Erica Ruppert

Alice had sung that single phrase to Paul one night as they sat on their haunches at the back of the yard, stoned and gazing up at the black shape of the hill in the middle distance. Her voice was flat, and the words didn’t fit the tune, but she repeated it until she got bored with the sound of herself. Alice had started calling the hill The Empress sometime over the summer. No one else Paul knew called it anything but the hill.