Thirst

The History of Thirst

Synopsis:
Humans do not need water, in the golden age. They don't even pee. Their Chief, who is a pragmatic wheeler dealer like a good parental leader, ignores Water as not worthy of negotiating with. That's fine with everybody, including Water, until Chief specifically excludes Water from contact. Keep away, Chief essentially says, from anything that does not directly advance the material prosperity of the person or the people, or that does not fulfill obligations to allies. Do not have any truck with that which spills away-or that reminds you how we spill away.

Presentation:
All set and stage directions are made as suggestions only.....

The set is mostly made of light-gobo leaf effects, etc. Fabrics, cycloramas, scrims, can also be used.
The spills and pools of water are projected, in motion, upon the stage, and, depending on the theater, upon the actors.
Water sound is part of the action.
There should be no actual water onstage..
The texture of the set may be blank white space, pale gray rock, etc.

{Author's note to self: This should be readable on radio or other audio, without suffering from a lack of visuals. It can be a closet drama, but should be OK for audio-only, if possible}

To "glitter" is to flutter sparkling masks, or, if audio only, is make an associated "glittering" noise.

Personae:

Teller-Elaborately robed. Does not wear a mask.
Busybody-Dressed simply, as opposed to Teller; has sparkling mask like the rest of the People, but can have additional masks. Fiddles a lot with mask(s). Always masked to Teller and People. Toward audience may be masked, unmasked, or may turn mask toward others onstage and hide behind it but look out at audience.

Chieftain-No mask-and actively refuses one
Raven-Firmly masked as bird (Iroquois style, perhaps).
Water-No mask-or a transparent one (or veil) that lets her face show through

The People-noisy and active, but don't actually speak lines.

{Author's note to self: May want to have stray lines not assigned to particular people]

Esp when Chief is on, humming and uber-sincere comments a la TV news tribute profiles--"She's a human being before anything else"

Script the humming}


They have very reflective masks-mirror mosaic, ideally, but aluminum foil could even be used. They wear the masks when someone like Teller is speaking-sometimes there is a hurry to get them on, and some are "smacked up side the head" to get them on. As far as number-eight is probably minimum.

[Possible: Use of masks as old-time "funeral home fans". Are the masks attachable, or do the wearers only hold them up?]

Rather annoyed when they have to find the masks and put them on. They sit around, like listeners, close at stage right and left, or even downstage. They "glitter" (visual or auditory) when called for. Some have to be prompted to mime along to the speakers; others are eager; all wander in their attention-miming/sounding gossip, lovemaking, crafts, etc.


I.

Busy crouches, strikes light (sound of striking), fixes upon it and then solemnly snuffs it in the water-light (sound of snuff). Busy shivers, transported.

Busy: You didn't need water, back then. We didn't, I mean. You didn't even pee. That was the way it was, at the first. Light was new, and the leaves were blue. Ripe fruits and agate rocks were toys we picked up and tried to bite, or break, or both--or throw. Our veins were ferns, just like all the fringes of ferns around us that were scarlet as the blood we started finding out we had. That was after some throws, as I recall....There was the piping of the birds, and us spouting our words--it was all the same...but look here, sorry. I'd better hush.


Teller appears. Busy hides stump of torch in own rear garments.
Crouching still, Busy is rapt as Teller makes entrance. Then Busy scrambles for mask.

         Busybody [aside]: This is what we tell. Stand back. Take cover.

[Commotion. Teller, with Chieftain, Raven, and Water in tow.]

         Chieftain: Tell it right. You tell it like it happened.
         Raven: [cawing laughter] Are you sure that's what you want?
         Water: [liquid laughter] Just tell it. Quit stalling.

[Teller is being both a diplomat and a bully]
         Yes, yes, of course-shut up, yes! I'll tell it, damn it all!.

[The others, except for Busy, disperse. Busy stays crouched and masked. Teller, in a heavy, swinging, embroidered/ornamented robe, stands tall and gets composed]
[People gather upstage, take cues (mostly) from Teller, and they mime]
         Teller: Have we all our focus?
[Everyone glitters masks. Glittering sound, murmurs, whistles.]
         Teller: Good. Now stifle. [Abrupt stop to glittering/sound. Someone strikes a resonant object, and Teller begins]

         Teller: Darkness clasped its lover, Light. Our world is their ache, their desperate, perhaps ill-advised, dream.
         Busy:  Light f***ed Darkness, and Dark returned the rape. They knocked each other up, and both their little bellies birthed War.
[Teller assaults Busy. Busy is wise.]

[Teller is seductive, not bombastic, to Busy and audience. Busy struggles to resist]

         Teller: They battled then, each bent on revenge.
Both wept as they battled,
Both cried as they fought--
So hard and so long they wept that their tears at last concreted around them, into a world.
Their tears sealed them up
It tombed them--
In the core of a mammoth Pearl.

        Busy: They trapped thems----

        Teller: Mmmmm?

