The morning sun spilled golden light over the hills as mist clung stubbornly to the fields below. In the small wooden cottage nestled near the edge of the forest, twelve year old Eli was already awake. He had been awake for hours, lying on the straw mattress he shared with his mother, listening to the quiet hush of the countryside.
Life in the village of Harthollow was hard, especially after Eli's father had died two winters ago from a fever they couldn't afford to treat. Since then, it had been just Eli and his mother, Marta. She was a woman of few words and many calluses, her hands cracked and rough from long days in the earth. She worked other people's fields for a few coins, while Eli tended their small garden, chased off wild rabbits, and sometimes gathered mushrooms in the woods to sell at the market.
The cottage was barely more than four walls and a leaking roof, but Marta kept it clean. A single iron stove warmed the main room, and a faded cloth hung over the window to keep out the worst of the cold. In the mornings, their meals were simple: stale bread softened in goat's milk, or porridge when there was grain.
But that morning was different. There was no milk.
"Old Nella didn't give any," Eli said, pulling his coat over his thin shirt. "She's dry again."
Marta didn't look up from the pot she was scrubbing. "She's getting old. Like the rest of us."
"I can go to the woods. Maybe find mushrooms, or eggs from the quail nest."
She hesitated. The woods could be dangerous, especially for a boy alone. But they needed the food and the coins even more.
"Stay close to the river," she said, not looking at him. "And don't go past the pines."
Eli nodded. "I'll be back before dark."
He stepped outside, the air crisp and damp. The forest began just beyond the garden, where pine trees reached like silent sentinels into the sky. Eli had grown up in those woods he knew the deer paths, the mushroom circles, and where the river ran slow enough to catch fish with his hands. But past the pines, the woods changed. Folks said the land there had never been tamed, that something old lived beneath the soil.
Eli wasn't sure what he believed. But he was hungry.
He wandered for hours, collecting what he could, a handful of mushrooms, some wild herbs, a few cracked bird eggs. His pockets were barely half full, and the sun was starting to fall behind the hills. He was about to turn back when he saw it.
A field, hidden beyond the thickest part of the pines.
He had never seen it before. It was wide, flat, and bursting with life tall stalks of wheat that glowed gold in the dying light, rows of fat cabbages, ripe berries glistening on vines. The ground itself seemed to hum, as if it was alive. Eli stared, then stepped cautiously through the trees.
The field was silent. No birds, no wind, not even the buzzing of insects.
He bent to touch a cabbage, its leaves dewy and cool. It looked perfect more perfect than anything grown in Harthollow. He hesitated, then pulled it free from the soil. It came loose easily, like the earth was offering it up.
He took just the one, then ran back through the woods, heart pounding.
That night, they ate well. Marta didn't ask where the cabbage had come from, but she eyed it suspiciously.
"Not from the village," she said, chewing slowly.
"No," Eli admitted. "I found a field. Past the pines."
She went still. "You went past the pines?"
"I was careful."
She didn't speak for a while. Then, quietly, she said, "Don't go back there."
"But the food"
No."
He wanted to argue, but the tone in her voice stopped him. Still, when she had gone to bed, Eli lay awake, thinking about the field. The perfect food. The quiet air. The way the earth had offered it freely, like it wanted to be found.
The next day, Marta left early for the village to work a field. Eli promised to stay in the garden, but as soon as she was gone, he slipped into the woods.
The field was where he remembered, untouched, unreal. He picked more just a little: some wheat, a few carrots, berries in a satchel. Again, the land gave them easily. Again, he felt that hum.
Over the next few weeks, Eli returned again and again. Each time, he brought home more food. He started selling some at the market. Neighbors noticed how well-fed he and Marta looked. Whispers started. But no one dared ask too many questions.
Marta, however, knew.
"You've been going back," she said one evening, watching him clean the vegetables.
"I only take a little."
"I told you not to."
"We're eating," he shot back. "You haven't been hungry in weeks."
She looked at him then, really looked. "You think you've found a gift," she said. "But the world doesn't give without asking for something in return."
Eli didn't understand. He just knew they were surviving.
Then the dreams started.
Strange dreams, thick with mud and whispering voice.
