The River Mother II: The Other Child
Twenty years after the flood, a ferrywoman raises a river creature with a name. The man across the water raised its sibling with a ring through its jaw.
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The story
Twenty years after the flood, something hatches in the grave mound on the Old Wall. The ferrywoman Teva hides it under her landing, names it Sedge, and teaches it to come to two knocks on the wood.
But there was a second egg that stormy night, and the man who kept it never learned how to call it anything at all. When the nets fill again, the grain-house owner Varn understands what is feeding the village — and opens the dry pit under his father’s barn.
What climbs out is white, half-starved, and answers only to a brass bell. One animal was raised with a name. The other was raised with a ring through its jaw.
The Reedlands · Part II · Watch the whole story in order →
Stills
Transcript
Every spoken line in the film, with timestamps.
You are not eating that?
Fine.
Fish, then.
Twenty years of flowers. For an animal.
They hear through the wood.
Two knocks.
Never more, or everyone hears.
That is not him.
He is still under there.
But he is why this one is here.
You came out of the sedge.
Sedge, then.
The nets have not been like this
since the year of the wall.
Somebody is feeding something again.
Then be glad, Varn.
The nets are full.
You gave her the ferry back.
Nobody gave me my father back.
If anyone hears that animal,
they take it like they took hers.
Why won't you do it?
Why won't you do what hers does?
There were two?
Two traps that night.
Two eggs.
I asked this village for twenty years
and nobody said a word.
I had a name ready for it.
My father fed that thing for eleven years.
Our nets stayed empty.
Hers filled in a week.
You want to see what one of them really is?
Wait.
Tie the rope back on the bell.
There is a thing in the reeds,
and we all know who has been feeding one.
Then show us what she has been feeding.
You did this once.
She is still here to watch you do it again.
Stop the bell.
It is coming to the bell.
Mine obeys.
Hers does not.
I will set mine on hers.
Do it.
He did not make a monster.
He made a thing nobody has ever once called by name.
Go.
Go where I cannot follow.
Sedge!
It is not listening to him.
It is flinching.
Get back in the hole.
Mere, your name is Mere.
I am sorry it took me so long.
Go on then, both of you.