THE LIBRARY · THE MIRRENMERE

The Asking Below

aka The Diver's Form, How the Lady Is Asked

A Hessk diver's instruction on the correct form for asking the Lady of the Long Water to give something back — a form the Vale has largely forgotten, which is why she keeps almost everything.

She keeps. Understand that first, hatchling, before you go down grieving for a drowned thing you think is yours. It is not yours now. It is hers, and it is whole, and it is safe as nothing up here is safe — and she will not give it back for wanting. Wanting is what she has most of. To ask, go down slow, on one held breath, and touch the silt with the flat of your hand so she knows the hand is empty. Do not shout her name into the green; she is not deaf and you are not the first. Name the thing you want returned, and name it truly — not what you called it, but what it was. Leave the price on the silt: not coin, coin is nothing to her, but the thing you would least like to give and can least spare. Then let the breath go. That breath is the whole prayer. If she means to answer, the thing comes up on the next tide, unrotted, exactly as it went down. If she does not, it stays, and so does your price, and you have taught her nothing but that you had it to lose. Most who go down have forgotten the naming and bring the wrong price, and that is why she keeps a hundred years of us and gives back one. Do not resent it. A world that is losing everything is lucky there is one thing in it that loses nothing.

This world ships in Valenfeld. Play the game →