Ravine Country

A story about a village on a scarred plain.

In a part of the world that’s full of ravines there are three that are around a particular small village. From above, they make a shape resembling an old, broken triquetra with the village at its center. The people in the village don’t go into the ravines that lacerate the earth around them. In the village, the ravines are known to be wild places. They cut jagged and their sides are steep and rocky and moss clings to the rocks and hangs long off of them in ragged strands. At the bottom of the ravines to the southwest and the southeast of the village run small streams which in the spring are greatly engorged by snowmelt from the mountains. Their dull roaring, at this time of year, can be heard at night by every person lying in every bed in the village, asleep or awake, it makes no difference. These waters ultimately disappear underground into a vast cave system, known to be deep and labyrinthine but scarcely explored at all, as all streams and rivers do in this part of the world. What is or might be found at the bottom of the ravine to the north of the village is unknown; it is too deep, no one can fathom it. Someone once dropped a lit torch from its lip, but the light went out, extinguished as if capped all of a sudden by an enormous douter, clasped in an enormous fist, well before it could have reached the ground.