Rites Beneath the Harvest Moon
On the edge of the village, where the barley sways like a golden sea, the harvest moon rises with an ancient hunger. The night air carries the scent of resin and damp earth, and with every pale beam, the fields seem to listen.
The narrator returns to their ancestral farm, summoned by whispering kin and a debt no one speaks aloud. They step into the circle drawn in chalk and ash, heavy with memory, where the old rites were once carried out to thank the land... but something else always came back with the dawn.
Under the moon, we feed the land what it believes it owes, and the land? it feeds us back with truth we do not wish to hear.
The Ceremony in the Fields
As elders chant in a language the wind seems to know, the time to begin arrives. A list of steps, each a heartbeat, each a sign:
- Light the brazier with birch and resin until the flame writes runes in smoke.
- Place the first sheaf of corn in the center, the grain arranged in a spiral that mirrors the old seasons.
- Offer a memory, spoken aloud, a secret kept since childhood, so the remembrance becomes a thread to pull the night toward dawn.
- Count the breaths of the earth, one for every star visible, until the counting feels like a second heartbeat in the soil.
- Drink the share of the harvest from a cup etched with the old sigil, tasting copper and rain and something else—an answer slipping into the throat.
- Close the circle with a cantor’s closing verse, and when the last vowel fades, listen for a presence moving just beyond human sight.
When the chant ends, the field holds its breath. In the glow, silhouettes emerge—forgotten ancestors or something else entirely, a silence that answers questions with a cost. The narrator feels the moon’s cold mercy and the weight of promises never meant to be kept, yet kept anyway, because the harvest will be gathered, moon after moon, ritual after ritual.
“Do not disturb what the harvest keeps, for it keeps you as well.”
The night wanes, and the ritual dissolves back into the earth. The dawn brings a quiet that feels like forgiveness, but the memory remains—like husk-cracked hands that learned to count again. The harvest will continue, the rites will endure, and some truths will stay buried until next year’s ascent of the harvest moon.