The Toll at the End of the Road

From the field journal of Tamsin Quill, Cartographer of Questionable Roads

The footprints pointed out of Hearthmere. The road beneath them was invisible, which made following both an exercise in faith and a poor choice of footwear.

Nella Bramble held her cloth-wrapped dough ahead of us. It tugged gently west. Above it, the moon-moth courier flew with a letter addressed to a village the envelope was having trouble remembering.

“How much farther?” I asked.

“The letter says we're close,” said the moth.

“Can you read the letter?”

“No. But it's trying very hard to get out of my bag.”

My new hat kept the sun off my eyes. I was beginning to understand why the black ledger at Mythikal Sundries™ had insisted on it. The invisible road would have been easier to follow if the hat also came with invisible boots.

The moth stopped in midair. Its silver wings beat once, then twice.

“There's a gate,” it said.

There was. It appeared only when I looked past it: two posts of river stone, a bar of tarnished brass, and a little window with no building attached. A bell hung above the window. Its clapper was tied with red thread.

Behind the glass sat a woman in a rain cloak. She had a ledger open before her and the patient expression of someone who had watched generations of travelers misunderstand a sign.

TOLL: ONE MEMORY WORTH KEEPING.

“We'd prefer to pay in coin,” I said.

“Most do,” she replied. “They leave with their coin.”

Nella stepped beside me. “Who took the road?”

The keeper turned her ledger so we could see the last entry. The name had been rubbed away, but its destination remained: Out of Hearthmere. Beneath it, in a careful hand, was the payment: the way home.

The flour cloth in Nella's hands sagged. “Someone from the village gave you that?”

“Someone from the village walked through,” said the keeper. “I collect the toll. I don't choose what a traveler offers.”

Beyond the gate, a brass chain stretched into the empty air. With each slow turn of an unseen wheel, another stone of Hearthmere's road faded. Whoever had paid with the way home had put the road itself into the keeper's collection.

I reached for my compass. Its needle pointed at the chain, then at Nella's dough, then at the keeper's ledger. Trouble, apparently, had developed a sense of humor.

“If we pay,” I said, “will you take our memories too?”

“That is how a toll works.”

Nella tore her dough into three pieces and handed one to each of us. The moth balanced its portion against its satchel. We ate together at the gate, while Nella told us how her mother shaped Hearthmere honey rolls: thumb in the center, fold toward the river, never rush the rising.

I will remember the warmth of the bread. The moth will remember dropping crumbs onto my hat. Nella will remember laughing at us both.

“There,” Nella said to the keeper. “A memory worth keeping. It didn't exist until we came here.”

The keeper considered this. Then she stamped a blank square in her ledger. The gate opened, and none of us forgot.

“You cannot take that payment,” I said.

“You have already given it,” she replied. “Some tolls make the road longer. This one makes it stronger.”

The chain stopped moving. For a moment, pale stones ran all the way to a low bridge and the roofs of Hearthmere. Nella's recipe book warmed in her pocket, and the missing letters returned to its first page.

Then the keeper turned to a fresh sheet. At the top, written in a hand unlike her own, were six words:

HEARTHMERE ASKED FOR THE ROAD TO GO.

The bell rang once. Somewhere across the bridge, another answered.

If the village had asked to disappear, we needed to learn what it was hiding from before moonrise.

Next dispatch: “The Village That Chose to Vanish.”

Follow Tamsin's next dispatch to Hearthmere, and explore more original adventures from Mythikal Sundries™.