Eden

Thirty-Eight

I'm reassured. I mean, seeing her sticking her hand in the drinking water is a bit a alarming, but that she isn't harmed doing so is reassuring all the same. Given what she just said about the river, I mean.

"Why?" I say. "Like, why does it do that? Why is it so dangerous?"

The water-seller shrugs. "It just is. It's the river. The Styx. The Leith. The source of the four rivers. So don't ever touch the water."

"The four rivers?" I say, mostly because that's the last thing she said.

"The four rivers of creation. Which flow out from Eden. That river down there, that's where all four of them start."

"Oh," I say. Because obviously, I suppose. I mean, if the rivers flow out from Eden, and this is Eden, then I suppose those rivers must be here.

To be honest, I have no idea what she's talking about.

I think for a moment, though, and decide what she said can't actually be correct, not really, not actually this river as a source of four different other actual rivers. Because if it was, someone would have noticed by now, surely. Some engineer making a dam would have accidentally followed a river upstream and ended up here. Or ended up where all four of them join up, and found that a bit weird, and then mentioned it to other people. So no, I don't think she means this as being true in a real-world literal way, exactly, but I think it is still somehow true, and I think I understand what she means. In a magical, mysterious way, it's true. Because why not this river beneath us as the source of all the mystical rivers in the world.

Why not? Perhaps there's springs and tunnels involved, or something.