The Mill by the Beck

Original fiction written for Revision Library; no external source reproduced.

Zara had never walked so far into a valley before. The path wound down through beech woodland, the leaves rattling overhead like hundreds of tiny green bells, following the sound of rushing water until, quite suddenly, the trees opened out and there it was: Gorse Clough Mill, a huge stone building standing four storeys tall beside a fast-running stream, its rows of windows dark and empty.

"They used to spin cotton thread in there," said her grandfather, Walter, pausing to catch his breath on the old wooden footbridge. "Hundreds of workers, some of them barely older than you, walked down this very valley every morning before it was even light, six days a week."

Zara peered up at the mill's blank windows. "Why did they build it all the way out here? Wouldn't it have been easier in the town?"

"That's exactly what most visitors ask," Walter said, easing himself onto a low stone wall beside the path. "But out here, the mill owners had something the town couldn't offer: the stream. Before steam engines came along, mills like this one were powered entirely by water. See that channel running off to the side there? That's the mill race. It carried water from further up the valley to turn a great wooden wheel, and the wheel turned the machinery inside, hour after hour, without a single engine."

"So the water did all the work?"

"Near enough. Of course, water is a fickle sort of power. Too little rain in summer, and the wheel slowed to nothing. Too much rain, and the whole valley could flood overnight, sweeping away bridges and machinery alike. That's partly why the mill closed for good back in nineteen twelve, when steam power made town-based factories far cheaper to run."

They crossed the footbridge and Zara noticed a narrower, humpbacked bridge further along, its stones worn smooth and pale. "What's that one for? It's too narrow for a car."

"That's a packhorse bridge, older than the mill by a couple of hundred years at least," Walter said. "Before proper roads were built up here, traders led long lines of packhorses over the hills, each animal loaded with bundles of wool or finished cloth strapped to its back. The bridges were built narrow and humped on purpose, so the water could rush beneath even in the worst floods without the whole thing washing away."

Zara ran her hand along the bridge's worn parapet, trying to picture a line of loaded ponies clattering across it in the rain. "It's strange to think this was once really busy. It's so quiet now."

"That's the thing about a valley like this," Walter said, standing and brushing dust from his trousers. "It empties out, but it never quite forgets. The stones remember, even when the people who laid them are long gone. Come on. There's a waterfall a bit further up, and I promised your mother we'd be back before the cafe shuts."

As they set off up the winding path, Zara glanced back once at the mill's dark windows, half expecting, for just a moment, to hear the distant clatter of machinery starting up again somewhere deep inside.