This happened at a busy crossroad where two well traveled paths met and mingled before going their separate ways. At first the crossroad was a naked x, pressured on all sides by trees. The roads that stretched away from that place were cold and thin, insufficient lines drawn between the mountain and the valley. Over the years many trees had been cut for lumber and the forest pushed back to widen the thoroughfare. Then someone had built a gibbet. Then someone had built a stable behind the gibbet and soon enough an inn next to the stable, a feed store on the other side of the road, an apothecary’s shop snug at its side. Soon there were enough buildings and goods to consider the place a small town. The crossroad was busy day and night but it was not named as a town would be. It was an in-between place. Often travelers were seen standing in the middle of the x, turning from road to road in a state of bewilderment. From each road came the same cool wind. Down each was afforded the same looming view of spruce and hemlock, rock, frosted blooms of lichen, hard dark earth.