         Busy: (Defiant) They trapped themselves. Neither one of them would speak; that would have ended it,  one word. Whichever did it wouldn't have lost--the other would have collapsed in relief. But they didn't.
So the more they warred, the heavier--the more massive each tear became. But, even when the tears rolled over them and clotted them together like flies floated in syrup, neither would speak. Neither of them would speak.

         Teller: Now they were one.
         Busy: Stop it.
         Teller: They were. They melded. They couldn't help it.
         Busy: Oh, not.
         Teller: Why do you say that?
         Busy: They hated each other.
         Teller: Of course they did. That's why they became one.
         Busy: You're talking sh**.
         Teller: You can't hate what you don't love. Right?
         Busy: I hate you.
         Teller: Then don't give me that kiss.
         Busy: I'll kiss right up below your a**hole, like I always do. [glitters mask at Teller and/or makes very loud glittering noise]
         Teller: [shielding eyes, ears] Stop that. It hurts.

[Busy and Teller struggle. Busy taunts with glitter. Teller knocks Busy down. Busy cowers, adjusts glitter and faces forward as if in school]

         Teller: That's for you.
         Busy: Okay, okay!
         Teller: Moving right along.

Chieftain stands up.

         Chief: Yes, can we please.
         Teller: Patience, my Lady.
         Chief: I just don't see the point.
         Teller: We're getting there.
         Chief: I'd better.

         Teller, to Busy: And you--don't.
         Busy: Excuse me?
         Teller: You were thinking it too. But you'd be nothing without her.
         Busy: Certainly my darling, neither would you.
         Teller: Ahem.
         Busy: Whatever.....anyway, there were these two fools. And this poor pearl was stuffed up with them.
         Teller: Our Pearl.
         Busy: Our Pearl. Right, they were having a conniption inside this, Our Pearl.

[Humming begins]

         Teller: The Pearl--how it suffered. In agony it had swelled-it had tried to go ripe, but those two scorched its belly from inside. In its agony its skin split, and gaped. It puckered and shriveled, and it hardened because it had no voice. Even if those two would have spoken, or screamed, or sung, the Pearl had nothing of its own.

And then, there--cradled as it had been in rainbow velvet nothing, as befits something that might have been perfect-
the Pearl failed:
The velvet melted away.
The Pearl was now a something, and in pain.

         Chief: Can't we get through this part any faster?
Teller: If the pearl could have had a voice, nothing would be living today-do you understand? Okay with you?

In that pearl's core, those two that were now one-those two that loathed the very notion of each other, those two now scrolled up and pasted together like the germ of a seed-they reaved apart. They shivered into pieces--like deafness splitting into seeds.


         Busy: They bit each other pieces, and those pieces were nothing if not little and mean. They burrowed and bored-and they did not stop till they crackled through the skin of the pearl as if it were merely a burnt sugar shell. It's a burnt little candy we've got, don't you know.

         Teller:          The pieces swarmed like locusts.
         The pearl cracked and shriveled; it scorched from within.
The Bitten Things tunneled from the core.
Some wearied and settled for the Pearl's middle strata.
Some went on, and pierced the skin, but
Collided with a bright-dark wall:
They were still sealed in, still suffocated,
Still drowned.
There was nothing, no air or anything outside the burned hide of the Pearl.

         Busy: The Bitten Things shook with terror: they quaked the Pearl's scars,
Until it shed nacre like leaves.
The leaves swarmed out, and they sealed up in a big skin.
They swarmed like the wind, and they blew themselves bigger
A bigger and bigger skin--
They blew themselves bigger
Until we had Outside.

{get some chanting rhythm here}
When the Bitten Things saw the swarm,
When the Bitten Things suddenly could breathe,
They shouted and yodeled and blew.
We are fragments, they called,
Just like you.

The nacre-leaves showered outward;
And the Bitten Things blew.
The nacre-leaves drifted together
As the Bitten Things trumpeted,
And the Bitten Things blew,
And the scraps they did bind
And stretched a new skin for the Pearl--
New, high above the peeled old.

The Bitten Things blew,
And the skin stretched taut.
It hardened, and became a shell.

No one has ever told why the shell named itself Sky
Or who it told.
But like a creek-bank exoskeleton filling with memory,
It coated its interior and cushioned the pearl.

The bits and pieces peered, blind.
Then, something burning dropped out of a crack in the pearl--
The Pearl's molten, lost heart.
It hissed on the wet inner curve of Sky, but began to roll.
It rolls across Sky, even now.

What is this? Someone cried.
Dawn, someone else called it.
All over the land, heads popped up from holes and agreed.
They crawled up from where they had never been,
And agreed upon this thing they named Day.

[How did Water come about? Say anything more than what Busy says below? Foreground Water's grief. She speaks.

Also--relevant for preceding passage too--do Chief, Water, Raven speak or comment? Review.]

II.
         Busy: The sky was green. Water gave that back. But the trees were blue-Water became blue too. Water, depending, became shadow-brown, stick-black.

