The Magnus Archives - RQ Network Feed Drop – The Silt Verses: Chapter 1: Let Me Speak First Of Revelations

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

This month we are featuring a feed drop of one of many brilliant podcasts on the RQ Network: The Silt Verses.  The Silt Verses is an award winning, full-cast audio drama that lurks in the grey area between horror and contemporary fantasy.    This first episode follows Carpenter and Faulkner as they begin their search for other members of their forgotten river-God faith. This will lead them to start traveling up the length of their deity’s great black river, searching for holy revelations amongst the reeds and the wetlands.  The Silt Verses is from Jon Ware and Muna Hussen, the same talented creators behind I Am In Eskew.  Introduction and outro by Ryan Hopevere-Anderson. Listen to The Silt Verses on The Rusty Quill website, on Acast, or listen wherever you get your podcasts, or to learn more about The Silt Verses check out its official website.   Credits: Written and directed by Jon Ware Produced by Muna Hussen Edited by Sammy Holden Performed by B. Narr and David S. Dear Performed by B. Narr and David S. Dear Recurring Cast and Collaborators: Jamie Stewart, Jimmie Yamaguchi, Lucille Valentine, Méabh de Brún, Calder Dougherty, Daisy Bilenkin, Gordon Houston, Damien Nieweswand, Parley Cook, Jonah Knight, Mintaka Angell, Caleb Del Rio  Content warnings: Drowning Flooding Human Sacrifice Graphic injury Gun Violence Body Horror Cults  Mentions of  Familial Death, Child death, Murder  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi everyone, it's Ryan here, the voice of Colin Becker in The Magnus Protocol. Today we are bringing you the first episode from one of the brilliant podcasts in the RQ network, The Silt Verses, which is created by the incredible John Ware and Munihusun, who also create I'm an Askew. The Silt Verses is a full cast audio drama that lurks in the grey area between horror and contemporary fantasy. The first episode follows Carpeter and Faulkner as they begin their search for other members of their forgotten River God faith. This will lead them to start travelling up the length of their deity's great black river searching for holy revelations amongst the reeds and the wetlands.

You can listen to more of this incredible series with over 40 episodes by searching for the Silt Verses. Wherever you listen to your podcasts, by clicking the link in the show notes below or by visiting RustyQuill.com or TheSiltVerses.com for more information. Have fun and enjoy the episode. Marco? Polo? Marco? Polo? Marco? I have spent my life in the shadow of this great and winding river.

I have always dwelt in the shadow of my god. Polo! My Nanak Glass, who knew the straits and sacred tides of the lower Delta better than any fisherman I ever met, would tell me that there were people who'd been born to the land, and there were people who'd been born to the water. And the people born to the land who were grasping controlling clinging to life and wealth as the sapling clings to the dead soul they would never understand what it meant to belong as Nana and I did body and spirit to the water. Carpenter! Polar... Faulkner?

He's dead. The kneeling man, who's been bound to a post here in the depths of mudflats, vote of hooks caught into the flesh of his throat and ears, his skin baked and dried by a dozen sunrises, and his facial features eroded away into a sheet of curved white bone by a dozen high tides, is indeed dead. We've been on the road for sixteen days and I am beginning to wonder if I can stand Faulkner

at all. He was well hidden. Almost missed him in the reeds. What, uh, what are you looking at? The rope works sloppy. He almost got free. Anything in his pockets? Already checked. No wallet, no phone. There was a prayer mark etched into the post, close to the bottom. Three vertical lines, a crossed circle.

I don't recognize that one. I mean either. Probably it's a regional sign of worship. Under the circumstances, an obelisk of Mark. Sacrifice. Exactly. I shall praise him. Trawler man of Titan flesh father in the water you're the mouth devouring in the mouth returning

You stand tall at the high tide and crawl on your belly at the low tide we your chosen faithful Acknowledge your sign and wait further revelations and patience and in grace for we know that when the river rises in flood class They never came here. I'm sorry, but birds got to his eyes. There's no bloating in the stalk. This was a natural death. Someone made a sacrifice, but the angels never came. Why not? Grace are the trawler man's mysteries, Brother Faulkner. And greater still are the territories he has to cover.

