The Story:

Last Day of Summer

You are a boy, Tolmy Cubbins, and you are going into town with a
basket of cranberries to sell to a greengrocer at the market.  It's
the last day of summer, i.e. the beginning of harvest.

You find a rusty knife... somewhere.  You use it... somewhere.

When yoy get to the market, you find the greengrocer missing, so you
need to search the town to find him.

Elsewhere in town, there's a rickety wooden chapel, next to a building
site with building stones lying around.  (It's going to be a new stone
chapel to replace the old wooden chapel, but that should not be
obvious.)

The greengrocer is in the chapel, sitting at a pew near the altar.
He's mourning his oldest friend, the preacher, who recently died, and
the funeral was at dawn this morning.  If you sit next to him, he
talks about the preacher, who brought him herbs and vegetables from
his garden, and also historical tidbits and legends.  He says the
altar reminds him of a legend he heard from the preacher, which he
tells you (of the man who stole time).  But he won't go back to
market, or take your cranberries, because he's in a funk.

Behind the wooden chapel is an overgrown garden, with a sundial, a
freshly placed gravestone, and a small garden house.  Also a man
with a hat is sitting on a bench near the gravestone.  The man says
he's paying his respect to the preacher, with maybe a hint that he
knew him, and perhaps was here to visit him but arrived too late.  The
man wants your knife, and gives you his hat in return, then leaves.

A bird attacks your hair if you try to go into the garden house.
Wearing the hat makes the bird ignore you.

In the garden house is a desk with a locked drawer.  The sundial
gnomon is a key that unlocks the drawer.  In the drawer is a book.  It
seems to be a long novel about a man who traveled through time and had
many adventures through history.  The preacher wrote the book in
secret, but didn't finish it.

If you give the book to the greengrocer, he is surprised and glad, and
he pays you generously for your cranberries.  You bring the treasure
home to your family, and live happily ever after...


Theme/mood:

The changing seasons is symbolic of the preacher's death, which was
inevitable, yet he was still unprepared, and didn't have time to
finish his work.  More generally, it's about time passing, and life
being too short.


Questions:

Where do you find the knife?

Where do you use the knife?

Why does the bird attack your hair?

Why was the book important to the preacher?  Why did he write it in
secret?

How did the preacher die?  Unexpectedly, but was it an accident, or a
sudden illness (or an illness that suddenly got worse), or was it foul
play?

Did you know the preacher?  Did you know he was dead?

Why can't you go anywhere else in town?

Why can't you go home without selling the cranberries?

Who is taking the preacher's place?  Who's funding the building of the
new stone chapel?

What if you don't have the knife when you meet the man?

Do the man and the greengrocer know each other?


Ideas:


First, you come to a river, but the bridge was washed out by a recent
storm.  Down the river a ways you find a boat tied to a tree, but the
rope is all gummed up with mud and you can't untie the knot.  If you
look into the river (or try to drink from it), you find a rusty knife,
but it's good enough to cut the rope, letting you ride the boat across
the river.

Hm, not that interesting a puzzle...  Why would you think of looking
in the water?  (Should be clued, e.g. you start getting thirsty.)
Maybe you just find the knife somewhere on the way to town and the
cutting happens somewhere else?  Maybe the sundial is covered by
weeds, and you have to cut them away to see it?  Then the man sees you
use the knife, and it reminds him of a knife he lost.
