Alexa Daskalakis

​The Echo

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The village kept one tradition. Not the harvest. Not the solstice. Not the laying of the first stone. They kept the Echo.

Each year, on the coldest day of winter, they gathered at noon in the square. In its center stood a well older than the church, its rim worn smooth by generations of hands. The mayor bent over the mouth and sent one word down into the dark. The word was always the same.

“Joy.”

What came back was never joy. One winter it was “Health,” and no one fell ill. One winter “Plenty,” and poles had to be set beneath the branches. The village counted its years by what the well returned.

This year Harlan, the mayor, leaned over the stone and called:

“Joy.”

Then the voice below answered.

“Harlan.”

No one moved.

Harlan kept both hands on the rim a moment longer. Then he straightened, turned from the square, and went home.

That night his wife found him in his chair by a cold hearth, his eyes open.

They buried him in ground that had to be broken open.

At first light Lena came to the well with a bucket. She had stood at Harlan’s shoulder for six winters. As the rope ran through her hands, a slow scraping rose through the shaft.

Then the voice came up.

“Joy.”

Lena did not draw the rope.

Again:

“Joy.”

Again.

“Joy.”

Then the sound beneath the word.

Nails on stone.

When she turned, the villagers were already there, bareheaded in the cold, standing ring by ring around the well. No one asked what she had heard.

Lena looked at the rope in her hands.
At the dark.
At the faces waiting.

Then she bent over the stone and said:

“Joy.”

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This is a work of fiction.