There are some places which are empty because they have been abandoned.
There are others which are empty because they have not yet been filled.
But there are a very few—though these are the most difficult to understand—which are empty because something has happened there so important that nothing else can remain.
It was toward such a place that the Cinnamon Bear and his companions now walked.
The path beyond the hill did not descend in any ordinary sense. It seemed, rather, to continue at a level slightly above the world they had left behind, as though the ground itself had been quietly lifted to meet them.
No one spoke for some time.
It was not the silence of uncertainty.
It was the silence that follows a question which has not yet finished answering itself.
Jimmy was the first to break it.
“Do you think we’ll know it when we see it?” he asked.
Cinnamon Bear considered this.
“I think,” he said, “we may have already begun to know it… and are only now catching up to ourselves.”
Paddy O’Cinnamon might have made a remark at this point, but he did not. Instead, he walked with unusual care, as though afraid that any unnecessary word might disturb something that had not yet fully arrived.
Judy, for her part, seemed neither uncertain nor afraid. She walked as one who has remembered something without yet being able to say what it is.
“It won’t be like the village,” she said quietly.
“No,” said Cinnamon Bear. “It will not.”
They came, at last, to a garden.
It was not a grand garden. There were no elaborate arrangements, no carefully designed paths, no evidence that anyone had attempted to improve upon it.
And yet—
It possessed a kind of order that did not require arranging.
The grass grew as though it had been invited.
The trees stood as though they had chosen their places.
The air itself seemed lighter—not in weight, but in meaning.
“This,” said Jimmy, looking around, “doesn’t feel empty.”
“No,” said Judy. “It feels like something has just happened.”
Cinnamon Bear nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “That is often how the most important things appear—after they have occurred.”
At the center of the garden stood a stone.
Or rather, what had once been a stone.
It had been moved.
There is something deeply unsettling about a stone that has been moved when one does not know who has moved it.
Jimmy stopped.
“That wasn’t like that before,” he said, though he could not have explained how he knew.
“No,” said Cinnamon Bear. “It was not.”
They approached slowly.
Beyond the stone was an opening.
A tomb.
Or rather—
An empty tomb.
They stood at its entrance.
No one rushed forward.
No one spoke.
For it is a curious thing that when one is finally confronted with what one has been seeking, one does not always recognize it immediately as an answer.
Sometimes, it appears only as a space.
Jimmy leaned slightly forward and peered inside.
“There’s nothing there,” he said.
“Yes,” said Cinnamon Bear.
Paddy O’Cinnamon frowned.
“Well,” he said, “that seems to confirm the riddle rather more directly than I had expected.”
Judy did not move.
She stood very still, looking not into the tomb, but at it—as though she were trying to see not what was inside, but what had been.
“It’s not just empty,” she said.
“No,” said Cinnamon Bear.
“It’s…” she hesitated, searching for a word that did not seem to exist.
“It’s right,” she said at last.
There was a pause.
Not of confusion.
Of understanding.
Cinnamon Bear smiled.
“Yes,” he said. “That is precisely it.”
Jimmy looked from one to the other.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “How can nothing be right?”
Cinnamon Bear turned to him.
“Because,” he said gently, “this is not the sort of nothing that comes from something being taken away.”
Jimmy frowned.
“Then what kind is it?”
“The sort,” said Cinnamon Bear, “that comes from something having been completed.”
Paddy tilted his head.
“I should have thought completion would leave something behind,” he said.
“It does,” said Cinnamon Bear.
“What?”
Cinnamon Bear gestured toward the tomb.
“This,” he said.
Jimmy looked again.
“But it’s empty.”
“Yes,” said Cinnamon Bear. “And that is what it leaves.”
Judy stepped forward at last.
“Someone was here,” she said.
“Yes,” said Cinnamon Bear.
“And now they’re not.”
“No,” said Cinnamon Bear softly. “Now they are not here.”
There is a difference between those two statements.
It is a difference that can change everything.
Jimmy blinked.
“Where are they?” he asked.
Cinnamon Bear did not answer immediately.
Instead, he looked around the garden—the trees, the light, the air that seemed to hold more than it contained.
“Everywhere,” he said.
Paddy took a step back.
“Well,” he said, “that is considerably less helpful than I had hoped.”
“It is also considerably more true,” said Cinnamon Bear.
There was a silence then.
But it was no longer the silence of absence.
It was the silence that comes when something has been said so completely that nothing more is required.
Judy knelt beside the entrance of the tomb.
“It’s not empty the way the village was empty,” she said.
“No,” said Cinnamon Bear.
“The village felt like something was missing,” she continued.
“And this?” he asked.
“This feels like something has been found,” she said.
Cinnamon Bear nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “And that is why it appears empty.”
Jimmy looked puzzled.
“That doesn’t make sense,” he said.
“No,” said Cinnamon Bear. “It does not make sense.”
He paused.
“But it does make meaning.”
Paddy considered this very carefully.
“I have always found,” he said, “that meaning is considerably more useful than sense.”
“That is because,” said Cinnamon Bear, “sense is what we expect… and meaning is what we discover.”
They stood there a while longer.
Not because there was anything more to see.
But because there was something more to understand.
At last, Jimmy spoke again.
“Is this what the village forgot?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Cinnamon Bear.
“And the map?” Jimmy asked.
“The map,” said Cinnamon Bear, “was never meant to show where this place is.”
“Then what was it for?”
Cinnamon Bear smiled.
“To show that it could not be shown,” he said.
Paddy nodded approvingly.
“That is exactly the sort of map I would expect from you,” he said.
Judy stood and turned toward the path.
“They’re still waiting,” she said.
“Yes,” said Cinnamon Bear.
“For what?”
“For this,” he said.
“But they don’t know it’s here.”
“No,” said Cinnamon Bear. “But they will.”
“How?” asked Jimmy.
Cinnamon Bear looked once more at the empty tomb.
“They will discover,” he said, “that what they thought was nothing… is the reason for everything.”
They began to walk back.
Behind them, the garden remained as it was—quiet, complete, and unmistakably changed.
Or perhaps it was not the garden that had changed.
Perhaps it was only that they had.
And as they went, there came, at last, a sound upon the air.
Not imagined.
Not remembered.
But real.
Faint at first.
Then clearer.
The sound of bells.
End of Part IV