The Eight Wilds Bestiary: The Stone Beak
A stone beak juts from the southern cliff, silencing those who gossip; pass beneath it and your tongue stiffens for three days.
Upon the shaded side of the southern mountain stands a sheer cliff, and within it is set a stone shaped like a bird's beak, cold to the touch and greenish in hue. The locals call it the Stone Beak. It is neither stone nor fowl, and none knows whence it came.
When a person given to idle talk, false tales, or spiteful gossip passes beneath it, the root of the tongue stiffens suddenly, and no word may be spoken for three full days, after which speech returns. The village gossips all feared it and took the long way round.
There was a woman named Aji, who loved to recite the faults of others; the small matters of the lane, once through her mouth, swelled into storms. Hearing of the Stone Beak, she sneered: "Children fear ghosts; I fear none." One day she passed before the cliff, still loud in recounting a neighbor's private shame. Soon her tongue turned to wood and stone; she opened her mouth and no sound came. In fright she went home. For three days she could not speak, and wrote her wants with a brush, to the neighbors' quiet mirth. When the term ended and her tongue loosened, Aji shut her door to guests and from then on kept her peace; when others spoke ill, she only waved them off.
The village elder said: "The Stone Beak is no spirit, but a curb upon the mouth. Idle words wound without blood, and so heaven set this stone to clamp them." After that, the people beneath the southern mountain minded their speech.