Life at the summer farm had already begun to wear them down. They could put up with the fact that it was cramped, but having nothing to do was worse. Rachel and Jerak had their hands full. Anna as well. But Javan and the twins had nothing to do. They simply sat around inside. Javan would go out to the lean-to occasionally, but that was all.
A future here?
The sea had to fall.
But the sea didn’t fall. Quite the contrary. On the eighth day after the birth it began to rise again. And it rose quickly. Javan had taken a walk down that morning, and having seen that the water had risen, he could confirm that the water rose by about three feet in the next hour.
In ten hours the plateau would be flooded. Two days and the forest would have disappeared. They would have a few weeks until it reached the summer farm, perhaps even a few months. But to what purpose?
Suppose the rising waters stopped when they reached the mountainside beneath the summer farm, Anna thought, as she stood on the plateau along with all the others who’d gathered there that morning, somber and scared. Suppose we’re lucky enough that it halts there, she thought. What sort of life would we have then?
She looked out over the endless gray sea.
If only there was something she could do!
Nothing could be as bad as this, sitting there, totally powerless, just waiting.
It was fifteen feet below the lip of the mountainside now. And it was still rising.
She turned to Javan.
“What shall we say to Rachel?” she asked.
“We must tell her the truth,” said Javan.
“We can’t do that,” said Anna. “We can’t.”
“We’ve got to,” said Javan. “I’ll do it if you like.”
She considered for a moment.
“No. I’ll do it,” she said.
They stood there a little longer. Could it be that the water had stopped even now? But deep down inside them they both knew that this time there was no hope left.
They didn’t say a word as they walked back to the summer farm.
Anna had initially intended to put off the conversation for a while, perhaps until the evening, but once she got inside the hut, she thought it might be best to get it over with at once.
She climbed the ladder and found them just as she’d left them: Rachel in the bed, her back propped against the wall, the boy at her breast. He gurgled as he drank.
Rachel looked up and smiled at her.
“I’ve got bad news, Rachel,” she said. “The sea has begun to rise again.”
Rachel just looked at her. She didn’t seem to take the words in. Or what they signified.
“What do you mean —” she said at last. “Rise?”
“Three feet an hour.”
“That’s just the tide,” she said.
Her mother shook her head.
“The sea’s begun to rise again. That’s the truth.”
“We can’t die now,” said Rachel.
“I know,” said Anna.
“Not now,” said Rachel.
“No,” said Anna.
Silence fell between them.
“Shall I send Jerak up?” Anna asked after a while.
Rachel nodded.
When she got down, the twins were on their way out the door.
Omak turned to her.
“A group of us has got together,” he said. “We’re going down to build a raft. It’s best to do it before the forest disappears.”
A raft.
Anna giggled to herself but said nothing. After giving the message to Jerak, she stood by the window and watched her two sons going down and across the mountain with five other men, all in their twenties, all with axes in their hands. They disappeared into the forest, and followed the animal track for half a mile before leaving it and heading downward. When they found a spot they thought suitable, they began to chop. None of them really thought the water would submerge the forest, this raft was a means of occupying themselves more than anything else, and they worked at best half-heartedly. When the first trees hit the ground, they decided to go down and see how high the water had gotten. On the way they passed an area of clear-cutting that seemed quite recent, the light wood of the stumps couldn’t have been many weeks old, but it didn’t strike them as odd.
Soon they heard the waves washing over the forest floor. Then they saw them. Limpid, almost shining, the sea lay among the trees below them, white with foam, the waves slapped up the gently rising ground.
“Look at that,” said Omak.
Spellbound they stood there and stared.
After a while one of them went right down, bent forward, and put his hand in the water.
“It’s warm,” he said
He licked one finger.
“And salty.”
“Shall we go for a swim, then?” said Ophir.
They looked at one another. There was something almost indecent about the proposal. But at the same time they realized that the respect they had for the water came from the situation they were in, and had nothing to do with the water itself. The water wasn’t sacred. It was warm, it was salty, it was the sea. So why not bathe in it?
They undressed beneath the sparse tree canopy, seven pale men in their twenties, some a little pudgy, all glinting with the rain that fell on them.
One after another they went down to the water, their footsteps were tentative, the forest floor was covered with rotting leaves and pine needles, and when they reached the water, they stopped and looked at each other.
How were they to tackle this? Just run straight out into it?
A vestige of respect for the water still remained. When they started wading out, it was with dignified movements, considering the circumstances.
Then the water reached their waists, and when the first one sank down and began to swim, the others followed suit.
Soon all seven of them were moving around in the water under the trees. Some of them lay on their backs looking up at the treetops, to the rain-pregnant sky above them, as they bobbed in the waves. Others swam down and slid across the bottom with open eyes, looked at the tree trunks, the roots, the yellow leaves, the grass and mossy hummocks that could be seen there, broke the surface and gasped for breath, swam down again. Others still swam out. The vista below them was perhaps even more alluring: if they took a breath and dived there, they would see entire trees standing on the bottom. Branches that swayed to and fro in the currents.
Ophir, who’d been a good swimmer all his life, wasn’t interested in what was under the water, he just swam as far as he could, put yard after yard behind him, thinking of nothing, just turned his head to the side, breathed, turned it to the other side, breathed, as he tried to get his arms and feet working as smoothly as possible.
When he couldn’t manage any more, he stopped, turned, and treaded water as he looked back. The heads of the others were bobbing about like little white balls back there. He raised his arm and waved, but no one waved back.
They probably couldn’t see him, he thought.
Without thinking what he was doing, he began to swim across the forest. The water was disturbed, and he was lifted slowly up and down as he swam, and he’d begun to think that perhaps he ought to get a bit closer to land, when he caught sight of something.
What in the world was that?
Something dark and shadowy was towering in among the trees only fifty yards away from where the others were bathing.
At first he thought it was a house. But no one had built up here surely?
He swam closer.
It was then he realized it was a vessel. An enormous ship lying there in the forest.
He stayed there treading water for a moment, his mouth open and his eyes goggling. Then he turned to swim back toward the others.