Suffering increasingly from shock and exhaustion from her wound and the
hard ride, Si'Wren's face remained unreadable, and her eyes seemed
somehow not to see him at all, even as she regarded him steadily.
Suddenly Kadrug raised his spear and shook it menacingly in Si'Wren's
direction. Si'Wren remained frozen, trembling greatly, and when he made
a fierce, menacing expression of hideous anger, her eyes widened, but
she still remained immobile.
Then, tilting his hoary head back in an imperious look of emboldened
masculine hauteur, Kadrug lifted his reins and prodded his horse once
with his heels, starting the animal slowly towards her.
At last, Si'Wren moved. Motivated by fear of capture--and worse, she
jerked sharply back on her left rein and kicked smartly with her left
heel into his still-heaving flank. The black exploded into action,
pivoting around towards the unseen bank of the river as Si'Wren dug
into his sides with her heels and reached back at the same time to
strike her horse's rump a quick sharp slap.
The black neighed and surged powerfully beneath her like a living thing
of fire and iron, surging toward the edge of the drop-off in a mighty
lunge until the ground suddenly fell away beneath his pounding hooves
and he had hurled them both far out into the air, high above the river,
rider and horse caught in a terrible rush of the wind of their falling.
They both went down, both Si'Wren and her horse, plunging with a mighty
impact and a great, arcing spray of white into the cold, swiftly
flowing mountain waters. Si'Wren's submerged ears heard the roar of the
waterfall, like a continuous, muted thunder in the rushing river
waters, as the horse fought his way to the surface again.
The men all jumped down off their horses and rushed to the edge of the
cliff and stared down at the surface of the river, but by the time they
could look, the foam of impact had moved far out of bowshot downstream.
The black was swimming steadily toward the opposite bank, but at first,
the girl was nowhere to be seen.
Still clinging to his mane, Si'Wren finally raised her head from the
water and gasped for air, and shook the water from her eyes to find the
black swimming powerfully for the other bank even as the swift current
swept them further downstream with every breath.
But he was not altogether tireless, and it seemed as if he might sink
and go under at any moment. Still gripping his mane with one hand,
Si'Wren reached back with the other and quickly untied the paired
saddlebags containing her writing kit and clenched them in her free
hand to lighten his load.
They were nearing the far shore, while far behind her she could hear a
chorus of hoarse voices as the men howled in frustration.
A few shot arrows in her direction, but it was too far for good aim and
their shafts did not come down at all close to her. They could no
longer reach her, and none dared follow the path she had taken.
Si'Wren felt her grip on his mane slipping, and letting go
involuntarily, she was dragged under by the weight of her waterlogged
kit with it's heavy clay tablets.
Underwater, she struggled to keep a tight grip on to her slippery
leather saddlebags as the river swirled and tumbled her over and over.
Up on the cliff, Kadrug abruptly thrust his sword into the air and
shouted in triumph, and as his men waved their flashing bronze swords
in the air, a chorus of hoarse voices howled in victory.
Then their leader jeered his derision as he turned away abruptly, and
after a final contemptuous look at the river from his followers, they
all retreated from the precipice and returned to their horses.
Still deep underwater and unable to hang on any longer, with a curious
roaring in her ears, Si'Wren finally resorted to more drastic means and
let go of her writing kit, with it's beautifully carved ivory writing
sticks, and the precious clay tablets wherein was written everything
she knew about her great, Invisible God Who was so much like water.
Unburdened by the weight of her kit, she rose to burst at long last
through the surface, gasping and straining for the life-giving air.
She quickly realized that she was so near to the far bank that, gasping
heavily, she merely let herself drift in closer, and swam a few tired
strokes to finally reach it on hands and knees. She dragged herself
halfway out of the water and collapsed, and felt the stub-end of the
arrow in her shoulder grate on a rock in the soft sloping bank. She
rolled halfway over onto her side to avoid doing that again, and lay in
the miry clay of the bank.
Clay. She had lost her writing kit, with all that she had written about
the Invisible God, but all around her was clay, miry clay, enough clay
to fill the whole world with tablets about the Invisible God. And then
she realized that she still had every word she had ever preached to her
Emperor, written in her heart.
Looking back upstream, she peered up at the far bank, high above the
water, where her many pursuers and their leader were no longer visible.
Than she looked around unsteadily, and a little ways downstream on the
same side of the river as herself, she saw the black stallion.
He was bogged down in the mud and reeds of a sheltered shallows, his
head sagging ever lower as he gradually gave up his fight for life by
successive stages, with weaker and weaker struggles. What a sadness,
that such a magnificent creature should ever have to die!
Si'Wren turned her head and lifted up her eyes, and shifted her gaze
over a little, to look up at the sky just beyond the waterfall, up into
the shining white mists of it's far-flung, billowing overspray.
And then she gasped, awestruck, for there in a perfectly stationary arc
stretching across the billowing, towering plumes of white mist, she saw
a multi-hued sweep of pure jeweled light, arrayed in the most beautiful
translucent bow of vivid colors, red above, and purple beneath, with
orange-yellow and blue-green streaked through the center of the
miraculously motionless curved arc.
Gasping with increasing difficulty for air from her tortured lungs, and
still gazing up into the white mists, Si'Wren stared, spellbound, as
the bow of colors and the thundering roar of the waterfall slowly faded
from her senses.
* * *
And Si'Wren died.
And these were all the years of her life, and she was but seventeen
when she died. I, Ibi, have made proper record of it and shall now seal
all away in a great stone jar, for a strange and unheard-of thing
happens even as I write these words. Water, falling from the sky for
almost a solid week! This miraculous thing have I beheld with mine own
rheumy and tired old eyes that thought they had seen all that there was
to see, and still it falls! The gods harken not unto the lamentations
and sacrifices of men. The rivers, the lakes, and the very sea itself,
all are tumultuous, swollen, and rising. Great fear has fallen upon all
flesh, upon every man, woman, and child, and upon every beast, and fowl
of the air, and lowly creeping thing alike. For the space of six days
and six nights has this cursed divine waterfall descended from the
heavens upon all the formerly dry land.
I go again to pray. Ye gods, why do ye not listen? Perhaps the great
Invisible God of Si'Wren, the Holy One Who is like water, will hearken
unto my prayers if the other gods will not, and surely tomorrow, on the
seventh day, He will rest.
* * *
The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful
men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away
from the evil to come. - Isaiah 57.