The Water Rises

by Elizabeth Teach

Misha walked that morning in her garden, between rows of grape vines, with wooden bowls in her hands, as she had done every morning for longer than a lifetime. She eyed the dark green leaves, the way the stems arched, the curling of the tendrils wrapped around trellises and rows of fencing. Perhaps today, her bowls were not needed, though she often found that the moment she turned to walk home that they were needed the most.

Pausing from her close awareness, she swept her eyes across the acreage she tended to: the flower gardens, the pastures, the apple orchards, the brilliant white and yellow roses, and here, her vineyard with grapes as sweet as honeycomb. Popping one into her mouth, she smiled, closing her eyes to avoid the fierceness of the sun, letting the warm day wrap around her and hold her in its palm.

Perhaps today would indeed be a different day. Perhaps, for once, bowls wouldn’t be needed.

Reaching for another grape, she noticed her hands were dripping with water as though she had just washed them. She stepped back, stared at the grape vines. No, it wasn’t the grape vines. Her eyes lingered on the roses a distance away; listened with her body. It wasn’t the grape vines; this time, it was the roses.

Retracing her steps, she knelt before the yellow roses, slipping bowls of water beneath where water droplets spilled from the petals and dripped as dew from the hard stems. Today was a hard day, she noted, for she had to use all her bowls, all forty of them, and they were all overflowing onto the dry ground.

“It was the village, Dyunsky,” a soft voice spoke behind her, “there was a fire. Many perished.” Misha turned, looking at the tears brimming in her sister’s dark eyes. “You remember, Katya? Her hair was burned, real bad. Clothes too. She left everything in room 4b. Three thousand letters she left. I counted each one. Three thousand.”

“Help me, Chen,” was all Misha could say in response. Together, they carried a handful of bowls to the well in the center of the flower garden; poured each bowl into the dark mouth, the sound of their soft prayers falling with the water. Beneath, they could see a clear gleam of light growing, dancing, ebbing, and swaying until the final bowl of water was poured, and the light rose upward, warmly, spilling over the stone sides and covering Misha until her hands became dry again.

Then she hugged Chen until Chen’s eyes cleared, and a faint smile returned to them. “Let’s go eat something,” Misha said.

“You always want to eat something after the pouring of the water.”

“But strangely, you never disagree,” Misha grinned.

They walked hand in hand towards the house, a rather massive home that looked as though it had been piecemealed together like a quilt: rooms bulged from the sides and were stacked on top of each other; there were half levels and full levels, and windows angled at fifty-five degrees; even the chimneys looked as though they were squeezed in as an afterthought, except for the little one that was attached to the little cottage, that everything else had been built off of.

Passing a window, Chen stopped.

“Look,” she peered through the ancient glass and could see a dark-skinned man holding a plain clay urn.

“I can’t see very well,” Misha said (for she was far shorter). “What is he doing?”

“He’s going into the basement,” she said, her voice a mixture of grief and alarm. She watched as the man unlatched the door next to the kitchen pantry and descended the steps, the door lazily swinging shut behind him. “Come on,” Chen grabbed her sister’s hand. They ran up the front porch steps and through the front door. Chen found a lit candle in the kitchen and carried it with them down the basement stairwell.

Once their feet landed on the cold dirt floor, a shiver rose through their bodies. Chen called out, “Hello? Can we help you?” But the man did not turn. Did not speak. Showed no sign that he heard them (though no one who visited ever did). He stood facing the furthest wall and uncapped the urn, plunging in his index finger. Blood splattered onto the floor as he began writing on the wall in cursive red letters: write, dip, write, dip, again and again, and again. Misha felt dizzy, staring at the hundreds of names sprawled out on the walls, heaving, pulsing in the candlelight. Blood slipped down the walls like teardrops.

When the man was satisfied, though not yet finished, he placed the urn where he had first started and withdrew from his left pocket a long scroll bound with red wax. From his right pocket, he pulled a rope. From his mouth, he pulled shackles. Setting all three objects on the dirt floor, he kneeled and wailed like a mother who had lost her child. Chen and Misha held each other closely as the agonizing sound filled the room, shook the walls, swelled stronger and stronger until the man’s soul ripped in two, and he burst into dust and disappeared.

Unnerving silence surrounded the two sisters as dark shadows danced upon the candle-lit walls. “Misha, you’re dripping.” Chen finally spoke, holding up her sister’s damp hand.

“Oh no…” Misha ran up the steps, out the front door, and grabbed as many metal buckets as she could near the firewood pile. “Grab some, Chen!” she called. But Chen already knew what to do. The buckets clanged in their hands as they ran to the vineyard. Water dripped from the vines’ dark green leaves onto the ground into massive growing puddles, expanding into one another, forming streams that swept down the vineyard towards the apple orchard.

The sun burned their faces as the sisters worked efficiently: Chen running buckets, Misha spreading them down the rows, alternating in pouring them into the well.

