Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy

by Stephen Morris

  Magdalena coughed a second time. Their footsteps disturbed a thick layer of dust, which rose in clouds around her feet and caught in her throat, though Aviva took only a few cautious steps. Aviva coughed as well. The older woman’s eyes, however, were wide with awe and fear. She looked around as best she could in the half-light while keeping her attention on Magdalena. The wooden planks of the walls were tall but steeply pitched, which Magdalena realized was a reflection of the tiled roof that could be seen from the street outside. The room was longer than it was wide and its two ends rose in triangular gables to sharp points. Three tall, narrow windows, rising to Gothic points, pierced the gables but were covered by sturdy shutters that admitted no light. Rough rafters stretched across the space high above her head, supporting the weight of the tiles outside. Other joists, also rough and dusty, reached across the attic at about her height, supporting the substrate of the roof. She bent her head to duck past one.

  There were shelves along the wall behind her, filled with old books whose bindings were coming undone and tattered pages were slipping from their deteriorating covers. Large books. Small books. Thick books and thin. There were also scrolls tied in rolls, which she dared to reach out a fingertip to touch, causing the edges of the brittle paper or parchment to crumble into more dust.

  A great number of individual pages were scattered on the floor, and they crunched as she stepped along the length of the attic, sweeping the flashlight’s beam along the floor and up the walls as she passed. It was these pages on the floor that rose to knee-height in the middle of the room, a narrow pile roughly six or seven feet long. Clods of earth and flakes of dry mud were also scattered around the floor, half-hidden by the scattered pages.

  Magdalena ran her flashlight beam along that central pile several times. It seemed unlikely that the pages were simply stacked in the middle of the room, one atop the other. It seemed more like the pages had been scattered over something, that they had been put there to hide something lying on the floor, something made of earth and mud that was slowly crumbling away.

  She wanted to brush aside the pages to see what lay hidden beneath them. “Is that the Golem there, buried under the pages of the prayerbooks?” she wondered. Was the clay humanoid figure that had been fashioned and given life by the rabbi, Judah ben Loew, who had ordered the attic sealed and whose staff she had come to recover, still waiting to be reanimated?

  The flashlight shook in her hand as she nervously reached out with the other. Her fingertips brushed a loose page, causing it to flutter to the floor and slide beneath her foot.

  “No!” Aviva barked sharply. But a second voice, a male voice, barked the same word at the same time as Aviva. Magdalena jerked her hand back.

  “Do not look at what might lie beneath those pages,” the female synagogue keeper ordered. “If it is…” The words stuck in her throat. “If it is… the Golem… then he must remain here. The rabbi was absolutely clear about that.”

  Magdalena nodded. Had she imagined the male voice? Aviva seemed unaware of it. Although Magdalena desperately wanted to see what lay beneath those scattered pages, she knew that Aviva was right. Whatever it was must not be disturbed. At least, not today. Disturbing the remains of the Golem could interfere with their work of aiding Fen’ka in any number of ways that Magdalena could not imagine.

  Her limited time was running out, as well. If she was not back at the university before the first session was over and academics began spilling into the hallways for their morning coffee break, her absence would not only be noticed, but she would also be seen bringing the staff into the building. That could be problematic, if only because it would announce to those bent on stopping their efforts to vindicate Fen’ka that she had been able to accomplish what they had not, and that the rabbi’s staff was now in her possession. She needed to find the staff and go.

  Magdalena lifted her flashlight and swept the wall opposite her with its beam. She saw dust. She saw warped boards and rusty nails scattered along the length of the boards. She saw more books crumbling on more shelves. She began to walk the length of the attic, going slowly so as not to miss any details. Perhaps there was a hidden closet or a narrow cabinet that contained the staff, but there seemed to be nothing but shelving and discarded books or scrolls. There were packets and bundles of individual pages as well, tied together with crumbling string or—in some cases—ribbon, individual pages of dry parchment that seemed to rustle as the first light to touch it in hundreds of years swept across them.

  Something rustled behind her. Magdalena jumped, glancing over her shoulder in time to see a large mouse dart across the floor from the corner of the room and out the door, down the stairs. A clatter jerked her attention back to the corner where the mouse had come from. Several of the loose sheets from the nearby shelves fluttered to the floor and a cloud of dust swirled in the air. She swept the corner with her flashlight beam.

  A long, narrow, roughly carved pole lay across the floor. It must have been propped up against the walls in the corner and dislodged by the mouse when it made its escape. The impact of the pole as it hit the floor must have gently shaken the shelves and disturbed the loose sheets that were drifting down around it. Magdalena walked to the pole, leaned over, picked it up, and cried out, dropping it again.

  “Is it…?” Aviva stuttered.

  Magdalena bent over and picked it up again, more prepared for the thrill of power that shot up her arm from the wood. She grasped it tightly but held it at arm’s length. Both women peered at it.

  The pole was too short to have been a support for the roof but too long to have been a cane or similar walking stick. It was about as tall as she was, rough hewn and marked with what could have been either worn carving or the tooth marks of rodents. She preferred to think of the marks as carvings. It was dusty, which made the marks more difficult to decipher. But as she stood holding the pole and studying it, feeling the living energy humming within her grasp, she realized this must be what she had come to find.

