Water, a story

It has been raining for a thousand years. The sky is flooded, and the people build up from the ground stone by stone, and one day, if the rain does not stop and the water does not recede, they will reach the heavens. 

The young woman is leaning against a stone wall outside her bedroom. The stones had been, with great effort, brought up from the surface and carefully sanded until they achieved the desired size and shape. At that point, the stones were handed over to the workers, who, according to the designs of the engineers, secured them at the top of the mighty structure. The entire journey - from dry ground to the top of their gray fortress - takes one year. 

But that comes later. Now, she is looking over the edge, and this is what she sees: 

Dark clouds packed with lightning and water looking like an exploding galaxy under a microscope. It is the sound of ten hundred million thousand horses stampeding over breaking glass. It's all she can see for hundreds - thousands - of miles. The terrible violence of nature set free. 

Sometimes, between the flashes of white light and the roar of thunder, she spies again what she thinks can only be The Other Kingdom, The Lost Place, or Dark Realm - "dark" not for lack of light, or a euphemism for evil, but because centuries have passed since they’d last communicated. The race from the rising water - now miles deep and turbulent with hundred-foot swells and full of monsters - took up so much time and effort and engineering, they didn't have time for communication. 

The young woman breathed deeply. Warm, damp air coated her trachea and filled her lungs. 

"I saw it," she tells her father later in the day. "I saw The Dark Realm." But of course this can't be true. 

If her father had had time to listen - if he wasn’t so overwhelmed with racing back and forth between the gatherers, the builders, and the engineers - he would have hugged his daughter and said, "I believe you," trying not to sound dismissive, trying to draw more of the story out of her, like he knew a good father should. But her father didn't have time, so he said, "The Dark Realm has been buried in the sea for centuries."

The woman did not believe her father. She did not think he was lying, just that he was incapable of believing the impossible. 

The irony, of course, was that he did believe the impossible. They all did. You woke up believing the impossible, and lived every moment, then went to bed, believing what could not be believed: first, that you lived in a world that was trying to drown you; second, that you could somehow survive in this world; and third, that there was some meaning to this constant building, up and up and up, as if there were no ceiling waiting to end your progress, as if you could keep up the pace of building forever. 

But she could see The Dark Realm, she wanted to say, though it was only vaguely recognizable from the history books. It had become a half fist with branches reaching like a tree fighting its way out of the earth. It was, she thought, something that could not stay balanced for long. In their attempts to stay beyond the reach of the rising water, they had abandoned care and symmetry in favor of a chaotic free-for-all that could only end in the collapse of the entire structure. It was, thought the woman, how most beautiful things end: a desperate struggle followed by silence, acceptance, and then a violent collapse into nothingness. 

There it was now, in silhouette behind a curtain of raging clouds, a claw the size of a city, reaching for them. Every week, every month, she would stand out here in the rain watching that massive hand swaying back and forth, getting closer with each forward tilt. 

Her father was the Director, a job that used to be called King. A thousand years ago, before the rain, her grandfather of who-knows-how-many-generations-past had been the King of England, a title which, by then, meant very little, but was good for getting you into football matches. Kings had been replaced by pop stars and social media influencers by then, just like money had been replaced by flashing lights on your telephone. It wasn't until the water reached the doors of the palace that the King decided something should be done, and directed his assistant to stop brushing the queen mum's hair, and start collecting stones that could be used to lift the entirety of the palace a few inches off the ground. 

But they hadn't suspected the rain would continue. In fact, the meteorologist who had predicted "clear skies with highs around twenty-two degrees," as if they had somehow found themselves in the south of France, had been sent off in a row boat with only one paddle. No one knows what happened to him. He may have found his family and started building his own stone palace that even now was rising inch by inch into the sky. He may have lived a long and meaningful life alone on his rowboat unaware that what he thought were epic, Odysseus-like attempts to chart this new, albeit damp, world had resulted in the same small circles, no more than twenty feet in diameter, over and over again until his end. 

