A Field of Repeating Clocks

The meadow didn't look unusual from the road. But the clocks in town always lost three minutes a year, and the discrepancy came from here.

She entered at noon. By the time she crossed twenty meters, it was 1988. A radio played six gardens away. She had been eight years old that summer and she had been happy.

She ran from one time zone to the next, faster and faster, trying to disorient the field. The meadow absorbed her attempts with great patience.

She stopped in a patch of 1961. An old man was sitting there eating his lunch. He passed her half a sandwich without surprise. 'It only moves,' he said, 'if you do.'