The Slumbered

Overview

The Slumbered are the herds, flocks, and villages that the Great Slumber has left standing in its Drowse Field. The Slumber is a face of the Unformed, the absence of wakefulness, and it does nothing to them but what it does to everything: it takes away the reason to move. They are alive, warm, and breathing, stopped wherever they were, and somewhere inside each of them the sleeper knows and cannot wake.

Appearance

A field of the Slumbered looks like a picture of a day: cattle standing with grass in their mouths, a dog halfway through a stretch, a woman at a gate with her hand on the latch, a child in a doorway. Their eyes are open and slow to blink, and their chests rise once in a long while. Dust settles on them, and birds that come down among them settle too. The air around them is warm and still and smells of hay and sleep, and the only sound is breathing, very slow.

Habitat and Range

They are found ringed around a Slumber field: in a pasture where a herd stopped, in a village whose fires went cold under the pots, on a road where a party lay down. The outermost of them stand at the field's edge, and travellers who see beasts standing unwakeable on a hillside know to turn back.

Behaviour and Temperament

They do nothing. A Slumbered beast can be pushed over and will lie as it falls; a person can be led by the hand a few steps and will stop. They do not eat or drink, and the Drowse keeps them from starving for a long time. They hold no will of the Slumber.

Abilities

The Drowse rests on them and carries a little way from them. Whoever sits down among the Slumbered to rest feels a sweet heaviness in the limbs, and a party that camps beside a stopped herd may not break camp in the morning. Noise, a drum, a bell, a marching song, and steady motion hold it off.

Life Cycle

They are not born. When the Slumber lifts, most wake slowly over days, weak and confused, with no sense of how long they stood; some never wake, and die at last where they stopped.

Uses and Dangers

They give nothing, and they are bait without anyone meaning them to be: kin who come to carry their own home are the Drowse's next. Rescuers go in roped, in pairs, with drums, and carry the stopped out at a run.

Lore and Belief

People worn down to the end of their strength sometimes call the Slumbered the rested and envy them. They are not resting; they are aware of everything and can act on none of it. Basin herders say a cow that stops chewing and stands too long in the evening has heard the Slumber, and drive the whole herd home at once.

Where It Appears

• The Great Slumber