It swept, unstoppable, towards the city.
*
Alerted to the oncoming wall of water, the citizens were already fleeing their soaring structures of stone, their wide boulevards of carefully cultivated trees and flowers.
They themselves were like a sea, but a lesser sea, the waves of terrified people surging and faltering, the weaker ones falling, trampled under the stronger.
Tesetra halted their mount. Degrat leapt down, looking down on the city, their home, with an anguished expression of helplessness.
Before him, he conjured up his Smoking Mirror.
It rose up from the earth being pounded by the rain, the hot muddy floor steaming, the hazy air swirling such that it took on a glistening sheen.
Normally Degrat would hide his marvellous mirror, from everyone, even Tesetra; but today he was uncaring about such things.
He wanted to see what was happening to the people he loved, despite their foolishness, their selfishness.
The mirror looked into the troubled hearts of the people. Their fears appeared in close-up in his mirror, the terror that would be etched into their faces plain to see.
Mothers carried babes, fathers carried older children. They glanced back fearfully, knowing that they could never outrun the towering waters hurtling towards them.
The waters smashed into them as if the waves were as solid as stone.
Indeed, the pummelling waves brought with them great chunks of the buildings they had already effortlessly destroyed. These alone wracked havoc amongst the poor, fleeing people – shattering bones, skulls, wrenching families apart.
The children were swept from their parent’s arms.
And even as they drowned, the men and women lamented the deaths of their children far more than they lamented their own.
*
Chapter 15
Strangely, the children swept away in the flood weren’t drowning.
When Degrat’s mirror looked into their hearts, he and Tesetra saw that the children had no fear, no cares.
They were swimming. Swimming as if they had been born to live in the water.
Their skin shook, rippled, became like tiny scales.
Their eyes expanded, becoming bulbous, enabling them to see in the darkest, deepest waters.
Limbs became fins, feet tails.
They became creatures of the sea. Creatures who saw the waters as their home, their sustenance.
They dived deeper into the waters; and, like their parents, were suddenly gone.
Weeping, Degrat dissolved his mirror.
The vast sea spread out across the valley. It seemed, at first, to be entirely devoid of all forms of surface life.
Then, in the distance, over to the east, heading back to the east, they saw the pitch black plumes rising from black trees.
The Iron Pyramid of the Iron Men.
Some of them had survived. They were floating on the waters.
Returning, at last, to where they had come from.
*
Tesetra didn’t think this was the best time to ask Degrat how he had produced his remarkable mirror.
She would ask him later.
‘We can’t go east anymore,’ she said, if a little unnecessarily. ‘Or north, or south,’ she added looking about herself, seeing the incredible extent of the spreading waters.
Was only this mountain left? Was there no west to head to either?
‘The land of the Rain god,’ Degrat said, gathering himself together, realising tears would be of no use to either himself, Tesetra, or the people who were now lost to them.
He looked over towards the west.
As the rain eased, and the darkness waned, the Sun thankfully replacing the Moon once more, a rainbow arched across the sky, its many, gorgeous colours like so many brightly plumed birds taking to the sky all at once.
‘How do you know all this?’ Tesetra asked Degrat. ‘Where the gods live, I mean?’
‘It’s the way the Earth was quartered; a realm for each god, for when they’re not the overall ruler.’
It wasn’t Degrat who had replied. In fact, Degrat was staring past her, glowering at whoever had spoken as he came up behind her.
Tesetra turned around on her horse. An incredibly handsome boy, with hair the colour of sun-washed corn, was heading towards them.
‘Who are you?’ Degrat demanded aggressively. ‘How long have you been watching us?’
He was worried that the approaching boy had seen his mirror. Worried, too, that Tesetra might find this boy more attractive than she found him.
Because Degrat had seen the interest in Tesetra’s eyes.
This time, Tesetra instinctively knew who the boy was. Even though he was now much older than when she had first seen him.
It was the Snake boy.
*
Chapter 16
Moving around to the other side of the mounted Tesetra, Degrat positioned himself as if he were protecting her from the steadily oncoming boy.
‘Long enough to see your mirror, if that’s what worries you,’ the boy answered calmly to Degrat’s aggressive query. ‘To see you weeping, too. But don’t worry; the children live again as fish, adapted to living in the sea.’
‘Fish?’
Tesetra had never heard such a word before, or of such a creature.
She did notice, however, that the boy’s own skin had the slight hint of being scaled, but like a serpent’s rather than one of these ‘fish’.
The pattern, too, was serpent-like, a mainly red hue graced with crazily meandering lines of pure black and white. It was impossible to tell if it was merely an elaborate tattoo or the actual texture of his skin.
Maybe, she told herself, she should find herself appalled by such an odd look. Yet she wasn’t; she found it strangely attractive, somehow entrancing and seductive.
There was something animalistic about it.
‘Creatures of the sea,’ the boy said in answer to Tesetra’s query, ‘I know this because I have my own magical mirror.’
He added this last part a little more urgently, noticing that Degrat still remained belligerent.
