The flooded square

An original fiction passage set in the nineteenth century.

Clara had crossed Bellman Square every morning since she was tall enough to carry a basket. She knew where the cobbles dipped beside the fountain, which shopkeeper raised his awning first and how many strides took her from the clock to the baker's door. Even among the market carts, her feet seemed to remember the way without her.

That morning, the square ended at the bakery steps. Brown water had erased the road and climbed halfway up the fountain. The shops remained in their usual places, but their painted names floated upside down beneath them. A wooden crate sailed slowly past the clock as though it had business elsewhere. Clara stepped forward, expecting the next cobble, and her boot entered cold water. She drew back. Around her, doors opened and voices called from upper windows, yet no one crossed the square. The route she had followed for years had become a wide, shifting surface with no path written upon it.