In the River's Wake

I remember the rain….

Thunder tore through the air and resounded off the mountainside as Clara plodded along, the rough dirt road now turned to swirling mud beneath her feet. Shivering, she pulled her hood tighter around her face and shifted the cloth bag with all her belongings beneath her cloak. She had traveled for two weeks to get her hands on a parcel of healing herbs found only in the city, and she was not about to let the precious lump tucked under her left arm become ruined by the rain now. Simon's waiting…I hope he hasn't worsened…too much.

Clara squinted her eyes against the dark sheets of rain, and through half-closed lids she could easily picture her smallest brother's face. Red-haired and rosy-cheeked, he had always been her favorite sibling. Despite the tussles he often got into with the blacksmith's son, a tall boy with whom he should never have dared to pick fights, she was always able to see beyond the freckled terror that drove Clara's mother wild. She smiled sadly at the memory of the Autumn Dance, when Simon had delighted in pulling the ribbons from all the young girls' braids. He hadn't been allowed outside once over the past month.

The sea of mud sucked at her leather shoes, swallowing one whole and slithering up her ankle like a serpent's maw. Clara tugged at her leg, and with a grunt of effort pulled the sticky foot free from the muck. She wished she owned a pair of high boots for nights like these, but the wish was fleeting compared with her fervent desire to complete her journey home. Simon's condition had been stable when she had left; his face had been pale and his brow sweaty, but the only signs that he had more than a passing fever were the raised rashes spreading across his shoulder blades, patterned in angry circles that marred his fair skin. The village doctor had grimaced at the red marks and pronounced them rare. He had never seen this disease outside the city before. The sickness was more common there, a concern that, if treated swiftly, was usually not fatal. Even the poorest of the city folk could scrape together enough coin to obtain the medicine, but the poorest of the city folk were among the richest of the villages that dotted the surrounding countryside. Her mother had thrust nearly half the family savings at Clara and told her to go; her eldest son had a family to take care of, and Clara was next in line.

Simon had smiled at Clara the day she left the village. He had winked, scratched his itching back, and said that he'd be up and ready for "that nasty brew" when she returned. Is he smiling now?

Crooked fingers of lightning arced overhead, reaching out for any unsuspecting victims on the higher ground. The sudden brightness of the black sky jolted Clara from her fretting and spurred her onward even faster. Her village at the foot of the mountain was visible now, a dark splotch against the gray rock, and she clutched her parcel closer to her chest. Almost there now.... She pictured a warm fire in the hearth of her home, miniscule compared to the roaring stoves in the city but more than welcome after a night such as this. We have so little wealth compared to the city folk…but what we have is enough for me. A small smile hovered on her lips, and for the first time in two weeks, stirrings of true peace warmed her from the inside. Soon she would give her brother the herbs, and they could go about their lives as they should, enjoying the good tidings nature bestowed. She was almost there.

By the time she could make out single houses, the rain had lessened considerably, and the sky had faded from ominous black to dreary gray. Clara continued forward until she could see the beginning of the main path that wound through the entire village, then stopped. A cold tingling crawled over her skin, and she closed her eyes in shock. Am I delirious? Wait…. She looked down at her feet as she opened her eyes once more, and saw as well as felt the small streams of brown that twined their way around her feet. An age spanned before she could shift her eyes to the fore.

Thigh-high water, the foam of a fast-flowing river just beginning to disperse among the surface, coursed through the whole of the village. The deep ditches alongside of the mountain were completely submerged, having served their purpose until they could no longer bear the power of the flood. Few houses stood unbroken; most had entire walls torn away, the interiors bare of any furnishings but the heavy debris that the torrent had thrown upon them. Some were mere heaps of wood and rubble. No trace of the carefully tended vegetable plots could be seen, nor any sign of the clay pots of flowers that often stood alongside the doorways. A scrap of cloth whirling crazily on the water raced toward Clara and clung to her left leg, clammy with dark filth. Shivering, she snatched the thing from her skin, holding it up with an unsteady hand. Beneath the layer of grime, she could make out a hand-stitched pattern of pine trees. Children's clothing....

