Happy New Year!

This is from a story I started at the beginning of last year but never got around to finishing:

The giant oak that stood in the middle of Spring Hollow's one and only city park began to turn, it's ruddy yellow leaves signaling to observant citizens the official start of autumn. For reasons that no one had ever even thought to try and explain, the giant oak was always the last tree to turn, and it had an uncanny way of starting to change year after year exactly on the day of the autumnal equinox.

The town's newer and younger residents had yet to take note of this phenomenon, while the older citizens simply accepted it, the way that they accepted that funny ache in the joints that always heralded rain. Given a chance, the more superstitious among them might tell anyone with the patience to listen the tales that were passed to them by their elders, of a time before the town stood, when the mountain folk would come down each year, from the Ozarks in the West and Appalachia in the East, to meet at the spring from which the town got its name and trade their wares. They traded with local villagers and with each other, for the items necessary to make it through the harsh mountain winters. It was said that an old woman, whom some might call a witch, came down from Knob Hill in the west and planted the tree beside the spring, and charged it with the task of signaling to travelers when the time of the trade meetings grew near.

Whether or not this tale is true, the fact remains that year after year, for as long as anyone can remember, a week to the day after the giant oak begins to change, artists and craftsmen from the mountains arrive in town and set up their wares in thee park around the great tree, intent on making small fortunes by overcharging tourists who've grown bored with the mass appeal of Pottery Barn and are ready to shell out ridiculous amounts for an Authentic Handmade Original.

In the 1950s, a stage was erected on the north end of the park for local bluegrass bands, and some of the townspeople began setting up booths to sell chili and baked goods. The following year, the mayor officially declared the gathering The Annual Spring Hollow Bluegrass Festival. Word began to spread, and the festival continued to grow. These days, for one week a year, the Spring Hollow Chamber of Commerce can count on seeing the kind of tourist traffic that Branson sees every day of the year.

The place of honor at the foot of the tree had, for the last fifty years or so, belonged to Sadie Mackenzie, doll-maker extraordinaire, and alleged great granddaughter of the one who planted the tree. She had inherited the spot front her grandmother, all the better to enchant pretty young girls with her incomparable creations. It was said that Sadie's dolls held places of honor in the nurseries and playrooms of royal palaces throughout the world. They were things of exquisite beauty, alarmingly life-like both to the eye and to the touch. How she made them was a closely guarded secret, passed down through the women in her family for generations.

It should come as no surprise, then, that on opening day of the festival, it was in front of Sadie's booth that Clarissa Henson, age six, decided to throw the first of the many tantrums that would be thrown in front of Sadie's booth by eager little girls over the coming week.