They say that long ago a village stood in a mountain valley, until one spring the river rose in the night and the water closed over its roofs for ever. Only the village bell was saved. It was hung on a post on the north shore of the new lake, and nobody has rung it since.
Ilka, a shepherd girl of twelve, knew the story by heart, because her grandfather Bela told it every winter and he had given her a rule: "Never cross the frozen lake after dark. The ice is thin where the old village lies." But one evening a lamb ran off, and by the time Ilka had caught it, the sun was sinking behind the peaks. The ice would save her an hour. She drove her twenty sheep out onto the lake.
In the middle, the fog fell so suddenly that it seemed to have been waiting for her. She could see neither shore; the world had shrunk to the white breath of her own lungs. The ice groaned, then cracked, a long sound like a door opening somewhere underneath, and the animals began to cry. She wanted to run, but she remembered another of her grandfather's rules: "When you are lost, stand still and listen." So she stood still, her heart hammering. And far away, a deep and unhurried bell began to ring.
She walked towards the sound, and the ice held; whenever she drifted away from it, the ice cracked beneath her, and she turned back, as one turns towards a voice. At last she felt snow and stones under her boots. The bell hung quietly on its post, with frost furring the rope, and not a soul was near it. Ilka counted her sheep, twice, and there were twenty, lamb included. Then Bela came stumbling out of the dark with a lantern. "I did not ring it," he said. "Nobody did."
To this day, the children of the valley learn one thing before any other: when the fog comes, stand still and listen. The way home, they say, will find them.
