The Tale of the Broken Bell

Once upon a time, there was a girl living in a small cottage in the shadows of the big castle.

Her neighbours didn’t get to see her much, and she mostly kept to herself. Most of her life was about work, which had her going away from her home at odd hours.

She didn’t mind, because that was her life, and there was nothing she could do to change anything in it.

Mostly, the girl was happy to live near the castle and near the kind of activity generated around it. She wasn’t living in the biggest town around, but there were many nice things around: all sorts of arts, interesting shops and places where to find books, which were always good friends to the girl.

She knew that a few of her neighbours found her anomalous for being alone (she’d been told several times that her life would be happier with a man by her side, but she knew that they were all wrong). She kept to herself and lived one day after the other.

One day, everything changed.

The new Intendant decided to visit the people that he’d have to administer in the area that the local Lord had given him to take care of.

When he reached the girl’s house, he tried to ring the bell by the door, only to realize that the bell was mute. The Intendant was surprised, and he had a closer look at the bell, which was how he realized that the clapper was missing; he thought that either the girl had taken it off or that some child had stolen it to play a trick.

Since he could hear some noise inside, the Intendant knocked on the door, and the girl answered it immediately.

From her reaction when he told her about the bell, the Intendant knew that she wasn’t the one who’d made the bell mute. Since the other bells on the street were untouched, the Intendant wondered if someone had wished to play a nasty trick on the girl, but then he noticed the pot of medicinal herb just below the bell, and he found the broken clapper in it.

The Intendant was relieved that this was just an incident, and he promised the girl to bring her a shiny new bell in a few days, for which she thanked him.

Before leaving, he asked her if her friends hadn’t warned her about the bell. She declared that no one had said anything; the Intendant then realized that he, himself, knocked on his friends’ doors, he didn’t use the loud, impersonal bells that usually announced strangers or deliveries.

The Intendant told the girl that they’d discuss more about his plans for the area when he came back, and he bade her goodbye.

Behind her window, the girl made sure that the Intendant was gone, and she started to cry in earnest.

Without him, she’d never have known that there was a problem with her antique bell, but she’d never admit it to anyone because the truth was just too depressing.

No one ever came to her door.