Journey to Water's Heart

by Lea Ben Shlomo

  “Are you crazy? What are you doing?”

  “We’re protecting you.”

  “From what? I don’t see any danger here besides you.”

  “So what’s this?” The older boy pointed at the puddle. Tanti looked and didn’t see a thing, except his annoyed reflection. “What do you see there?”

  “Myself.”

  “That’s exactly your greatest danger. That fancy face that doesn’t know the difference between flora and fauna.”

  “And you? What about you?”

  “We’re making sure you don’t touch what you’re not supposed to touch.”

  “I didn’t touch a thing,” Tanti said.

  “But you wanted to.”

  Tanti lost his patience. He meant to walk away, but his leg started to sink in a red-orange puddle, trapping him. He pulled his leg out and looked at his shoe in dismay.

  “You should put in your second shoe,” the boy said. “A dandy such as yourself can’t allow himself to walk around with one brown shoe and one orange one.” Tanti decided to walk away. The two boys blocked his way, rolling and flipping, laughing, and watching him with huge eyes, which reminded him of his horse, Gayalo.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Ninei-Ninai,” was their answer, and again, they somersaulted back and forth.

  “What?”

  “As we said, Ninei-Ninai. That’s what he calls us.”

  “Who?”

  “Our great-great-grandfather Aklivor,” the older one said and pulled Tanti’s shirt. “We are after all his great-grandchildren. He’s Ninei and I’m Ninai. We’ve forgotten the names our mother gave us. In fact, everyone has. And you, fancy Tanti Marin from the village, can we try on your hat?” The younger brother started writing his name on Tanti’s colored shoe.

  “Get out of my way. Why are you harassing me?” Tanti said and retrieved his stolen hat.

  “We aren’t harassing. We were sent,” said Ninei or Ninai. It was hard to tell the difference. “We were ordered to accompany you on your tour of the Water Farm.”

  “I don’t need you to accompany me. I can manage just fine without you.”

  “We saw.” The boy pointed at Tanti’s orange shoe. “This time you emerged unscathed. But there are sinkholes here that the chance of getting out of alive is zero to a million.” He paused for a moment, trying to calculate what he had just said. “I meant, the chances are one to zero, or something like that.”

  His brother burst out laughing.

  “My big brother is a bit stupid. There’s no chance whatsoever that you’ll get out of those sinkholes alive. Not one to zero, or two hundred in a million. We’re here to make sure you don’t do anything foolish, since we can discern between a research puddle, a natural waterhole, and a sinkhole. Not everything you see is as it seems. Besides, we have to train you to walk through hostile territory, which is what our great-great-grandfather Aklivor ordered us to do.”

  “You’re doing a great job with the hostility,” Tanti said dismissively and turned away. “Tentapops and sinkholes. I’ve never heard so much nonsense in my life.”

  Just then, his second leg sank into a green puddle, one of the glowing ones. Tanti got angry at himself. He thought that if he dipped in his second foot, at least his shoes would be the same color.

  “Watch out!” The two boys shouted and leaped toward him. Tanti felt as if a tremendous force was pulling his leg, as if someone wanted to tear it from his body. In order to avoid the awful pain, he had to relax his body and let it be pulled down. The pain eased. Panic consumed him as he felt himself getting sucked into the mud, to a depth he didn’t imagine such a small puddle could contain. Terrified, he grasped the branch of a nearby tree and pulled himself up with all his might. Ninei and Ninai grabbed him, and together, they managed to stop the sinking. Just then, he kicked the shoe loose in the puddle, and he fell forward on his face. The shoe sank and disappeared in a chorus of bubbles.

  “We told you.”

  “Thank you for helping me. That sinkhole was scary.” Now earth and mud stained his clothes. He reached out to the puddle to retrieve his shoe, but their shouting stopped him. This time, they seemed really frightened. Then he remembered Aklivor’s warning and took a step back. Frustrated, he got up and started walking jerkily, one foot shod in an orange shoe, and the other in a green sock. He didn’t like walking this way; it was very uncomfortable, but he wanted to get away from that place as fast as possible.

