The Slow Echo

What it looks like, and what it does

A narrow green valley with a cairn at its head. A figure calling with cupped hands. On the opposite slope a faint second figure with cupped hands, answering. A notebook with dated pages weighted by a stone.

Answers once. Does not repeat. Is audible from the cairn at the head of the glen.

What is known

At Glen Sorrow, walkers call out in their twenties and return in their thirties to hear the reply. Many keep a notebook. The answer is the same words, in the voice of the caller as they will have become.

Some leave messages for themselves. Some return to hear a voice that has changed. One woman asked a question and was told “yes,” in a voice she knew.

What it can do

• Returns a call eleven years later in the caller's own voice
• Ages the voice by exactly eleven years

Where it stops

• Answers only one call per caller
• Is silent if the caller does not come back

An encounter

Ross shouted “I'm here” at twenty-six. At thirty-seven he went back, and from the far slope a voice answered, tired and warm, “So am I.” He says it was the first time he had been glad to be himself. He wrote it in the notebook beneath the stone, and left it there.

Hamish Ross, walker, The cairn at Glen Sorrow, Eleven years apart

What is established, and what is only said

• established: Eleven callers have recorded their original words and the reply. The words match, the voice does not.
• rumor: That the strangers who hear the answers of the dead are never told whose they are.
• interpretation: It may not be an echo. It may be someone who has agreed to answer.

Still unresolved

Calls from people who never returned are answered anyway. Those answers have been heard by strangers.

Where it has been recorded

• Glen Sorrow (confirmed) — Recorded by Hamish Ross, walker.

Connected entities

• Hourbehind — Both carry a voice across time. One an hour, one eleven years. In neither place is anyone astonished.