‘How? How can you also have such a mirror?’ Degrat asked uncertainly, disbelievingly.
He wasn’t sure how he had come by his own mirror. He couldn’t possibly believe that this boy had another one just like it.
‘No doubt like yours, I just discovered I had it one day,’ the boy admitted, now drawing close to both Degrat and the mounted Tesetra. ‘Though mine is slightly different. It allows me an uncontrollable glimpse of the future, and even then a future of tales that will be told, rather than the reality.’
‘Then how do you know what’s true, and what isn’t?’ Tesetra asked curiously.
‘I don’t; I didn’t believe that there would really be such remarkable things as fish until I just saw them being created just now. And that’s despite the tales of fishermen appearing in many tales I see in my mirror.’
With a wave of his hands, he created a swirl of air, a light gust of wind; and brought a mirror into existence before them.
*
Chapter 17
The Wish Fish
A long time ago, there was a poor fisherman; poor because he was lazy, hardly even bothering to wash. He spent most of what little money his far wiser wife earned on drink.
One day, to his immense surprise, he actually caught a fish. One of tremendous size too, almost as big as a child.
‘The gods be thanked!’ he exclaimed excitedly. ‘This should please even that miserable, ungrateful wife of mine!’
‘I’m sure she won’t be pleased by my awful taste,’ the fish insisted miserably.
The fisherman jumped back in surprise.
Had he heard correctly? Had the fish spoken?
Had he been drinking too much again?
He took out his knife, ready to slit the fish open.
‘Please, please!’ the fish begged. ‘If you throw me back into the waters, I can ma
ke it worth your while!’
The fish had spoken!
The fisherman was aghast!
Was this fish actually some poor (or rather, incredibly rich) prince who had been transformed into a fish by a wicked witch, as he had heard tell in some odd tales?
‘How?’ the fisherman asked unsurely. ‘How can you make it worth my while?’
Without bothering to answer, the fish strangely began to cough
Was he fighting for air? the fisherman worried, anxious that his chance of riches might be fast disappearing.
The fish coughed up a sparkling gold ring.
‘That is remarkable!’ the fisherman cried out gleefully, snatching up the glistening ring and admiring it greedily. ‘I’ll take you home so you can cough up more gold rings for me!’
‘No, no; I’ll die once I’m out of the sea, and there’ll be no more rings!’ the fish declared fearfully. ‘You won’t need any more rings! Read its inscription!’
The fisherman looked closely at the letters that had been beautifully engraved onto the ring. He frowned, his expression one of doubt.
‘Well?’ the fish asked.
‘I…er, can’t read,’ the fisherman admittedly ashamedly.
The fish sighed; he was worried how much longer he could continue to live while remaining out of the water.
‘It says,’ the fish explained tiredly, ‘“Wish Me Luck!”’
‘It’s a lucky ring?’ the fisherman asked excitedly.
‘It’s a lucky ring,’ the fish agreed, more tiredly than ever. ‘So, please, would you put me back now?’
The fisherman eagerly gripped the ring tightly in his hand.
‘Ah, but I have the ring now anyway; and so I can have you for lunch anyway!’
‘No, you can’t!’ the fish snapped irritably, ‘If I die, so does the luck of the ring!’
*
The fisherman was whistling so joyfully at the change in his fortune that, when he returned home, his wife stormed at him for being so happy when he was returning empty handed once more.
‘Not empty handed,’ the fisherman said cheerily, proudly showing her the glistening ring on his finger.
‘A brass ring?’ she snapped, astounded by his stupidity.
‘A lucky ring!’ he insisted, taking off the ring and showing her the inscription.
He told her the amazing tale of how he had come by such a remarkable gift. Of course, he had enough sense to realise his wife wouldn’t believe his tale – so he added a few more details he thought would make it more of a story his wife would accept as the truth.
His wife didn’t believe him, of course.
*
Once again, the fisherman’s wife found herself down the market, buying food it was really her husband’s job to provide.
The market traders were used to her appearance every weekend, familiar with her particular humiliation at having to buy fish.
‘Ben returned empty handed again, did he?’ the traders chuckled.
The wife was more distraught at her humiliation today than she had ever been.
She knew her foolish husband would go around proudly displaying his brass ring as if it were the most precious object in the world.
‘Actually, he caught the most remarkable fish it’s possible for anyone to catch…’ she began, as she fell into the tale of how he had come by a magical ring.
*
The fishmonger was amazed by the tale he had heard from the fisherman’s wife.
A ring bearing the legend ‘Wish for Luck!’
If he had heard such a tale from her fool of a husband, he had to admit, he would have dismissed it as nonsense.
Yet his wife was a sensible, respected person: and she had seen the ring conjure up a plate of cooked venison so delicious, she had declared, that she didn’t need to buy any fish or meat this week!
At the guild meeting held in the town’s hall, he related the tale he had heard to the mayor.
Naturally, he was sensible enough to realise that the mayor wouldn’t believe any references to an enchanted fish; but, of course, the part about the magical ring was perfectly believable.
