Full of Emptiness

From the top of his head right down to his toes, the sensation of Summer soaked into Iva's small, tingling body. This would be the first Summer he would remember and this moment was where the memory began.

He was crouching in the open field, his back to the distant village and his eyes lowered beneath the sun's bright glare as he examined the pond in front of him. A premature moustache of sweat began to seep down to his chin. Five seconds today. Yesterday it had taken six for the beard to threaten its appearance. He squinted up into the sun and wiped off the wet moustache before jolting to his feet and bolting back to the village.

“Watch it, Iva!” shrieked Mrs. Una, but Iva just waved his apology, leaving her to pick up her tray of empty bottles on her own.

Sasha shook his head as Iva forced him against the wall rounding a tight corner. “There he goes again.”

“The poor boy,” sighed Tilly behind her fan. She was waving it furiously in between tiny sips of the cup she held in her other hand.

Iva had already reached the steps up to the mayor’s house, but he couldn’t resist turning back to Tilly upon that remark. The second time he reached the steps he was holding Tilly’s fan and empty cup above his head as he kicked open the door and darted down the hall. “Mr. Mayor! Mr. Mayor! Mr. Mayor! Mr. Mayor! Mr.—”

“Iva.” The door at the end of the hall opened the moment the boy reached his hand up to the knob. “What a surprise.” It was the mayor. He was staring down at Iva beneath his dark, bushy eyebrows.

“There’s another one,” said Iva. His frown even appeared in his voice.

The mayor nodded slowly. “Is there now?” He took Iva’s hand and started down the hallway. “Then let’s see it, shall we?”

When they came down the steps together and headed towards the field, everyone knew, and this time no one made any comment as they joined the procession out of the village.

“See?” Iva was the first one to break the silence once they reached the pond and everyone had circled around the edges. He freed his hand from the mayor’s and crouched down again to tap the surface of the water, glancing up with a smirk to watch the mayor’s reaction as he did so. It was no use looking at anyone else. They wouldn’t bat an eyelid until the man beside him did.

“Hmm…”

Iva sat back with a small huff and waved Tilly’s fan in front of his face to prevent another sweaty moustache from growing. “The water is hard, Mr. Mayor. Frozen – like when it’s cold.” Thrusting his arm to the left, he used Tilly’s fan to point out a spot in that direction. “That pond over there is the only one with soft water in it still.”

There were no outspoken remarks or even quiet murmurs among the gathered crowd. Not one person expressed a word of concern, nor did they demand the slightest explanation from the mayor. Although, who could blame them when the thought of glancing down at the pond to see for themselves whether Iva’s observation was true or not barely crossed their minds? If Iva had known that such a response from his neighbours was possible, he might have put a little more effort into appealing to them instead of the man they had all apparently decided to govern them. The lad was past the point of simply being accustomed to the fact that he was the only one who ever questioned anything or even thought for himself; by now, it was part of his identity.

A giant hand placed itself on his head and ruffled his hair, inviting Iva to tilt his head back to see the mayor’s smiling face descend upon him as he bent down beside the boy. No, Iva was not a threat. He was just a young rascal who was learning. He would be taught in due time, and those piercing green eyes which bore into everything now would gradually fade to be at peace with how the world was presented to him.

The mayor crouched beside the water’s edge with Iva, inviting everyone else to do the same with a small gesture. Then he cast his gaze over the circle of ice in front of them. The grey surface was perfectly smooth, untouched by any scratch and almost glowing with the sun’s bright rays beaming down on it. If it were not for the steaming cloud emanating from the pale face before being swallowed by the golden heat from above, he could have told everyone that this was a fragment of the moon which had fallen to the earth. He did consider the idea. It certainly looked like a piece of the moon, but even he felt some reservations at the notion of convincing the people of something so outlandish. Better to keep it simple. There was still Iva to think about, too.

He broke into a deep chuckle and patted Iva on the back this time. “This water is not frozen,” he announced with what looked to the people like the most warm, fatherly grin lighting up his face.

Iva shrunk away from him in disgust.

“Please, Rosalie Una,” he continued, holding out his hand to a young woman crouching nearby. “One of your mother’s bottles if you would be so kind.”

The life that sprung into Rosalie as she reached back to her mother for a bottle and presented it to the mayor made Iva cringe. If only she could see what a silly smile she was painting over her plain, dull face. When the mayor kissed her fingers in thanks, the boy could hardly stop himself from hiding in his knees as the silly smile progressed to a stifled giggle and the plain, dull face flushed with a wave of red. At least it made the mayor’s next action slightly less painful to watch in comparison.

Looking up once Rosalie was safely seated back in her spot, Iva held his breath in case he should want to suddenly shout out or scream as he already felt close to doing. With his chin locked tightly between his knees and his hands holding up the top of his head on either side, he forced himself to watch the mayor lean forward to the frozen pond, scrape the ice with the lip of the bottle as though to draw out water and then hold it up, emptier than the brains which the villagers supposedly owned, for all to see.

“Who would like some?”

There was not one person apart from Iva whose hand did not immediately shoot up at this boisterous request from the mayor. One bottle was not going to be enough to fill the cups of everyone there, and the mayor knew it. After pouring air into the first several cups which had pressed towards him, he bent back down to the pond and repeated the same mime to serve the next surge of thirsty villagers, every one of whom went away with exclamations of praise for the cool drink they thought they had been given.

If there was one redeemable quality about his neighbours, Iva thought, it was that they were always grateful. Watching with wide-eyed amazement as the people received their drink one by one, their eyes devouring the invisible water before it even passed through their lips, Iva wondered for a moment whether he was the one who wasn’t seeing right. How else could all the others have their thirst satisfied by mere air? It was one thing believing what the mayor said, but another matter entirely when their very senses were being fooled into submission. Yet not one looked as though it were all a pretence. They all believed it. Every one of them.

Tilly’s fan was only making him hotter now with the effort of fanning himself and he cast it aside for a less strenuous source of coolness, crawling onto the circle of ice and sprawling on his back with a sigh of relief as the heat was sucked from his body. The temperature was not the only thing he noticed, though. What really sent a chill down his spine was the fact that he was not sinking. So, he was right. The pond really was frozen, and the mayor really had fooled everyone. Iva wished he felt a sense a triumph at the thought, but somehow being right wasn’t enough. Now he had to face the more difficult task of convincing the village of the truth before they all died of thirst without knowing it.

Iva groaned softly as he pulled himself to his feet. There was a tiny part of him that wished he were just as blind as the others. He shuddered at the thought.