Walsoken

Walsoken is a settlement at the fen edge of the Northern Marches, and it is known chiefly for its dykereeve, the officer who keeps its cuts and causeways. For three summers she walked the edge of a blighted patch near the village and set down what she found: no insects, no birds, no worm casts, and cattle that refused to cross the line even when driven. In all that time the only living thing she saw inside was a dog that chased a hare over the edge and came straight back out. Her notes are among the plainest accounts the march has of what blight looks like from close by. Whether she is the Dykereeve Esther Sutton whose Three Seasons at an Edge appeared in 4617 no one in the village will quite say, though the three seasons invite the guess.

Blight in the march has a sharp edge that can be walked and measured: grey grass that never greens, thorn that neither leafs nor dies, water that loses all taste. Nineteen patches are known, five of them creeping a few feet or yards a year. Nobody has been harmed by walking through one, but nobody in four centuries is known to have spent a night inside. The fen calls the condition corruption without embarrassment.

For the traveller: the edge is easy to see once pointed out. Cross it by day if you must, never camp inside it, and believe the cattle.