The Hollows of Harpring

I’m excited to share with you some places inside Harpring. I briefly touched on Manderly Cove in my newsletter. But now, let me bring you a little further into the woods.

Harpring sits deep in the woods. Over time, sections were cleared to make room for homes and businesses, but never more than necessary. The town grew by settling into itself. There‘s one main road that runs through the center of town with side streets that branch off just enough to take you where you need to go. Beyond that, the woods take over again.

North of town sits Lake Casta, lined with cabins and homes along its shoreline. If you follow the shoreline east, the land gives way to another body of water: Manderly Bay. Between the two bodies of water lies a stretch of forest locals don’t cross into. They call it the Hollows of Harpring. The trees grow thicker there, and the light disappears entirely. There are no marked paths leading into the cove, but if you walk long enough, you’ll start to feel like something, or someone, is guiding you anyway. That’s where Manderly Cove is. Or, at least, that’s where it’s said to be.

In the early days of Harpring, a long-time resident Gretchen Macht, was shunned by the locals over false allegations. Legend has it, Gretchen went missing. A search party was constructed. They combed the woods, shoreline and all roads leading out of town. Nothing was ever found.

Years later, she was declared deceased when articles of her clothing washed up on the shores of Lake Casta. And that was enough for the town to move on. But what no one in Harpring knew, and what no one could’ve known, is that Gretchen had never left the area. She had just gone inward into the forest.

At that time, Manderly Cove was considered a forbidden part of the forest. It wasn’t official and marked with signs or boundaries, it was an understanding passed down to generations that it wasn’t a place people went. And if they did venture in, they didn’t come back the same way, or they didn’t come back at all.

But Gretchen found her way there. What began as a place to hide became something else entirely. She built a shelter using what the land would give her, and over the years, it grew board by board, room by room, into a cottage that didn’t quite match anything else in Harpring. From the outside it looked simple enough. Yet inside, it wasn’t.

She spent her days writing and documenting family records, names, dates, connections and things said behind closed doors. Every family in Harpring had a place in those pages, and every secret had somewhere to live. What began as survival evolved into something purposeful; constructed piece by piece while the town carried on, unaware.

With enough information to destroy generations upon generation of families, the locals of Harpring became quite lucky when she fell ill, had to stop writing, and upon her death, became unable to carry out her mission.

Years passed. Then decades. The cottage sat abandoned until one day, the door to the cabin opened again, and another someone found their way in.

The resident of Harpring have always believed their secrets were safe, tucked away in the woods, buried in time and left behind with the ones who carried them. But the Hollows don’t keep things hidden, they just preserve them. And somewhere in Manderly Cove, the stories that were started were never meant to end…only to be continued…..