Folksburywoods

Silas lived in a hole in a tree. It was nothing like the holes the little harried feet men lived in. The hole was dark, dank, and cobweb-filled. He lived there alone and liked it that way. Silas was a keeper of things. His job was to travel around, sticking his nose into everyone else’s business and then writing it down in a big heavy book. Everyone disliked him for doing his job, but Silas didn’t care. It was what his father had done and what his father’s father had done before that. Silas’s family had always been keepers. Silas was paid two meals a day and a new suit of clothes once a year when the Lord’s representative came to collect the book. The keeper would clean out the locals’ pig pens if he needed pocket money. Silas Scrum never married, and when he died, the locals burnt his tree down rather than waste a hole in the ground. Stories are told that you might glimpse the keeper spying through a lit window or peeping from behind a wall on moonless nights. Perhaps Silas doesn’t know he’s dead and still records the goings-on of the villagers. Maybe we’ll never know.