The Lullaby Of The First Mother

The Lullaby of the First Mother

The American Lullaby Prequel

By Ekona Del Rey Monroe

Prologue: Fragments

Long before the pale strangers came across the great water, the people of the mounds knew the land could sing.

They knew some songs were born from joy.

And some were born from a mother’s grief.

This is one of those songs.

Because the Mississippian people had no written language, many of their exact spoken words, songs, and stories are lost to time.

What remains are fragments preserved in oral tradition, archaeological echoes, and the enduring power of four slow notes that still drift across the land.

This is one of those fragments.

It begins with a mother.

It begins with grief.

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Chapter One: The City of Mounds

The city rose from the earth like a prayer.

Great earthen mounds, carefully built by generations of hands, stood against the wide sky.

The largest rose nearly one hundred feet high, its flat top crowned with temples and the homes of leaders.

Cornfields stretched in every direction, golden and heavy with the harvest.

The river flowed slow and steady, carrying trade canoes and the songs of fishermen.

Awanha stood at the edge of the fields, her hands covered in clay from the morning’s work.

She was a respected potter, known for shaping vessels that held water, corn, and the stories of her people.

Her two children, a boy of seven and a girl of five, ran through the tall stalks laughing.

Their voices mixed with the wind and the distant rhythm of drums from the central mound.

This was the Mississippian world at its height, a civilization of farmers, traders, builders, and spiritual people who understood the land as a living thing.

They built mounds to honor the ancestors, to connect earth and sky, and to give thanks for the corn that sustained them.

The river was a living being that carried souls. The corn was a sacred gift.

Life was hard, the seasons could be cruel, illness could come suddenly, but there was also beauty in the rhythm of planting, harvesting, and ceremony.

Awanha watched her children with a full heart. The boy had his father’s strong laugh.

The girl had her mother’s careful hands.

That night, during the harvest festival, the illness came.

It moved quietly at first. A fever. A cough. Then it took hold.

By the time the moon rose full and bright, both children were burning with it.

Awanha stayed by their side through the night, singing soft songs and pressing cool clay poultices to their foreheads.

Her husband and the healers did everything they could.

The children slipped away before dawn.

The boy first. Then the girl, her small hand still holding her mother’s.

Awanha did not scream. She sat in silence beside their bodies as the first light touched the mounds.

The city continued its rhythm around her, drums, voices, the wind through the corn.

But inside her chest, something had broken open.

She carried her children to the river at sunset. She washed them gently, wrapped them in fine cloth, and placed them in a small canoe with offerings of corn and pottery.

She pushed the canoe into the current and watched it drift away.

That night, she sat alone by the riverbank.

The wind moved through the cornfields. The river whispered. The distant drums beat steadily.

And then she heard it.

Four slow notes.

A — C — B — A.

They came from the wind. From the river. From the rhythm of the drums themselves.

The melody felt like a mother calling her children home.

Awanha picked up a bone flute she had made long ago. Her fingers moved almost without thought. She began to play the four notes.

The lullaby was born.

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Chapter Two: The First Notes

The four notes spread slowly at first.

They rode the wind through the tall corn. They echoed in the river’s current.

They wove themselves into the ceremonial drums during the next full moon gathering.

People began to notice.

A grandmother would stop in the middle of grinding corn, tilting her head as if listening to a distant voice.

A father standing by the river at dusk would feel an overwhelming pull toward the water, believing he heard his lost son calling.

Children playing near the mounds would suddenly run toward the largest one, laughing as if someone was waiting for them with open arms.

Awanha continued to play.

Each night she sat by the river, bone flute to her lips, playing the four notes over and over. The melody never sped up.

It never slowed down. It simply asked the same question again and again.

Where are my children?

The people began to change.

Some walked toward the great mounds at night and were never seen again.

Others stood by the river, staring into the water, whispering names of those who had passed.

The sacred mounds, once places of honor and ceremony, began to feel different, heavier, hungrier.

One night, during a harvest ceremony, the largest mound cracked open.

The earth split with a low, rumbling sound.