It could be that it was made of a remarkable metal, gathered from a comet that had fallen from the heavens down to Earth. Perhaps it was even forged by a wizard, he explained, as he told the mayor of the ring bearing the promise, ‘Rub me and wish for luck!’
The mayor, being a far more learned man than the fishmonger, doubted some aspects of the tale.
So when he in turn told of the ring’s discovery to a visiting dignitary from the state’s capital city, he judicially removed the more unlikely sections, replacing them with far more likely scenarios.
The ring had obviously belonged at some point to an ancient, now long forgotten wizard, for it proudly proclaimed that its bearer simply had to ‘Rub for a wish!’
It was a remarkable tale, the court dignitary had to admit, keeping his own doubts about the tale to himself.
He kept these doubts to himself, too, when he retold the tale to one of the king’s aids.
In fact, he simply removed the more doubtful facets of the story, filling in the gaps with far more plausible explanations of the ring’s provenance.
The ring’s incredible powers were all down to a sparking jewel renowned for consolidating magical energies. This was the infamous Ruby of Wishes, which a great many now unattainable esoteric books referred to.
When the king heard of this fabulous ring, he decided he must have it, no matter the cost.
Heralds were sent out to every town, even every village, either announcing or posting a proclamation that the king desired to purchase a famous magical ring known to be within the ownership of a person living within the kingdom’s borders.
Anyone possessing this fabulous Wish-Ruby Ring could name their price.
Reading this proclamation one day, the fisherman irately glared at the now filthy and dull ring gracing his own hand.
‘Why couldn’t I have been lucky enough to find such a magical ring?’ he grumbled, irritably slipping the useless ring off his finger.
And so he threw it away, casting it into the river for some other incredibly lucky fish to swallow.
*
Chapter 18
‘So our children will be eaten?’
Degrat was appalled.
‘Not these children, no. But the children of children of children? Well, one day there will be so many of them, they will become like so many of the other animals that the creations of gods see it as their right to eat. At least, this is how it will be for a long time; some tales hint, however, that it might not remain so for ever.’
‘I thought you said you couldn’t control which tales you were shown in your mirror?’ Tesetra pointed out as the boy let his mirror dissolve. ‘Yet you just showed us a particular tale.’
‘Hah, not a particular tale,’ the boy replied honestly. ‘It was a tale about a fisherman and a fish, yes; but not one I was expecting, or think particularly apt for what I wished to prove. I’m lucky, though, that at least it was about a fisherman – sometimes, fortunately, my mirror seems to allow me to choose a subject.’
‘Where do these mirrors come from?’ Tesetra asked next, this time looking more towards Degrat for an answer rather than the new boy.
Degrat shrugged; he didn’t know.
‘The dust just formed about me one day as I worked in the quarry; it revealed to me what was in my father’s heart that day.’
He hung his head.
Was that the day, Tesetra wondered, when his father had volunteered to take part in the sacrificial procession? It had been a surprise to everyone as, being a mason, his role was already an important one as far as worship of and subjection to the gods was concerned.
‘I kept it a secret, of course,’ Degrat added. ‘I didn’t, like you Tesetra, want to be accused of having powers that might bring bad luck down on our people.’
The Snake boy glanced at Tesetra’s tattoo; he did
n’t ask for an explanation of Degrat’s comment.
*
Despite its amazing power, the horse wasn’t capable of carrying the three of them comfortably on its back. Even so, the Snake boy had clambered up behind Degrat, as this was easily the swiftest way to travel
Despite Degrat’s doubts, Tesetra had insisted that the boy – who had at last introduced himself as Fandran, a name he had given himself (for he couldn’t remember anything of his past life) – should accompany them in their search for the Rain god. Even so, Degrat still continued to show his displeasure at Tesetra’s decision.
‘It’s too late for even a god to help our people now, Tesetra,’ Degrat morosely complained as they ascended the rest of the mountain. ‘Most are dead; the children are these fish, destined to be eaten sometime in the future by the new men who will populate the earth.’
‘Surely we might as well try.’
This wasn’t Tesetra who had retorted to Degrat’s mumbling complaints, but Fandran.
Degrat glared back at him, finding another reason to hate him; Fandran agreed with Tesetra, adding to Degrat’s sense of alienation, of humiliation.
‘There doesn’t seem to be much else we can do,’ Fandran continued, either unaware or uncaring of Degrat’s anger.
‘Shouldn’t we search for survivors?’ Degrat persisted. ‘We can’t be sure that everyone died in the flood.’
‘If they’re safe, they’re safe,’ Tesetra stated flatly, perhaps even a little unconcernedly. ‘There’s nothing we can do to make their situation any better.’
Their irate conversation seemed to ring out around them, for now the angry cracking of the Earth had come to an end, along with the pounding of the rain and even the Snake Song. The only other sound now was the steady clop of the hooves on the hard ground, the rattle of disturbed stones.
It was a rattling, however, that sounded as if it were growing in intensity. They noticed, too, that the disturbed stones rolling around them also seemed to be increasing once more.