Air

by Geoff Ryman

  Hatijah was weeping. “We can’t leave our goat,” she said.

  Inshallah. Mae relented “Of course you can’t, it is all your family’s wealth. But Edrem, please tell her, life is more important than money. Let the goat go, perhaps it can save itself.”

  Edrem’s silhouette, tall, skinny and slow, murmured to his wife: “We must go.”

  Mae started to struggle higher up the hill, to the Shens. She shouted as she walked: “Edrem, I rely on you! You take the children, Hatijah the bags, okay? Okay? And leave your lights on. We will all need light!”

  Mae struggled up the hill, leaning on her hands. The hillside was sheathed in water, a solid rippling sheet that was seasoned with tiny cutting flints. The stones sizzled against her fingers like fat on a stove. My God, the whole hillside is moving!

  All around her, suspended in the air, was a sound like sighing, a rushing sound of water, in a hundred thousand streams. It was a terrible sound, huge and gentle at the same time, vast as a world. As if Mae had heard the world for the first time.

  That’s it, that’s the sound.

  Unexpectedly, the ground flattened and Mae stumbled forward. She was at the schoolhouse. Already the dusty playground was a polished lake, reflecting the children’s swings. Water poured out from one corner of the school as if from the spout of a pitcher.

  Mae waded to the door and pounded. “Teacher Shen! Teacher Shen!”

  The door seemed to bounce open.

  Mae felt another hot breath, but not the Dragon’s. Moist, weepy, there was Suloi, her face sticky with tears. “He won’t come, Mae,” she said, and shook herself into sobs.

  Mae hugged her sister from the Circle. “What do you mean?”

  A voice out of the darkness, like the darkness, growled, “There will be no Flood. It is foolishness.”

  “Oh, Shen, don’t believe me, but believe the water, look at the ground! Shen, please come!”

  Something wavered in the darkness, as if it were coiled, legless.

  “There will be no Flood.”

  Suloi backed away. “He will not leave.”

  Mae pleaded: “Shen! Come outside! You can hear it. The snows are melting!”

  “And the snows will run off, as they have for two thousand years. Do you think those machines of yours can change the world?”

  “Do you think you can hold back a Flood? How? By teaching it arithmetic?!” Mae’s voice broke with fury.

  The darkness, the despair finally uncoiled and stood up. It cocked a rifle. The gun clicked in the darkness.

  “I will not have scandalous filth such as you telling my family what to do,” said Despair, who once had been called Happiness.

  “Go, Mae,” whispered Suloi, and gave Mae an invisible, loving push.

  Shen growled, “We stay here where we belong.”

  Mae pulled Suloi to her, hugged her, whispered in her ear, “Run in the dark.” Then she pulled back and ran and called over her shoulder, “Live!”

  The hills were laughing.

  There was a giggling sound, thousands of chuckles as the water shook itself over rocks, down gullies. It slapped its way across the rock faces of the terraces.

  Mae skittered down the slope to the square box of the mosque that had the public-address system mounted on its gable. She came to the door. She rattled it. The sound beyond was hollow. It was locked.

  Who locks a mosque? It’s never been locked! Mae had calculated, she knew it would take three hours to rouse each house in turn. Mae was near tears. She had planned and planned, but she had never planned that the mosque would be locked.

  She would have to run to Mr. Shenyalar, the Muerain. He would have the keys.

  At least it was downhill. She turned and let the water and gravity carry her.

  Mae staggered and slid down the hill. She skittered through the space between the Alis’ and the Dohs’. She got tangled in old rusting bedding that someone had discarded. The springs made a merry sproing sound as she pulled her feet free. She half fell onto the cobbles of Upper Street, and spun herself into the concave frontage of the house of the Doh family.

  Mae shouted up at the shuttered windows, “Old Mrs. Doh, all Dohs, wake up, wake up, there is a Flood, there is a Flood!” She had danced with them only hours before. “Please wake up!” New Year, and everyone will be asleep, drunk, exhausted, happy.

  Mae spun away onto the bridge. The little river roared, enveloping the arch in mist that stroked Mae’s face and danced happily into her lungs. Over the stone balustrade, moonlit rapids shot white and hot and fierce down the gully. Mae remembered the ducks, the geese. Already they were a memory, already washed away. Below, the village square looked like an ocean, all glinting waves.

