Washington Horror Blog

Great Falls of the Potomac, Year of the Starling

  The old, sick, ugly, useless woman looked up at the Great Falls of the Potomac, then looked downstream to where the churning water relaxed, spread out, and resumed its steady flow to the sea.  Nobody could swim the Potomac:  everybody died in it.  Great Bear Jumper thought it was because his warriors were weak and not on the right path.  Every summer he prepared them again, but nobody could ever get across the Potomac.  Every summer, the canoes came back with the warriors who failed to make the crossing—the ones that lived long enough to be pulled to safety.  Ardua kept the others.

  Golden Fawn was the only one who knew about Ardua.  Nobody called her Golden Fawn anymore.  She had lived too long and was a childless burden to the nephews that hunted for her.  Only her great niece Tripping Girl would listen as the old, sick, ugly, useless woman told the Old Stories about the Potomac.  Tripping Girl liked to listen to stories.

  Golden Fawn told Tripping Girl about the Great Ice Time and how The People had to travel for months at a time to follow the herds.  Sometimes the Great Ice would sneak up on them in the night if they weren’t careful.  Sometimes the Great Ice would creep away.

  There came a time when The People were being terrorized by Ardua, an evil spirit that could turn good people bad.  The Wise One came up with a plan to trap Ardua in the Great Ice.  The next time a woman went into labor, he had them clean the baby and hide it.  Then he took the placenta and rubbed it over a heavy stone.  He wrapped the stone in swaddling clothes and threw it into the edge of a lake, near the Great Ice—late, late at night.  Ardua was fooled, and dove into the river, thinking it was a newborn baby she could possess.  Ardua was very evil, but sometimes stupid.  She pushed and pushed to enter the baby, but it was hard and would not yield.  Ardua was too stubborn to give up, and was still scratching at the bloody stone as the water around her suddenly joined the Great Ice.

  Ardua was trapped in that glacier for thousands of generations of The People.  When it melted, Ardua stayed in the water because she could not remember anything else.  She stayed with her stone.  

     The People knew that Ardua had awakened the first time they came to the new river—the Potomac.  This was the farthest north they had been in 10,000 years.  The Great Falls beckoned to them to set up camp, but The Old Ones sensed Ardua and took The People far, far away from the Potomac.

     It was only after the Delaware War that the people returned to the Great Falls of the Potomac.  Nobody listened to The Old Ones anymore—after so much war, they clearly had no magic or wisdom left.  The Old Ones did not even know where the starling had come from—this strange, glossy bird that shimmered with a
hundred tantalizing colors.  The Old Ones did not know what it meant when the Cherokee had said that the Seminole had seen white men, and that they rode on magical beasts called horses.  The Old Ones knew nothing, so nobody listened to their warning about Ardua.  Only Golden Fawn remembered and believed
because her son had been the first to drown in the Potomac.

     Now a hundred moons had passed since his death.  Great Bear Jumper had decided to move The People further north, but Golden Fawn was still afraid of Ardua.  She knew that Ardua would keep killing.  She told Tripping Girl all of this because she was afraid that someday The People would be brought back here and not know about Ardua.  She told Tripping Girl never to forget about Ardua of the Potomac, and to make sure every generation knew.  Tripping Girl remembered.  It was the Year of the Starling, and the old, sick, ugly, useless woman died before the journey.  Tripping Girl saw thousands of starlings circling overhead as The People trudged away.  Great Bear Jumper was afraid of the birds, but he did not know why, and did not tell anybody.  Tripping Girl thought they were pretty, but she thought she heard them crying, “Ardua, Ardua, Ardua,” as The People left on their journey, and it made her shudder.  She clung to her mother and looked away from the starlings and the Potomac.