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The Drowned Valley · The Kept

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.

First seen in The Names I Woke With Book One 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 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. 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.

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