  On the other side of the bridge, there was a huge puddle. Even here on Upper Street, a pocket of the road was flooded. Mae plunged down from the bridge and water poured in over the tops of her boots. Even now, the village was still asleep, still dark.

  “Flood! Flood!” she shouted. Suddenly a flashlight flared around the corner of the back of the Haj’s house.

  “Mae, this way,” said a voice. It was her brother. “We’ve got Mother up at the Wings. I’ve just been down to Lower Street.”

  “Ju-mei! I need to get to the Shenyalars’.”

  “Good, this is the way, down here.”

  Mae waded towards him, the water above her knees. Ju-mei reached forward and grabbed her arm. Together they thrashed their way down the rocky gap between the house of the Haj and his neighbors. The alley was like a water garden, all ferns and waterfalls. Mae and Ju-mei fell into Lower Street as if plunging into a river.

  The current nearly swept them away. It poured around the corner of Ju-mei’s house, rucking up like bedding, white as sheets.

  Across the street was the Muerain’s tall stone house, with its bronze plaque. Clinging to each other, Ju-mei and Mae crossed the torrent. It made them trip downstream as if dancing. They crammed themselves into the porch of the al Gamas’ house to brake. Holding on to the rough walls, they pulled themselves upstream, as if up a cliff.

  Something crackled. Mae turned to see the Haj’s straw outhouse spin out into the current and down into the square. The square was a lake. The village’s one streetlight glowed golden on waves rocking against the front doors of the Kosals’ and the Masuds’. The outhouse roof, like a straw hat, swirled away on the current. The surface of the water roiled as if full of serpents.

  Ju-mei pulled Mae into the doorway of the Shenyalars’. He pounded; Mae howled.

  “Muerain! Muerain Shenyalar! Oh please, please open. Please wake up! Oh, Muerain! Muerain!”

  Why, why didn’t they move? They were religious Karz, they did not drink, they did not celebrate the New Year, why didn’t they hear?

  “There is a Flood, Muerain, please wake up!”

  From somewhere down in the valley came a terrible spreading crash, as if someone had dropped a dresser full of china. The sound of breakage rolled, settled and then shushed to a halt.

  The small terraces below the village were falling, collapsing into the waters.

  The houses of the Pins and the Chus. Where Sezen was?

  Mae was spurred by terror. “Shenyalar. Wake up! Oh please wake up!”

  A casing moved.

  “Who is it?”

  “Mrs. Shenyalar, it is Chung Mae. Listen, did you hear that noise?”

  “Yes, yes indeed.”

  “The Flood is here! Mrs. Shenyalar, can your husband come with me, can he come and open up the mosque, so we can use the public-address?”

  “Wait there, Mrs. Chung,” said the wife.

  Ju-mei began to shout at the other houses. “Mr. al Gama! The Hajsir! Mrs. Nan!”

  A light went on at Mrs. Nan’s.

  “Mrs. Nan! Get up, get your things—go!” Mae shouted at the light.

  The door of the Shenyalars’ opened.

  “Oh, Muerain!” Mae cried in relief.

  “Inshallah,” breathed out the Muerain. He had
taken time, the foolish man, to dress in his religious robes. He saw the river and its surging current, and the new lake at the foot of the streetlight. He heard the roar. He turned and looked at Mae, and his fine, thin features said mutely: You were right.

  “We have to tell everyone,” she said.

  Unhurried, the Muerain strode back into his house. “Wife! Get the children, get food, and go at once to Madame Kwan’s.”

  His wife called, “Surely it is too soon to worry?”

  “It is too late to worry. I order you, wife: Out of this house and up to the house of the Wings’!”

  “What are you doing?” his wife asked.

  There was a flurry of footsteps on stairs. “My duty!”

  At that moment, the entire village was plunged into darkness. The power went.

  “Inshallah!”

  “Husband!”

  “Get to the Wings’. I go!” shouted Mr. Shenyalar.

  Mae wrestled with her backpack, and felt the rubberized surface of a waterproof flashlight.

