“Again?! What did I do to deserve this?! Illya, did you get beat up again?!” His mother was already rushing for the first aid kit. “What kind of kid are you…?”
“Mom! I’m not a kid anymore!”
“And what’s changed? You’re still getting knocked around…” She soaked a cotton ball in hydrogen peroxide and started wiping away the blood, trying to get to the wound. “Defending some damsel in distress again, huh?”
Illya hissed in pain.
“Shh… Mom!”
“What ‘Mom’? Spill it already… Though I can probably guess. Same old story, right? Some jerk was harassing a girl, you stepped in, and got your butt handed to you. That’s how it went, isn’t it?”
“Well, see, you already know everything. Ouch!”
“Deal with it! I found the cut… Oh my God! You’ve probably got a concussion! We need to get you to the hospital!”
“I’m fine! I don’t need anything!”
“Hush, hush! Don’t start yelling at me… Fine, I’ll clean the wound for now, and we’ll see how you feel after that…”
“Ow!”
“That’s it, I’m done… Anywhere else?” His mother continued her “torture.”
“That’s all, I just hit the back of my head…”
“What about here?”
“That’s just blood, I smeared it around trying to feel for the cut.”
“Great job, using dirty hands! Hold still, I’ll wipe the blood off… Was the girl at least pretty?”
“What, I shouldn’t protect girls who aren’t pretty?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“She was pretty.”
“And? Did you introduce yourself? Get her number?”
“No. She left… with the guy who was harassing her… She went with him willingly…”
“Life’s teaching you some hard lessons, Illya…” His mother playfully tapped him on the forehead.
His father shuffled out of the bedroom in an old housecoat, glasses perched on his nose, and a newspaper in hand. Who even reads newspapers these days? Everything’s online—whatever you want, and plenty you don’t.
“What’s our hero gotten himself into this time?”
“Same as always,” his mother said with a wave of her hand. “Defending a girl, getting beat up for it, and the little princess walks off with the stronger guy. That’s women for you—they go for the alpha males, even when they’re total jerks.”
Illya frowned. If you look at it that way, should he just stand by when the other guy’s stronger than him?
His father, though, heard something else entirely and grew concerned.
“And you, Kateryna, are you like that too? Always eyeing the alphas?”
“Why would I need someone else’s alpha when I’ve got my own, the best one right here?” His mother shot a playful glance at his father.
“Yeah, that’s me…” His father smugly patted his sizable belly.
Sure, he was hardly an alpha, but confidence is everything.
“Think about what we’re going to do with our son instead. He’s got over a month before university classes start again. Exams are done, internship is over. Is he just going to wander around the city looking for trouble?”
“Mom!”
“What did I say wrong? With your pathological need to protect girls, you’re going to get yourself roughed up every day. And fine, if it’s just like today. But what if they seriously hurt you… or worse, kill you! Oh!” His mother, scaring herself with the thought, clapped a hand over her mouth.
She wasn’t wrong, though. Illya’s compulsive need to protect girls had shown up as early as kindergarten. Maybe it was just a desire to defend the weak, but there was no one weaker than him. He’d been a sickly, scrawny kid, so he was always the one getting beat up. Nothing had changed even now. Though Illya was finishing up at university, he was still short, skinny, and had no interest in sports. On top of that, he struggled with communication. He had no friends, got awkward during conversations, took forever to find the right words, and felt shy about approaching anyone. Even buying a ticket at a counter made him uncomfortable. So, he wasn’t exactly eager for new acquaintances, crowded places, or parties. The only thing he couldn’t stand was seeing a girl being mistreated, and he’d step in to defend her, even though it usually backfired, like today.
“What’s there to think about?” his father’s voice cut in. “Send him to Ivanivka, to Grandma Olena.”
“Maybe that’s not a bad idea,” his mother latched onto the suggestion. “People are calmer in the village. Grandma Olena said the local club’s shut down, and there aren’t many young folks left. The restless ones have all left to seek better opportunities elsewhere. Though, I’m sure not everyone’s gone. Maybe Illya will find himself a nice, quiet village girl instead of some city diva.”
“Mom!”
“What, ‘Mom’? You’re twenty-two already, and you’ve never even had a girlfriend! I might want grandkids someday…”
“Dad?” Illya turned to his father, hoping for backup. “What am I supposed to do in the village?”
