The Song of the Silt-Wife

Folklore

[Sound of a wooden chair scraping against a stone floor] Elder: Sit. Just sit for a minute and stop fidgeting with those laces. You think you know the river because you can swim in the shallows during the heat of July. You don't know the delta. Not the deep parts where the water turns the color of a bruised plum. [Pause] Elder: There is a thing that lives there. We call her the Silt-Wife. She doesn't come at you with claws or teeth. She doesn't look like a monster; she looks like a girl made of river-foam and wet silk, shimmering just beneath the surface of the reeds. [Sigh] Elder: But it is the song that does the work. Now, listen close. It is a bright sound. It sounds like gold coins clinking in a velvet bag, or like a silver bell ringing in a bucket of cream. It is a sweet, high humming that makes the marrow in your bones feel warm, even when the wind is cutting through your coat. It promises things. It promises a handful of gold dust for every step you take into the muck. [Pause] Elder: You'll follow that sound. You'll walk right into the silt, knee-deep, then waist-deep. You'll be so caught up in that melody that you won't notice the river pulling at your boots. You'll think you are walking toward a fortune. But the moment you try to call out, the moment you open your mouth to tell your kin that you've found the gold, the music just... stops. [Sound of a heavy breath] Elder: Then comes the silence. Now, it is not a quiet silence. It is a heavy, oppressive thing. It tastes like river-mud and old fish. It settles in your throat like a plug of wet clay, thick and cold. You will open your mouth to scream, to beg, or to simply gasp for air, but there is nothing left. Just a grey, muddy void where your voice used to be. [Pause] Elder: I saw a man once, ten years back, who had been taken by her. He lived in the village for three years after he crawled out of the reeds. He could eat, he could work the fields, but he couldn't make a sound. Not a whimper. He just looked at the river with eyes that looked like they were filled with silt. He spent the rest of his days in a silence so thick you could almost touch it. [Sigh] Elder: So, when you hear a bell ringing where there are no bells, you turn around. You walk back to the road, and you don't look back. Do you understand me?