Author: Nick

The desert sand lay like a sea of breadcrumbs, spread thick and packed together. The scrapyard sat in the midst of the crumbs, with pale gray and steely blue hulks of metallic engines broken down and left here to be beaten by the sun when it was out, and rusted by the rains that came now more frequently.

The three women had crouched beneath those metal mounds, while gently weaving them together with strips and bits of cloth, making shades from the sun and curtains for privacy when they needed it. Each day they looked out to see if there would be sun or storm. Today it was storm. Clouds gathered, purple in the distant sky, rolling in together, a slow stampede that would thunder above them soon enough. Grandmother inhaled.

“Clean wind,” she said.

Rebekah nodded. “I’ll leave out the collection pots then.”

She stepped down from the chunk of metal where she’d perched, and crossed the sand to the smaller metal mound where her daughter lay.

She drew back the thin cotton curtain to find Leah slouching against the metal, a thin sheet of steel laid across her raised knees. She smeared a mossy goo across the surface of the metal, gently shaping it with both hands into a multicolored display.

“It’s storm today,” Rebekah said.

“Alright.”

“Keep close to us.”

“Yes mother.”

Rebekah’s eyes roamed up and around the alcove her daughter had claimed for herself. Other paintings were smeared across the metal surface, the moss paint dried and stuck fast.

They weren’t sure about this mound. Weren’t certain of its permanence. The other bulks of scrap had been there for ages, as the rust and wear attested. They remained through the fierce storms with both clean and dirty wind. This piece, though, wasn’t so old, or so sturdy. It shook in the storms. Could that have been why Leah chose to live here?

“What did you make?” Rebekah asked.

“I’m not sure. What do you see?”

She held up the scrap of steel. The mosses’ colors swirled before her, a blue circle around the outside, and within, a brown creature, shaped like an almond or a leaf, with triangles for hands and feet. It had a yellow spot on its head, and a light stippling of red on the triangle parts.

“What do you call it?”

“I don’t know. It’s special somehow.”

A fierce gust of wind whipped the cloth door aside, sending a swishing whistle through the giant chunks of fallen metal.

“Come,” Rebekah took her daughter’s hand. She led her out across the little way between shelters, to the metal mountain where she and Grandmother slept. Leah sat down and laid her steel sheet carefully beside her. Rebekah left her there in the care of Grandmother, who was braiding strips of cloth to make an extra safety rope.

Rebekah lifted their two collection pots from one corner and mounted an outer foothold in the main dome. The wind rushed at her, pulling at her clothes and hair as it passed by. She paid it no mind. She set the first pot in its place, a crater in the dome’s surface where it lodged tight enough to resist the gusts that would come on even stronger. There was a similar dent in the third metal mound where she lodged her other pot.

The clouds were stampeding overhead now, thunder like the rumbling of hooves. Rebekah stole inside their shelter again. As she came inside, she bent to seize a corner of their curtain, and pulled it toward the metal. There she knotted it around a thin spine that had bent and broken off something else. She did the same with the other free corner.

Grandmother had tied her safety rope and Leah’s, securing them with the best knots she knew. Rebekah took her own rope and secured it.

The wind howled and the loose cloths outside flapped, like flags from an ancient, long forgotten kingdom. Rebekah sat down beside Grandmother, who held Leah around her shoulders. They were looking again at Leah’s moss painting.

Rebekah watched the light outside fade into gray haze, the thunder grumbling, the rush of the hoofed creatures above growing greater. If she had dared, she could have slipped out and stared up into the sky to see the massive thunderhead gather and sweep in like a heavenly version of the huge metal machine that they crouched under, except this one would be whole and functioning, tearing forward with the speed of the winds above. She would feel the wind on her face and smell the rain coming.

There would be no flooding. She had to assure herself of that again. The ropes were only to be safe. The waters had never risen above knee-level, and only rarely then. But Leah might need to be secured, and her mothers wore the rope too so she wouldn’t be ashamed.

It was dark outside now. The wind moaned and their curtain squirmed, helpless now that Rebekah had tied it.

The first big thunder rolled its booming voice through the clouds, echoing down to where they huddled together. Rebekah’s skin chilled. The hairs on her arm stood on end.

They heard it seconds before it came. From behind them, behind the metal, the slapping smack of the water unleashed on the sand, the huge raindrops slapping thick and fast against the packed ground, rushing forward toward them, pounding on the metal roof above them, pattering, clattering, and flowing down and over the edge of the entrance, drips streaming down in long watery threads, while the storm advanced, engulfing all their shelters in its waves. The three women pressed themselves back together into the hollow of the alcove.

Thunder crackled and boomed again, shaking the desert with deep-throated bellows. Rebekah watched the waters rise in pools where the drips from the roof dug little holes for the water to gather in.

There would be no flooding. She was sure. There never had been before. There wouldn’t be now.

Whiteness flashed over all, sweeping everything behind its searing glare. The thunder roared, “Doom!”

Rebekah realized she was clutching her safety rope, and forced her hand to unclench. It was always like this, and they made it out. They were safe here.

Through the roar of waters and clamor of thunder, she could hear Grandmother whispering in her daughter’s ear. Leah whimpered, and pressed her head against Grandmother’s chest. The whiteness burst through again, and then again, again and again, like blinking inverted.

Leah gasped, voice catching in the back of her throat, her body stiffening in Grandmother’s arms. It shook, her limbs coming undone and writhing in spasms. Rebekah moved with Grandmother to restrain her, pulling arms and legs in and pressing her down into the packed sand, against the metal shelter, her eyes rolled back to the plain whites.

Grandmother kept whispering, though neither of them were sure their daughter could hear. Rebekah heard the storm outside, but now through deadened ears, as if the thin cloth between them were as thick as the scraps of metal. It was Leah’s moans she heard, the storm inside her body, maybe her soul, that worried her. She couldn’t be sure of safety from that storm, that terror. There was no way she could see to turn it for their advantage.

The storm outside raged, and Leah’s fit ran on, though both might have lasted only minutes. They pulled time out, and out, and out further into a long, sustained moment like a string woven together from many fibers into one lengthy strand pulled along and stretched taut.

Then the slapping smack of the rain on the sand slowed, the drops shrinking, and softening to a patter. The sky was still dark, and would be so till the next dawn. Leah closed her eyes and her body relaxed.

Rebekah waited to be sure the storm had passed on. She undid her safety rope, and slipped outside into the soaked world. Pools stood shimmering with wrinkles rippling across their faces, reflecting the deep gray clouds, distorted. Rebekah pulled down the collection pot from the medium-sized shelter, and brought it inside theirs. Grandmother scooped a handful from it and ran it gently along Leah’s face. The girl inhaled sharply, and opened her eyes. Deep green eyes, like the pools outside would be, when the moss grew up suddenly in them, slowly absorbing the water.

Rebekah brought the second collection pot inside, and set it down on the ground, water sloshing about inside. She glanced down into the pot, and froze.

“Mama,” she gasped. “Come here.”

Grandmother turned from Leah, and came. “What?”

She looked down into the collection pot and tensed.

“What is it?” Leah asked from the place where she lay.

Rebekah gave her a hand, and eased her to her knees beside the pot.

There within the water, in the midst of a ring of blue, a little brown animal with a yellow spot on its head and red-speckled fins swam swishing in a circle.