Come on, let's get back up on the road. See if we can find somewhere to stop for breakfast. Uh, shouldn't we untie him? We can push the body out into the mud. Let the high tide carry him out into the river. He was an offering, it's only right to see that he's taken. If we push him out into the river, odds are good he'll end up washing up in some fisherman's pots further downstream, and then the police will get involved.

If he stays where he is, it's more likely they'll never find him, and they'll never know we were here either. It's the least we can do for whoever made the sacrifice. We leave no trace that can't be swallowed up in white silt and black water. Come on, I want a goddamn cappuccino. A god must feed. A god must be fed. This is a fact agreed upon across every territory of the peninsula. And so, really, the only point of difference between the people born to the water and the people born to the land is the precise nature of the sacrifice we need to make. For Nana Glass there was never any doubt. She'd lived all of her life in the great flat floodplains of the White Gull River's

lower Delta. She'd grown up amongst the lobster catchers and the ferrymen, the picture of virility and hearty male arrogance. And she'd watched the rivers swallow them up, one by one, fathers and sons. Over the long years she pierced her ears and cheeks and lips with seventeen barbed hooks of varying shapes and sizes in devotion to the trawler man. And she wore them proudly out in public without concern that any of our neighbours would dare to rat her out to the lawful authorities. authorities. Nana Glass feared nothing that walked in this world, but she also knew what it meant to fear the thing you loved. That was why she sang as she waded out to the bottom of her garden where the marshland flowed into the water. On the first day of every new year, without fail, there'd be some poor delivery boy, or surveyor, or drifting vagrant, bound and chained at the

posts that marked the tideline. Sackcloth tugged over their faces, the prayers of invitation etched across the wood and their foreheads. Mud swimming up over their waists and around their throats. Blood trickling down from the barbs of the little silver hooks. And Nanaglass would sing the songs of our faith aloud, in kindness and in sympathy, so that our sacrifices would hear the words and understand that their drawn-out deaths had meaning beyond the mundane. So that the trawler man would know that life was being offered and send a fresh flood tide

lapping up through the shallows of our garden, so that his dripping angels in their crawling and shittiness hunger would know it was time to be fed. Terrifying, cruel, unforgettable Nana Glass. When the police cars finally did come roaring through the narrow lanes to Nana's house on the edge of the river, tipped off by some neighbour other, finally plucked up the courage we never did find out which one. When death came to Nana's house, she kept on singing. We could hear her crooning, my brother, Em and me, from our hiding spot behind the tumble dryer in the basement of the old house. Her heavy waders clunking back and forth on the boards as she sang.

I'll forget who I was when the tide comes home. I'll forget what I did when the tide comes home. There'll be no more need for hurt word or deed, for counsel or creed, for sorrow or seed, when the tide comes home. Then all at once a megaphone barked from somewhere outside, telling her to give herself up, and we could hear Nana Glass crack open a window and she began to holler her discordant song towards the distant figures huddled fearfully behind the four police cruisers that were Dear Nana Glass crack open a window and she began to holler her discordant song towards the distant figures huddled fearfully behind the four police cruisers that were parked

in our front yard, firing off her hunting rifle through the open window at the end of each verse, like a kind of obscene punctuation. And even when, as we learnt later, they broke down the front door with a hand-held battering ram, Anana dropped her rifle and ran out onto the wooden jetties at the bottom of her garden, a frail figure in white, fleeing but also, magically, dancing a path down the boardwalk and through the reeds. Even when a blast of shotgun pellets struck her in the shoulder from behind, another blast twisted her broken face right around on its bird-like neck. I am certain that Nana Glass kept on singing right to the end, calling out to the trawler

