The Cellar Door

At the end of the row the hedge turns a corner. In the grass at the foot of it lie two slanted doors: gray boards, a rope for a handle, a hasp with no lock in it. The firefly is sitting on the crack between them, lit.

It goes dark. Four seconds. It lights again a yard on, inside the crack, and then it is not anywhere.

You lift one door by the rope. Seven steps go down into the cold. A cobweb is stretched across the bottom one, whole. You walk through it.

At the bottom the cellar goes two ways over packed clay. To the left the firefly lights, one second in five, a yard farther each time. You could go as it goes: a step to each light, and stand still through the dark. To the right there is no light at all, and a draft that smells of cut hedge.