What the Water Keeps

a drowning-rite, Hessk origin, in a Highbridge hush-book

A Hessk shore-rite for the drowned, copied into a Mourner's hush-book at Highbridge, teaching that the Long Water keeps what it takes and gives it back only when asked rightly. In the margin, in a different hand, one dissenting line about a keeper that keeps nothing.

When one goes under and does not come up, do not grieve as for the lost. The Long Water does not lose. She KEEPS — the drowned, the sunken, the whole flooded village — holds them whole and patient in her deep, and asks nothing of you but that you ask her rightly, in her season, at her shore, and she will give back what she has kept. This is her mercy and her long game both: she is the one keeper who never lets go, and so the one from whom nothing is truly gone. Bring the drowned's name to the water. Do not shut the door on them too soon. What the water keeps is not ended; it only waits.

[margin, a later Vale hand, cramped:] — The Lady keeps. Say that much for her. There is a keeper below that keeps. Ask the sky-folk what THEIR making keeps and watch the face they make. The water holds the drowned whole. The sky holds nothing whole — it only unmakes and tries again. Better a hundred years in the Lady's cold keeping than one hour as a thing the sky drew and threw away. Do not, ever, wish yourself into the sky's keeping. It does not keep.