The Hollow Beneath the Hill

The villagers said the creature’s breath stank of rot, that its claws could gut a man before he finished a prayer, and that it had never once seen the sun without longing to extinguish it. They said many things, as villagers do, but none of them had walked far enough into the pine-choked hollow to see the beast with their own eyes.

Only children wandered close. They were braver—or stupider—than their parents, and they loved to test their courage. They’d leave pebbles at the mouth of the hollow, or dead birds, or the waxy stubs of candles stolen from the church. Sometimes they swore they heard the beast breathing in the dark.

But they always ran home before twilight, before the silence in the trees thickened and the hollow began to hum with a sound that no one could rightly name.

The Hollow

The monster—though he had never called himself that—knew the hollow better than any human ever could. It was not just his dwelling; it was his marrow. The trees bowed toward it, and beneath their roots the soil coiled around long-forgotten stones. Rainwater pooled into the hollow’s floor, seeping into black veins of earth that fed him in a way he could not explain.

His body was no more than a shadow of what it had once been. He remembered a time when he had stood upright, when his hands had been clean and precise, when he could build and shape and make beauty from what the world offered. Now his back hunched, his arms dragged, his face was a crag of bone and teeth. The reflection he glimpsed in pools made him flinch—though not from vanity. It was recognition.

He had become the nightmare that his own people once whispered about.

The only sound he truly loved was birdsong. Birds did not fear him in the same way as men. They perched on his shoulder when he stilled himself, tugging worms from the moss at his feet. Their wings made a sound like paper turning. Sometimes he wondered if he had been punished solely so he might never take flight.

The Girl with the Red Ribbon

The first time he saw her, she was weeping. A young woman, eighteen, sitting at the edge of the hollow with her skirts muddied and her red ribbon hanging loose from her braid. She was not afraid, though her eyes were wet. She stared straight into the dark where he waited.

“You can come out,” she said, her voice wobbling.

He did not.

“I know you’re there,” she pressed. “I saw your shadow.”

He shifted, annoyed at himself for moving too close. But something in her steadiness disarmed him. Slowly, carefully, he let his bulk emerge from the hollow.

Her eyes widened, yes, but she did not scream.

“You’re uglier than I thought,” she said, almost matter-of-factly.

He rumbled a noise that was neither laugh nor growl.

“That’s all right,” she added, wiping her nose with her sleeve. “My uncle says I’m too plain to marry.”

The monster tilted his head. He wanted to ask why she had come. He wanted to tell her to go back, that the hollow was not kind to humans. But his tongue, heavy with years of disuse, felt more like stone than flesh.

So instead, he crouched down, lowering himself so that the trees hid most of his mass, and simply watched.

The girl sniffed and tied her ribbon back into her hair. She began to hum—an off-key melody, something childish but oddly soothing. Birds came to listen.

When she left, he felt the hollow heavier for her absence.

Whispers in the Village

The villagers noticed her wandering.

“Don’t go near the hollow,” her mother scolded.

But the girl kept slipping away. She brought crusts of bread, a tin cup of milk, once even a kitten she thought was lost. She left them at the edge, and sometimes she caught the monster’s eyes gleaming back at her.

The villagers noticed the gifts disappearing. They thought wolves were prowling.

One night, drunk men bragged in the tavern that they would hunt the beast that haunted their forest. “Bring its head to the square,” they said. “Hang it beside the church bell, let it clang when the wind blows.”

The girl overheard. Her stomach twisted.

That evening, she returned to the hollow with no gifts, only her trembling hands.

“They want to kill you,” she whispered into the dark.

The monster blinked. He should have been angry—humans had always wanted to kill him—but instead he found himself tilting his head at her worry. No one had fretted for him in centuries.

He wanted to ask: Why do you care?

But his tongue still failed him. He could only lower his head until it nearly touched the forest floor, an unspoken gesture of acknowledgment.

The Old Truth

The girl’s visits grew bolder. She began to ask questions.

“Were you always like this?”

The monster grunted.

“Do you eat people?”

He snorted, the sound like wind rushing through a cavern.

“Do you have a name?”

Silence.

She sighed. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll just call you Hollow.”

The name fit. He accepted it.