  “Stop, don’t go alone,” the two boys said and grabbed his shirt. “It’s dangerous to walk around. You saw it yourself.”

  “It seems to me that it’s just as bad to stay with you two.”

  “Wait, you haven’t seen this yet.” Little Ninai reached out to a nearby tree. He tore off a piece of the bark and put it on the surface of the green puddle. The bark was swallowed up and disappeared with a faint sob. In order to prove his words, he got up, broke a branch off the tree, and put it on the puddle. The branch disappeared as well.

  “Do you want to tell me that this little puddle can swallow such a large branch?”

  “It can swallow you, your hat, and your frills in less than half a minute.”

  Tanti looked at that perfectly round puddle. The water was calm again, and the fern fronds were crumpled now and moved restlessly. Ninei and Ninai came closer and leaned over the green puddle, staring intently.

  “Now,” Ninai said.

  “Now what?” Tanti asked.

  “Quiet.” Ninai kneeled.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to retrieve your drowned shoe,” Ninai said.

  “And how are you going to do that?”

  “With caution.”

  “You aren’t going to risk your life for one of my fancy shoes, are you?”

  Ninai didn’t answer. He circled the green puddle once, then twice, his eyes locked on one particular spot. He gestured to his younger brother, who started swaying from side to side. His movements slow, Ninai came closer, reached out, and plunged his hand in the water. Tanti followed him anxiously. He didn’t dare breathe. Ninai’s thin arm rose slowly, and in the end, Tanti’s shoe appeared as well, dripping wet and as green as fresh hyssop.

  The water made a burbling sound and seemed to leap toward the shoe. Young Ninei grasped his brother and pulled him away. The two of them flew back, rolled, and sat up, grinning so widely that the corners of their mouths almost reached the corners of their eyes.

  “We did it, stinky sinkhole,” young Ninei said and stuck out his tongue.

  Tanti took his shoe, emptied it of water, and shook free the snails sticking to it. Despite his revulsion, he preferred the filthy shoe over a barefooted trek. A mollusk like the one the boys had thrown on him slowly crawled out of his shoe.

  What more will happen to me today? he wondered. He caught it with two fingers and flung it away. It fell right in the middle of the green puddle. He heard a short, sharp whistle, a pathetic squeal, and the mollusk vanished.

  “I didn’t mean to do that!” Tanti said.

  “Don’t worry,” Ninai said. “The mollusk is one of the few creatures that survives the sinkholes. It knows how to relax its muscles and go through the bottom layer of mud. It’ll pop up in one of the other waterholes, a bit annoyed and vengeful, but sticky and alive.”

  Tanti got up and started following them. For a long time, he didn’t say a thing. He hoped they were leading him toward the house.

  Suddenly, from the corner of his eye, he saw something red blinking. His already slow pace grew even slower, and he started looking down at the ferns growing out of the puddles. “I think I already know,” he said. He passed by them and started leading, looking at the waterholes and paving his way carefully. “Here, this is a sinkhole,” he said, pointing at one of the puddles. “And this is just a regular puddle. And here’s another one
.”

  “Hey, you’re right. It really is a sinkhole. How can you tell the difference?”

  “I found it strange that the water in the sinkhole doesn’t suck the ferns into them. And I noticed that the puddles you kept your distance from had this kind of tuft of ferns. And then I noticed a red spot.”

  Ninei and Ninai looked at each other. Ninei whispered to his brother. “Do you think he found out about the—” and Ninai hushed him. “Wait,” he said. “Let’s see if he really does understand what he’s talking about.” He sat down and pulled his brother down to sit with him. “Tell us, Tanti. What exactly did you find out?”

  “Here, there’s a red eye on the middle leaf. When we come closer, it reacts with rapid blinking, and after that, there’s a movement in the water. I think these things happen with fish or predators who have animals that clean them, or spy for them. This probably signals whatever’s beneath the water to open up and suck the object into it. Something like that. I don’t understand what’s going on there, because I’m not sure if it’s flora or fauna. The only thing I’m sure of is that every place that the fern blinks, there’s a danger of sinking.”

