The Grass Spirit

In the mountains south of the rivers there lay a village called Stone-Below, ringed by terraced fields. Among its folk was a man named Stone-Root, diligent to a fault and stubborn as old oak; he worked his land like a general, and every weed must fall. Yet one stubborn tuft by the mountain spring defied him: each spring he cut it, and by the next dawn it stood green again, as if unharmed.

Stone-Root grew bitter. "This weed robs the soil and starves my grain," he told his family. "I will dig out its roots for good." They pleaded; he would not hear.

On a still night in late autumn, under a pale moon, he took his hoe to the tuft to rip it from the earth. The blade had sunk a foot when a voice came, thin as wind through reeds: "Old sir, stay your hand. Stay."

He started, and saw no one. Then, amid the grass, a child stood, scarcely a foot tall, robed in living green, her face like a young leaf. No ghost, no mortal: a spirit of the grass.

Stone-Root found his courage and barked, "What thing are you, to bar my way?"

The child folded her sleeves and bowed. "Sir, do not be angry. I do not plead for myself. This spring is bound to the earth's veins; its source runs shallow and clouds with ease. The grass I gather binds the soil in a net, sifting sand and clearing mud, so your village drinks without taint. Uproot me, and the spring silts and turns bitter, not your house alone will suffer."

Stone-Root doubted, yet he remembered how neighbor wells turned salt in drought while this spring ran sweet. His heart softened a little. "Then what do you ask?"

"Nothing." She smiled. "Only that you leave three feet beside the spring, where my kind may rest. Your fields are wide; what is one corner to you?"

Stone-Root stood silent. At length he flung down the hoe. "I am old," he said. "To wrestle grass for three feet, is that not a small and grasping thing?" He piled stones to mark a boundary around the tuft and never touched it again.

Thereafter, in years of great drought, the neighbor wells ran dry while Stone-Root's spring flowed as before. The villagers marveled; he only smiled and said nothing.

Some years on, Stone-Root sat by the spring with his grandson on his knee. The boy, scarce three, pointed at the grass. "Grandfather, a little one sings inside the grass." Stone-Root stroked his head and watched the verdure stir; a breeze passed, and the leaves whispered answer. "Go listen, then," he said. "Only do not frighten him."

The Chronicler of the Strange remarks: that plants should bear spirits proves not that they must bewitch or harm the living. Stone-Root, a mere tiller of earth, could make a pact with the unearthly and keep his boundary, so the spring stayed pure, and men called it a blessing. Those today who strip the hills and fill the waters, greedy for every inch of profit, might look upon this surrendered three feet and feel some shame. Thus I set down the tale.