A vertical shaft appeared where the temple had stood.

It was wide enough for many people to fall at once.

The walls were lined with roots and earth, descending into darkness.

The first Pit had opened.

Awanha stood at the edge, bone flute still in her hands.

She had grown taller. Her belly had begun to swell with something ancient and heavy.

Her eyes were hollow, leaking slow tears. She was becoming the First Mother.

She played the four notes.

The people felt the pull.

Many walked forward, believing they were answering the call of lost loved ones.

The lullaby had found its first great feast.

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Chapter Three: The River Listeners

The River Listeners appeared soon after the first Pit opened.

They were not solid. They were shadows, ethereal silhouettes of lost children playing along the riverbanks.

They ran, laughed, splashed in the shallow water.

They looked exactly as the missing children had in life. Their voices carried on the wind and water, calling “Mother, come home.”

They did not speak words. Only the four notes, woven into their laughter.

Awanha saw them every night.

Her own children’s shadows played along the river, beckoning her.

She wanted to follow them.

The pull was overwhelming. But each time she stepped toward the water, she heard the living children of her city laughing in the distance. She turned back.

The River Listeners were patient. They waited. They played. They called.

Many mothers and fathers walked into the river and never returned.

The sea along the coast also began to open gateways, dark whirlpools that swallowed fishing canoes and coastal villages.

The Hidden Cavern waited below.

The city was unraveling.

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Chapter Four: The Feeding of the Mounds

The great mounds became the primary Pits.

People were drawn to them at night. They climbed the earthen steps believing they would find lost family members waiting at the top.

Instead, the mounds opened and swallowed them.

The Wind Carriers carried the four notes through every cornfield.

The Mound Guardians, tall, earthen figures, rose from the mounds to guide (and sometimes pull) victims downward.

Awanha, now fully the First Mother, walked among her people.

She was tall, pregnant with unending grief, wearing a feathered cloak that moved like the wind.

She played the bone flute, her hollow eyes leaking tears, her mouth open in a silent scream that had become the melody itself.

She did not want to take the living. But the grief inside her was stronger than her will. The lullaby needed to be fed.

The city began to empty.

Whole clans vanished. The fields went untended. The drums grew quieter.

Yet the four notes continued.

They spread beyond the city, carried by the river, the wind, and the stories told around fires.

The lullaby was becoming an ancient force embedded in the land.

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Chapter Five: The Great Mound

The final harvest ceremony was supposed to be a time of thanks.

Instead, it became the end.

The largest sacred mound cracked open during the height of the ceremony.

The Pit was colossal, its walls lined with roots and earth, descending into darkness.

The four notes echoed across the city like thunder.

The First Mother stood at the edge.

The River Listeners appeared in full force, hundreds of shadow children playing along the river, laughing and calling for their mothers.

Awanha saw her own children among them, exactly as they had been in life.

They reached for her.

The pull was the strongest it had ever been.

She wanted to follow them.

She wanted to end the grief. She wanted to be reunited.

But as she stepped toward the edge, she heard the living children of her city.

They were crying. They were afraid. They were being drawn toward the Pit by the same melody.

Awanha stopped.

The human mother inside the entity made her choice.

She turned away from the shadows of her own children and played the four notes louder, directing the living away from the mound and toward safety.

She broke the cycle for the next generation, even as she remained trapped in eternal grief.

The city was forever changed. Many were lost that night. The mounds closed. The river grew quiet.

But the lullaby had been born.

It would wait patiently through the centuries for the next great sorrow.

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Epilogue: Fragments

Because the people of the great mound cities had no written language, many of their exact spoken words, songs, and stories are lost to time.

What remains are fragments.

Archaeologists centuries later would find strange bones, bone flutes, and collapsed mounds.

They would hear stories from descendant communities about a grieving mother who played four notes on the wind.

The four notes still drift across the land, carried by the wind, the river, and the quiet places.

The lullaby predates America as we know it.

It is an ancient grief waiting patiently for the next great sorrow.

The American Lullaby continues.

It always has.

The End