The Hollows

They started as nothing more than rumors.

"Did you hear what happened to so-and-so?"

"What happened?"

"They got in trouble and spent the night in a pit!"

Keilah heard them when they had already been circulating for a while, but then the gossip was always slow to reach her ears. When she finally did hear, there was a lot more to the story, and it goes like this:

One day while joining the hunters, Captain Adam witnessed one of them drinking on the job. He said nothing at the time, though he did talk to the Lead Hunter when they returned to Willowmoor. "Drinking on a job like that is dangerous. Get your men in order."

It seemed no one would face any punishment, though...at least, at first. The hunters went back to work the next day as usual, though they had all been admonished as a group for the one drinker.

Then, about a week after the incident, the man who had been drinking on the job did not turn up for work. The Lead Hunter had seen this behavior from him before, so he didn't think twice as he led the rest of his crew out into the woods to seek the game that was slowly beginning to return with the coming spring.

It was a normal hunt - at first. The men and women fanned out as they always did, pairing off in groups of two so that no one would end up alone. The Lead Hunter got off track chasing down a moose, and that's when he heard it: a thin cry for help being carried on the wind. After exchanging glances with his hunting partner, the two then silently hurried to find the source of the noise, for it could only be a person in trouble.

There was eventually a clearing in the woods that had obviously been visited recently, though they saw no one present. Still, the voice persisted, and the two hunters took pistols off their belts as they moved slowly forward...

They stopped abruptly when they came to the focal point of the clearing, though it had not been obvious at their entrance. What they saw was that a narrow pit had been dug, and peering over the edge showed it was a deep one with thorny walls and at least a foot of water along the bottom. That wasn't all, though...a man was down there, too...the same man who had been missing when they met up that morning to start the hunt. "What are you doing down there?" The Lead Hunter called down, amazed. "Did you fall in and get trapped?"

"You wish that's what happened to me!" The man replied back, his voice miserable. "I got thrown in here by the guards for drinking on the hunt last week!"

The hunters exchanged concerned looks before fetching some rope and working together to rescue their fellow. When the man was back above ground, the Lead Hunter left the hunt to retreat to Gulliver Hall, where he thought he might find the captain. Luckily, he happened to be out front, chatting with some of his usual admirers.

Pleasantries were dealt with quickly, and then the Lead Hunter shared the story of the man in the pit with Willowmoor's trusted village captain. Adam listened as well as he always did, but then he surprised the other man by saying sharply, "Ah, your hunters found the first of the Hollows."

"The Hollows?" Echoed the Lead Hunter, feeling mildly unnerved.

Captain Adam nodded. "Yes, they're pits we're digging to impart lessons on those citizens who need a reminder of what it means to be without community in this world."

His expression was stony, so the Lead Hunter decided it was not the time or place to express his own discomfort with the idea. New punishments had been coming to Willowmoor ever since the militia attacked, so it shouldn't be surprising...

"Thank you, Captain," said the Lead Hunter, giving the captain a slight bow of his head before turning to leave.

It was through the efforts of the Lead Hunter that Keilah learned not only of the existence of the vile pits that had been dug, but of the fact that her husband was responsible for them. When she looked back years later, she would often wish she had confronted him and filled up the holes then, considering what other punishments came to exist in Willowmoor...