Wandering Spark - Part 7
As always, one day was not enough or even an hour. And of course, half an hour is always not enough...
People fussed around. They packed things and hid in dry stashes. They were removing doors from hinges, greasing the unnecessary instruments during the season and packing them in begs. They stored food on the ark and the last time they examined the fields - whether the nets lying well, whether the bottom crop will not wash the first harvest of reps.
The rain weakened, and then stopped altogether. For the first time in the offseason.
Children squealed, ran around the village, hugging:
"Sun, sun! Come look into the window!"
The sky clearly brightened. The sea flipped with a large ripple.
"Faster, faster!"
Varan helped his mother get into the boat, gave a hand to his sisters one after another. Then he climbed himself and sat down on the oars next to his father.
"Well, with the Emperor’s help," he said abruptly. "Get ready."
The shore was moving away and the ark was getting closer - a crooked village on the water, hung with rope ladders, with liquid hazes rising from pipes.
The boat swayed. Kids began to stir up.
"Mom, is this Shuu swearing underwater?"
"Don’t repeat stupid things ... It's the Emperor who opened the dam, and now the water rises."
"And why are swaying so much?"
"Be silent..."
Varan with family reached the high side of the ark. They got out, raised the boat; somehow placed in a tiny cabin. A neighbor's baby cried behind the wall of tight skin.
All stretched on hard shelves. They froze, listening to the water boiling outside.
"Ma-am..." Lisa exhaled.
"What?"
"Can I buy glass beads for myself?"
"Yes, you can."
"And I," Iris said with bass, "won’t buy anything. I'll save some money to ride on a big turtle. For one minute, one coin... For a minute, that's it."
"Save money firstly."
The Ark swung. Again and again. Iris sat on the bench, covering her mouth with the hands:
"Oh, I'm gonna puke..."
"So go out."
"I'm afraid to be washed off ..."
"Varash, come out with her."
Varan got up, took the child on his shoulders, and pulled out on a narrow visor over the storming sea; the sky was very light, the fog hung over the sea, and the semi-submerged village seemed like not real, more ghostly. Near the shore roofs protruded from under the water. In Varan's house, the water has reached the level of the table...
Some late slobs, swearing, were moving from the shore to the ark, and their boat was dancing like a feather in the wind.
"Look, Varash! It's blue, over there!"
Dirty sister’s finger with a bitten fingernail pointed on the sky.
"Look, there's a hole in there already! And in the hole is blue! This is the sky, the sky!"
A new attack of nausea interrupted her enthusiasm.
Varan watched up, but not on a piece of blue that he, unlike Iris, had seen many times in the off-season. High in the tears of the clouds flew, there were flying circles of birds - not small ones, but real tall birds, plastens or even krilams...
The first ray of sun fell on the gray, terrible, wavy sea. It fell and drowned in the fog; the ark was jumping on the waves, ugly in appearance, but absolutely unsinkable. There was a smell of fried fish. There was a smell of wind. The mist parted, and when it parted altogether - the village was gone and there was no cloud. Before the stunned, blinking eyes, the sea opened – not blue and not gray, the sky was blue, and not gray. White rock in drops of green color was the world of Gorni, turned into an island now in the midst of the water, not clouds, looking in at its own unrecognizable reflection.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
