Hagovi’s Bridge, Chapter One: Storm Surge
Dedicated to my little sister.
Listen to audio narration by N. MacCameron on SoundCloud.
Hagovi wrapped her slender fingers around her mother’s razor-edged shins and pressed down. The hard floor grazed her knees and bent her toes until they ached. She longed to unbend and wiggle them.
Father embraced Mother from the back. His well-muscled arms crossed over her chest and held her arms away from tearing at her hair.
“’S come close.” He murmured into his wife’s ear. “But we’re safe. I build her strong, and she’ll hold.”
Hagovi listened to the swirling hiss of billions and billions of grains of time blasting against the stone walls of their compound. Here, at the edge of time, at the edge of space and matter, she cowered with her parents, in exile, and in fear of their formidable neighbor, the Barrier.
Mother thrashed her head against Father’s chest and groaned. The great divider between the known and the unknown haunted her psyche, never more than when it surged into their tiny piece of the known and engulfed them in wind and time grains. Each storm stole more ground from her sanity.
Father held tighter and hummed a descant to the wind howling through the turrets above. He tilted his head and graced his daughter with his sad, sweet smile.
The counterpoint stillness crackled inside the vast chamber of the water factory, where the storm had overtaken Mother. Glass pipes wound over and through the ceiling and all four walls like a nest of snakes. In the center of the room, each glass snake’s head dove into a giant glass tank that gurgled and frothed with new-made water.
“Give us a drink, DK.” Father begged.
Hagovi glanced into his eyes anxiously. If I go…
Father rubbed his whiskery chin on mother’s cheek. “Drink’ll do us good.”
Hagovi dashed to the spout. Her skirts tangled in her feet and her slipper slipped off her heel. Her slender fingers wrapped with equal force around the handle of the giant water pitcher. She had to support the vessel with her thigh as the pure, cool water gushed from the spout.
There were no glasses; Testoneel, one of two servants who followed her family into exile, hadn’t washed any since the storm began. After a hasty glance at the shelf, Hagovi balanced the pitcher and staggered back to where Father knelt with Mother in his arms. He nodded to a place within his reach, but out of the sweep of Mother’s legs.
Hagovi rested the pitcher on the floor. She returned one hand across both of Mother’s shins and gripped Mother’s wrist with the other.
“”S a long one.” Father smacked his parched lips and lifted the pitcher with one hand. He kept his other arm secure around Mother’s upper body.
He tipped the water down his throat like he poured barrels of dried starinis berries into the measuring hopper.
Hagovi kept her voice low and calm. “The storm lasts.”
Mother’s eyes and mouth gaped wide, stretching the fine wrinkles around her lids and the corners of her mouth until they disappeared. Her pupils roved randomly and her tongue pulsed in and out of her lips.
They had not eaten, nor drunk until now. Hagovi ran her tongue along the ridges in the roof of her mouth while Father continued to gulp.
With a satisfied gust of air, he lowered the pitcher and wiped his mustache with the back of his hand, narrowly missing Mother’s head with the bottom of the glass vessel.
He tilted Mother’s head back with a dexterous twitch of his shoulder, and dribbled a few glistening drops onto her lips. She shuddered and writhed and whimpered.
“Swallow, Beloved.” He coaxed. “Drink ’em down.”
He handed the pitcher to Hagovi and nodded toward the spout. She dashed again, but when she returned with the water brimming over her hands, Father nodded at her.
“Drink ’em down, DK. No knowsing when we’re done here.”
“Can’t you carry her to bed?”
“Too far from the water. We can last without food, not water.”
“How long ’til ‘S stops?”
“Be done before the eqrubup change color, promise.”
Hagovi half closed one eye at him. She placed her lips to the cool liquid and sucked. She swirled her first mouthful around her mouth and spat aside. Then she sucked and sucked, gulped and gulped until her stomach sloshed like a ton of time sand in a cloth bag.
She wanted to run around the compound collecting leaves, checking that the servants were safe, blocking up cracks where the time sand filtered in. Maybe only find one of Mother’s woven blankets. She always calmed when they wrapped her in her own creations.
Mother groaned again and kicked her legs. Father scooped some water from his palm onto her lips.
He hummed her favorite hymn. “When she sleeps, go find Dimpfeg and Testoneel.”
About the Author: Where are you from? Chances are, I’ve been there. Africa claims me as her child, Europe claims me as a nomad, Canada claims me as a settler. My voice, accent, outlook and style reflect all the places I have lived and loved. What do you love? I love children and hope never to grow too old to get down on the floor and build, romp, or fly through a child’s imagination. I love animals and am pleased to say, they seem to love me back. https://leoshine.micandpen.com/
