The Mound That Wakes at Dusk
In the valley where the river forgets its course, a burial mound sits at the edge of the pines. They call it the sleeping hill, though rumor says it keeps counsel with the night, listening for footsteps that should not come and murmuring in a language the living cannot translate. When dusk leans into the grass, the mound does not sleep so much as gather its memories, as if the earth itself were tightening a sleeve around forgotten names.
Mira tends the village archive, a quiet collector of rumors and brittle maps. She has learned to read the fields by what they refuse to grow: the wheat that tilts toward the hill, the frogs that fall silent, the wind that carries the scent of rain a heartbeat before it comes. At dusk she crosses the boundary of the old pines with a lantern that trembles in her grip, and the hill answers with a breath that tastes of iron and soil.
- The rim grass sways in waves as if a hidden current moves the soil.
- A cold wind follows a whisper that seems to rise from beneath the earth.
- The air thickens with the scent of earth and old copper coins.
- A lullaby hums from below, cadence older than the village itself.
Drawn to the circle of stones, Mira brushes dust from a weathered marking and slides a gloved finger into a seam in the earth. The ground sighs, the seam yawns, and a damp stair reveals itself. The lamp gutters, then steadies as a pale light spills up from the opening. Shapes—perhaps memories, perhaps the dead—loom in the soil, not in faces but in the suggestion of faces, as if the mound is reciting a story written long before the village learned to spell it.
Wake not for a spectacle, but for a memory we could not bear to forget. Remember us, so we remember you.
A voice, thick with soil and sorrow, slips from the mouth of the mound: “Wake at dusk, remember at dawn.” Mira feels a quiet oath take root inside her, heavier than stone. She does not flee, nor does she pry the earth open with wanton curiosity. Instead she keeps watch, a reluctant steward of a pact old as the hill itself. When night finally yields to pale light, the churn of the earth subsides, the ring of stones seals again, and the hill rests—cool, patient, and patient still—awaiting the next dusk when it will wake to remind the living why some memories must remain buried.