Where the Fjord Sleeps

he fishermen of the coast did not speak the old name, because names wake things. They called the fjord 'the sleeper,' and they spoke of it the way one speaks of a grandfather who has been kind and must not be disturbed. At every tide they left an offering at the water's edge — bread, a coin, a lock of hair — and the water took it and gave back fish, and the bargain held.

One season a young man came from the city with nets and a motor and a theory about yields. He laughed at the offerings. He went out at dawn and came back at noon with a hold full of fish, and he laughed again, and the old fishermen did not laugh, because they knew what a full hold meant when the sleeper was not fed.

He went out a second time. The water was still. Too still — the kind of still that is the surface of a held breath. His motor failed in the middle of the fjord, in water so black it looked like a hole cut in the world. He leaned over the side to see, and he saw, in the deep, a shape the size of a longship, turning slowly, dreaming with its eyes open.

They found the boat drifting at dusk, empty, the nets still full. The offering stone at the shore was gone, and in its place was a single silver scale, the size of a man's palm, and the old fishermen said nothing, and left two offerings at the next tide, and never spoke the young man's name again, because names wake things, and they did not want him to wake.