  Ninei and Ninai rejoiced and jumped around him. They slapped his shoulder and looked happy. “You did it! Great-great-grandfather will be very happy.”

  They hugged and rolled in the grass. No wonder, Tanti thought, that they were so round and smooth.

  “When will we reach the house?” Tanti asked. “I’d like to clean up.”

  “We haven’t finished the tour yet. There’s tons to see.”

  “I prefer to turn back now.”

  “We thought you were curious and a nature lover. And actually,” Ninai said, “we’ve only just started becoming friends.”

  “I like nature. But not the kind that sticks to my neck, and not predatory water.”

  “Walking along the stream will bring us back home in two or three hours, if we walk fast.”

  “I can’t go fast,” Tanti said. “My orange foot is wet, and I’m getting blisters. And my green foot hurts because of where the sinkhole sucked me in.”

  “Perhaps you’d like to rest a bit?”

  Tanti almost thought he was hearing concern in their voices.

  “I want to get out of here as fast as possible,” he said. “I have to get to the house and tend to my injured foot.”

  “If that’s what you want, we’ll take the short route,” Ninai said, and he pulled aside the reeds that grew on the banks of the stream. Tanti could see the house’s roof, and the corner of a window, hidden beyond the dense wall of reeds.

  He didn’t know if he should be mad at the round brothers, who could’ve jerked him around for hours, or angry at himself for not noticing the passage.

  Ninei and Ninai were no longer there. They had vanished as though swallowed by an especially quick sinkhole. Tanti limped toward the house, circled it, and searched for the front door. The house was big, and the yard was overflowing with objects and plants that forced him to walk around them and added to his distance. The pain in his foot increased from minute to minute. He felt as though his foot was swelling up with every step he took.

  A young, feminine, dirty hand came to his rescue.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Manin grabbed his arm.

  “The house.”

  “We’d better take a shortcut. You look kind of…”

  Tanti raised a hand, signaling that she stop. “Don’t tell me how I look. Not a word. You hear?”

  “I hear. The entire farm hears you.” Manin led him to a side door, which was just ten painful steps away. “I was expecting you at the reptile compound, to help me with the feeding. It’s a shame you didn’t come. There were new spawnings, a real treat.”

  “I’m sorry. I should’ve come.”

  “I imagine you were lured by Ninei and Ninai’s charm, and you preferred to go with them. Especially after my grumpy reception this morning. Sometimes, I really am awful. Especially when I really like someone, or I really don’t. Or when I’m woken up early in the morning.” She stared fixedly at his feet.

  “I see that you, too, weren’t at your best this morning,” she said. “Otherwise, why would you wear different-colored shoes? I’d think you were scatterbrained and sloppy if I didn’t know, as we’re taught here at the Water Farm, that things aren’t always as they seem.”

  “I’m not. I’m not sloppy.” Tanti felt his head spin and held her hand tightly.

  “I know, Tanti, that you dress carefully. And even though you’re a bit jumpy, you’re talented and farsighted. You could even be extremely handsome if you weren’t so filthy and wet.”

  “I am filthy and wet. No doubt about it.”

  “Forgive me if I’ve offended you. I suppose I could look nicer if I’d wash my face. Here, let me take you to bathe and primp before everyone else arrives and catches the pools.”

  “I don’t think I can take another step,” Tanti said before he collapsed. Manin gripped his arm, and Tanti leaned on her, placing his weight on the slender girl. They managed to reach the threshold. From there, she dragged him after her, through the rooms in the house to a narrow entrance in which steps carved in stone led them to a dusky cave.

  There were three pools in the cave. Steam was rising from one of them.

  Manin ordered him to enter the first pool to wash off the filth and dust. Then she explained. “There are sponges and soap here. After that, enter the warm pool. It’ll ease the pain in your leg. And finally, dip into the cold water, and you’ll come out as fresh and smiling as a baby. See you!”

  She disappeared, her voice still echoing in the cave.

  Chapter 6

  The First Lesson

  Tanti took off his clothes and laid them on a moist stone by his side. He crawled to the first pool and was surprised to find the water warm and pleasant. From there, he moved to the second pool, which was covered with steam and smelled of sulfur mixed with lavender and Shernan bark.

