Little House on the Wasteland

Twenty-One: The Flooded Village

The afternoon was quickly waning, but the convoy was now making better time. As the Great Eighty Road continued to lead them westward, past the sprawling ruins of Damoyne, there were fewer lectric cars, fewer iron signposts, less nameless lectric clutter lying in piles and creeping across their path. The hollow houses and crumbling creetrock walls that lay alongside the Eighty Road began to shrink, and the great leaning towers of Old Damoyne began to recede ever further.

Captain Syed had assured them that they would be clear of the ghost city by nightfall. When she called an end to the day's march, however, it did not feel as if the convoy was free of the abandoned lectric city completely. With the sun hanging low and red in the sky before them and dusk threatening to envelop the Eighty Road, the echoes of Old Damoyne were still all around them. To the southeast, its towers were still visible. Indeed, as the sun retreated, their shadows only grew more stark upon the horizon, cutting fangs into the purple sky.

The ruins that radiated from the city's center had never disappeared entirely either. Remnants of Merican structures still pockmarked the landscape in small clusters.

Eventually, the convoy came to a gravel trail that intersected the Eighty Road. A short distance to the south, according to Captain Syed, lay a stream where they could take on fresh water. There, they would make camp for the night. And so, wheels creaking, the bisox car turned down the path that Captain Syed had indicated, and the rest of the convoy fell in behind.

The trail led them past rows of roofless creetrock houses. Empty doorways and windows gaped in upon courtyards overgrown with gnarled vegetation, their foliage gray and inscrutable in the twilight. Finally, in a flat clearing encircled by these sorts of ruins, they stopped. Mr. Chavez unharnessed the bisox, and everyone began to set down their loads.

The stream that Captain Syed had promised could be heard murmuring nearby, and Mary and Laura were sent down with Devonte to gather wood from the trees that grew along its banks. When Laura reached the stream, she was surprised to find more ruins standing right in the middle of the water. Upstream and down, the water meandered undaunted through a maze of old walls and columns.

Laura wanted to get a better look, so she set down her armload of kindling and hoisted herself onto a tree branch that hung over the current's edge. She scooted forward on the branch and leaned out to inspect the ruins that lay upstream. There, the water flowed through a large brick building with three intact walls. Daylight was quickly disappearing, but, as she stared and let her eyes adjust, Laura could see how the stream pooled up behind the building and spilled out in a burbling torrent through its half-sunken doors.

Devonte Aguilar had hopped up onto a low creetrock wall which jutted out into the water and now stood there atop his narrow perch, also admiring the flooded ruins.

"The river must've moved since Lectric Times," he announced to Mary and Laura, making a great show of maintaining his balance as he tip-toed further out onto the creetrock wall.

Laura was always reluctant to acknowledge that Devonte might be right about something, but she supposed his theory made more sense than someone building their house right in the middle of a stream.

Laura swung back down to the ground. She was crouching down to pick up her bundle of kindling when she heard Devonte splashing in the water. For a moment, Laura hoped that he had lost his balance showing off for Mary and fallen in, but when she looked up she saw that his pants legs were rolled up. He appeared to be deliberately wading into the cold stream. Mary watched from the bank as Devonte leaned down, digging something up from the mud.

"Hello! What's this?"

Devonte raised his hand up high. There was something in it. Laura came closer to see what it was, stepping down to the water's edge beside Mary. The sun had just set, but the moon was already rising big and full above them, making the stream's ripples glitter. Moonlight glinted through the glass object that Devonte held aloft. It was a drinking cup with a long stem, wrought in pure lectricmade glass. Devonte wiped the cup down with the hem of his tunic, rinsed it in the stream and held it up again. It shined even brighter, smooth crystal curves shimmering as Devonte twirled it in his fingers.