In those days, the weather wasn’t nearly so violent. Of course there was the rain, but it didn't rage the way it does now. The man in the rowboat would have had choices. He could have, for example, had he been clever enough, built a waterproof house latched to floats that kept his home bobbing just beneath the water's surface. Others had done similar things, while others made their way to the peak of Mt. Everest. 

You can criticize those who settled Everest, or those who built houses that bobbed just below the water's surface, because looking back you are aware just how temporary those situations were. But even though the stone skyscrapers would outlast them all, everything has an expiration date. This truth escapes no one. One day they would build too high and the sky, a very inhospitable place, would burn them. Or the building materials would no longer appear from the depths. Or the water would catch up, reach up, and grab them by the ankles. None of these likelihoods was particularly appealing, but sometimes fate deals indelicate blows. Sometimes - and this was unfortunately true for so many who lived in the kingdom - the only logical choice was stepping into the long stretch of air in front of you and down into the turbulence below. 

I should mention here that a murderer lived outside the woman's bedroom, just below her window. He dressed all in black and had bright white hair he kept short, so that much of his pink scalp was visible. He would pace the dark hallways making sounds no one understood. Some thought he was speaking in the old language, but most thought he was just trying to scare people. 

He was old, but not old enough to remember the ancient language. English, a language that had five hundred years ago become so associated with the world before the rain, that it was driven out. They had had a celebration to drive it out. People had shown up wearing hats. But by the time it was over, the words “celebration” and “hat” no longer had meaning. No new words had arrived to replace them. So the whole thing became just a little bit confusing and was soon forgotten. Stories began to lose or take on new meanings. Words were replaced by other words over and over, and without the ability to trace their origins, it became impossible to trust what had been said even as recently as five years ago. So Shakespeare had become a series of motorcycle how-to manuals, the Magna Carta was a renowned exercise program, the plot of Star Wars contained the schematics for a super computer and the cure for most diseases, and the Holy Bible was a lengthy collection of hilarious puns. Even this story - the one you're reading now - has most likely gone through so many generations of language that its original meaning has been blotted out. The word “murderer,” for example, might really mean “friend,” or “teacher,” or even “mother.” There's simply no way to know for sure. 

The murderer, not unlike most ne’er-do-wells, was adept at hiding in the shadows, so he would vanish in one place and reappear somewhere else. Whether he really did vanish was uncertain. What was certain was that he could disappear for days, only to reappear some stormy night howling into the wind. He would cry, and laugh, and try to convince you of his genuine goodness. But he was, after all, a murderer, and everyone knows the fate of those who fool themselves into believing such things. 

Even so, the young woman liked to sit at her window talking to the murderer, who, from time to time, would put down his sinister act and speak like his real self to the woman. 

She knows so many people who have died, she would say - not with sadness, but as a cold and inescapable fact. 

They die in so many ways, she'd continue. Sometimes they fall off, and sometimes they are pushed. Sometimes they go alone, but more generally they go in groups. Having a group - even if you don't know them - makes jumping easier, more natural, like something you do a half dozen times a day. It's communal. It's the better part of a not-so-good time. “Do you ever push them?” she asked. 

The murderer thought this over. “Only sometimes,” he said. 

“Why do you do it? It's horrible.”

The murderer shrugged.”Your father wouldn't like us talking like this.”

“Never mind that.”

“You think I should be punished. You think I should be in jail.”

But there was no jail, and his life was a punishment. He had no family, and no one loved him. 

“Sometimes,” he said, “a person doesn't know it's the end.”

“So you're going to say you just help them get on with it?”

“No,” said the murderer, now very serious. “I wait with them. I sit down, I hold my hands together in my lap, and I wait with them. Soon enough you hear the sounds of the Ferryman and they're always glad you were there when he came. It makes the entire process much less of a bother.”

“What does the Ferryman sound like?”

“Like a thousand whispers being sucked through a vacuum in space.”

“That’s very strange.” 

“It is.”

“Seems to me people must have a very unfair opinion of you, if that’s all you do.”

“I think you’ll find the older you get the less you care what people think.”

“It doesn’t help that you skulk around in the shadows.”

