The Village Joke
Hollin Beck was a small village in the hills, the kind of place where most people knew each other's grandparents' names, and where every kid grew up hearing the same handful of stories.
The biggest story was Old Tarvik's treasure.
The version Lina knew went like this. Tarvik had lived in Hollin Beck about eighty years ago. He had been a farmer with a small holding up the slope above the village. He had lived alone. He had been thought of, at the time, as eccentric. He had buried something — gold, jewellery, important papers, depending on who told the story — somewhere on his land. He had died without telling anyone. The land had been sold and resold. The treasure had never been found.
Most kids treated it like a joke.
"Oh sure," they would say, rolling their eyes. "Tarvik's treasure. The pot at the end of the rainbow."
Lina was eleven. Her cousin Bo was nine. They were spending the summer at her grandmother's house at the bottom of the village. They had nothing else to do.
On the first morning, Lina sat on her grandmother's bench in the back garden and said, "Bo. We are going to find Tarvik's treasure."
Bo nodded with great seriousness. "Yes," he said. "How?"
"By doing what the others didn't."
"What didn't they do?"
"Listen properly."
Lina explained. Most kids who had hunted Tarvik's treasure had gone straight to the slope and dug. They had dug for an afternoon,