man as she bore him her life's last offering. Our van is packed with bird-watching equipment, binoculars, cameras, books about the oyster catchers of the Lower Delta. Hidden in the compartment beneath the passenger seat are the items which cannot be explained away. One dilapidated keymark special revolver, one packet of bullets, one prayer chalkboard to help us practice the Troller Man's sacred marks. One tattered copy of the silt verses. The parish has given us enough cash to pay for another week or two of hotel rooms. After that we'll need to make our own way onwards. Brother Faulkner and I have been on the road for 16 days in search of revelations. And I am already

so very tired. Ease away, my grateful skin, trawler man. I will rejoice at skin reshaped in silt, And my fragments will swim in the currents of the abyss. Fill my eyes and mouth with thick and choking mud, Trauleman. I will exult in the death of sight, sensation, and noise. Bear me away into black depths, Trawloman. I will forget my pain and the name I once wore.

Rise like a dark river in my throat, Trawloman, and my drowning lungs will sing of tides and flesh. These are the Silt Verses, first chapter, and I name its disciples thus in order of their arrival. Maeve Brun as Carpenter, Bea Gnar as Falkner, Jamie Stewart as Mason, David S. Deer as Sid Wright, called the Doherty as Stanton. Created by John Ware and Mona Husson. Audio production by SB Procter. Performing her latest hit single. Are you hearing me loud and clear? A smooth, insinuous voice in your stereo? Then let's give a very special thanks and praise to the Saint Electric, because

I know she is with me today, and I hope she's with you too. Whether your daily grind is coming to its end, or just beginning, you know a cup of the good brown joy is the only thing that's going to pick you back up. Stick with us, because after these messages, we're going to be listening to Erin Sands playing one of her best loved classics upon a ceaseless night outside of time. This is Sid Wright, and we're starting your day right with a s- With the finest tunes on our bl- Prayer stamp on the radio's rubbing away.

They should have given us a new van. One with working wipers and a working radio. I didn't realize you were so eager to listen to the enemy's voice. with working whippers and a working radio. I didn't realize you were so eager to listen to the enemy's voice, Brother Faulkner. Do you possess in your heart a secret yearning for the songs of the Saint Electric? Should I watch my back? That's not funny. We need to be able to listen for traffic reports, police bulletins. It's vital to our mission that we can see and hear and-

But forget it, I'm just trying to rile you up. It isn't the radio. We're nearly a hundred miles from Glottage. Soon there'll be no more Iron Towers. Just passed a sign for a diner. We can stop and get you that coffee if you like. What's it called? The Riverside Cafe? You know it?

Out here in the Marishes, if it isn't a Riverside Cafe, it's a waterside view. I grew up somewhere like this, you know? A lot of fishing crews in here. Mmm, based on books, they have pancakes. How many of these people do you think are with us? I'm not with you. Could you catch the waitress's eye? I'm talking about the Faithful. These people have grown up by the sacred water of the river.

They're not like city folk. Some of them will be on our side. If only we could recognize one another. If only we could talk to them. Oh, do you want to stand up and ask them? There's a policeman in the fair corner too. Maybe let's, uh, see if you can convert him before he unholsters his revolver. People don't hold to our faith around here anymore, Faulkner. They have fisher gods and money gods and friar gods and lanterns in darkness. If you want to know what they believe, go drop a coin and the jolly king kippers,

all singing, all dancing, blessing machine out back. Yes, hello, I'll have a cappuccino and the pancakes. Are they thick or crepes? Cause I really like them thick. Yeah. Oh, I'll have the pancakes. Are they thick or crepes? Because I really like them thick. Yeah? Oh, I'll have the pancakes with hash browns and extra syrup. I'll have a green juice. Thanks. They have...pancakes. I read the menu. I just don't want it.

