The Tale of the Silent City (House Item)

Book Text
A local Dervin legend.

Many Dervins still tell this tale to discourage their children from wandering too far from their camps into the desert.

In the days of the great forest there was a city of beauty. The city was filled with rare flora and fauna not to be found anywhere else. And the people of this city was just as beautiful. Bright smiles and cheerful souls filled the streets. Songs of love and peace rang through the air. But this city of beauty was a secret that only a few people knew.

Some people dreamed of the secret city and looked for it, never to find it. But some people did find the secret city of beauty and were so enamored by it that they could not pull themselves back to their families and homes to tell the world of its beauty. So the city remained a secret.

In this secret city of beauty, there was a good king. The king loved children, but he had no wife and no children. He wanted to share the many toys in his palace with children. He opened the palace doors to children so they could visit him and enjoy the wondrous toys. The joy of the children brought even more beauty to the secret city.

One day, the gods heard of this city and the king's wondrous toys. They became jealous. They wanted to see the city and the wondrous toys of the king, but the gods were to big to fit in the city. The gods became mad and burned the great forest that the secret city was in. The gods then buried the city with sand so that no one could ever find it again. The city of beauty became the Silent City, no longer filled with the laughter of children.

Many ages passed and the sand that buried the great forest and the secret city became the home for the tribes of Ro. And in the tribes of Ro there were the children of the tribes. The children played all day on the sand dunes and they danced all night.

Sometimes, the children of the tribes of Ro wandered too far from their campfires at night. Chasing each other beyond the safety of the tents the children would hear the sound of toy bells. The children crept closer to the bells and farther away from the safety of their mothers and fathers.

The children got closer and closer to the bells and just when they felt they were there... up from the sands came a hand that grabbed their ankles. The children screamed, but they were too far from their parents. No one could hear them. The hands pulled them beneath the sand never to see their mothers and fathers again.

The hands were the hands of the dead people of the secret city buried beneath the sand. The city was not beautiful any more and the people were now ugly and evil creatures of death. The good king of the city became twisted and tormented. His palace was silent. He missed the laughter of children.

The king of death commanded the dead creatures that were once his people to dig their way to the surface of the sand dunes. He commanded them to lure little children to their clutches. The children were pulled beneath the sand and dragged to his palace to live in the darkness.

Every now and again, a child can hear the toy bells if he wanders too far. Every now and again, a new child is dragged beneath the sand to the darkness of the palace of the king of death in the Silent City.