It was not a place one should visit without an invitation but Harlan Fleming wasn't going to stay long. In fact, it was a surprise he ended up here. It wasn't what he planned. Yet, when he heard there would be no school if a teacher couldn't be found for this year, something about the place called out to him. It wasn't just the fact that his only living relative had ventured into those same hills and never come out, again. Or that there were things which needed to be said between them that would take a long time to explain. Those were ordinary things.What the young teacher felt on the day he stepped off the train, in Cedarville, was not ordinary. The others were there that day, too, reaching into his heart--uninvited--the same way he was reaching out to them. As if all the forces of life were suddenly converging into that single place and time. As if something significant--and highly important--were about to happen. As if it actually would.
