The Bargain of the Black Mire

Folklore

[Transcription begins: Speaker identified as Elder Mara. Setting: Hearth-side recording, wind audible in background.] Now, lean in. Don't let the fire go out while I'm speaking, for the cold of the moor has a way of following the words. There was once a man named Silas. He had a farm on the edge of the Black Mire, where the peat is deep and the rain never truly stops. It is a cold rain, a thin rain, a rain that seeps through wool and skin to settle in the marrow of your bones. For three years, the blight came. It came in the spring, it came in the summer, it came in the autumn. The stalks turned a bruised purple, and the grain wept a black slime that smelled of old graves. Silas looked at his children, and he saw their ribs. He looked at his cattle, and he saw their hide hanging loose. He looked at the Mire, and he saw the sulfur rising in yellow plumes from the vents in the earth. Now, listen well. Never walk the Mire when the sulfur is high. It clouds the mind and makes a man think the mud is solid ground. Silas walked into the Mire. He walked through the peat, and the peat pulled at his boots. He walked through the fog, and the fog tasted of rotten eggs. He walked until the land vanished, and there sat the Mire-Wight. The Wight was a thing of grey reeds and wet leather, with eyes like pale fish and fingers as long as willow switches. "I want a harvest," Silas said. "I want the blight gone from my fields." The Wight shifted, and the sound was like wet linen tearing. "A price," the Wight hissed. "A price for the green. Give me a secret, Silas. A secret that has never left the walls of your house. A secret that is yours and yours alone." Silas thought of his father's hidden gold, but that was a known thing. He thought of the fence he had moved in the dead of night, but the neighbor suspected. He thought of the pride he carried in his heart, and he thought that pride was a secret enough. "I will give you a secret," Silas said. "I will give you the secret of who I am, and the things I hold most dear in my soul." Now, you see where he stumbled. You never give a Wight a doorway into your heart. You give them a stone, a coin, or a lie. You never give them the root of yourself. The Wight reached out. It did not take a word. It did not take a confession. It reached into Silas's chest with those willow-switch fingers and pulled. It pulled out a thread of light, a thread of memory, a thread of name. It pulled and it pulled until Silas felt a great emptiness where his history had been. "The bargain is struck," the Wight whispered. "The harvest is yours." Silas walked home. He walked through the peat, and the peat did not pull. He walked through the fog, and the fog smelled of clover. When he reached his farm, the stalks were gold. The grain was heavy. The cattle were fat. But when he stepped onto his porch, his wife looked at him. She did not smile. She did not call his name. She looked at him as one looks at a stranger who has wandered onto the road. "Can I help you, sir?" she asked. Silas tried to speak, but he had no name to call himself. He tried to remember his father, but the memory was a blank slate. He tried to remember the smell of his mother's bread, but there was only the scent of sulfur and cold rain. He had traded the secret of his identity for the green of the field. He had the harvest, yes. He had the gold in the barn. But he was a ghost in his own kitchen. He spent the rest of his days sitting on the porch, watching the rain fall, wondering why the woman in the house looked at him with such pity, and why he could not remember the sound of his own voice. Keep your secrets locked tight, children. Especially the ones that tell you who you are. The Mire is always hungry, and it doesn't care for the value of the coin, only the weight of the loss.