What We Could See From Our Wall

When we looked past our wall, we could see the lake. Sometimes it looked blue, other times green. We could see the town, the shape of the church standing out among the smudges of all the houses and shops. Auntie rarely let us go there, so it was as hazy in our minds as in our view. Our best view was of the old Melendy estate, the fallow fields and broken fences giving the still beautiful manor house an air of terrible loneliness. Nobody would tell us why the Melendys weren’t on the estate anymore, so we imagined reasons. Maybe everyone fell ill with a dreadful plague and died while in quarantine. Maybe there had been a tragic love story, one that ended with tears or blood or both. Maybe a witch had enchanted everyone and they were still in the house, sleeping until someone – maybe us? – came to break the spell.