The bell tower in Marrowhollow rang only once a decade. No one remembered why, not really, though there were plenty of stories. That it warned of famine. That it summoned luck. That the dead answered it.
I arrived two days before the next ringing.
The town was slow and moss-covered. Buildings leaned on one another like old friends. Chickens strutted through the dusty square, claiming space they had long since inherited from people. A windmill stood without blades, watching.
I had no reason to be there.
I rarely do.
The innkeeper at The Hollow Cup gave me the room with the crooked window. "You're here for the Bell?" she asked.
"Depends what you mean by for," I said.
She grunted and handed me a tin key. Room smelled like clay and rain memory. I liked it.
In the market, they were selling tiny bells made of glass, bone, brass. Some were hung with red thread. Some hummed softly without wind. "Protects your memories," one vendor whispered, placing a ceramic bell in my palm. "But not from yourself."
I gave her a wooden button in trade. She nodded solemnly, as if I'd paid more than enough.
The town had a tower, yes. Grey stone and vine-bitten, it rose like a finger pointing at a sky too lazy to look down. No one was allowed inside, except the bellringer—and no one could quite agree who the bellringer was. Some said the mayor's cousin. Others said it was chosen by dream.
A little girl told me it was a ghost named Myra who hated soup and rang it out of spite.
That seemed the most honest.
I wandered, as I always do. Marrowhollow had a calm to it—too calm, the kind that made you feel watched, not with malice, but with expectation. People glanced at me with half-smiles, like they knew me.
Which is always possible.
I walked past a garden where an old woman hummed to her squash. Past a faded mural of the Bell, painted with five fingers holding its rope. Past a cat with two tails and one indifferent attitude.
At the edge of town, a boy carved names into the fence. He paused when he saw me.
"You're late," he said.
"I usually am."
"Still time though."
"Time for what?"
He shrugged. "Whatever this one's for."
That night, I sat in the square with my satchel beside me. Trinkets clinked when I shifted—sun-discs, half-coins, teeth made of smoke. The ceramic memory bell sat in my palm.
I wondered what I'd forgotten.
A man joined me. Always does. They never say their name at first. It's part of the ritual. This one wore a coat of patchwork maps. His voice cracked like old parchment.
"You look familiar."
"I get that a lot."
"You believe in the Bell?"
"I believe in a lot of things. Most of them contradictory."
He laughed. "It remembers us, they say. Remembers what we forget."
"Sounds exhausting."
He raised his flask. I didn't take it this time.
"You here to remember something?" he asked.
"Maybe to forget something," I said.
He nodded like that made sense.
We watched stars argue quietly above.
At dawn, the town gathered. Quiet, reverent, curious. No speeches. Just breath and winter.
The tower door creaked open.
A child stepped out.
Not one I'd seen before. Not one anyone had. He—or she, or neither, or both—walked with steps older than they should've known, and climbed the inside stairs of the tower.
No one spoke.
No one breathed.
The bell rang.
Once.
It was a sound you felt in your ribs.
Not loud, not sharp—just deep. A sound like ink in water. Like fire in snow. Like a story you half-remember from a life that might've been yours.
I dropped the memory bell. It cracked.
Inside it: a note. Faded, folded, impossible.
I opened it with hands I did not know were shaking.
"Don't forget her. The river. The frost. The hand. You promised."
I left Marrowhollow that afternoon.
Didn't speak to anyone. Didn't pack properly. Just walked. The road was softer than it should've been, and the air smelled like a scarf I'd lost centuries ago.
The cracked ceramic bell stayed in my pocket.
I don't remember what I promised.
But I believe I meant it.
It wasn't on my map. And I carry good maps, at least I think I do.
The river curved out from a field of long yellow grass, a slow black snake that shimmered without light. No name on the signpost, just a painted symbol—five curled lines ending in drops. Like fingers. Or roots.
The locals wouldn't go near it. Called it the Remembering Flow. Said it shows you things that aren't always yours. Or worse—are.
"You drink from that water," an old woman warned me, "and you might remember someone else's sins."
I asked her if that still counted as guilt.
She didn't answer. Just spat, and shut her door.
I walked alone. The river kept to my side like a shadow that forgot which body it belonged to. I slept beside it for a night. Maybe more.
The wind said her name.
I didn't remember who she was. Not really. Just a shape in the fog. Long hair. A voice like snow falling in silence.
Every time I blinked, she came a little closer.
By the third night, I found the hand.
Stone. Grey. Reaching out of the riverbank, fingers splayed toward the moonless sky. Trinkets dangled from it—old necklaces, dried flowers, pieces of string with names carved into the knots.
I knelt beside the pool that formed beneath it.
My reflection wasn't mine.
She looked like someone I should have remembered.
"You're late," she said.
That voice again—like frost breaking on glass.
"You always were."
"Was I…" I began. "Did I love you?"
She smiled, sad and patient. "That's the cruel thing, isn't it? I don't even know if you were meant to."
Her eyes didn't blink.
She wasn't real.
The river doesn't lie, but it doesn't care about the truth, either.
It gives you a memory. Yours, someone else's, something half-formed between. And you have to carry it until it dissolves. If it ever does.
She reached up—no ripples. Her hand brushed mine.
"You left me in the frost," she said.
"Did I mean to?" I whispered.
She tilted her head.
"Does it matter now?"
I woke up with my boots soaked and a frozen scarf wrapped around my shoulders. Pale blue. Frayed at the edge. Not mine.
I carried it anyway.
The rest of the journey felt like déjà vu painted over grief.
The trees looked familiar. The way the sun slanted through the pines—I'd seen that before. But I couldn't say when. Or if.
Crows began to follow me.
One dropped a stone button at my feet. Shaped like a snowflake. The others cawed, laughing, or warning—I couldn't tell.
A village waited downriver.
They welcomed me politely, nervously. Offered stew, stale bread, and soft eyes that never met mine.
Their river well had frozen over in midsummer.
Children spoke in rhyme while they slept.
One muttered the words I heard in my dream:
"You left her in the frost. You came too late."
I asked if they knew her. The girl with ice in her voice.
They only shook their heads.
But a child pointed at the scarf on my shoulders and said, "My sister had one like that."
I asked where she was.
The child didn't answer.
I left before dawn.
The river kept pace.
It showed me faces in the water. Some I recognized. Most I didn't. But I felt them all the same.
One of them was me.
Younger. Smiling. Holding someone I couldn't name.
The frostborn girl never came back.
Not in the water. Not in my sleep.
But the scarf remained.
And so did the feeling that I had once made a choice that had cost someone everything.
I buried the scarf at the mouth of the river. Just where it met the Sea of Unnames.
I whispered thanks. And goodbye. And maybe.
And the wind whispered back:
Some memories aren't meant to be owned.
Just carried.
The next town asked if I was a ghost.
I told them I wasn't sure.
But I could mend their roof.
And they let me stay.