  “I have two,” she said, and passed him one. The light flashed on the wet walls like fairies in a play, dancing ahead of them.

  Mae turned to her brother. She kissed his cheek. “Thank you,” she said. “Don’t go down. Lower Street is lost. Go up to the Soongs’, the Pings’, and Mr. Atakoloo. Yes?”

  “My place is with you,” said Ju-mei.

  “It has always been with me, brother. But it is also with your wife and neighbors. Please go?”

  Ju-mei paused, and then, very deliberately, gave his sister a long, low bow of respect.

  Then he turned, shouting, “Go to Wing’s, don’t go on Lower Street!”

  Mae shouted, for a Muerain could not lose dignity to that extent. “Everyone up! The Flood is here! Everyone up!”

  Mae and the Muerain fought the current back up the gap between the Haj and the Nan households. Overhead, the stars glinted with merriment, the hills roared, everything was comic. The little people were finally seeing who their master was.

  The current on Upper Street had gained strength. It sounded now like a waterfall; the little lake had reached up into the house of Mr. Ping, and its surface rippled as it sluiced its way out between houses.

  The Muerain hoisted up his skirts to show long hairless legs. He reached back for Mae, and ran, holding up his skirts like a dancing showgirl. The stars laughed. Around their feet stones swirled like the shards of broken pots.

  The Muerain ran up the cobbles of the bridge. Below, through the pursed lips of the bridge’s arch, the river made a noise like a child blowing through its own spit. Mr. Shenyalar and Mae cleared the top of the arch.

  More like a stallion now, all in white, the Muerain plunged down into the cascades that swept around both sides of the Dohs’ ancient house. His sandals were snatched away from him. The Muerain nipped and minced and hopped across the stones on tender feet. Ouch ooch eek ouch.

  The stars clutched their sides, their tiny eyes narrowed, wet with tears of laughter.

  Ahead of them was movement. Mae shone her torch.

  Mr. Ken was giving a piggyback ride as if at a party, Mrs. Okan’s arms around his neck. Mr. Okan shuffled beside them, clinging to the edge of his wife’s dress and murmuring to her.

  Behind them came Sezen’s two sisters; Edrem, carrying his youngest child; and Hatijah, who was carrying the goat. Its eyes were round and pink with terror.

  The Muerain said, “Hurry up to Kwan’s. The bridge will not hold.”

  “The current is terrible,” said Mr. Ken. “Mae, come with us.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Mae, do not be so foolish. Please!”

  Mae said instead, “Loan the Muerain your shoes.”

  A moment’s pause, the sense of it was seen, and Mr. Ken kicked off his galoshes.

  “Is your mother out?”

  Kuei shook his head. “My mother is packing!” The Muerain hopped on one leg, pulling on the shoe.

  “Packing! Does she think it’s a picnic?”

  “I know!” Mr. Ken began, to run to gain momentum to get him and Mrs. Okan up the steep slope of the bridge. “I’ll have to go back for her!” he shouted.

  The goat blinked and kicked in Hatijah’s arms. Mae and the Muerain ran.

  They ran straight into the rusting bedding now washed into the roadway. Blindly they bobbed and bounded their way over the springs. On the moonlit hill, Sunni’s house was dark.

  Out onto the bare slope, all trails gone. The stars glistened on the sheen of water. Ahead of them the white walls of the mosque glowed.

  They reached the door of the mosque. Mae waited, panting. The Muerain suddenly slapped his own forehead.

  “I’ve left the key behind,” he said.

  “You what?” Mae felt like the water—torn, broken, swept away.

  The Muerain stood back, raised a leg, and kicked at the lock. He was tall, strong, a herdsman. With a splintering sound and a shuddering of wood, the door chuckled its way backwards.

  The floor was flooded. He grasped the wooden railing of the prayer stall, splashed across the floor to a staircase, and ran up the steps to the tower. Mae ran after him. The flashlight licked hungrily over the back of the speaker down to the batteries. Mr. Shenyalar bent and kissed the batteries, tasting them to see if they still worked. He flicked a switch; there was amplified crackling. He began, low and dark, to sing.

  Mae grabbed his arm.

  “Muerain. Please!”

  The flashlight glared angrily at her.