“I happen to like the shadows. They taste like … like happiness.”

“That’s also a very strange thing to say.”

“That’s only because you think you know me,” said the murderer. “Here’s the thing life will teach you sooner or later: we’re all alone in our little fleshy shells. No matter how badly we want to let people in, they can only travel so far. They are blocked by so many things.”

“Like what?”

“Like, for example, the conclusions they’ve already drawn about you. Like your own fear of letting people know you. You think you want to let people in, but when it comes to it, it’s more comfortable keeping them out. We spend our entire lives alone, showing ourselves just enough so the loneliness is bearable. Then, in the end, we open ourselves up. What have we to lose? That last flash of life, before it goes out, and we finally open up, removing all roadblocks. Death teaches us not to be alone.” 

The woman thought on this, then said, “So you just sit there with them?”

“Quietly.”

“Like you're sitting here with me now.”

The murderer laughed.”Don't worry. You're not going anywhere yet.”

He was wrong, though. She was going somewhere. Everyone who lived here - and there were thousands and thousands - had the civic obligation, when they turned eighteen, to descend the great spiral staircase contained at the center of their stone palace the hundreds of miles to bring up a single stone that would be added to the structure. The stone represented, they said, a little extra time of life. A few seconds of time. But added up, and spread out over the entire population, and those precious few seconds amounted to months of extra life. You were, for that one year, a gatherer, and nothing excused you from this responsibility - not gender, politics, religion, station, intellect, or physical ability. 

The young woman's eighteenth birthday was in two weeks. 

“What was it like for you?” she asked the murderer. “When you descended the staircase?”

“Oh, that was a long time ago.”

“But you still remember.”

The murderer reached into his jacket and pulled out a stick of dried meat. He bit into it and began to chew. He offered some to the woman, who declined. He was watching a lightning storm in the distance. The old cliche was to say that the lightning danced, but the lightning did not dance; it was too angry for that. The lightning waged war. Hiding in the darkness, exploding into blinding flashes of light, the sound that seemed to shatter the air, only to vanish almost before you’re aware of its presence. 

“What?” said the woman, waiting for a reply.

“It’s - ”

“What?”

“It’s beautiful and patriotic, just like they say,” he said. 

“Is it?” she asked. 

“No,” he replied.

“No?”

“It’s horrifying.”

The murderer had gotten to his feet and was watching the young woman closely. Her stoicism impressed him. 

“I don't mean to frighten you - “

“You haven't.”

“ - but I feel honesty is best.”

“Well,” said the woman. “I appreciate that.” 

There were moments when the rain would ease to a gentle mist and the skies would clear just enough for a halo of light to filter through. This would create ribbons of colors - red, orange, yellow, pink, blue, and green - that would tint the air and reflect off the water. It was a moment like this when the tower of the Dark Realm came into view, hurling toward them at a hundred and fifty miles per hour. The woman, standing again at the stone wall outside her room, thought for sure the massive claw would crash into them, and the entire city would be thrown in bits and pieces into the sea. 

She could see a man standing at the base of one of the fingers, leaning in as if he alone was directing the city toward her. The young man was the same age as the woman, but she would have no way of knowing that. Even as he drew closer, she could see that he was made mostly of shadow. Only parts of his left side were visible to her eye; the rest was dark and blurred. She could see his left eye, which was brown, but not his right, which looked like the flame of a candle in a dark room - more than that, she thought, it looked like a flame that was burning a hundred miles away. 

She didn’t know why so much of him appeared as shadow. Maybe it was because she’d been raised in such isolation that finally seeing someone from The Other Place, from Out There, her brain didn’t know how to process what she was seeing. Maybe she just didn’t want to see. Or maybe he was a ghost. Anyway, she couldn’t deny that the part she could see - his brown eye, narrow eyebrow, the straight line of his jaw - was handsome. 