The dreams began quietly. At first, Eli dismissed them as nothing more than a tired boy's fancies. But each night they grew clearer.
He dreamed of roots coiling beneath the earth like serpents, of wheat stalks bending though there was no wind, of shadows stretching long and thin across the glowing field. And always, there was a voice a low, murmuring tone that he could never quite catch, yet it left him waking with his skin clammy and his heart racing.
Marta noticed. She always noticed.
"You've been restless," she said one morning, her eyes shadowed with worry. "What do you see in your sleep?"
Eli hesitated. If he told her, she would forbid him from ever leaving the cottage. So he shook his head. "Nothing."
But she didn't believe him.
One afternoon, while Eli carried firewood to the stove, Marta took his hand. Her grip was firm, her voice low. "Listen to me, Eli. There are places in this world older than we can understand. Your father he once told me he heard stories of that field. A place where the earth remembers. A place that tempts the hungry." She swallowed hard, and Eli saw fear in her eyes real fear, not the kind she showed when coins ran short or when the roof leaked.
"It gives," she whispered, "but it always takes."
Eli frowned. "Takes what?"
She didn't answer.
The dreams worsened. Now the voice was clearer. It spoke his name. Eli Eli take more.
And during the day, he found it harder to resist. The field was abundant beyond reason. Cabbages as large as barrels, apples red as coals, beans that spilled from their pods in torrents. He only had to reach, and the soil parted like soft bread.
He began to notice something else, too: when he stepped into the field, he felt stronger, sharper. His tired legs no longer ached. The scratches on his arms healed faster. Hunger dulled the moment he crossed beneath the shadow of the pines.
It was as though the land itself was feeding him, not just the food.
One evening, Marta returned late from work and found Eli sitting awake, staring at the cabbage leaves on the table.
"You went again."
He nodded.
"Eli," she said, voice breaking, "you don't understand what you're touching."
"I do!" he snapped, surprising even himself. "It's food! It's life! Why should we starve when it's right there?"
She sank into a chair, her hands trembling. "Because I've seen it before. When I was a girl, a family lived near here the Hadricks. They were poor, like us. Then one season, they were suddenly rich with grain. Strong as oxen, never hungry. People whispered, but no one dared ask. Then one winter, they were gone. Vanished. Their house empty, their fields blackened like ash. Only the trees remembered."
Eli shivered but tried to hide it.
"That field isn't ours," Marta said. "It never was."
The next night, Eli dreamed of his father. He stood at the edge of the field, pale and hollow-eyed, his lips moving though no sound came. Roots clung to his ankles, dragging him down into the soil.
Eli woke choking back a cry.
By morning, Marta had made up her mind. "We leave Harthollow," she said. "Pack what you can. We'll go to my sister in Greenton."
But Eli shook his head. He thought of the villagers, the gnawing hunger that would return, the empty nights. And beyond that, he thought of the field, waiting for him, whispering his name.
When Marta went outside to fetch water, Eli slipped into the woods one last time.
The pines closed around him, their silence heavy. When he stepped into the clearing, the field shimmered in the sunlight, golden and endless. The hum beneath the earth pulsed stronger than ever.
He walked among the wheat, touching the heads of grain. "What do you want?" he whispered.
The soil shifted. The hum grew louder, until it was a voice all around him, filling his bones. Stay. Grow. Feed. Belong.
The roots at his feet stirred. Not binding, not threatening welcoming.
Eli's breath caught. For the first time, he understood. The field did not simply give food. It wanted something in return. A caretaker. A child of its own.
He thought of Marta, of her tired eyes and cracked hands. He thought of her warnings, her stories. And then he thought of never being hungry again.
When Marta returned to the cottage and found it empty, she ran to the woods, her voice breaking the silence as she screamed his name. She reached the pines but did not cross. The trees seemed thicker, darker than ever before.
The villagers said she wandered for years, always looking toward the forest, never daring to go beyond.
And in the field beyond the pines, the wheat grew taller, the cabbages fatter, the soil The richer. If you listened closely, you could hear a hum in the earth. And sometimes, if the wind was right, a boy's laughter carried faintly through the stalks.
Eli had become part of the harvest.