A cracked, worn leather boot covered in mud joined in: "She gave each star near me a name. While I warmed her feet in the yard each night, she taught her younger sister their names, pointing up."

Nearby, a small brown sandal, missing its buckle, pushed by the pile's weight against the boot, is eager to share its tale of summer mornings spent skipping stones across the pond. Seven bounces were the record that made its wearer jump and clap with joy. One of the buckles came loose that day at the pond.

Nothing is heard from a wooden clog with faded painted tulips that could have spoken of a girl who tended her mother's garden, singing tunes encouraging carrots and potatoes to flourish. A tiny house slipper embroidered with silver thread remembered afternoon chess matches with a grandfather, the Queen's Gambit forever left unfinished on the lone board. The house is now empty with windows broken and a front door hanging on a smashed hinge.

From within the pile, voices merged and mingled: tales of football matches in town streets, double Dutch jump rope sessions where braids bounced in rhythm to counting songs, each memory preserved in worn soles and frayed laces.

A sudden change in the night sky, with thunder rumbling overhead, failed to influence any of them—thousands, each cradling a story of running, jumping, dancing, and playing. Over there, high up in the pile, a pair of winter boots, fur lining matted and torn, recalled long journeys through deep snow, whispering encouragement with each step. Rain began to fall, pattering against the shoes, but the stories continued, precious tales in the darkness.

A cloth sneaker with a hole in its toe spoke of afternoons spent in meadows sketching wildflowers and dreams of becoming a famous artist. There, in another spot, a patent leather shoe, showing cracks, its shine long gone, remembered a birthday cake with six candles, a wish left unspoken. All the whispered exchanges, unheard in the night air, spoke of lives interrupted, childhood moments frozen in time like album photographs that would never fade.

Scuffed now, a leather Oxford, its metal buckle still catching a glint of light, shifted in a pile. "My boy," it said, "he used to complain when the chambermaid didn't polish me properly for his piano recitals."

Further down in the pile, a patched work boot, its sole half-separated and hanging like a tired tongue, let out a quiet retort. "Mine didn't complain when his toes froze last winter; he had given his socks to his sister."

The Oxford falls silent for a moment. "We're the same size, you and I."

"Different paths though," the work boot replies. "Until now."

"My boy," the Oxford continues, "he cried the first time he scuffed me."

"Mine cried only once," the work boot murmurs. "When they took his father's boots away."

A breeze rolled over the top of the pile, sending two shoes tumbling down and shifting a few others. The Oxford's leather creaked as it moved, and visions of the marble floors of the villa, where it once clicked importantly across drawing room floors, danced in memory. Beside it, the work boot's cracked leather bore the marks of cobblestone streets and market days in town, its patches telling stories of careful repairs by candlelight.

"He'd practice his bow as I held his feet steady," the Oxford said. "Back straight, heels together. The violin instructor would tap his cane until it was perfect."

The work boot's loose sole flapped again in another breeze, and rain might be coming. "Mine bowed too. Every morning at dawn, helping his father load the cart with potatoes. Fourteen steps from the cart to the cellar, six hours a day."

"Different music," the Oxford noted.

"Different dance," the work boot agreed. "Though yours played Mozart, and mine hummed it while he worked. Same song, different stages."

The Oxford's imperious tone seemed to tighten. "My boy used to watch the street children from our window."

"Mine used to watch your boy's window," the work boot replied. "Said the violin sounded like angels." They fell quiet then, two soles from the same city, finally resting on the same earth. The Oxford and the work boots are forced to press against each other in the darkness; their differences dissolve in the yard's equalizing mud. Neither spoke again that night, but they leaned into each other, now pushed closer by the pile of shoes tumbling down on them, two halves of the same broken story.

Sounds of a rough, coughing truck engine cut through their reminiscence, headlights sweeping across the massive heap. The men begin loading the shoes and boots into a worn wheelbarrow and the flatbed truck. As they are lifted, some catch final glimpses of the buildings behind them, their walls silhouetted against the dawn sky. A small voice from within the pile speaks one last time: "We carried them as far as we could."

The truck tires splashed through puddles and struggled around a muddy corner on its way to the city. A pair of tiny red boots with metal fasteners whispered, "We remember," into the dawn. We will always remember and carry our stories with us." Everything was quiet. Even the rain had stopped.

Behind the dark gray wooden buildings, the morning sun begins pushing the clouds away, illuminating the yard that is devoid of even a single blade of grass. The sign above the gate, fastened between fencing topped with barbed wire, shone briefly in the morning light. Its message was a promise and a memorial: "Arbeit macht frei"—work sets you free.