Closer. Closer. And closer. Now she can see his shoulder. Now his arm. Now he is reaching out to her and she is reaching out to him, though she’s not sure why. This can’t possibly be safe. The structure is so enormous it might as well be an entire planet hurling down on them. She withdraws her hand. She looks around, but no one is there to see what she is seeing. Why isn’t anyone else here? It’s almost as if she’s imagining everything; if this were real, then certainly there would be crowds of onlookers, people screaming and running and hiding and crying and praying.

Closer. Closer. But it is real. The wind is howling around her and her hair is whipping around her face. She uses both hands to hold her hair back. She can see the young man’s dark hair. She can see his dark skin and the mole just under his eye. There is no nose, no chin, no neck, only darkness, as if she is looking through him into space. His eye is no longer a flame from a candle, but a star millions of light years away that has since burned out and died. 

Closer. She can see the intricacies of the stone work, the mortar, the bending like a hand slowly becoming a fist. It is a living thing, she thinks, hungry, and it’s going to devour us. The young man is still reaching for her, leaning, climbing over the edge to extend his hand as far as it will go without falling. She takes a step back. Her eyes are wide and her mouth is an oh. She wants to cry out, but she doesn’t. Or perhaps the sound of the wind, like a hurricane now, drowns the sound of her scream. The wind is blasting through the open window behind her. She hears furniture being thrown about, breaking up against the walls and each other.

Closer. And she does reach out. She takes a step forward and stretches her arm as far as it will go. The man now is a mile away. A half mile. Yards and inches and centimeters and millimeters. The entire sky is blocked out by the structure that must be five times the size of her home. It seems to have no end, and whatever holds it up and allows it to move cannot possibly be real. It is something entirely made up, fake, from an eight-year-old’s imagination. 

But here she is, and time has stopped. She sees the young man frozen before her, still only partially formed, and he smiles as their fingers almost touch. She reaches forward more. He is about to touch her. He is about to take his hand. And then what? 

She blinks, and time starts again. There is a tug from behind, and she is pulled back. She takes several steps to keep from falling, and in a moment finds herself around a corner. Her friend the murderer has pulled her away and is now holding his index finger to his lips.

“Shhhh!” he hisses, and she is surprised she can hear him with the violent wind. But now there is no wind, and everything is quiet except for his “Shhhh!” She tries to walk back to where she was, but he grabs her wrist and holds her in place.

“Let me go!” she says. 

He holds her like that, but only for a moment. When he releases her she runs back to her spot by the wall to see - 

Nothing. The sky is open again. There is no sign of the young man or the Dark Realm. The colorful ribbons again fill the sky, but they are darker now, more purples and blues than oranges and pinks. There is only a slight wind that brushes against her cheek, and something she hasn’t seen in a very long time: a lone bird, flying in the direction of the horizon. She remains where she is until well past nightfall. 

“You should,” the teacher said, “avoid talking at all costs. Focus your attention on each step, one by one. The steps are uneven, and the slightest fall can end in catastrophe.” There were ten students in the small classroom. They sat at desks and the teacher was at the front pointing at a writing board on the wall. 

“But how do we pass the time?” someones asked.

“By walking.” The way he looked at the student, you’d think he’d been asked if the world was made of marshmallows, though of course no one could have known what a marshmallow was. The teacher was a small man, and the young woman thought he looked like he had been born out of a piece of driftwood. He was stiff, dark, and cracked. “When you talk,” he continued, “you are not only distracting yourself, but those around you. Communicate only when absolutely necessary.”

“What if you need to talk to stay awake?”

“Or for encouragement?”

“What about if you need something?”

The teacher stomped his foot, though the effect didn’t seem to be what he had hoped for. “No!” he said grimacing from the pain the stomping of the foot apparently caused him. “You walk! That is all. All attention, all focus, must be on the next step. Distractions end in catastrophe.” 

Another student leaned over to the woman and whispered, “Imagine. Falling all that way.” He said it with glee, as if he were looking forward to it. 

The woman ignored the comment and instead looked out the window to her right. She saw the murderer standing outside. He wore a half-smile and was shaking his head. The woman raised her hand.

“Yes, you,” the teacher said.

The woman stood from her desk and said, “What if we want to - I don’t know - sing?”