  “Is that…?” Aviva stuttered again.

  “Yes.” Magdalena was sure of it. “This is the most precious artifact of all here. It is the staff of Rabbi Loew.”

  “With which he inscribed ‘truth’ on the Golem’s forehead to give him life and then altered it to read ‘death’ so as to destroy it?” Aviva asked in hush tones.

  “Yes.” Magdalena saw Aviva shiver and turn slightly, clapping a hand across her mouth. “How do you dare touch it?” she asked Magdalena but then answered her own question before Magdalena had a chance to respond. “No, we must. It must not be lost. It alone, if nothing else, must be preserved.”

  Magdalena turned to leave and realized that Aviva and Milka might think it suspicious if she left with only the staff in her hands. She pretended to scan the shelves and chose a few packets of pages, tied with string and ribbon, as well as a handful of the books whose bindings were disintegrating. She added a dozen individual pages that she scooped up from the floor and pretended to examine to the stack and thought that should satisfy the curiosity of the two guardians of the synagogue. She arranged it all so that she could easily carry it, slipped the flashlight back into her shoulder bag and then, holding the papers in the crook of her left arm and the staff in her other hand, edged out of the door and turned to pull it shut behind her. The door creaked and shivered but it closed. She juggled everything that she was carrying as Aviva turned the key in the lock. The bolts clicked.

  Pulling the key and taking that with her, Aviva slowly made her way down the narrow stairway to the narthex below with Magdalena following.

  Reaching the bottom of the stairway, Aviva stumbled over to Milka. Hearing them, Milka turned from the visitors who were lined up before her and, startled by Aviva’s shocked expression, jumped from her seat and offered it to her colleague. Aviva fell into the chair, gasping for breath and fanning herself. Milka looked to Magdalena for an explanation.

  “Go. Hurry.” Aviva fluttered her hand first at Magdalena and then towar
d the door. “Deposit the staff and the papers where they will be safe.” Taking a deeper breath, her eyes flashed cold for an instant, her voice regaining some of its stern edge of commanding authority. “But do not think that they must not be returned when the danger is past. What belongs here in the synagogue must be returned to the synagogue, as the rabbi wished when he sealed those things in the attic.”

  “Yes. I understand.” Magdalena stood there a moment, then leaned down to gently kiss Aviva on the cheek.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “Prague thanks you. History thanks you. We saved the staff together, Aviva.” Thinking of Fen’ka, she added to herself, “With it, maybe someone like the rabbi can work another marvel to save the oppressed of Prague, as he used it to make the Golem to protect the Jews.”

  Magdalena dashed out the door of the synagogue and headed towards the university.

  Magdalena darted into the Angel House and flew up the steps two at a time. She could hear the buzz of voices behind the meeting room doors and the scuffing of chairs and shuffle of feet. The meetings of the first session were breaking up. She slipped into the office and thrust the staff into the tall, narrow coat closet in one corner and simply dropped the pages and papers that she had also retrieved onto her desk. She would deal with those later. In the meantime, there were other matters that needed attention.

  She set down her bag, flattened her palms against her skirt and brushed away the dust from the synagogue’s attic. She tossed her hair back. She took a deep breath and stepped out to meet the coffee-seeking academics as if she had simply been tending some postponed paperwork in the office.

  As Magdalena was climbing the steps to the synagogue attic, Fr. Dmitri and Sophia were missing the opening session of the conference to attend church at the Orthodox cathedral, on the edge of the New Town near the river. The cathedral, scene of the martyrdom of the first Czech resistance fighters against the Nazi occupation, soared above the Sunday congregation inside. The local clergy conducted the service primarily in Czech, but with liberal smatterings of other languages, cognizant of the number of likely visitors to the church on any given day. The priest and his wife each lit a number of candles on behalf of the others struggling to overcome Fen’ka’s curse. After a slight hesitation, Dmitri lit one for Fen’ka, and another for George, Magdalena and— could he light one for Elizabeth? he wondered and then relented. If he could light a candle for the dead, he could light a candle for the undead.

  “May they all repent,” he whispered.

  After the service, Dmitri and Sophia walked back toward the Old Town along the riverbank. They passed under the famous Fred-and-Ginger office building, its one tower of green glass strong and upright while the other twisted backwards and away from the first, looking for all the world like Ginger Rogers performing one of her famous dance steps with Fred Astaire. The sound of the rushing river filled the air around them. Sophia, her arm draped through the crook of her husband’s elbow, stopped and pointed.

  “The river,” she said. “Look at how the water level has risen. And it’s fast. Listen to how it roars.” She glanced at her husband and then back to the river. They stepped closer to the railing running along the edge of the sidewalk and looked down into the muddy, rushing depths.

  “It has risen much higher than it was, even the day we arrived,” Sophia pointed out. “Is that typical for this time of year, do you think? I would have imagined that this is more what the river would be like in early spring, when the snow begins to melt and the spring thaws begin. By now, I would have expected the river to be smaller and maybe even drying out, exposing some of the riverbed. Like in Salzburg, when we were there last summer.”