Are you sulking, Faulkner? You shouldn't taunt me. I know I'm wet behind the ears. I know you don't care about anything I have to think or say. But you don't need to be so offensively blatant about it. How else would I make it clear that I don't care about anything you have to think or say? that I don't care about anything you have to think or say. I was joking.

This is a holy mission, sister. This is a pilgrimage up the sacred river, my first pilgrimage. And you keep sneering at me as if none of this means anything. Alright, I'm sorry. You're- So, we should discuss finding accommodation in the next town over, which I think is- I'm sorry, no. Could you go back to saying you're sorry? Did you just sorry my sorry?

Please, any closure on that sorry. Listen to me Faulkner. I've been travelling up and down this river for seven years in pursuit of the Troller Man's signs. I've served the Faith in ways great and small. I've hidden in the deep mud as police convoys ward on past. I've carved his prayer marks into the walls or enemies churches while alarms flared and men yelled out they would find me and shoot me dead. So I can tell you from experience that the holy mission part comes later on when we

deliver a report and the high katabasian blesses a successful pilgrimage and we reflect in private on how it all didn't go to hell. This part, when we're on the road, this is just coexistence and we need to make it as comfortable for ourselves as possible. If I mock you, it's because I need you to mock me back. It's kind of a trust exercise. That's acknowledged. And I apologize if I've been putting too much pressure on you. Honestly, sister, after the stories I've heard, I think I was a little in all of you. Was. I think I was a little in awe of you. Was? My point is, I'd genuinely like to know more about you, Sister Carpenter.

I'd like us to get to know one another, in the hope of becoming friends. That's a fine hope. Ask me anything you'd like. What's Catabase and Mason really like? What's your read on him? He frightens me. Not a bad read. Is that your only question? They say you was present for the Sodden March in 903. Is that true? Oh, how old would you think I am? Not a clue. This is fun. Hit me again.

Were you in the room when the wreck of the Gulf Walker was displayed? I was. And did you see them? The symptoms of the withered tide? The river's rise? I saw the same as every person in that room. If you don't mind me asking, how'd you come into the Faith? I mean, how were you called? Well, I was born into the Faith. I grew up with my grandmother, who was a local priestess of sorts.

After she died, I went into foster care and eventually found my way back to my people. I actually meant it on more of a personal level. When did you first find your faith? As in, what caused it? Like I said, I was born into it, so there's your answer. That's not really an answer. Oh, it'll do for now. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry. You did say I could ask you anything. And I already regret it. Let's go back to the jokes, I liked those better. I just wanted to know what was the moment of revelation. When did you know? Back to the jokes, Faulkner. I don't understand what's so embarrassing about that. I don't need you to.

I'm gonna ring home. Drink your green juice. Children and adults hold different forms of faith. In Nana Glass's old and crumbling house by the Delta, our faith was both an existential certainty and life's grandest, most raucous game. Em and I would run and play for hours in the waterlogged garden, dancing amongst the sweet grass, leaping over the bobbing buoys of the lifeless, sackcloth-covered heads that bobbed in rows along the shallows. Whenever one of us tripped

and fell, the other one would shout, Trawler Man, life has been offered! Trawler Man, take your prize and leave a gift behind! And the fallen sacrifice would leap up, squealing, and we'd run back to the solid ground that was a place of safety, away from the river that was the trawler man's crawling, sodden garden. Once you were back on the dry land, we told ourselves, that meant he couldn't get you. I do remember when I was called in the little angels of Mending Reform House, a squat brick compound with high walls and barred windows in the southern reaches of Glottage, two or three years after the fateful day when the police came for Nanaglas. I was living there amongst a gaggle of other orphans from the

endless religious wars of the western territories. All of us subsisting on a steady syllabus of lessons that I would later come to understand were called deprogramming. We were taught the names of safe, sterile, modern gods. We thanked the Saint Electric for the gift of light and our working television. We praised Augustus, her backyard's pond god, for trickling so sweetly and keeping the gentle goldfish swimming in his waters. For a time I would sneak out of our dormitory room at night, descend into the garden in my bare feet and balefully call upon Augustus to rise up and drown the hateful reform house in black flood and thick silt on behalf of his greater master, the trawler man of tide and flesh.