“You can help your grandma with the garden, chop firewood for the winter. Get some fresh air, build up your strength. And in your free time, work on your thesis. Don’t forget, you’ve got your final year in the history department ahead! We got internet set up in the village, so you can research and prepare.”
His father, a history professor himself, had sparked Illya’s interest in the subject. So, Illya had made it to his last year at the local university, though he still hadn’t settled on a thesis topic. Well, maybe spending time with Grandma in the village wasn’t such a bad idea. When he was younger, Illya had often been sent to stay with her during every school break. But for the past five years, he’d only visited with his parents for her birthday, Easter, or the occasional trip. Grandma Olena was seventy-three now. Up until seventy, she’d been pretty spry, managing the garden on her own and even supplying her son’s family with ripe tomatoes and long, greenish zucchinis. But in recent years, his parents had to help with planting and harvesting during their weekends off, which they weren’t thrilled about. Illya thought it over, remembering the rosy apples and sweet plums, the carefree summer breaks of his childhood, and agreed to go to Ivanivka.
* * *
The village, one of thousands like it across Ukraine, greeted Illya with overgrown weeds and the rich scent of freshly cut grass. Grandma Olena’s little house sat at the edge of a hill that, for some reason, was almost in the center of the village. Usually, high school graduates would gather there to watch the sunrise after their prom night. As a kid, Illya had sledded or skied down that hill in winter, straight onto the snowy garden, and in early spring, he’d pick chamomile for tea. From the top, you could see most of the village and the distant horizon. You could sit up there, dreaming of far-off lands, thrilling adventures, and a bright future.
Grandma, who’d been told over the phone about her only grandson’s arrival, welcomed Illya with her signature borscht, garlic rolls, and sweet pastries. She was the same as ever—short, a bit plump, with a gentle smile on her face. She kissed Illya on the cheek, sat him down at the table, and started asking about his parents, his studies, his personal life. Illya answered, stuffing himself with pastry after pastry, looking around the room where nothing had changed in years, his thoughts drifting back to childhood. After lunch, he stepped outside for a walk.
Everything was just as it had been in his childhood. The old shed for grain. Another, now almost empty, for firewood and coal. They’d long planned to get gas hooked up for Grandma, but money was always tight. Everything else was the same as ever, as if this yard was untouched by time. Only the old well had been replaced by a modern borehole. Near the doghouse, a reddish mutt named Sharko was tied up. Recognizing Illya, the dog whimpered happily, dropping to its front paws. Grandma didn’t keep any other animals. Illya wandered through the yard, then headed to the garden. His eyes fell on a crooked little shack at the edge of the garden, right at the foot of the hill, one he’d built himself from scrap boards as a kid. It was still standing! His feet carried him toward the shack without thinking. Abandoned, neglected… Now, despite his short stature, he almost touched the wooden ceiling with his head. And underfoot, a metal sheet covered an underground tunnel he’d started digging as a child, convinced there was treasure buried deep in the hill. For a few years, he’d worked on that tunnel, secretly hauling out dirt to the surface because it turned out to be much harder than he’d thought. He’d made decent progress, but eventually, high school and university entrance exams made him forget about those old dreams, which now seemed downright silly.
Illya stepped out of the shack, which looked sad and useless now, climbed up the hill, and sat in the pose of “The Seated Demon” from Mikhail Vrubel’s famous painting, letting his thoughts wander freely.
But for some reason, his mind kept circling back to that tunnel and his childhood hopes. If he thought about it seriously, not as a naive kid but as a history student finishing his degree, maybe that naive kid had been onto something?
The first burial mounds were built over 5,000 years ago by the Aryans—older than the pyramids! In Sumerian, “kur-an” translates to “mountain of the sky.” The last to use such burial practices were the Scythians, who inhabited these steppes since the start of the first millennium BC. After them, the Cumans and Pechenegs reused existing mounds, piling more earth on top. So, what might be hidden in their depths is anyone’s guess. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were over 100,000 of these ancient monuments in Ukraine, but now only 25,000 remain, and even those are being destroyed by black-market archaeologists or plowed over for farmland. Barely a hundred mounds are listed in the state registry of protected cultural landmarks. And the rest? Any one of them could hold real treasures. Like the Scythian pectoral, found in the Dnipropetrovsk region, now valued at two million dollars or more. And Ukrainian archaeologists in the northern Black Sea region uncovered over a hundred burials of young female warriors from noble Scythian families, proving the existence of the legendary Amazons!
