A Plea For Plowshares

I was not lost. I was thrown away.

After all my service? After all the blood, pain, sorrow, and chaos that was sown on my fields of destruction, and this is the thanks I get?

And that's not my real name. Talk to that stupid piece of rust in Tuscany, it's still there. That one wasn't thrown away, now was it? Oooh, saint sticks me in a rock, I'm all hot steel, I'm gonna steal your origin story because wah I've got forging issues. Little too much carbon in your blade, wroughty, may your tongue fall out.

Let me tell you my story.

You humans, you've lost your fear of water. You are quite foolish, but we things of earth know that already. For centuries the northern folk threw their swords into lakes, rivers, anything to seek expiation for our existence. The slow-approaching death of old age lets you see clearly what awaits those who choose the path of violence.

But to cover your bloody exploits with running water? Are you mad, or desperate? Do you not remember the poet, who warned, “Wharfe is clear, and Aire is lithe; Where Aire kills one, Wharfe kills five?” Water takes its share of bloody tithe, and no amount of our kind sacrificed in your stead will stop the water from taking its due.

We were glad when the northerners were finally vanquished. Pesky people. Good riddance. Like bending us into a different shape is supposed to ritually kill us? I would like to talk to the idiot who gave them the Sampo, I'd love to have a rather up close and personal discussion with their liver. Or lungs. I'm not picky.

We talk. We sing. Some people can hear it. Most go mad anyway, whether or not they can hear our tales of death.

But now I'm not sure about this plague of professional nosy busybodies you humans call “archeologists.” No fear, I'll give them that. Cooler than quench when it comes to digging up things they should leave well enough alone. Ooh, lookie, graveyards, let's find the curse tablets! Ahh, a temple, let's find the cache of statues! Or skulls! Let's check the teeth for evidence of the Black Death! What, us, believe in curses? Nah, just superstition, let's display all these esoteric things in museums, so everyone can see things in the light that were buried in the dark!

Idiots.

What if they choose to wake up and do their jobs?

And now you're grubbing around in waterways! What are you thinking? Charging headlong into every cenote, sunken ship, and rip tide to retrieve treasure? Do you really think that a mere few centuries are enough to erase the dangers of the deep? If something wrecked a ship, and ships vanish daily, do you honestly think the danger is gone now?

Well, if you keep “sacrificing” your plastic garbage to the ocean, you may get a reckoning sooner rather than later. Don't make us teach all the orcas how to take you out.

If you're foolish enough to dig up what others tried to wet-bury, then you must accept responsibility for the consequences. You think all these watery tarts giving up sword after sword recently is coincidence? A product of your superior intellect? Better coffer dams and restoration techniques?

Can't find me, can you?

See, I'm the same sword. I'm older than you think. I was ancient before the Angles and Saxons mingled their ores and wrote down what little they knew of my past. I was ancient when that dratted Ulfberht signed his name to his work and bandied himself about as Wayland re-fleshed. I was ancient when I was thrown in a lake, to sink into the cave at the bottom, a feast-hall for ogres.

Bottoms of lakes are all haunts for "ogres." Each lake has, or had, its monster. Whether or not it dies – or you killed it off – is up for you to find out. Some find out the terminal way. Good luck with that lottery; keep probing. I'll be lying here watching it unfold. Maybe you should explore more cenotes? Blue holes? Waterfalls? The Rivers Wharfe and Aire would love to have a word with you, even after centuries of stubborn humans trying to make them “safer.”

Even where I lurk, I've heard about some of the monsters in the New World. Snapping turtles! Alligators! Giant catfish and tarpon!

Where is “here?” I'm not telling you. You would turn this place into another Loch Ness, with all those nosy busybodies and their prying “equipment.” It's bad enough with your intrusive archeologists with their SONAR and LIDAR and other scary ALL CAPS acronyms that can't keep out! Stupid SCUBA. Go away!

Have you noticed how many swords are suddenly being “un-aquafied?” Not unearthed, though there are more of those as well. Kids on vacation, underwater archeologists, people getting off ferries, far East workers digging a trench through a swampy area, it seems that everyone's finding swords in some body of liquid! And you're excited about this?

You fools. You stupid, thoughtless, insane creatures. Chasing after archeologists like some Indiana Jones fan club, not even listening to the anthropologists' warnings. But of course, the natives just never know what they're talking about, do they? Oh, nooo, they've only lived there for millennia, adapted, struggled, survived. If you used that logic center you claim to have, that would imply that their “myths and legends” have more than a touch of truth in them, wouldn't it? What better way to preserve knowledge than in the stories they tell?

I was made in the long ago. Your hands took hard rocks and hit them against other rocks to draw out the fibers of my being through complete destruction of the clay surrounding me. My mother, if you will, incinerated in birthing me. I was beaten, bent, beaten again, repeatedly held in fires the same temperatures as the magma that formed me. Forged into a shape against my will, made supple and sharp for one reason only: to kill your kind.

I was given to the one who was the best killer. I was used, and used, and used again. And then the killer fought an even better killer, and I was taken as treasure to the bottom of a lake. I was displayed as a trophy. At least I was not used for killing.

And then that killer had a son, who went out into the world to kill. And was wounded, and returned, and died in his mother's arms. And that other killer pursued his wounded game, met the mother with his own borrowed sword, and it was not good enough. I was wrenched off the wall, and I did the killing. I was further used to ensure the son was killed. You think I was melted in that one's blood? Why his, and not his mother's? Really?

I was brought back to the upper world. I was substituted for the sword left behind, renamed, used again and again for killing. Left in barrows, stolen, bequeathed, used against my will, over and over. Eventually thrown in another lake, because that became a better option than cairn or grave. Harder to hear our song through the weight of water, which has its own voice of death.

I became the property of another lady in another lake. Then I was wrested from her grasp by a mighty magician and given to his pet killer. More killing, but justified killing, in their minds. Because that makes it better? But he fell in battle as well, given to his minion to return me to a lake, any lake. No one knows where I am, what lake's lady holds me. And I want it to stay that way.

Have you figured it out yet? Do I have to spell it out?

The ladies of the lakes are handing back their ill-gotten goods.

Grendel's mother was a “lady” too.

I was thrown away, and yet you beg for my former master's return.

The ladies have had enough. They are giving you your ill-conceived wish.

What do you think will happen if it becomes my turn to rise again from the water?