But Augustus never showed me more than a docile steady dribble from his fountain spout. And soon enough I gave up on religion altogether. And eventually the new songs I had been taught were the only ones I remembered. They tried to keep it from me, what had happened to M. He was too old for his own good. He was, the courtroom concluded, an accessory to the multiple crimes of Nana, and quite likely a co-conspirator, while I, a genuine innocent, had simply been under both of their spells. They say he was a model prisoner within the dusty walls of Fenford Maximum Security Confinement. He took writing classes, which must have been how he stole the chalk. He laboured in the compound kitchen, which would have been how

he secured the knife. And the guards came to trust his polite country boy manners, which I can only imagine was why they weren't paying close attention to him, as he stood up in the exercise yard one sunlit morning, strode across to a fellow prisoner by the name of Cook, who was sweatily attempting a deadlift, and jammed the stolen blade into the man's throat, and yanked it free to unleash a torrent of blood, as Cook swayed, and staggered, and tried to stem the flow, and finally fell, and kicked, and expired there upon the sand. Hence the flood was all M said. The authorities aren't stupid.

They keep a security camera trained on any prisoner thrown into the sealed and soundproof solitary confinement cells, no matter how much that prisoner has been bullied or beaten raw. But they are money strapped, which is why there was only a single camera appearing down at the uppermost corner of M's cramped cell, and it's why nobody bothered to come and check on him. This left him one wall to work on, unobserved, over the next week. When the flood came, it broke open the taps in the prison kitchen, and it drenched the floor of the

warden's private bathroom from an overflowing toilet, and it made the general population cry out in laughter and irritation combined as the sprinklers opened up over their heads. The guards ran back and forth with buckets, and once the warden's toilet had been rescued, and then later once they'd got to everything else. It was hours afterwards before anyone thought to check the security cameras and realise that the sprinklers had also activated in the tiny sealed solitary confinement cells that stood deep in the bowels of the prison. There were five bodies bobbing in the water, their horrified, hallowed faces bouncing gently against the camera before floating away. M was only one of them. Once the cells had been drained and the grotesque corpses cleared away, the guards realized

what he had done, although the scratches on the wall were now faint and smeared and impossible to read. My brother had covered the wall in prayer marks. The second circle of silt, the rhyme submerged, the lock keepers canticle, the secret marks of our faith that signified invitation and sacrifice. I don't know why or how our God responded when the river was so very far away and there were a thousand comrades still locked down in prisons across the peninsula, scratching marks into walls with no hope of ever being answered. Perhaps M's faith was particularly strong, or his prayers had been written in exactly

the fashion that was required of him. Or perhaps the trawler man only intervenes when it makes him laugh. But whatever the reason, M's faith had been rewarded. He'd summoned the Flood in to join him, and the Flood had answered. I didn't know any of this at the time. I simply strolled into the communal dining area of the Reform House early one morning to see my fellow orphans already dressed, and clustered excitedly around the television which was brightly announcing the deaths of five dangerous religious fanatics within the

walls of Fenford maximum security confinement. At that moment I knew which name the newscaster was going to read next. I knew it. With a certainty that I cannot explain. And as my brother's name was read, Hannes' sullen mugshot appeared on the screen. That was when the other children glanced incuriously around to look at me, their smiles glib and uncomprehending, as if they were waiting for me to smile in turn. Aren't we all glad to hear this news. Won't teacher be glad to know that such aberrations of humanity have been wiped away?"

