The Fragmenting of the Pale Eye (Field Recording Transcript)

Mythos

[Recording begins. Heavy sound of wind rushing through dry reeds. The rhythmic clink of salt-crystals being sorted into a wooden bowl.] Interviewer: [Unintelligible]... the tradition of the marshes? How it began? Elder: (long pause) The Eye was one. The Eye was white. The Eye was silent. It sat in the high black, watching the deep, watching the shallows, watching the men who drifted without a map. Long before the salt took the land, the Pale Eye was a single stone of light. It gave enough to see the wave, but not enough to see the way. [Sound of a distant gull crying; the wind dies down momentarily] Elder: The Weaver of Tides, she saw the drifting. She saw the weeping. She saw the salt crusting in the throats of the young who could not find the shore. She looked at the Pale Eye and she saw it was too proud. It held all its light in one place. It held its light and it gave nothing to the lost. [Pause. The sound of a throat being cleared] Elder: So the Weaver reached up. She took the hammer of the deep, forged from the pressure of the trenches, and she struck the Eye. She struck it once for the lost, twice for the lonely, and thrice for the forgotten. [Sound of wind gusting, clipping the audio] Elder: The Eye broke. It broke into a thousand silver seeds. It broke into a million guiding lights. It scattered. It spilled across the black, pinning the night with a thousand tiny needles of hope. Now, the sailor does not look for one light, for one light can be hidden by a cloud. Now, he looks for the shards. He looks for the scattered pieces of the Eye, and he finds his path home by the many. Interviewer: And the cost? You mentioned the cost earlier. Elder: (soft laugh) The cost is the water. When the Eye broke, the balance broke too. The moon no longer pulls with a single hand. It pulls with a thousand small fingers, pulling here, pulling there, pulling in circles. The currents became wild things. They twist like eels in the mud. They pull south when they should pull north; they pull deep when they should pull shallow. The sea is a confuse thing now, a restless thing. [Sound of stones clicking together] Elder: It is a hard sea. It is a dangerous sea. But we are no longer blind. We have the shards. We have the silver seeds. We have a thousand ways to find the shore, even if the water tries to lead us astray. [Recording ends abruptly]