The Whispering Wheat Fields

In the village of Stillmarsh, everyone knew the rule: you did not go into the wheat after dark.

The fields ran for miles around the village, gold in the day, silver under the moon, rolling like a slow sea whenever the wind moved through them. By daylight they were just wheat — beautiful, ordinary, the thing the whole village lived on. But at dusk, when the wind dropped and the light went gray, the wheat began to whisper. And the whispers, the old people said, were names.

Yara had heard the stories all her life, and like most fifteen-year-olds, she had decided they were nonsense — tales to keep little children out of the fields, where they might get lost. Her younger brother, Tomas, who was eleven and believed everything, was not so sure.