The Village That Rearranged Its Streets

I have lived in the same small village for twenty years. It has one green, a church, a pub, a war memorial, a shop, and a handful of lanes I could walk in my sleep and frequently, tipsy from the pub, more or less have.

One evening in November I walked home from that pub through a thick, sound-swallowing fog, my old dog on her lead, and the village was wrong. Not foggy-wrong, where you lose your bearings. Wrong in its bones. The church, which stands to the right of the green as you leave the pub, stood to the left. The war memorial, always by the shop, was across the green by the church. The lane to my house, which forks right at the memorial, now forked left, and I took it on autopilot and then stopped dead, because my feet knew the route and my eyes were screaming that the route was a mirror of itself.

My dog would not walk. She planted herself, hackles up, and stared at the rearranged green and growled — low, steady, at the whole village, at its swapped geography. I have never heard her growl at a place before. Animals and children, people say. She knew.

I got home by walking the wrong-but-mirrored lanes with my heart going, let myself into my own house, which was at least still my house, and did not sleep. In the morning the fog had gone and the village was correct: church right, memorial by the shop, my lane forking right. I walked the whole thing twice to be sure. Correct. As if nothing had turned inside out in the night.