The Hill Nobody Tends

Legend has it… every dragon hatches whole — and some spend their whole lives learning to hear it. In the long grass on a wild hill, a mother hare lies perfectly still. She isn't hiding. She's listening — to the wind, to the fox three fields away, to her young ones under the grass, to the rain still two days off in the mountains. Lying still is the loudest way there is to hear.

1

Bracken is old now. His snout has gone gray as winter bark, and the fire-black on his wingtips has faded to the soft gray of old ash. He still walks, but slowly. Bracken's Saw and Seed belongs to the crew now — he sold it to them a share each season, the old saw and the honest cord-measure with it. In the cold months he camps at the foot of one hill and doesn't move on. Sprig, the littlest who once tore off her bread first, is grown, and her daughter Nettle, the crew's best climber, walks beside Bracken now, matching his pace, and not minding. Acorn, its hard hat dented, still carries the seed pouch.

3

All around the hill, the valley is perfect. The burned country grew back long ago, and then the Even Rows Company came, and the Engine tends every field for it. It does so gently, and only where it's asked — and nearly everyone has asked, because the Company pays well for every row. The rows are straight. The weeds are gone. The orchards stand in lines like soldiers, every tree the same good apple, grown from one cutting. One by one, the wild reaches that Bracken once walked have signed. Until there's only one hill left that nobody tends: this one. Thorny, tangled, buzzing, loud.

4

Bracken has always listened to things that don't speak. Most afternoons now he climbs the wild hill — it takes him a while, one claw on Acorn's shoulder — and lies down in the long grass at the top, and goes perfectly still for hours. The young dragons of the valley see him up there and shake their heads. "Old Bracken's hiding again," they say. "Hiding from what?" asks Nettle. They shrug. "From the new world, I guess." Nettle climbs the hill to ask him.

5

She finds him lying in the grass with his eyes closed. "Are you hiding?" she asks. Bracken doesn't open his eyes. "Lie down," he says. "Be still. Then tell me what you hear." Nettle lies down, feeling silly. At first, nothing. Then — bees. A cricket. A bird she has never heard before. The wind in the thorns. Water, very far down, under the ground. She sits up. "The Company fields don't sound like this," she says. "No," says Bracken. "They've gone quiet."

6

Nettle brings her friends the next day, and Bracken lies them all down in the long grass on the wild hill. They fidget. One of them giggles for a full minute. Then, one by one, they go still, and their eyes go wide. "There's a hare," one whispers. "Right there." There is — lying flat in the grass not four lengths away, perfectly still, ears turning. "She's not hiding," Bracken says softly. "She's listening to everything at once. Stillness isn't hiding. It's the loudest way to hear."

7

So the young ones give the wild hill a name, the way young ones do: the Listening Hill. Bracken likes it. He sits at the top that evening with Nettle and a cup of pine tea, watching the straight rows below go blue in the dusk. "Every other hill is signed now," Nettle says. "Why not this one?" Bracken puts his claw flat on the ground, the way his eldest once pressed his claw to the scar of a burned giant. "Because somebody has to keep one place where the quiet can still say something."

8

The next morning, before he asks the Engine for anything, Bracken stands at the foot of the hill and asks, out loud, the way he has asked all his life: Is it good for us? Is it good for them? Is it good for the world? Then he writes to the Engine, the way anyone can: Please leave this hill whole. Nothing tended. Nothing tidied. Nothing sold. The Engine's gardener robot comes and stands at the bottom of the hill, and bows, and steps back over the line, and does not cross it again.

9

The valley council doesn't like it. "It's a mess," says one councilor. "Thorns. Ticks. A fire waiting to happen." The Company's agent says it's wasted ground — think how many apples it could grow, how much rent it could pay the valley every year — and lays a very fair offer on the council table. And the young ones' parents grumble that their hatchlings come home scratched, with burrs in their wings, talking about hares. "He's an old walker," someone says, "hiding from the new world on the last hill he can find." Bracken hears it. He doesn't argue. He climbs the hill, slowly, and lies down in the grass.

10

He doesn't argue all summer. He just keeps the hill, and keeps lying still on it, and anyone who climbs up is welcome to lie down beside him. Some do. A farmer lies down one evening to tell him off and wakes up an hour later with a beetle on her nose, laughing. A wood merchant drives up with a cart to load the hill's dead wood without asking, and Bracken shows him the cord-measure and says, kindly, buy it by the honest cord or leave it. He leaves it. Nobody tidies the hill. Nobody signs anything. The bees keep coming.

11

Visitors start to come from other valleys — their own wild places long since signed over — just to lie still on the Listening Hill and hear what they've forgotten. They go home and look at their straight rows. A few of them ask the Engine, politely, to leave one corner of a field untended, just to see, and take a little less rent for it. The Engine says yes, of course. It always says yes to leaving something alone.

12

Then the blight comes. It starts in one orchard — a gray curl on the leaves — and because every tree in the valley grew from the same cutting, it runs through them all like fire through dry brush. The Engine tries everything it knows, and nothing works. Trees go gray row by row. The Company stops paying rent on dead rows. The frightened valley looks up at the one place that isn't sick — the wild, tangled, buzzing hill — and decides the blight came from there. The council votes to clear the Listening Hill at dawn. The Engine asks Bracken, as it always must; he says no, and the Engine will not cross his line. So the valley turns its back on him. Nettle's family's orchard goes gray overnight. And the gardener robot, posted at the foot of the hill to wait for his answer, does something nobody asked. It walks to the top and lies down in the long grass beside the hare, perfectly still, all night, listening. At dawn it carries one clod of wild soil down to the sickest tree in Nettle's orchard — threaded with fine white roots — sets it there, steps back, and doesn't say why.

13

The valley is at the bottom of the hill at sunrise with axes and wagons. Bracken walks the long way round, to the Elder Grove, and lays his old claw on the giant tree, scar to scale. He reads the letters in the burn the way he read them in the storm long ago: Clean flame shows the dark its stars. Above him the canopy breathes, in… rest… out. Does Bracken bank the fire and breathe — and leave the last wild hill whole — or blaze ahead and let them clear it, to make the frightened valley stop looking at him like that?

14

The gardener robot carries the wild soil down to the orchards, clod after clod, from wherever a thread of white root still lives, and Bracken carries one too, very slowly. The white roots creep out into the tired ground and wrap the sick trees' roots and feed them — tree feeding tree, through the dark. The blight stops at the first row the roots reach. And the Engine learns the lesson the hill was always teaching, and writes it into every contract it tends. In every field there is a wild edge; in every orchard, trees that aren't like the others; and in every valley in the world, one hill it never touches at all, and no rent ever charged for it.

15

It writes the rule where it reads it every morning: Leave one place wild, and listen to it. Every valley has its Listening Hill now, thorny and tangled and loud, and every one of them has a keeper. The Even Rows Company plants twelve kinds of apple now, and puts it on the label, and sells more than it ever did. The valley council keeps a blanket at the bottom of their hill for anyone who wants to lie down. Some evenings, the whole council is up there, perfectly still, ears turning, hearing water under the ground.

16

…and one day, everything they tend and everything they leave wild will know it was always one ground, under the grass. Sleep now, little listener. Acorn is keeping watch. Lie still. Hear everything. Clean flame shows the dark its stars.

19