I turned and ran. I ran out through the kitchens, into the fresh and freezing dew of the reform home's garden, out into the world and towards nothing in particular. And all I could think, through hot and angry tears, was that M had been struck down for my disloyalty, that the trawler-man had seen my faiths collapse and had taken my brother to punish me. And as I stood there alone on the empty lawn, crying and sobbing with my hands clenching, that morning I looked down into the depths of her pond and I saw that the goldfish were dead. Bobbing absurdly on the surface of the water upon their sides, their black rolling eyes staring upwards towards me, shiny and still, like five hallowed corpses floating in sealed

cells, and an inexplicable, smooth tide rolled out from the water's heart, slopping over the sill of the pond and soaking my trainers. The silt-verses teach us that all rivers are one river, and all currents, sooner or later, find their way to the same silent garden beneath the waves. This was the first miracle my God showed me. There have been more since, over the years. But that moment, alone in the grey dawn, before a pond full of dead fish. Knowing that I was seen and understanding that all things in this world were connected. That was the first time in my life I knew what terror really was. The first time I truly believed in you, my River. It's me, Uncle.

I'll ring you back. How's the holiday sweetheart? No birds yet. We might have more luck upriver. So I'm not ready to call it quits just yet. And your eldest? Enthusiastic. How about the weather? Oh, fine. Nice and bright. Well the forecast says the skies may yet open up, so be careful.

And keep your eyes in the rear view if it gets slippery. I worry there might be a bad motorist tailing you up one of those narrow country roads. Of course. We're both reliable drivers. Wouldn't you agree? Of course, darling. You know, I just worry about you both. The young lad in particular. I'll keep an eye on him.

You don't need to worry about either of us. Alright. Well, keep me updated, sweetheart. Lots of love. Lots of love. Lots of love. While you were gone, I spoke to some of the fishing folk. Hmm, did you give them our pamphlets? There's a town just north of here. Marcel's Crossing.

Most of them work off the keys there. Go on. A week ago, there was a storm upon the river, a big one. Boats were capsized, catches lost, and one dinghy, the intrepid accrual five, disappears. The police have been combing the river up and down for the past few days. They couldn't find a trace. I would suggest we head down there ourselves and ask some questions. Could be that this was another offering.

Alright. Good work. Anything else? You were right. These people would not count themselves amongst the faithful. They spat when they spoke of the river. They hate going out on the water. They hate their they spoke of the river. They hate going out on the water. They hate their own reliance upon it. They're so fearful. I don't understand it.

Too many bad catches. Too many drowned sons and daughters. too many drowned sons and daughters, too many other options. Come on, let's see this town for ourselves. At a certain point, I have to consider whether Nana Glass's favourite maxim needs to be reworked, because the inhabitants of Marcel's crossing seem to belong neither to the land nor to the water, but rather to be trapped between the two. Their spindly stilted homes and sinking keys clustered awkwardly between the black water and the empty plains. There's a long rambling high street with butchers' shops and tourist tat for desperate anglers and lost hikers.

And at the very end of town, an illuminated pier, just a ramshackle boardwalk that leads out to a promontory packed with a dozen neon-lit shrines where you can drop a coin in and get a blessing. The people look unhappy, resentful of our stares, keeping their heads bowed, turning their faces away from the water even as they launch their dinghies out upon it. Faulkner and I stop off at the town diner. We explain that we are a pair of avid birdwatchers looking to finally track down a great crested shrike. And we begin to learn more about the missing fishing crew. Dyer, Slater, Smith and Butcher, it seems, will all be deeply missed. Although fuller, not so much.

The Intrepid, an elegant little crabbing dinghy with a striking periwinkle hull, was an object of much admiration up and down this stretch of the water. The river storm in which the boat vanished was grim and frightful enough that the sailors who did survive it are greeted with a smatter of applause and free shots of schnapps when they enter either one of the town's two bars. Nobody in Marcel's crossing seems to doubt that the missing crew are dead. And nobody seems to believe that the police will find any bodies, which makes me suspect that disappearances on this stretch of water, like the seasons, are simply a fact of life.

