The Drowned Valley · The Kept

The House by the Water-Meadow

The lowest house in the valley, nearest the water-meadow. Every morning an old voice inside it goes down a list of names over the work of her hands. It will be the first the river reaches.

First seen in The Greying Book Two of The Borrowed Dead

Also in The Drowned Valley

The Drowned Valley A Flemish valley going under, four hundred years gone. A church tower stands drowned, and not all of the dead were let go cleanly. The Valley Village A low cluster of houses along a Flemish river, four hundred years gone. The family's hearth, and Margriet's ledger of the valley's names. The Church A small parish church with a low tower, the valley's births and deaths kept by hand in the register: the keeping before the word existed. The Rising Water Where the river climbed the family's legs the night the valley filled. No graves, no markers: the origin-grief the whole craft answers. The Churchyard Up on the rise by the church, inside a low wall of field-stone: leaning markers, wooden boards gone soft and grey, a flat slab by the porch. The valley keeps its dead here with a grave, a board and a name in the church book, and the water will undo all of it in one night and a day.

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