  “I’m sorry, Muerain-sir. But most people sleep through a call to prayer.”

  Pause.

  “They turn over in their beds.”

  Pause.

  And his voice, rich and deep, said, “The Flood has come. For our sins, our godlessness, the Flood is upon us.” It was strange. Mae could hear his voice, which was so close to her, roll and fall away all across the valley.

  Then he said, “Follow the advice of Mrs. Chung. Take food, take blankets, and go to Mr. Wing’s. Do not go on Lower Street. Already you will not get past. Go on Upper Street. Now. The Flood is here.”

  He turned.

  “You go,” the Muerain said.

  She paused. Somehow she had pictured herself calling the faithful.

  “You must go and wake people. I can stay here.”

  “Not too long,” Mae warned him.

  “I have a duty,” Mr. Shenyalar said. “Go.” He passed her back the second flashlight. She turned and the Muerain’s voice ballooned out over the sound of the water. “The Flood has come.”

  Mae staggered down the steps and then had to lean over. Acids shot like venom up from her stomach and out of her mouth. The fumes were acrid; she had difficulty breathing. Her throat was raw and sore. She knelt down and scooped up some of the water and drank.

  Where could she do the most good? Sezen would have roused the plain, the houses in the low south. It was Sunni who had farthest to go; she was high, but next to the river. She would need to go down to the bridge to cross. Mae looked across and saw Sunni’s house, high and alone. She blinked, and thought she saw it move on its foundations.

  So Mae ran to save Sunni.

  The hill between the high mosque and the high house was no longer flowing with water. It was pouring mud; the mud stirred around her like porridge, but porridge with teeth, for it was also full of stone. I will have to give up soon, Mae thought, I will have to save myself.

  Already.

  Another voice spoke, unbidden:

  The hillsides dissolve like sugar in tea. That undermines the terraces and they fall. The houses fill with mud or are crushed by stone.

  Ahead, the river leapt up, white and snarling. The river had become a kind of dragon, rearing up over it banks, leaping, challenging, and opening its maw.

  Mae thought of Sunni, of their delicate chats in the ice cream parlor, of adjusting each other’s hair. The stones nibbled her ankles, the mud tugged playfully. A boot was pulled free from her foot. Mae for
ged on, against what was becoming a tide of mud.

  Sunni’s high stone front step was already an island. Mae pounded on the door. She shouted. The river was louder.

  The door was not locked. Mae ran into the darkened house. It looked so calm and normal and safe, with its rack of kitchen pots and new pool table in the living room.

  “Sunni! Sunni! Mr. Haseem! Wake up!”

  Mae ran up the stairs—narrow, steep, unfamiliar. She had never been upstairs. She bashed her head on a beam. There were many doors. Which one? She pushed her way into a bedroom full of snores and reeking of booze. Starlight through the window fell over the bed, making chessboard squares.

  “Wake up, wake up!” Mae cried.

  Sunni jerked and sat up and then wailed and covered herself with the bedding, her face full of fear.

  “What are you doing here? Get out!” Sunni wailed.

  Her husband snored, fully clothed, still in his boots.

  “Sunni, the Flood is here.”

  “Get out of my bedroom!”

  “Sunni, please, just listen. The snow has melted. Listen to the river.”

  “Madwoman!”

  Sunni was in a rage. She tried turning on a light. Nothing, no power. She got up and threw on a robe and stormed towards Mae and pushed her. “Madwoman, get out of here!”

  Mae pushed her back.

  “Ow!” shouted Sunni, scandalized. “Husband, wake up, she will kill us both!”

  “Stupid cow, I don’t know why I bother with a woman with cowshit instead of brains!” Mae raged, and seized Sunni by the wrist and pulled her out of the room.

  “Husband! I am assaulted. Help!”

  Mae’s strength surged out of panic and anger, and Sunni was dragged to a corridor window.

  “There,” said Mae.

  Outside, the river was full and white. It filled the gully; it was pouring all around the bridge. It hauled itself over the top walls of Lower Street and down, a waterfall now. Under the steaming moon, they saw the entire valley. It glittered like a sea.

  “My god,” whispered Sunni.

  “See! See!” raged Mae. “Who is the madwoman now!”