  “Yes, it certainly has risen,” Dmitri concurred, nodding his head. He scanned the river, towards the Charles Bridge, then up the river, then back toward the bridge again. “Do you think…?” he murmured. “Is it possible?”

  “Do I think what?” Sophia asked with concern in her voice..

  He turned to his wife. “I believe you are right, Sophia. Normally, at this time of year, the river level should be going down, not up. And even if it rose a little, it shouldn’t be rising this high or this quickly. This is not right. I think it is not natural. I think this is more of the black magic that George and Elizabeth and Magdalena have unleashed against the city. This could be the beginning of the flood we saw in the vision at Loreto.”

  “But why?” Sophia asked him. “What do they hope to accomplish by raising the level of the river? They certainly can’t think that they would truly cause a flood, can they? How could they influence the natural world to such an extent? And,” she continued, “even if they could, how would that help them achieve their goal?”

  Dmitri looked towards the Charles Bridge again, crowded with tourists and local residents. “I don’t think flooding the city is their main objective.” He felt weak and shivered as he stood beside his wife in the humid summer heat.

  “Then their objective is…?” she prodded.

  “Remember how Theo explained the power of the bridge? How it was designed to protect the city and incorporated all manner of magic into its construction?” he asked. “The bridge is one of the few things able to stand in their way and prevent them from unleashing the full force of Fen’ka’s curse and Svetovit’s wrath against Prague. But if the bridge is washed away, then its magical power goes with it and its ability to protect the city is washed away as well.” He paused. “The bridge has stood since the late 1350s and has withstood floods before, but floods washed away its predecessor bridges and have—undoubtedly—damaged this one in its nearly seven hundred year existence.”

  “So Magdalena and George hope to wash away the bridge?” Sophia spoke as if dumbfounded.

  Dmitri nodded. “Or at least severely damage it. Damage it enough to crack the magic in it that protects the city.”

  Sophia was aghast. “They must think that they can create quite a flood, if they hope to accomplish that, and then still wreak more damage on the city.”

  “It would have to be a very powerful flood,” Dmitri agreed. “Probably a once-in-a-lifetime kind of flood. Or even a once-in-a-century kind. It demonstrates their hubris, their pride and arrogance, that they think they can accomplish something like this.”

  He shook his head. “But the bridge is too sturdy to be damaged by any flash flooding. In order to accomplish what they want, the flood—if it was conjured by George and Magdalena—will take time to accumulate enough water and enough force. That may work in our favor.”

  “But it could also work against us,” his wife responded. “Tomorrow is the last day of the conference. Won’t most of the attendees be leaving Prague on Tuesday? What if the flood is still building in force and we haven’t been able to avert whatever it is George is trying to accomplish? They could get away with whatever it is they want, simply because the rest of us have left Prague.”

  Dmitri shook his head again. “True. I hadn’t thought of that. Well, we will have to reschedule our flight home if we haven’t been able to stop them by then. I’m certain most of our little group will feel likewise. Even if not everyone can stay, some will. At the very least, you and I will stay. We cannot give up until we have bested George and set his plans awry.” They began walking again, towards the Charles Bridge and the Old Town. As they made their way along the river, they kept watch on the surging waters.

  Coming up to where the bridge met the Old Town, they stepped carefully into the busy flow of humanity there, people walking on the bridge, tourists strolling the lanes of the Old Town, vehicles filling the streets. Dmitri and Sophia crossed the street and made their way slowly, with the crowd, toward the Old Town Square. Dmitri proposed getting something quick for lunch before rejoining the afternoon sessions. “We also need to tell the others about the flood that seems to be on its way,” he said. “We need to think about our next move.”

  The crowded thoroughfare that was Karlova Street opened into the Old Town Square. A large crowd milled about the O
ld Town Hall in front of them, the people gathering at the base of the Astronomical Clock to watch it toll the hour and see the parade of apostles and other figures that would move about on the clock’s face. It was difficult to pick their way through the milling crowd, which also included tour groups forming into lines behind their tour leaders, further complicating the attempts of others to navigate the square. Dmitri and Sophia held hands and kept together as they found themselves pushed closer and closer to the base of the clock by the crowd, jostled and bumped by tourists anxious to plant themselves in the most advantageous place to view the tolling of the hour.

  Someone who seemed to have been separated from his tour group and was hurrying to catch up with them knocked Dmitri into the back of a woman in the crowd. “Excuse me,” Dmitri muttered in English to the woman. Another person, trying to keep up with a different tour group, pushed Dmitri from the other side, knocking him into the same woman again.

  “I’m so sorry,” he repeated, touching the woman’s shoulder. “I don’t mean to keep bumping into you but…”

  The woman glanced at him over her shoulder and then whirled about to face him.

  “Victoria!” the priest and his wife both exclaimed.

  “What are you doing here? We were worried about you and had no way to locate you! Have you seen any of the others? Have you heard what has happened to Peter?” Sophia dropped her husband’s hand and opened her arms to hug Magdalena’s friend. “I am so glad to see you!”