The mid-morning sun is a pale, heatless coin hung above the canopy. Joan Petrakis stands at the edge of the clearing, her boots sinking into a carpet of rust-coloured needles. The air smells of cold sap and damp earth. Before her looms the largest pine in the grove, its trunk thick enough to swallow a doorway. Nailed to the bark at eye level is a crisp, white sheet of paper. The typed letters are sharp, the ink fresh, as if the carriage of a typewriter had just clicked its final return.
Twelve rules are laid out in a neat, clinical column. 'Rule 1: No lights past midnight. Rule 2: Do not sweep the porch.' Her fingers graze the edge of the page. The caretaker said the cabin was empty for a year. Yet the paper is not yellowed by the mountain weather, nor is it curled at the corners. It is a direct address. A contract she didn't realize she was signing when she accepted the retreat.
She reaches out to touch the heavy, ridged bark. The tree feels strangely warm beneath her palm, vibrating with a low, subsonic hum that rattles her teeth. From a split in the rough bark right beside her hand, a folded yellow paper begins to inch outward.