Grasping the cloth tightly in her fist, Clara struggled through the viscous water, not caring about the chill that shot up her calves as she moved forward. Even without her traveling pack and bag of herbs, the force of the water would have hampered her approach, but their added weight made every movement a trial. She bent at the pressure that warred against her, using all her strength not to submit and bow like the poor souls below. Only a few treacherous steps in, she'd tossed aside her over-bright hopes of the inhabitants seeking shelter before the flood. The ditches had been dug for that very purpose, since the farmers had all predicted heavy rain come springtime. They stretched far beyond the width of the village, six paces deep, and should have diverted any flow around the homes and gardens. They had remained here throughout her journey, she knew this by the feeling in her gut; they had been confident in their planning. But the gods had been cruel. If anyone was left alive, she would have to find them now…as well as the dead.

I remember the river that flowed so cold....

As the water level fell slightly beneath her frozen legs, Clara could make out bobbing, lifeless hands that rose above the surface when the flood rippled, then sank beneath the water once more. Stifling the roiling of her sickened stomach, she pressed onward, only one thought on her mind as a certain cottage came into view. A battered cottage that had somehow braved the torrents to remain mostly intact except for one unlucky wall. Her home.

Mother...Simon...gods, let it not all be for nothing.... The scrap of cloth flew from her outstretched hand as she neared the place she had lived for all her years; saving anyone and anything would take both her hands and all her will, yet she held onto the bag of herbs she had traveled so far to claim. With a few last torturous steps, Clara's mud-coated boots hit the wood of her cracked door frame. A tremor rushed through her, her breath coming in shallow rasps as she imagined the wreckage within. The images of gray, limp hands and the bodies beneath them burned into her mind and scorched her heart, and she prayed with every mote of faith inside her that these images would not come before her in this ruined home.

She saw her mother first. The brown working dress, worn soft by time and toil, encased a sodden, unmoving form that had been helplessly hurled against a wall. The wood anchored in soil and clay had done the impossible, stayed standing in the direct path of the flood when all other homes fell to pieces before it, and the cruel irony of its survival was not lost on Clara. She could not see her mother's face, only the horribly bent angle of her neck from behind, draped in soaking auburn hair that had lost all luster in the degrading filth. Bile rose in Clara's throat and she retched violently, dragging herself past her dead parent with too-wide, haunted eyes. She would not turn her over. Her mother had been stolen, and she could never look upon her face.

None of her younger brothers would have been in the house when the flood came. They would have been outside, playing, laughing, when the waves crashed over their heads; finding whether they had lived or died would take hours of searching, wondering, and futile hope. All but Simon, bedridden by his illness, cooped up inside so he would not spread disease to the rest of the children who now lay several paces beneath the wash of water, soil, and broken dwellings. All but Simon had some faint hope of being alive.

Is there no way...there is no way.... The bag of herbs almost slipped from her shivering hand, and she had half a mind to let it fall and float away. Surely it had no purpose now. Simon was not here, where the third wall still stood with one gaping hole to tell of the debris that had torn through.

Caught in a horrific trance, Clara gazed numbly at the cold, dripping walls around her. The water was receding now, twining less fitfully around her calves, and she could see more debris strewn over her former home. Debris that must have wreaked its own destruction before coming to rest here. A shard of someone's treasured flowerpot...a stone from a fire jagged fragments of other homes, thrust against these somehow standing walls as if they were sorry monuments for all that was now gone....

A wavering sound broke the spell of the water's rhythmic rippling, a small, high puff of air that didn't belong. Clara's hazel eyes, brimming with unshed tears, swept back to one snapped length of wood planks leaning against the back wall. Holding her breath and her precious bag, she dared to force the large obstacle aside. An astonished cry fell from her lips at the shuddering figure huddled there, blue with cold and covered in rashes, that slowly lifted the leather water bag over his head to stare at her through clouded blue-gray eyes.

I remember the joy for one moment...and how quickly it drifted away....

Lifting her sickly brother from the low eddies of murky water curling around her ankles, Clara held him close, uncaring about the disease that could spread to her person. Simon was alive, and she still had the herbs...here was something left to live for.

But not much more.

The sky's ominous clouds and their watery burdens blew away toward the east, following the last of the rushing river as it diverted into distant smaller streams. Clara sat huddled atop a dislodged boulder on the mountainside, exhausted in body and soul as she gazed out over the ruined landscape. The villagers had been farmers, as all country villagers were, and this had been their land and livelihood. But neither had any need for the other any longer; layers upon layers of fertile soil had been simply borne away by the flood, and all that was left was a useless mixture of swamp and scattered belongings that none possessed.

