XVIIITHE VALLEY OF SILENCE
AS soon as dawn was over the glacier the next day, Peterkin was on his feet and sipping a good gulp from his flask of the Water of Bounceability. You see, he dreamed about this magic gift of the princess’s as he lay a-sleeping ... and really, what an easy thing it was to cross the boundary mountains, now!
Just one little swallow—and then a hop, skip and jump! Up, up and over! Over the tree-tops, over the glacieritself ... then down into the valley on the other side.
As he floated to the earth there, a strange hush seemed to fall on him. It was the quiet sense of absolute stillness. He walked forward a little way, then stopped in bewilderment. Not a sound—not a whisper of anything. He could not hear even the crunch of his feet upon the greensward. He called out, but somehow his voice sank away into nothing. The trees rustled silently; a great, frothing brook went tumbling down through a bit of woods without a murmur. All was quiet.
A young peasant girl came toward him, leading a horse across the fields—but Peterkin could hear neither the patter of her feet nor the hoof-beats of the horse.
“What ho!” cried he, “I must have gone suddenly deaf! I can’t even hear myself speaking. Here, girl, tell me what’s wrong with my ears?”
The peasant maid halted her horse; she looked at Peterkin with startled wonder. Her gaze settled on his moving mouth—and her eyes grew larger and larger with surprise. Suddenly she snatched a little twig from the branch of a nearby tree, stripped it and commenced to trace queer letters with it in the dust of the road.
“Phew!” thought Peterkin. “She must be deaf herself. It’s a good thing I went to school and learned to read andwrite!” Then he looked down at what the little girl had traced upon the road—and this is what he read:
“What are you eating?”
Peterkin laughed a noiseless laugh. Then he snatched the twig from her and wrote in reply:
“Nothing.”
“Then what makes you move your mouth so queer?” she asked in writing.
“I’m talking,” he scribbled back.
“What does talking mean? That’s a word we know nothing about in this valley.”
“Then how do you understand one another? And why don’t you make words with your mouth?” he traced.
“We write to each other—like this. There would be no use in talking like you do. We are all deaf.”
“All of you?”
“Yes, everybody in the valley.”
“Oh, then this is a valley of silence,” wrote Peterkin.
“Silence? What is silence?”
“Why, silence is when there is no noise.”
“What is noise?” she scrawled.
Poor Peterkin had to give it up after that. He tried to describe to her what the wind was like when it roared in wintry weather—or how the birds sing at evening in the woods—or how men can understand each other’s smiles and scowls by simple noises which they make with their mouths. But she only shrugged her shoulders and sighed. At any rate, Peterkin thought it was a sigh—but he could not hear it.
So he marched along at her side in strange silence, making no noise and hearing none, until they came into the center of a little village.