The Weight of the Silver-Tongued

Folklore

(Transcription: Oral History, Ostra District, Subject 14) Look at the water. It is a blue that screams. Look at the houses. They are the ochre of old wounds. We are a people of vivid things. Our eyes are emerald, amber, or the deep brown of tilled soil. Until we lie. The Hue-Debt is a patient thief. A white lie leaves a white speck. A betrayal leaves a grey film. Most of us fade slowly, like old linen in the sun. Then there was Elian. He lived when the North-fleet came. Sixty ships with sails the color of charcoal. They came for the salt and the silver. They came to burn Ostra to the waterline. Elian stood alone on the white salt-pier. He did not carry a blade. He carried a story. He shouted to the admirals across the surf. He told them the harbor was a graveyard. He told them the tides were governed by a blind god who demanded the eyes of every sailor who anchored there. He told them the water was a poison that would turn their blood to brine. It was a lie. It was a mountain of a lie. The admirals paused. They looked at the shimmering water. They looked at the man. And in that moment, the color fled from Elian. The deep green of his iris did not fade; it vanished. It was as if a candle had been blown out. His eyes became two spheres of polished milk. Pure, colorless, vacant. The fleet turned. They sailed back to the cold north, terrified of the blind god. Ostra was saved. Elian lived for a few more years, but he walked in a permanent fog. He gave twenty years of his life to that one sentence. He died a young man with the eyes of a ghost.