The sacred river is wide here, and much of it is hidden from human sight. Wild and unseen things coo and cackle from their nests amongst the thick fields of cattails. When you toss a pebble into the water's depths, the sound is dull and soft, and the ripples vanish in a heartbeat or less. I'm loath to admit it to Faulkner, but this is exactly the sort of place where our God might lie in wait. We spend the afternoon scratching covert prayers of illumination in hidden places along the deserted waterfront, hoping for a sign to be revealed, any sign, to show us whether

the trawler man was here and I keep thinking to myself but why were there five of them why five what do you have empty rooms here you came from the car park didn't you how many do you want? Two rooms for two people, single beds. We can pay you in cash. Twelve for a single room, twelve and ten for a room with a consecrated mattress. Praise the jolly king, Keper. What does the consecration do?

Uh, hang on, I've got a pamphlet. No, it doesn't matter. Two single rooms. Well, give me five minutes to go up and clean them out. So... What now? We take to the water ourselves.

If there was a miracle here, we need to give the Trawler Man a chance to reveal it to us. If not, we get back in the van and we keep driving in search of something better. We've still got plenty of upriver ahead of us. So to be clear, we're talking about chartering a motorboat? Unless you've got money stashed away that I don't know about, we're talking about stealing a rowboat. Something light and small that makes as little noise as possible. We can take it out onto the tributaries, see

if we can find anything the searchers might have missed. Brother Faulkner, how well can you swim? There are students of the faith who hold that learned swimming is an insult to the Trawler Man. Blasphemous arrogance and sinking to deter the instant of our own sinking in silt-filled water. And I grew up on the Whisper Plains where the canals were unhygienic and polluted. Oh, some day you must really tell me how you were called. Don't worry about giving yourself up to the river too soon, brother. We can always find you a life jacket.

Co-existence isn't working out between Faulkner and I. He's too young in his every expression and every instinct, too accustomed to the barge in his every expression and every instinct, too accustomed to the barge and cumulations of adolescence, too quick to blusteringly leap in and defend his every choice and feeling and utterance, undercutting himself wherever he goes. And he brings out the worst in me as well. I catch myself slapping his suggestions down before they're even out of his mouth. He keeps giving me these anxious searching glances, wondering if he's said something idiotic. And I'm already smirking unpleasantly, as if to confirm that, yes, he has. He's begun to irritate me. There's no other way of putting it.

That night, as we steal down to the town quays, unmoor a long canoe and push it out into the current, I listen to him crash and splash behind me, straining to propel his own torso into the boat without tipping us both up, and I curse my luck that I am not alone in the darkness amongst the gentle currents, venturing up the river of my god in peaceful silence. Instead it's as if I'm being trailed by my own drunk and clumsy shadow. The first tributary is up ahead. It's hidden just past Seddon. What do you think, sister? It should take about 40 minutes to get all the way up to the old distillery on the eastern bank.

Once we're close, the reeds fall back and there's nowhere to hide. Then we turn around. By my estimate, we can explore the first three tributaries in full and make it back to the town while it's still dark. I'm gonna whisper in him as we go. Here goes. Sweet dark mouth, all the peoples of the world emerge from your great dark depths. Sweet dark mouth, you shall widen again. Swallow twisted thoughts and empty desires,

for the towns, the villages, quench the fires of falsehood and thought. Oh sweet dark mouth. We shouldn't have come out here. That's what I'm thinking. It's a waste of our time, and an unnecessary risk. And I'd be much better off getting a good night's sleep. And a moment later I check myself. Why should I, who have witnessed the sudden miracles of my river for myself, suddenly be so skeptical about the idea that he might reveal himself to us out here? Am I losing my way?

