The Deep Serpent's Pearl
TaleA long, shining serpent of the deep water, and the sailors' stories behind it.
Ask any fisher at the village jetty about the deep water and they'll go quiet for a moment.
The deep water is where the river bed drops away and the sunlight gives up. Down there it's blue, then dark blue, then dark. Jellies drift past glowing like lanterns. Old snapping turtles sleep on the bottom with moss on their shells. And somewhere in the dark, winding slowly through the water like a ribbon in the wind, swims the Deep Serpent.
It's longer than a canoe. Longer than two canoes. Its scales shine silver and blue, and along its back runs a crest of pale red fins that ripple as it swims. It swims standing up, head towards the light, as if it's always listening for something far above.
The fishers say the serpent carries a pearl. Not an ordinary pearl from a mussel, but a great round glowing one that holds all the light that ever fell into the deep water. That's why it's never completely dark down there, they say: the serpent's pearl lends a little light to everything, the jellies and the glowing anemones and the little fish with shining spots.
When the Gloom washed down the river, it sank, the way murky things do. It sank all the way to the bottom and found the serpent there, and wrapped round it. Now the serpent crackles with sparks when anyone swims close. The water fizzes and flashes, and the sparks shoot out towards whoever is nearest.
"You'll see it glow first," say the fishers. "When it glows, swim sideways, and the sparks go past. Energy doesn't bother it at all, it's full of the stuff. Earth magic is what you want: it's been floating so long it's forgotten what solid ground feels like."
And they'll always add: watch your air. The serpent lives deep, and chasing it is easy to get carried away with. Come up for a breath before you need one.
Calm the serpent and it glides away into the dark, leaving silver scales and pearls behind, sometimes moonstone, and very rarely a crown of coral that it wore like a king.
Nobody has ever found the great glowing pearl. The fishers say that's the point.
Tale: a serpent with a pearl full of light.
True: sailors have told stories about sea serpents for thousands of years. Many were probably sightings of the giant oarfish, the longest bony fish in the world: a silver ribbon of a fish with a red crest that can grow to 8 metres, about as long as two small cars end to end. Oarfish live deep down, swim upright, and are very rarely seen alive. And the deep sea really does glow: most of the animals that live there, about three out of every four, can make their own light.