What she did not know—and what he could not explain—was that he had once been a man of the village himself. Long ago, before the hollow swallowed him. He had been a stonemason, carving arches and doorways, bridges that bent like ribs across the river. But the villagers had grown suspicious when his wife died in childbirth, and his neighbors whispered that he had bargained with darker things to keep her alive.

Grief had driven him into the hollow. The hollow had listened. And in return, it had taken him for its own.

Now the village told the story differently. He was a curse, a beast, a shadow that had always lived under the hill. They had erased the man he was.

Only the girl seemed capable of seeing more.

Fire

It was not wolves that killed the sheep that spring—it was hunger. Men had not trapped well, crops had not taken, and bellies had grown lean. But when hunger gnawed, it was easier to blame a monster.

The men gathered torches and dogs. The girl tried to warn Hollow, racing into the forest with her lungs burning.

“They’re coming,” she gasped, stumbling into the hollow. “You have to hide.”

He placed a clawed hand on the earth. The ground shivered, split, and swallowed him whole. Roots wrapped around his shoulders like arms, pulling him deep.

When the men arrived, they found only the girl.

“Child!” her father roared. “Have you lost your mind?”

She shook her head, biting her lip.

The men burned the edge of the hollow anyway. Flames licked up the pines, smoke smothering the air. Birds scattered. The girl choked and cried, but no one listened.

The hollow ached. Beneath the soil, Hollow’s body writhed, half in pain, half in fury. The roots tightened around him as though to keep him from rising.

The Bargain

For three days the fire smoldered. The villagers cheered, believing they had purged their monster.

But the girl crept back. She dug at the scorched earth with her bare hands, calling his name—Hollow, Hollow, Hollow—until her nails split.

At last, the ground split and he rose again, charred, staggering, but alive.

The girl sobbed in relief. She clung to his claw, and he let her.

For the first time in centuries, he tried to speak. His throat tore, his tongue felt broken, but the word came all the same:

“Stay.”

The girl froze. Then she nodded, her face wet.

She stayed. She began to live half in the village, half at the hollow. The villagers muttered, but they could not keep her from wandering. Her presence softened Hollow’s edges. His growls became hums, his silence became companionship.

Yet deep inside, he knew the hollow would not let him keep her forever. The roots whispered: You belong to us. She does not.

He ignored them.

The Trial

It was inevitable.

One morning, the villagers dragged her to the square. “She consorts with the beast,” they cried. “She brings him offerings. She is his witch.”

The girl shouted, fought, clawed. But ropes bit her wrists, and the crowd jeered.

That night, they meant to cast her into the fire pit where they burned their refuse, a sacrifice to cleanse the monster’s taint.

The hollow trembled with rage. Hollow rose higher than he ever had before, his form blotting out the stars. He thundered down into the village, scattering huts like twigs, shattering the church bell.

The villagers screamed.

But Hollow did not kill them. He did not touch them at all. He tore the ropes from the girl’s wrists and carried her back to the hollow, setting her down gently on the moss.

The villagers watched in silence, stunned. Some swore his eyes were not red with hunger but blue with sorrow.

What Remains

After that night, the villagers stopped venturing near the hollow. Fear had triumphed, but it was a fearful respect. They rebuilt their church without a bell. They spoke of the monster only in whispers, telling their children never to stray too close.

The girl grew older. She still visited, still tied her red ribbon in her hair, though streaks of silver touched it now. She spoke to Hollow of her life, of the seasons, of the ache in her knees as she aged.

Hollow listened. He never asked why she kept coming.

When she finally did not appear one spring, he waited. Days, then weeks. He left gifts at the edge of the hollow—stones carved into small birds, feathers gathered, flowers pressed into the soil. But she never returned.

The villagers whispered that the strange ribbon-haired woman had died quietly in her sleep.

Hollow returned to his hollow, deeper than ever before, curling into the earth like a root. His body had long ago ceased to hunger for flesh. All he wanted was the hum of her voice, the presence that had once made him less monstrous.

Now, when children leave pebbles or dead birds at the hollow’s edge, he ignores them. He waits instead for the faintest echo of a girl humming off-key, somewhere between the trees and the dark.

And sometimes—just sometimes—he hears it.