XIX
EARS TOO SHARP
THERE, in the silent village, they found a group of old men nodding on a bench in the warm sunlight. Across the brook a big mill wheel was turning; but it made no roar or clatter. A cart went by, but there was no rumble to its wheels. Down the street a blacksmith was hammering at his ruddy forge; but there was no clang or clatter to keep noisy company to the flying sparks. All was silence—dreary, unbroken silence.
The old men stirred when Peterkin approached. They knew him for a stranger. They rose and made a place for him beside them on the bench. Then one of them took a piece of white chalk from his vest pocket, turned to the brick wall behind him and began to write. The words he wrote were so many that, before he was through, he had covered the wall from top to bottom with this sad and mysterious tale:
“Once,” he wrote, “this was the Valley of the Rippling Brooks. All were happy here, then. It was in my youth, I remember, when in our ears there ran the murmur of a hundred gleaming, merry brooks that cross the woods and fields and tumble from the hills in frothy white. The music of our laughter was like the music of these brooks—never slowing, never saddening. We were the happiest of all the Four Kingdoms.
“Then, one spring day, when the brooks were swollen and roaring with gladness, there came into our midst, from I don’t know where, a strange and toothless man. He was a farmer, like ourselves, he told us—and he was forever muttering low words between his empty gums.”
“The toothless villain again!” thought Peterkin.
“We gave him shelter for the night,” continued the old man with his writing. “But long before the moon was up, he had stolen off to the fields where the brooks were white in the darkness—up the steeps to where the waterfalls were splashing into quiet pools with a cheery murmur. He reached over the low banks, listening greedily to the music of the water. He knelt, bent his face close to the gurgling eddies—and began to drink!
“We were all in bed by now and most of us asleep. It was so easy to fall asleep in those good days, with the murmur of the softly playing brooklets in our ears—not at all like to-day, when night is a black stretch of silent terror.
“Suddenly, in every household, someone sat up straight in bed. In every household, someone had noticed that the sound of the water was growing fainter and fainter. First one brook and then another seemed to die down—as if it were suddenly drying up!
“We rushed out into the village square, across the fields, up the hills. The moon came out and showed us, gleaming bare, the dry and empty beds of many of our beloved brooks. Yes, nothing but dry, pebbled ruts, where no stream trickled and no water sang. Where was the villain who had worked this trick of tricks?
“We found him soon bending down at the edge of one of the last of our brooks. He was drinking, drinking, drinking. He was sucking the pearly water up, up into his puffed cheeks. He struggled to his feet as we surrounded him; he brushed the drops from his sagging mouth and started to run away. But he was bloated and heavy with all the water he had gulped and he could not move. We seized him and flung him into the water. He splashed and puffed and staggered clumsily, dripping, back into our midst. Hate was in his wet face, and his red gums were like round, snapping tongs.
“‘You men of the Rippling Brooks,’ he hissed, ‘your ears are far too sharp! Your happiness is all in the ripple of water—and I am here to take away that happiness. So if I cannot steal your brooks—why, then, I shall steal your ears! From now on, I decree that you, your wives and your children and all your neighbors shall be deaf. You shall live henceforth in a valley of silence, where not even the whir of a wren on wing shall come to your ears. Henceforth, all who dwell in this valley shall be deaf—and all who enter it shall be deaf, too—until I come again to set you free from the spell of utter silence.’
“Then the moon plunged behind a black cloud. This toothless demon disappeared with a terrific burst of thunder.
“And that was the last sound that has been heard in this valley since he cursed us with silence and sorrow.”