“What?”

“Or tell jokes?” another person said.

The woman sat down.

“There’s no singing,” said the teacher. “There’s no jokes!”

The murderer was smiling, holding his hand to his mouth.

“But surely there are some jokes,” the woman said. “I mean - ”

“Get out!” said the teacher, looking at the woman and pointing at the door. 

“What?”

“Get out! I don’t care who your father is.”

“My father?”

“Get out.”

She got up to leave, but before she could get to the door, she heard someone say, “No, she can stay.” It was the murderer, who was now inside the room. The woman hadn’t seen him climb through the window, but she could now see his stern expression, and the look of fear on the teacher. 

“Now, now,” said the teacher.

“She can stay,” the murderer repeated.

“It’s okay,” the woman said. “I’ll go if he wants me to. It’s not as if I’m - ”

“You can stay,” said the teacher, breathing heavily.

The woman sat down, wondering not for the first time who the murderer really was, and why he seemed to be always nearby. 

The teacher lowered his head, took several deep breaths as he returned to his place by the writing board. He said, “There are, as you will see, on the wall, small reservoirs for water every two or three miles. Always stop to drink. Never skip an opportunity for water.” He was speaking slowly, as if each word were a battle he was losing.

The woman was listening now, and writing down what the teacher was saying.

When she finished writing, she looked to her right and the murderer was gone.

The other nine students were carefully writing down everything the teacher said. They may have thought him foolish, but their eagerness to learn and get on with what they knew would be the great adventure of their lives bordered on mania. They sat with wide eyes and open mouths. They asked questions about the teacher’s own experiences during his walk, and moaned and sighed and clapped after every story. 

Hour after hour passed and the teacher was still speaking. Water. Food. Sleep. The things you bring with you. How to prepare physically and mentally. How to avoid disaster. How to avoid death and the long fall to the bottom. “You walk on the outside, nearer the edge,” said the teacher. “You allow the inside path to those on their way up. You are more fresh. They are more tired. You will appreciate this when it’s your turn to make the ascent. If you take the inside path and force them to the outside path, when they fall, they fall forever.” The woman imagined them falling, eyes and mouths sealed tight, their bodies curled into a ball, their rocks held close to their hearts as if to protect them. Do they have any awareness when they stop falling? 

“What is it you were going to say?” asked the murderer later that evening. The sky was a glorious purple and deep gray.

“When?” said the woman.

“You said, ‘It’s not as if I’m - ‘ and then he interrupted you. Your teacher.”

“Oh,” she said. “I was going to say, ‘It’s not as if I’m learning anything useful.’”

The murderer smiled. “It’s probably a good thing you didn’t say that.”

“He’s a horrible little man,” she said. “Whenever I’m near him, I get the slightest whiff of … of vomit. I know it’s not him. It’s me. Does that ever happen to you? Are you ever around someone you dislike so much you smell things that aren’t there but somehow your mind associates that person with that thing you’re smelling?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s very strange.”

“It sounds like it. Do you smell anything strange when you’re around me?”

She said, “No, no. You’re my friend. It only happens with the teacher.” 

“Hmm.” They were both looking at the sky. The clouds had opened just enough for the moon to shine through. “When do you leave?” he asked.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

“So soon?”

Instead of answering, she said, “Is there really no talking during the walk?” 

The murderer didn’t answer. He was thinking about her leaving the next day.

“I saw you shaking your head when he said that,” she said. 

“Oh, there’s talking.”

“So why did he say there isn’t?”

He said, “Because much of the time the talking is - ”

“What?”

“Most of the time it’s either people complaining, or - ”

“Or what?” she asked.

“Or people going mad.”

She didn’t say anything to that. “I suppose some people just aren’t cut out for it.”

“That’s true.”

“But I am, don’t you think? I won’t complain, and I certainly won’t go mad.”

“You never know.” he said.

“I know,” she insisted. 

He was staring at her.

“What?” she asked.

“No. You don’t know. You really don’t know.”

This is the end of Part I; stay tuned for more.