the marsh

story about a marsh

 

In a deep blue-green valley sunk between mountains lies a marsh. Icy-cold streams wind down from the mountains and feed into it's dozens of pools of foggy green water. Even through storming winters and scorching summers they stay smooth and cool as carved jade, never freezing or drying up. The ridges of solid land between the pools form a web of little pathways that run all over the marsh valley. Tiny wood bridges arch over some of the pools--others have little rafts drifting in them or clouds of white salt lilies, and one has a hundred floating candles with enchanted wicks that never burn down. A sickly tree, half-poisoned by the salty marsh water, stoops over the smallest pool, and from it’s lowest branch hangs a swing. And in this valley there is also a house. If you’re lucky you might see the chilly North wind fill it’s sails and send it drifting through the pools before it’s peeling yellow paint disappears behind the heavy shrouds of white mist. In the evening the house’s windows are lit with candles and blue woodsmoke pours from it’s brick chimney. The windows flash dark when dim figures pass in front of them. Not a sound is heard from the house, morning or night. No laundry line goes out even on the rare days when the sun burns through the heavy mist and slants down on the marsh in syrupy golden stripes. No smells of baking bread or hot coffee disturb the marsh, not even a footprint on the pathways. Only yellow candles and blue smoke all night and empty grayness in the morning. The neighboring villages know nothing of the valley marsh. Few have climbed the mountains that loom up around it, and those who peered down saw white fog and nothing else, as if the valley were a well too deep to see the bottom of. Even fewer know that the mountains are really the body of a sleeping giant, her back turned to the outside and curled around the marsh. Where her thick tree-covered knees and towering chin meet there is a tiny pass carved out by a river. If you chose to visit the valley marsh, this is where you would meet the boatsmen who rows travelers across the black water. Pay him and you may see the bottom of the well.