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Haven
Later, there were a few who claimed they had felt something in the wind at first, an odd pale scent as if of rain and ozone, thinned past sensibility in the summer heat. Hindsight shows what the seer desires. Still we had no reason to doubt them, nor the inclination. A man in free fall might desperately grasp the air as if it could provide a hold, and who would we be to argue logic with him?
No one spoke of anything untoward until the birds were gone.
Some fowl remained in dooryards fussing after their garden snails, but the woods fell mute. One evening flickers trilled into a deepening sky, killdeer keened in darkness, and then the sun rose silent. Not a quill, not a fleck of down remained. The hunters’ dogs could flush no teal.
We talked about it quietly, struck by the air’s odd hush. We spoke in whispers as if afraid to miss the last thrush’s last note. We heard nothing but the whine of flies.
A month passed, and we became almost accustomed to the empty skies. A draught horse balked in mid-field one day, near noon, and would not calm even when freed from the plow. Her keeper fretted, brought a few of us from town to make what we could of her. She had not moved more than a few yards in the minutes since he’d left her, but reared and circled us at speed, whinnied at some terror we could not see. By that evening all our horses were so afflicted. They would not rest. Even those we dragged bodily into their barns stared east in vivid fear, as though a second red sun was rising beyond the plank walls, stirring storms.
The next morning they were gone. Paddock fences were broken down, stable doors splintered, and the dust they’d raised in fleeing was a thin pall on the orchard.
Hair stood on end on our napes that month. Old, sweet dogs turned sour, snarled at offered scraps of meat. Lovers screamed insults at each other. The Seated Queen of Stars glowered from her northern throne. The goats’ teats went dry.
When it came, the flood swept half our town away.
There was no rain, nor any dam in the mountains to have burst, but the flood came nonetheless, and fast. It was as if no one had ever lived in the half-mile swath it scoured. No wrack of houses stood above the flood. The apple trees were broken from their rows and cast downstream. The flood was odd. Clear enough for trout, it flowed beneath our rainless sky for days.
At length we drank of it and it was sweet, as water from a rill shaded by oaks. It effervesced, a little. It had no source but still it flowed, and in time we built small boats to launch upon it, a dozen boats the size of ducks with small dry boxes on their decks. We wrote to those who perished in the flood, long aching letters meant for no eyes still living, and told them of our grief for them, our longing to be reunited with them on the other shore. We secured the letters in their boxes, and pushed the little boats into the flow to bear our sorrows downstream and away.
Seven nights passed, and the boats rode downstream past our town once more. They passed again seven nights after that.
There were two of our men who built a pirogue, determined to sail the length of this strange round river, and they set out with a week’s supply of bread and meat. We did not see them again.
In time children were born, and they brought forth children in turn, and their children found it odd to think of rivers that never flowed back to their source. We told them that once all rivers had head and mouth far separated, and they laughed at our deception. They tossed bright toys into the river, shining balls and little boats of applewood, and waited confidently for their treasures to return to them.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
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