But despite how quickly they ran and poured, water continued to seep from the vines, rising inches upon inches over the ground until all of the buckets were swept away. Misha stood waist-deep in the center of the vineyard, water seeping from her skin. She closed her eyes and listened with her body. “They’re in so much pain,” she moaned, collapsing to her knees, the cool water rushing over her sternum. “We have to get the water to the well.”

“There’s too much, Misha. We can’t. It’s impossible,” Chen said, standing a distance away, watching the stream form into a narrow river, separating them from the orchard.

Misha abruptly stood up and turned, “What if we…” but she didn’t finish. Upon seeing her sister’s pale face, Chen turned around. A younger man with unevenly cut hair walked down the garden pathway towards the front porch. In his bronzed hands, he carried three woven, bulging sacks. Chen and Misha stared at one another and then, in unison, started towards the house.

This time they ran down the basement stairs without a candle, nearly slipping from the water that dripped from their clothes and skin.

Before their eyes could adjust, a man’s voice filled the room with mourning song, his voice changing cadence, pitch, rising, falling, dancing in a tongue they did not understand, but it was an ancient song known by many, and it filled their bones with grief.

The floor glowed, subtle at first, like the first bit of morning light sweeping across the horizon, then growing stronger and stronger, trembling, splitting the ground into fragments. Before them, a man rose from the floor and opened a woven sack full of chunks of land, grassroots still straggling from their bottoms, and poured them into the cracks. Then he opened another sack and poured brightly colored garments and beaded jewelry. Finally, he opened a third sack and poured out bones of all sizes until all of the cracks were filled. Then he fell to his knees and sang a final wailing song, like a mother who had just lost her child, and his soul was ripped in two, and he disappeared into dust.

This time, instead of silence, voices quietly rose from the cracks, out from the blood-names stained on the wall. They started as a whisper, then became a crowd of voices, crying, shouting, murmuring.

Misha and Chen felt their bodies shake.

Water began to thinly cover the ground, then rise, shifting and rippling as the earth groaned.

Chen tugged at Misha, and they both tumbled up the steps. The vineyard had been washed away. They could see water pouring from the apple trees with such speed and intensity they had never seen before, flowing into the vineyard’s river, causing a wild river to form. Even the garden was drowning, inches of water rising over the hyacinths and daffodils; yellow rose petals floated, whirled, and sank.

“The garden, Chen! Everything!” Misha burst into tears. Water dripped from her just as it had from the grape vines, the trees, the roses.

Suddenly, the ground shook, throwing Chen and Misha off their feet into the water and mud. The water rose faster now.

Shivering, they ran back inside the house, nearly colliding with a woman taping billions of polaroids of women with missing tongues to the walls. Others were just silhouette images, for their bodies had been taken.

Misha stood staring. Unable to move.

Chen ran up the stairs, passing a child screaming in fear. There was dust everywhere, on the handrails, in the very air she breathed. Laws and decrees were nailed to doors, stamped with red wax. She opened a bathroom door where a girl sat with her arm outstretched, tattoing herself with curse words. In the next room, she found a boy running after his father’s heart. To have his soul split into dust would have been a mercy; instead, he stared blankly, not knowing his own name.

She ran past dozens, hundreds, of others in the hallways; there were so many, past the walls where she, too, had grieved a lifetime ago. She stopped, gazed at the stories of her ancestors, at her people’s scars engraved like tattoos on the walls. Tell me their stories; she was so young then, curling up at her grandmother’s feet; tell me, Grandma. Tell me, Nai Nai. Chen paused. Tracing the images with her fingers, leaning her forehead against the wall.

An explosion sounded above her. Dust coated her arms and eyelashes. She coughed. Choked. Opening a window for air, she saw that the water had risen to the second level - either that or the house was floating. Everything was covered. A great groan burst from the earth like the earth was taking its last breath; its soul was about to be split.

“Misha!!!!” Chen screamed, running through wailing crowds of people, tripping down the stairs. “Misha!” She ran from room to room; tears splashed in her footprints upon the layers of dust. Voices built upon each other, upon the groaning and shrieking of the earth, the voices from the basement, the ones she passed in the hallway, the child screaming, the waves hitting the window panes. Her soul felt it was about to be split in two.

The basement! But of course! She ran through the kitchen, down the stone steps, felt puddles of water beneath her feet. “Misha!” she cried, but it was a tired call. Halfway down the stairwell, she stepped into a pool of water. The basement was completely flooded.

“I’m over here,” Misha said, her quiet voice echoing across the water.

“What are you doing?”

“Listening.”

“To what?”

“The stories. The voices. I realized…the photographs…they aren’t dead. Someone cared to take those pictures; someone cared enough to mourn. Even if it was just by one person.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The woman, she didn’t run. She stopped and looked. She listened. She remembered and held onto the stories. She carried them home as guests in her living room and put them on the walls for others to see even if they didn’t want to see them.”

Tell me the stories.

“Chen, what are we running from?”

Chen didn’t answer. She simply stood there in a bloodied, grief-filled room and listened. And then took one dry step forward towards a glowing water.