She poked the tiny fire at her feet with a sodden twig, eyes intent on her brother's form beside her. The night would be cold, and her dress clung relentlessly to her slick skin, but she had taken the first opportunity to wrap her only cloak around Simon's shuddering body. Her hands had hurried to make the herbal medicine in a tin bowl with the cleanest water she could find and administer it to both of them, just in case. Now he slept, whispering soundlessly of nightmares, as Clara looked to the crimson setting sun.

How many years did our village stand.... As the water had seeped out of houses and ventured away from the village's remains, Clara had needed little time to see that all other bodies left behind would never breathe again. She'd recognized forms and lifeless faces, and nothing existed among the cruel devastation to suggest than any others in her family had survived. They lay there, unmoving, or they too had been carried away. Quiet, frozen tears slipped from her eyelashes as the sun bowed further beneath the horizon, slowly relinquishing the sky to the shimmering moon, and she wondered of the gods and of her fate.

We are the last of generations...I, a girl on a journey, and Simon, the ill boy who outlived them all.... A choked, bitter laugh broke from her throat, a testament to the terrible irony of saving one life to lose all the rest. She'd rightly feared for Simon's life, but never did she dream he would be the one she should have feared for least of all. He'd been unable to speak when she found him, too deathly cold to move his lips, but she'd needed no words to tell her how he survived. Their mother had kept a leather drinking bag near his bed, so he could satisfy his growing thirst without rising against the healer's will. He must have seen or heard the flood coming, and in the few seconds before it hit, pulled the large, empty bag over his head and trapped air inside. He always was very bright...I might have panicked and drowned with all the rest...oh gods, are you merciful or hateful to me? The humorless laughter diminished into a sob of despair as she held her face in her hands.

In time, she peered listlessly through the spaces between her fingers, and saw the afterglow of the fallen sun course the sky once before fading in turn. And in that brief moment of last light, she glimpsed the highest tower of the city from which she had returned; the southern city Keliah, capital of the Ashmedaian Empire, and the home of the folk who truly had so little compared to what Clara once had.

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"So we came here, Korvayn...I believe Simon made it out o' this city, and that he'll come on back, too. I trust him. You'd like Simon, he always loved to hear stories too."

A small, scrawny face with stormy gray eyes stared up at Clara, the face of her youngest son. She laid a hand on his mop of coal-black hair, sighing softly at the experienced skepticism that clouded his eyes before it was gone, lost in a jumble of other conflicting emotions. The little boy tugged sharply on her ratty sleeve and glanced sideways at his four sleeping half-brothers on the other side of the room, one of many filthy hovels in a crowded alley, before speaking up in a soft, solemn voice. "Then we're both a-cursed by rivers, Ma. Y'sounded happy in the country place...." He trailed off, caught up in a vision of fresh air, green fields, and their very own house in the valley....

Clara drew her son close, unable to prevent silent tears from trickling down her face. "Korvayn...who can say what th'gods want fer us, only that we keep on tryin' with what they give...oh, don't say yer cursed, Korvayn, don't see it like that."

The little boy took silent, dry-eyed comfort in his mother's arms, but gazed sightlessly into the darkness of her damp dress. So Ma had a real river take her...I'm just waiting for my River, come to wash me away.... Korvayn could almost feel the baleful sigil birthmarks on his forehead, cool against his plastered bangs, and his shoulders sagged as he let his mother's arms keep him from the floor. The jeers and scowls from other children, the slammed doors on he alone when other beggars were spared a crumb, and all the righteous, accusing eyes flowed through his mind in a never-ending stream. When will my River come and show me the way? One river led to another, and his mother gave life to a child tainted by the gods' sign of watery Hell...but no, this was a test, she said. He wouldn't see it like that.

Mother and son huddled in the shadowed corner, lost in their own thoughts so much the same, as a cloudburst sent heavy drops pattering down around the slums of Keliah. The southern city Keliah, the shining capital of the Benefactor, who set the River running free to give humanity a second chance so long ago. Mother and son remembered the rain that had already been, and had yet to be.