They'd bring me to the old woods, my father and mother, when I was small.

They'd say its name aloud to me, Penda's Slake.

And they'd tell me that every name in this world has two meanings, one of them buried.

That these woods had a thirst in them, just as you or I had a thirst.

That we had a responsibility to see that thirst was quenched.

So, we would be performers in a piece that had been acted out through the slake again and again,

with people playing the different parts of the chaser and the chaste since

time first began.

They taught me a song, and we sang it together, my mother and father and me, as we walked our way through the woods.

And we whispered it to the sacrifice who had come with us, its head bound and thick sackcloth.

And the harmony of our voices was the sweetest thing I'd ever heard.

And the words were a poetry that was sacred and only ours.

No one else is.

We will bring you terror, and you will bring us meat.

You will make me savage, and we will make you fleet.

You thank us for the chasing.

We thank you for the feast.

The grass leaps up about your carcass,

long and lean and sweet,

will be your chosen hunters,

and you, the god we eat.

These are the silt verses

...