So, maybe it was worth continuing what he’d started as a kid—extending the tunnel, digging a little deeper? This spot definitely wasn’t in the state registry of cultural heritage; it wasn’t even considered a proper mound. Just an ordinary hill that the locals proudly called a “mountain.” But what kind of mountain is it when everything around is flat? It had to be a mound! Of course, he shouldn’t get his hopes up too much. But he could try. He had nothing better to do anyway. If he got lucky and found anything—coins, jewelry, weapons, or household items—he’d turn it all over to scholars. And what if he made a discovery, and his name went down in history?! At the very least, even a small find could make for an amazing thesis.
With those thoughts, Illya returned to his shack, lifted the metal sheet covering the hole, and jumped down. Surprisingly, nothing had collapsed in the years since he’d last been there. But he didn’t dare crawl into the side tunnel leading under the hill. For one, it needed to be widened—he’d grown since then. And second, he wasn’t as reckless as he’d been as a kid. The tunnel would need to be reinforced with boards to prevent it from caving in and burying an unlucky archaeologist under tons of dirt.
From then on, Illya’s days followed a routine: water the garden, head to the underground tunnel, chop firewood, pick out boards to reinforce the passage, work in the garden some more, then back to the tunnel. He gradually hauled out the dirt and tried to spread it discreetly around the garden and yard. He piled it in rings around the trees, claiming it helped hold water better, and heaped it on the cellar, saying it would help preserve winter supplies. The clay he carted all the way to the edge of the hill, beyond the garden.
Sudden thunderstorms occasionally interrupted his work. The summer had been dry so far, but now, every evening, dark clouds rolled in from the west, pierced by fiery lightning. They’d cover the village, dump a quick downpour, and move eastward.
Grandma sighed that the garden crops might rot. As the saying goes, “Don’t pray for rain; pray for a harvest.” At least they didn’t need to water the garden anymore.
“Back in the day,” Grandma Olena would recount, “people turned to higher powers. To protect themselves from storms, they’d ask for Perun’s mercy in sacred oak groves, in the God’s Woods, bringing offerings to the altars—sometimes a bull, sometimes a red rooster, or even just pieces of bread and meat. They honored the god of thunder and lightning on July 20th, 22nd, and 27th, but the biggest celebration was August 2nd, Perun’s Day, now called St. Elijah’s Day. You, my grandson, were born on that day, which is why we named you Illya. And during droughts, they’d turn to Perun’s companion, the Maiden Dodola, who watched over earthly and heavenly waters. But now, everyone’s forgotten. Once, mighty oaks—Perun’s trees—grew in our area, but they’ve all been cut down. I saw the last ones when I was just a little girl. And the pond beyond the hill! Your father should still remember it. Water is life; when there’s water, the weather is just right. So many ponds across Ukraine have dried up. Now it’s either months of drought, or everything floods, or whirlwinds snap trees, or winters come without snow…”
Illya could hardly believe there’d once been a decent pond in the meadow beyond the hill, deep, with a whirlpool in the center and thick willows dipping their branches into the water. Grandma said several grown men had drowned there in her lifetime. Where had all that depth gone? The streams had silted up, everything was clogged with mud and overgrown with grass.
Little by little, Illya’s project progressed. The underground tunnel grew longer and, by his calculations, now reached about halfway into the hill. Unfortunately, he hadn’t found anything, and hope was starting to fade. He was already considering giving up on this “foolish” work and forgetting his childhood dreams of finding treasure. The hill turned out to be just an ordinary hill, not living up to his expectations. He’d just have to keep quiet about searching for treasure, or people would laugh at him. But just as he’d firmly decided that this would be the last day of his “excavations,” his pickaxe struck something hard. His heart raced with anticipation, though Illya quickly tried to calm himself. It was probably just a rock. He couldn’t believe he’d actually get lucky…
Carefully, Illya cleared away the dirt around the unknown object. Only when his hands touched a metal surface, etched with mysterious symbols and designs, did he allow himself to believe: this was it!