Honey and Time

The Spirit hadn’t moved in Amy Hudson for over 200 years. One summer First Day at 8 a.m., she’d sat down to meeting and stilled herself, turning inward, but neither spoke nor stirred that morning, or evening, or for the rest of the week. 

After a fortnight, when she hadn’t responded to the local Friends and her dearest family, they consulted a doctor. Every breakfast that summer, the Friends would place a bowl of honey next to her, and some folks said they had seen the old Friend eat. 

When snow caved in the roof that winter, she opened her eyes and helped clear out the meetinghouse but, since she wasn’t a carpenter, sat back at her place as the new roof was raised. After a few generations, the tone in which folks would say, “This is Amy Hudson,” shifted from an introduction to the way you would discuss a portrait or a statue, since of course no one believed that this was the same Amy, still waiting for the Spirit to move. Someone would occasionally leave honey or an apple in the old meetinghouse every now and then while they sat in that quiet place, out of politeness.

Sometime in the twenty-first century, local historians moved the figure of Amy Hudson into a small history museum along with a number of old journals and garments. Visitors marveled at the tone of the sickly but realistic color of the statue’s skin, which they figured had been painted on and gradually worn away by the elements. This local find hadn’t gained the attention of big archeology teams, so no one had bothered to verify whether the soft material of the sculpted body was half-set clay. 

One day, a lone, young visitor received a distressing message while visiting the museum and began to cry. The Spirit moved in Amy Hudson, and she opened her eyes, and spoke.