The daffodils had come in early this year. Almost too early for comfort. Nars crunched through the frost-bitten grass, the morning mist curling around his boots like dead men’s breath. His shovel, crusted with dirt, rested on one shoulder. His hands, cracked and calloused, stung from the cold.
The patch near the northern fence of Greywick Cemetery had once been unremarkable. Now, it bloomed. Yellow daffodils, wide-mouthed and oblivious, clustered over freshly packed soil. Nars had worked that spot in silence three nights prior, hands sticky with sweat. He had planted them. Thought it clever, poetic even.
Narcissus flowers. Daffodils rising from the disturbed patch of earth he couldn’t bear to look at for long. Nothing grew like guilt. Nothing bloomed quite like lies.
He passed the gravestones with mechanical grace, pushing his wheelbarrow, a mirror shard hidden deep in his coat pocket. It had broken the day she gave up, splintered into pieces when she fell and he didn’t catch her. Now he carried a sliver always, superstition or sentence, he wasn’t sure. It burned cold in his palm when he touched it.
She’d wanted to be heard. That was all.
And now, she was in the soil beneath the daffodils, roots tangled in her hair.
A child’s voice, high and curious, sliced through the morning fog.
He froze mid-step, eyes narrowing. Two girls stood by the daffodils, all knobby knees and oversized coats. One crouched, inspecting the blooms. The other stared at the cracked stone behind it, where a smear of moss traced a half-forgotten name. They couldn’t have been older than fifteen. Nars recognized them. They had been coming every day this week taking tombstone rubbings. Maybe for a project for school. Maybe they were just drawn to the wrong part of the graveyard.
“Look, they’re blooming,” one of the girls said. Lars thinks her name was Esa.
“That one’s glowing,” the taller girl said, pointing. Her hair was matted, as if she hadn’t brushed it for days. “See how it’s different from the others?”
“Don’t be dumb, Liala,” the shorter one replied. “It’s just the sun’s reflection.”
Nars cleared his throat and stepped out from the trees. “You girls shouldn’t be here.”
They both turned. Neither flinched. The taller girl’s eyes snagged on his boots which were mud-crusted, and worn down at the heels. Her eyes crawled upward like a spider tracing the contour of a web. Her stare caught on the sweat-stuck collar of his shirt, the sharp line of his jaw, the hollows beneath his eyes.
“You’re very beautiful,” she said finally.
Esa tilted her head. “Like one of the marble angels above some of the gravestones.”
Liala took a step forward. “But cracked.”
Nars’ mouth opened. Nothing came out.
The girls stood in silence, looking at him like he was the statue. A reflection caught in water. Unmoving. Perfect.
“Do you come here to see yourself?” Liala asked. “Or to see what you buried?”
Esa’s voice was softer. “She said you looked just like a god when you stood over her.”
Nars stepped back.
“Are you family of the deceased?” he asked, motioning toward the unmarked gravestone behind the daffodils. It was old, cracked at the top, the name long since worn away. No one ever visited it. That’s why he’d chosen it.
“No,” Liala said, tilting her head. “But she talks to us.”
Nars’ stomach turned over. “Who does?”
“She’s beautiful, too.” said the taller girl. “She talks when we listen.”
Nars flinched. “Who?”
The quiet one didn’t blink. “The girl under the flowers. But she can’t speak on her own. Just echoes.” The shorter girl blinked slowly. “The girl under the flowers who only repeats what she’s told.”
Nars’ hand gripped the shovel harder.
His heart stumbled. “That’s nonsense.”
“She says you visit her,” said the other. “But only to reflect.”
Nars took a step back. His heel struck the edge of the shovel. “Go home.”
“She thinks you love mirrors,” the silent one murmured. “She wonders if you’ll ever look at her and not yourself.”
“Come on,” he said, voice rough. “Off with you both. This place isn’t safe.”
They gathered their materials and left eventually, skipping down the gravel path toward the iron gate. He watched them the whole way, one of them tripping on a gnarled root, the other catching. They both blushed in embarrassment. Nars watched them until the fog swallowed their figures and he couldn’t be sure if they’d ever really been there.
That night, the dream returned.
He stood at the lip of a pond, its surface too still, too deep. He leaned closer, expecting his reflection. But it was her. Her face where his should be, lips parting. Soundless. She moved her mouth again.
He woke clutching the mirror shard, blood blooming in his palm.
By morning, the daffodils had multiplied.
They curled like golden horns along the northern fence, rising in unnatural symmetry. Beneath them, the earth sagged. The cracked gravestone stood like a forgotten punctuation mark.
The girls were there again.
“She liked stories,” said the tall one. “Especially the one where Echo loved a man who couldn’t love anyone but himself.”
“Echo faded until nothing was left of her but voice,” said the other.
That night, the dream grew teeth.
The pool swallowed him whole. Her arms wrapped around his neck, gentle, dragging. Beneath the surface, daffodils opened like mouths. His screams bounced back to him, twisted and hollow.
He woke with water in his lungs and the smell of flowers in his throat. There was only one thing to be done.
Days passed.
The daffodils overran the cemetery. They grew in patterns. Spirals, concentric circles. Like eyes opening. Like mouths waiting. The mirror shard he carried warped and his reflection no longer mimicked his movements. It smiled when he did not. He placed it on the fresh soil of her grave. He stared at it. Marveling at the reflection. He knelt and pressed his hands to the earth. He couldn’t eat. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.
The girls found him again near dusk.
His body was twisted beneath the daffodils, eyes glassy, mouth open in a silent plea. The flowers had grown through him and up his throat, coiled through his ribs. Around his neck hung the mirror shard, now smooth, whole, showing only her.
The wind stopped.
The daffodils turned.
They say the grave whispers sometimes. Not in his voice. In hers.
Repeating his name–Nars–just once. Then silence.
And beneath the soil, the echo ceased to repeat.
The gravestone had changed. No chisel marks. No tools nearby. It now read:
“Reflected. Repeated. Rooted.”
The daffodils never stopped blooming.
Even in winter.
📸 Photo by Charles Tyler on Unsplash
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