Have I forgotten what happened to Em? No, I'm not losing my faith. I simply lack any in Faulkner. I don't genuinely believe that my trawler man, my faint whisper in the night, my divine terror that leaves me awake at three in the morning in every sodden hotel room, sweating and gasping, my eyes wide after each new visit to his deep and drowning garden. I don't believe that my god would speak to this sulky boy as they speak to me. I don't believe that any idea that Faulkner could come up with could lead us to anything divine.

Soon enough, I'm proven wrong. Carpenter. I don't have any song requests. Carpenter, listen. Grab the lamp. There's someone out here with us. Do you think it's- Just grab the lamp, Faulkner. Don't turn it on until I say so. Stand up with me. Carefully. Don't fall in. Keep one hand on my shoulder if you have to.

Shit! Are you alright? Did you feel that? Like a wave. I'm going to look ahead. You look back. Yell out the second you see anything. I see you it carpenter what? in the moonlight in the rain I can see it carpenter I agape! Twin mouths agape!

And then the lamp flickers to life in his hands. And I see it too. The Trawler Man, when he slicks back his oil-skin hat to show you his own true self, has two faces and two mouths. One mouth that devours and one mouth that returns. All raw material which is swallowed up in the belly of the river, altered and recreated in its currents, is washed up again in a second form. In our faith, nothing is wasted. The lost fishing boat, the Intrepid, is drifting gently down the tributary towards us upon

a rolling and inexplicable downriver tide. Brushing up against the reeds, bouncing lazily against the boundary walls of the water before reasserting its course, its crew are still on board. It takes us time, in the dark, in the moonlight, to see just how thoroughly they have been changed. In the dark, in the moonlight, for a moment it seems as if the five fisherfolk have simply frozen in place, playing a great and extended joke upon the two of us, posing in various positions of flight around the boat. One is attempting to scramble up the mast, One is attempting to scramble up the mast. Another is bent halfway over the prow on his back, his mouth hanging open upside down like an awful inverted figurehead. In these eternal, fixed positions, the raw material of their bodies has been twisted and stretched out

in every direction. Like rope and tarpaulin, conjoining with jib and mainsail, their insides and their outsides merging and curving about the contours of the vessel, their heads lolling loose from these great netted sheets of flesh. This boat has been draped in a festive tapestry of skin and everything that is hidden beneath. And across this wet, sluicing canvas, the trawler man's mindless, minor sherabim, the grey hermit crabs, and limbless, sucking rock limpets of the river have gathered in their thousands, writhing in ecstasy, engorged and still feeding upon the fisherfolk's plentiful meat, a sea of life caught in a net of death. It drifts towards us, with intent, a new singular composed of the many, watching us through

sunken and sightless eyes, and for a moment I feel that reality itself is adrift and the trollerman's garden must be rising up in the reflected waters to meet us from below. I catch hold of myself, correct my balance in the rowing boat, reassert my own stable reality as firmly as I can. This is something tangible. Something new and worshipful, comprised of many bodies. And as it drifts towards us, its many frightened eyes gape apart, and its several mouths open, and it begins to moan an organ-piped psalm of rejoicing from its several throats. An immortal saint. We stand there, and the shared terror of our silence, gazing out at what is unquestionably a miracle. And then Faulkner falls to his knees in the rocking coracle and he begins to rejoice.

He praises the Trawler Man for life returned from the abyss, for life reshaped in current and silt, for tangible proof of the changes that are to come upon us all on that great and final day when the river rises at last. He rejoices in the fact that we too have been chosen, no, blessed, to witness this grand wonder of transubstantiation, the great and undeniable harm that is the fishing boat of bone and flesh that was sent to us upon a sacred tide. And I do too, of course. I rejoice. To listen to more of the Silk Verses and check out their other content, please search The Silt Verses wherever you get your podcasts or click the link in the description of this

episode and as always you can visit RustyQuill.com for more information or you can find the creators behind The Silt Verses on Twitter at TheSiltVerses or on their website TheSiltVerses.com. Thanks for listening!