qarrtsiluni

One day the tide went out and kept on going.

There were some among our people who were nervous. “A great ebbing brings a killing wave!” they cried. And yet minutes passed, then hours, and mud that had been a fathom deep began to dry, to crack under a strangely swollen sun.

We went down to the sea to walk there among our boats fallen over.

Fish lay on their sides all around. We gathered baskets full. When we set all the fish out for smoking, the racks creaked under their weight.

The days were endless. The sun hung motionless above the western horizon, over canyons and broad plains once obscured by the sea.

Before long, we had gathered and eaten all the fish near our village. We ventured farther from the old shore to search for more, baskets in hand. Dry kelp, dry eelgrass tumbled in a dry wind. At length we stood upon the brink, the edge of the shallow sea that had fringed our land, and the old seafloor fell swift away from us. A mile down we climbed, the scent of old brine sharp in our nostrils, our steps raising a fine pale dust that made us cough hard.

There were those of us who had been lost at sea and we found them, alive beneath the wreckage of their ships. Their hair was ropy and green and they greeted us distractedly, lost in opaque thought. Aquamarine eyes that had once been brown or gray fixed on the sun, alarmed. We bade them return with us but they did not follow.

We stayed with them, our colors changing over days.

What were our spines but the backbones of fish? What were our arms but fins? We were fish then again, scuttling at the bottom of a sea of air. The air grew thick around us, cloaked the sun. A mile above us thick air parted from thin, a meniscus overhead, seething.

After some time, restless, we walked toward our homes on the old shore, but the air grew thin as we arrived. We could not stand, nor could we breathe. We fell down gasping. Animals were there, the dogs we had left to guard our homes grown sleek. They watched us choke. Their eyes had changed, grown yellow with fire in them. They regarded us with curiosity, with pity.

The dogs came to us where we lay dying and kindly pushed us back into the sea where we could breathe. They watched us with some fondness a while longer, then turned and went about their business, lords of the world we left for them.

by Chris Clarke

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Thin clouds blow in from the ocean to the west. The desert air bears a tang of distant rain. Dark clouds swirl from the sea to the south. Sage and datura strain thirsty leaves toward the sky.

Soon the rain will come, will slick these canyon walls with wet, quench the lichen and the moss. The rock will darken. Fifteen thousand years of rain and the rocks turn black as blood.

You grasp a rock chisel, your callused hands hard as hooves. Place the chisel against the rock. Strike it with the hammer. A fleck of desert varnish falls away, pale granite underneath.

Sweat beads your forehead. It runs into your eyes. Below you and miles away is the river, blue and tempting in this heat, but you are not fooled.

When you dreamed of the beginning of all things, your mother knew it. Your father argued. “That doesn’t happen anymore,” he said.
“She has the headaches.”
“It wasn’t that kind of dream.”
“It has to be. She has to be. Look what’s become of us.”
When the dream came again your father understood. He cut off your hair. He bought you boy’s clothes.

Clouds blow in from the west, from the south. A deep bass whisper comes from across the river. Dry lightning strikes the far mountains. You watch smoke curl from a distant peak. The remembered taste of tobacco smoke flits across your tongue.

The desert burns piece by piece. The others brought strange grasses with them, weeds that spread as quickly as the very fires they fed, and what had once been clean bare soil between the creosote bushes now lies choked with fuel. One spark eats an entire mountain. Flame piles on flame, smoke on smoke, and nothing escapes. The desert dies. Centuries-old piñons die, and junipers. Each fire roasts jackrabbits alive, and coyotes. All that remains is ash and char. You try to chase the image from your mind.

There comes above you a scrabbling of claw on rock: spiny lizards contend for territory, doing pushups. The vanquished one dives for cover in a crack, disappears into the other world.

How many times have you died of fire? How many times has the smoke filled you, brought the haloes, the headache, how many times have you died and gone to him? He met you there the first time, the man with the spiral horns, he came to you and he folded himself into you and you became him, and you flew out over the desert and fell wet onto its greedy soil. It all made sense then. Who better to bring rain than a man who bleeds? The others were like the river below: stopped up, plugged up, unable to come up out of their concrete tombs. How many times have you come back from death, puking, longing for the permanence of the deaths the others die? Girl become man, become ram, become rain: how many trips through that crack in the rock, split hooves clinging to the thinnest flake?

Too many such deaths to remember, and after each one another bighorn carved into the rock.

Too many such deaths to remember, and after this one there will be just one more to come.

You try to chase the image from your mind. You were not there but you see it plain. The desert dies. A wall of flame, a cliff of flame, and it blocked the canyon mouth. There was no escape. There was nothing to be done. All bones; all bones. All char and ash. The sky turned black as blood.

Still, she was lucky: she only had to die that once.

Hammer hits chisel, and again. You free another fleck of rock. The new bighorn takes shape, forefeet raised, standing like a man. Another hour, perhaps two, and then all will be finished. Sweat beads your forehead, falls upon the soil.

Soon the rain will come, will quench the fires. The river will swell, will burst. The dams upstream will pop out one by one, teeth on a zipper. The sky will darken. Loud cataracts in every canyon will scour the desert clean; will sweep away the fetid river cities as dead, dried leaves on a sudden wind. Cattails and tules will sprout where once the jet skis fumed. You feel a raindrop, fat and cold, hitting your shoulder. Then comes another. Your children will plant beans on the graves of old casinos, soil marled with the ashes of those you loved.

You grasp the chisel, your callused hands hard as hooves. Fifteen thousand years and these rocks themselves will dance. Place the chisel against the rock. Strike it with the hammer. Distant thunder comes from across the river. A fleck of desert varnish falls away, pale granite underneath.

by Chris Clarke

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