The River's Due

The river in our village was everything. Giver of life, bringer of death. It provided you with good fortune or stole your future. It was where the priests baptized us and the grandmothers blessed us afterward, in between the washing. The river’s spirit whispered to us all, every day of our lives. When someone was lost to the river, those same traveling priests claimed God had called them home. We nodded to make them feel better, but we knew it was the river that had come calling for its due. We may have come to accept Jesus as our savior, but had our doubts he would have tried to walk our river.

The river was also the path the Lord of our lands demanded we take to deliver his portion of the autumn harvest. Because satisfying his impatience was more important than our lives. When I was named Guardian of the Harvest at the end of the Winter’s Fast festival, the countdown began to determine how the rest of my life would go. I had until the harvest was done to either run, train harder for the journey, or pray for death. I decided training while praying for death was the most prudent. As the other men slapped my back and told me what an honor it was to be chosen, I swear I could hear their whispered thanks to God and the spirit of the river. I could even feel a shift in the air as their collective balls dropped in relief.

Like me, they had all trained for the time they might be called as Guardian. The lone man who would guide our gift of supplication to the Lord’s castle at the mouth of the river. Where he sat behind walls of stone, protected from the river’s moods. Every year we cut trees from the forest and fashioned them into a raft to carry that portion he determined our stomachs could do without. Then, when we had safely delivered our tribute, we were graciously allowed to sell the logs for processing which, in a good year, would pay enough for the Guardian to catch a ride home and buy a round of ale for the poor men who’d not been chosen to risk their futures, let alone their lives.

How many times had I sat with the men around the fire with our cups of ale, arguing over the best knots to hold the raft together? What trees made for the best steerage poles? How many times did the men tell of their glory days, stories that grew more dangerous with every telling? How many times did we sit around that fire to hear tell of the Guardians who failed? Those tragic heroes that lost their lives or the ones who lost the gift, but did not have the sense to play dead? Those failures who made their way back to let everyone know that the village now must give up what little they had left to our Lord who could not, would not, do without his daily bread. Cyclops George, who’d given up his left eye as penance. William the Wet Nurse, Johan the Donkey. Johan. I had seen the scars from his time under the yoke, futilely pulling a plow across the fields. My mother and I had put the salve on him every year to stave off the pustulent infections. Yes, the men enjoyed telling stories of Johan the Donkey whenever I was around.

Sometimes around that fire, deep into the evening and their cups, the other men will accept the truth. That it could have been any of them if they’d been chosen that particular year. That all their skill, all their bravado, is nothing compared to the river’s desires. It was not they, but the river that decided their fate. In those moments, even Johan was still a man. But empathy does not last under the weight of a hangover in the sharp rays of morning. As the sun rose, he again became a packhorse that would never pay back his debt.

The voyage is only two days. Two days to prove your good fortune or be marked an unlucky beast for the rest of your life. Perhaps a more charitable people would forgive after a time, but the village would say, “We let them live, that is charity enough.” And one cannot leave the Lord’s lands without permission and what other village in those lands would accept such a soul, with the stench of failure wrapped around them like a thick blanket? Even the Lord’s fighting force would be loathe to use them as cannon fodder. Luck, fate, God’s chosen, all the same thing. You cannot trust that any of it will last. My mother made the mistake of trusting in my father’s luck the night before he left. For her belief, she was forced to wed a donkey, not the man she’d fallen in love with. All because God had granted her a child and none would believe she was just another Mary.

After the harvest, I had yet to be struck down by lightning or disease, and so climbed aboard the raft I’d helped fashion. Tightened every knot, tested the strength of the steerage pole, and waited to be cut free from the shore. Staring down the river, you cannot help but admire its beauty. Like a bear across an open field. The horror of its claws and teeth still hidden. But you know they are there. As Guardian, I was made to memorize every bend, every set of rocks. Look for the gnarled crone of a tree and push to the left. See the trio of stones bald as monks and push to the right. Come round this bend and hold on for dear life. Pray to God or the river and maybe one of them will listen. The village unmoored me and let me drift to whatever future lay ahead with their blessings and, just as in years prior, promptly began making bets. On whether the son of Johan the Donkey would make it, or come back another beast of burden. I knew, deep within my heart, that anyone who took the latter bet would be sorely disappointed.

I did as I was told when I passed the old crone, made the sign of the cross before pushing to the right as I passed the monks, and held on for dear life around that bend. Sitting on the raft, eyes closed against the noon sun on the second day, I gnawed on the last of my hard biscuits and knew, I just knew, that I would make it. But the river heard me and called back the waters loaned to the clouds and was obliged.

In a moment, it was as if night had snuck across the sky and pounced on me. I had heard the word deluge from the other men, a word stolen from their fathers who stole it from more learned men. But now, I knew, they had never understood the word. Within moments, it felt as though my very bones were soaked through, that I was more water than man. The covering over our harvest was rendered useless and seemed to melt under the pounding rain. The river devoured our tribute, but while our Lord in his castle may think such a gift worthy, the river would not.

I could hear the wave bearing down on me. The river had taken my father’s future, and now it had come for mine, but I would do it one better. Down on my knees, I let go of the leather straps, and let the river claim me as it had the harvest. Crushed beneath the roiling white crested waves, there was no surface and no bottom. The world had disintegrated. There was only the river. I heard the river call out, Let it be dark. And there was nothing. And it was good.