Grave Yard

Half a kilometre from the last house, a square of dead men holds its shape against the sky. Thirty-seven metres north to south, thirty-six east to west, no more and no less, as if a carpenter had measured the distance between birth and forgetting and cut it free. The church is gone except for a shadow in the grass, but its room remains, a hollow rectangle the wind still passes through. People have dropped into that ground for a thousand years, piling soil until the whole enclosure stands raised above the living world. The cross-pillar leans slightly south, wearing its markings smooth, and the granite wall catches rain without mortar to hold it. Haroldstown has forgotten most of what it was, yet this much it kept: a clear edge, a level floor, and enough darkness for the dead to stand upright.