The River That Carried No Grudges

On the banks of the river Odre sat two villages that had hated each other for a hundred years.

Nobody could quite remember why. Something about a boat, and a goat, and a wedding gift that had gone in the wrong direction. The story changed depending on who told it.

Every year, on the longest day of summer, the elders of both villages met in the middle of the bridge to renew the feud. They shook their walking-sticks at each other, exchanged three ritual insults, and went home satisfied.

One year a child — a small one, from the north bank — wandered down to the water while the elders were busy insulting each other above her, and asked the river a question.

“River,” she said, “who was right? My grandmother, or theirs?”

The river, which had been flowing for eleven thousand years, laughed under its breath the way old rivers do, in small quick ripples.

“I have been carrying their arguments to the sea since before either of them were born,” it said. “I have never kept one.”

“Why not?” asked the girl.

“Because I am a river,” it said, “not a cup.”

The child thought about this for a long time. Then she climbed the bank, walked onto the bridge, and tugged on her grandmother’s sleeve.

“Grandma,” she said, “the river doesn’t remember. Why do we?”

Her grandmother opened her mouth to answer — and could not. Neither, when asked, could the other grandmother.

They stood on the bridge for a while. Then one of them laughed, and then the other, and they went together to the south-bank inn and shared a jug of dark beer, which, both of them agreed afterward, was the finest thing that had happened in either village in a hundred years.

::: moral A grudge is a cup you carry. A river is lighter. You can choose, at any time, to be more river. :::