again!” She realized she was crying, but she couldn’t stop herself now. She also realized she was shouting, and she managed to take a deep breath and speak quieter when she asked him, helplessly, “Did you ever mean to be here? Or was I really just an accident on your way to somewhere else?”

“Oh, Rose,” he protested, but he couldn’t seem to get any other words to follow her name. He just watched her helplessly, all his smiles and quick jokes gone and shriveled up like they’d never existed.

Rose knew, then, that she was right. She’d guessed the ending to another one of Quentin’s stories. All at once, she wished she hadn’t.

She stared up at him fiercely, waiting for an apology, and explanation, anything that would make this better, at least a little. That was his job, after all. Just at that second, she thought that she might even have liked a lie. If he told her right then that of course he would never leave, and they would always be together just like Uncle Mitch and Wilfy, she decided that she would believe him.

Rose stood there for a full minute, and waited for him to fix it. Quentin looked at her, eyes wide, and she thought that she’d never seen him scared until just now. Finally, she couldn’t take the silence or the confusion on his face any more. Rose burst into tears, banged up the porch stepped and stormed into the warm, bright house. She dropped her bag at the door and rushed straight past Uncle Mitch’s worried face.

“Rose!” he called after her, “Rose, honey, what’s wrong?”

He wouldn’t understand. Wilfy had never left him, not once, and so Rose didn’t answer. She shut the door of her room as hard as she could, curled up on her bed, and cried.

And even though she was mad at him for never telling her, and scared of losing him, and worried that she would never be good enough for anyone or anyplace else but here–even with all that, Rose wished Quentin would come and shush her, and tell her that everything would work out in the end.

After School (A Rose Amongst Daisies)

Near the beginning of Imaggen, we pick up with Rose at the end of a typical (and not all-together tranquil) day at school. One of the very first scenes I wrote with just Rose and Quentin, doing their normal thing as bonded Person and Imaggen. It’s still one of my favorites, especially since it provides our first good look at Quentin from his Person’s perspective. This isn’t the entire thing (too long to post all in one chunk, really), but it’s enough to get the feel of it.

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Rose Sherbourne made her way down the sun-warmed street unaccompanied. She hummed happily to herself, ignoring the concerned glances of the familiar Imaggens she passed with practiced ease. Inevitably, the Persons on the street would turn to watch her back with worried frowns, after their Imaggens had whispered in their ears that the little girl—no, that one, just there, the Sherbourne girl that lived up in the crooked house—had no Imaggen by her side. Rose’s Imaggen never came into town. It made her unusual, when her old clothes and tattered shoes had already made her pitiable, and the resulting emotions in the observers were ones that Rose had quickly learned to avoid.

Rose turned left at the bakery, then right at the store house. She reached out as she skipped along the street and used a lamp post to spin herself off of Hill Street and around the corner onto Main, going west. Her purple scarf flew behind her in two frayed streams, twin flags of her triumphant march into afternoon freedoms. Sunlight glinted off her blonde hair and swirled with the dust motes kicked up by her steps as she hurried away from the school building and all the things she’d learned therein.

She followed Main Street as it left town and meandered west out towards the long green plains. Uncle Mitch’s house stood right in the middle of her vision, a small dark square set back from the road about half a mile from town. There were no other houses in that direction, just lots of farm land. Most other people had built east, where the big mill that employed the town sat like a big cardboard box on top of the biggest hill.

The girl kept the leaning house in sight even as she turned off Main just as it turned into a smooth dirt road just a few hundred yards after the last town shop. She wandered along at a right angle to the road, following a familiar path that put both town at home at her back. Her feet brought her up one small rise and down another, and then, all at once, she could look down at the barn.

It was an old, red thing that had once been big enough to be seen on the horizon from town. Now, though, the building was all collapsed in on itself, as if the surrounding grass had started to swallow it up, only to have it get stuck halfway down. The roof was at an angle with the ground, and only two walls were left. It looked like the bow of one of the ships that Rose had seen pictures of in school. Daisies abounded here, growing in huge puffs and tuffs that frothed up the walls like waves, bringing the last of the barn-ship down into the depths.

Rose paused at the top of the hill to take one last look at the house over her shoulder before she made her way down to the barn. The horizon tightened and the sky shrank into the sides of the green-daisy hills as she descended. She took a moment at the bottom of the rise to plan a way through the great heaps of daisies between her and the building.

It was entirely the wrong time of year for daises to be growing here at all, but that never stopped Quentin from doing it anyway.

After several minutes of silent contemplation, she eventually bit her lip, reeled in the ends of her scarf, and gave a sigh of exasperation. “No fair!” she shouted towards the barn. “Come on, there’s no way through!”

“There is too!” her Imaggen’s familiar voice called indignantly from behind the still-upright corner of the barn. “You just have to try harder!”

