The Watchful One

There is a slope beyond the old mill road where the heather gives way to scrub and stone,
and on that slope grows a bush no one planted. It isn’t remarkable at first glance—just a tangle of dark stems and waxy leaves, small berries like drops of dried blood. But when dusk falls and the mist rolls in from the moor, the villagers say the bush stirs. They call it the Watchful One.

Long ago, a shepherd named Ruaridh camped near that slope with his flock. In the night, he woke to the sound of breathing—slow, deliberate, not quite human. He saw the bush shifting, though the wind was still. Then came the gleam: tiny orbs glinting between the branches, like dewdrops catching starlight.
But they moved—blinking, following him.

He fled, leaving his fire and flock behind. When others returned at dawn, they found no sheep, only hoofprints that circled the bush again and again before vanishing into the earth.

The elders say the bush grows where a watcher was buried— a sentinel from an age when people feared the things that crept from the mists more than death itself. His eyes, they claim, refused to close, and so the land covered him with roots and thorns, and the earth itself kept his vigil.

Now, when children stray too close, their mothers hiss, “don’t let it see you—don’t meet its gaze.”

For the bush remembers every face that lingers too long, and sometimes, when someone disappears on the moor, the next morning there are new berries hanging heavy on its branches. Each one holds a reflection—small, round, and glassy as an eye.

On certain nights, travelers swear they see the bush lean slightly toward the road, as if listening. Dogs won’t pass it. Birds fall silent above it. And if you whisper near it—just a word, even your own name— the sound never returns. It’s as if the bush swallows it whole.

Yet some say it isn’t cruel. They believe it’s guarding something older, something sleeping beneath the hill,
and those eyes are not hungry, but tired— forever keeping watch so that the rest of us can sleep in peace.