  In the beginning, the water was so hot that he could barely endure it, but after a minute, he couldn’t endure the thought that he’d have to get out of there sometime. The water enveloped him and gripped his body like a shrunken garment, pulling the stress and pain out of him. As he sat on the bench against the wall of the pool, his head tipped back, his eyes half-closed, he thought he heard mumbling. Shadows passed before his face, and he wondered if he wasn’t alone in the pool. “Excuse me, is someone here?” he tried to say when one of the shadows came close to him. No one answered. Just a rustle and a giggle. The steam was heavy and dense. Tanti sank in with pleasurable laziness. When he woke up, he felt as though he was burning in the sulfur water. He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep, but he felt he’d stayed in the second pool enough. He got out and went to the third pool, where he found a little niche with bowls containing all sorts of soaps. The water was cool. He shampooed his hair, quickly washed his face, and climbed out. Then he wiped himself with a towel waiting for him on the same rock where he had left his clothes. As for his clothes, he couldn’t find them. Instead, he found a light-colored, clean, folded linen gown. He looked around, but no one was there. Having no other choice, he wore the gown, which almost reached his ankles. The gown, which looked as though it were made out of a simple, rough material, was, to his surprise, comfortable and soft.

  Tanti searched for the door through which he had entered. On the other side of the pools, he noticed stairs leading to a narrow hallway and remembered how he had gotten in. Carefully, he walked along the slippery ledge and climbed the stairs. At the end, he found a sitting niche with carpets and lit candles. There was no opening in the wall. He looked back and searched for another stairwell. He was still limping slightly but was happy to see that he felt much better. The other stairs he found didn’t lead to an exit but to another hallway, which brought him right back to his starting point. He tried another dir
ection. He was tired of the moist, slippery gloominess of the cave, and of walking in circles. In the end, he sat down, hoping that someone would come in and get him out of this place.

  He tried yelling. “Hey, is anyone here?” Echoes of sound surrounded him. The water started raging, and Tanti imagined the steaming pool water rising and flooding the cave.

  His eyes rested on faint circles of light flickering on the water. He raised his eyes, trying to search for the source of the light.

  In the cave’s ceiling, he noticed shapeless apertures, which sent down faint, pale beams. He got up and started walking and climbing toward what looked like the largest opening.

  The dim light grew brighter. He found iron poles installed in the stone, leading up like a ladder. Tanti climbed quickly. Now he noticed a frame installed in the ceiling. He pulled the handle. The aperture didn’t budge. He grunted and tried to push the frame, but to no avail. Once again, he turned the handle, pushed it, pulled, and jiggled, until the hatch suddenly opened. Tanti lifted himself and leaped up. He rolled right into a room furnished with sofas and armchairs. He heard shrill, brief creaking. Later on, he realized that it was actually the sound of Aklivor’s laughter. The old man sat at the end of the room, in all of his hirsute glory, his blue eyes twinkling.

  “Reckless and jumpy like his father in his youth,” the old man chuckled. “Is your leg better? Ninei and Ninai told me you were almost swallowed by a sinkhole. One or two days of rest and your leg will be as good as new. Try not to run around the farm. Always search for the shorter, easier ways.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “If you’re trying, you’re already on the right track. I heard you managed to solve the riddle of the sinkholes. We’ll talk about that later. Let’s start now with the first lesson. We’d better not waste our time with unnecessary talking. First, make sure you secure the hatch, so no one will fall through, especially, God forbid, an old man like me. And then we’ll start the lesson.”

  Tanti got up and obeyed the old man’s order. His head was full of questions. While he listened to the old man’s voice—who, in the meantime, had opened a carved wood chest and taken out a papyrus scroll—he noticed shelves crammed with books and rolled sheets of paper covering three walls of the room. Before him was a large window and an open door, which led to a nice orchard with pebble-paved paths. On the wall to his right was an entrance that led to a slightly smaller room, in which there were sinks and sieves like those he had seen over the waterholes, and jars and test tubes and other instruments. He had no idea what they were meant for.