She hated when he said that. Rose glared at the empty air and returned her attention to the flower-covered grass again. Her brown eyes narrowed hard in concentration. Maybe if she took one step to her left and then…no. She’d only hit that big clump two steps later, and there was no getting around it. “You’re lying!” she finally declared with certainty. “There is no way I can get to you without bending at least one flower.”

He heaved a theatrical sigh. “Alright, alright. You caught me. Here.” Rose watched unperturbed as the daises before her rearranged themselves, bending and reaching back to frame a clear path through their midst. The girl allowed herself a triumphant smile and made her way flower-free over to the side of the barn. She reached out and trailed her fingertips along the chipped paint and splintered wood as she finally rounded the corner. And there, waiting for her like he did every other school day, was Quentin, her Imaggen. He was looking carefully at something over on his left, so Rose took the chance to watch him for a moment before she spoke.

He stood leaning against the side of the barn with his ankles crossed and his hands in his pockets. Just like always, he appeared in his blue pants and vest, and his dark blue greatcoat brushed his knees as he turned. The shirt underneath the vest and coat was blue with white stripes today, and his tie was the color of the sky. Rose liked that shirt the best—it meant that Quentin was in a good mood. Just like always, every button and every strand of his curling dark hair was perfect, like he’d spent an hour getting everything straight, even though he never needed to.

Still, she always thought that he looked silly, wearing all of that and standing next to an old rundown barn in the middle of a field. Quentin didn’t look quite right anywhere in Mill, really. He always seemed a little too…big. Too bright and colorful. Like he was supposed to be at a party or a meeting in a big city like Corsus, but he’d taken a wrong turn and just ended up here with her instead, by accident. The thought made Rose uneasy, because she was half-convinced that it was true.

Quentin  finally turned and focused his blue eyes on her with a smile; she shook herself and picked her way over to him, careful of the uneven ground and her own untied shoelaces. Rose returned his smile with a broad one of her own—she was out of school, and she was with her Imaggen. Finally, she could learn something for the day.

Mill

This marks the beginning of a new set of stories called Imaggen. In this world much like ours, every Person has an invisible friend called an Imaggen that helps them navigate the Imaginary Forces.  The southern town of Mill is the place that our eleven-year-old heroine Rose Sherbourne, her Uncle Mitch, and their Imaggens call home. For more background on Imaggen and its characters, check out http://sybil.appspot.com/world/imaggen/

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The town of Mill lay cradled in the heartland of the Southern Continent. To the north, the Thurber River eased its way east across the continent to meet the turbulent River Swift in its northward charge from the mountains. To the south, the Cullipher marked the long low slope of the continent’s farmland, dividing it from the rocky southern coast in a gentle flow, all the way from the mountains to the western shore. Both the Thurber and the Cullipher left generous deposits of nutrient-rich soil for the inhabitants to transport and farm. The large, rolling plains between the rivers were dotted with small towns amidst vast stretches of wheat, corn, hay and other agricultural staples.

Mill—named so because of the great grain mill that employed most of the town’s farmers and laborers—was one of a dozen tiny towns scattered through the continent’s vast farmlands. Far out of sight of either river, Mill’s residents were accustomed to the sight of unbroken farms and pastureland stretching in all directions. On clear days, of which there were many, the hazy purple mass of mountains could be seen low on the southeast horizon.

The people of Mill were, by and large, the typical products of their upbringing. Conservative, hard-working, and largely unconcerned with the World outside their own work and produce, their exposure to national and international news was limited to letters from relatives. The town’s political representative also stood in for three other towns in the region, and so rarely came south from the continent’s far-off island capital of Corsus.

Of the nation’s cultural and intellectual centers like Port and Innsbrook, Mill cared little. Those who went to major universities almost all came back to teach and work in their hometown. Films and books reached Mill a year after the more modern coastal cities had finished with them. Their main concerns were the going price of wheat that week, combined with the thousand necessary little distractions required by the agricultural lifestyle.

Few Imaggens stayed, and few Persons left. The population of 250 made due with one city-block’s worth of stores, salons and grocers. The Mill schoolhouse took pride of place next to the city hall in the middle of town, squeezed in between the government seat on one side and the dilapidated movie theater on the other. It was a place of long days, honest work, and few pretensions. Members of the community were expected to know their place and fulfill their duties, and for the most part, everyone did.

Still, even in a place like Mill, there are inevitably one or two individuals who find themselves on a different path, in a different rhythm than those around them.

In Mill, those people were old Mitch Sherbourne and his eleven-year-old niece, Rose, who lived in the old crooked house set back from the road just to the north of town.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this leaning house just outside of Mill, with the wide front porch and the rickety stairs, is where this part of the tale begins. The stories worth telling rarely start anywhere except in places like this.