         Water: You're funny.

         Busy: We don't think so. Go tell that one. [Teller, quivering like a lover, approaches Water]

         Water: Why should I draw near to you?

         Teller: Please. I just want everyone to know.

         Busy [to Water]: Sorry. We don't have anyone else.

[Teller and Water both assault Busy]

         Busy: Don't hurt me. I'm sorry, there really isn't anyone else.

         Teller: Says you.

         Busy & Water: Go!

         Teller: No! Well...I would, if I could.

         Busy & Water: Mmmmm?

         Teller: Come here. You've got my legs. You've got my mouth.

         Chief: Stop this now!

         Everybody: Shut up! [Water gently makes Chief sit down] [Somebody: Was this part cleared with the diamonds?]

         Teller: Within that iridescent carapace called Sky,
Among the scarlet ferns and crimson vines and azure leaves,
Though we hungered,
Though we needed caves and canopies, had to chip stone and cut hide and kill,
We knew no thirst. Full measure of liquid we contained.
There was no such thing as rain.

         Busy: Water-we knew what Water was, as we knew a pheasant or an earthworm or an elk.  Water held fish, and water kept snails. But Water herself was as irrelevant to us as was the slime in which slid our stock of dinner slugs. Water was not useful. Water snaked always in her course-but we could not cook or skin her, as we could a good snake.

         Teller: And better than any snake, we shed skin at will.
We did not even need to bathe, for anything that adhered to our skins we cast off.
Only children bothered to splash with creeks.

         Busy: Chieftain told us that this was right.
Let them play, I heard her saying. It's a toy.
If we forbid it, they'll want it. If they get it, then toward it they'll grow dull.

         Teller: When we came of age, we spurned that toy, Water-and we did it witnessed by all.

         Busy: We shriveled in the creek, for hours, before Dawn.
Chieftain marched us into a pool in a bend
Exposed to Dawn no matter what time of year.
When the sun stuck the Water, our eyes zeroed out.
By the time the hands wheedled us up the bank, we were as hungry for dry land as for bread.
By the time we gave up our allegiance to our own,
We would have sworn any oath just never to have to soak again.

         Water: You make me feel so very special.

         Busy: I didn't mean-

         Water: Hush. I know. They made me into an instrument of torture. A loathsome thing. What had I ever done to them? To this very hour I still don't understand-what, what was the problem?

         Teller: Once we were on the bank, still wet, the Chieftain would speak to us about Water.
Let me tell you about my grandmother, she'd say.
My grandmother, Chieftain would say--

[Chieftain stands, takes over]

         Chief: [to Teller] Sit down and shut up. [Teller, humiliated, crouches next to Busy]

         Chief: My grandmother stopped at nothing.

         Raven, Water, Busy: [Assorted expressions of sarcastic agreement] That's for sure. Wordness. Yep. Yeppers. Duh. Amen.

         Chief: She emerged--my grandmother did--one blinding noon.
From the mouth of the cave that she had entered before dawn and left after midnight--
Forty straight times preceding-no one really understands what she did for us--

         All: She re-wrought the world, just for us.

         Chief: The roots of grains and herbs had agreed to shoot, when we planted them. We would so easily know the ones that liked us-they would be green, not blue.
         
         [People begin gathering up a trug of long weeds. It's urgent]

Trees undertook to encase their seeds in fruit that would not poison us, and whose flesh was sweet to crunch.
Bees bought into her arguments about making honey above ground. They liked this notion of branches, on trees.
Other animals, whose civilizations then flourished entirely in burrows and caves
Drew up crude project charters in the dirt
And, after considering the metrics,
Resolved to live naked in the light.

         People: Woo hoo.

         Chief: But my grandmother--so weary after all this!--she was now no longer used to the sun, or to noise.
She was so tired. So hard had she worked, to get it all, get it all worked out.
Everybody, after all her work,
Everybody understood.
Now she could exit the cave.
But when she ducked her head under the limestone arch,
When her heel sank calf-deep on the bank of the creek,
Water was molten shrapnel in her eyes.

         Water: What? Again and again, what?
I burst, I bash, I flow, I flood. I'm promiscuous, when I meet mass, or light. What else was there to know?

         Chief: My grandmother discovered our youth, all too big to call themselves girls, or call themselves boys,

         Teller: Kicking up creekwater and song.
Wearing like garlands the water and light.

         Busy: They sang about grass in the morning, and they sang about hot coals at night.
They sang how the sky was an oyster
And they were refulgent pearls.

         Chief: My grandmother. . . at first she kept quiet.
They were young, she said she told and told herself.
When they declared the creek water good as diamonds
My grandmother blared with rage.

         Busy: No, she didn't. Not then.

         Teller: Oh, not then?

         Chief: She did! Then!
         She had just come from council with the minerals of the ground. The diamonds had been particularly hard.
We'll give you some radiance, they said. Sharpness, even, we'll give.
And you'll use us, and trade us like flints. Why should we come to you? Why?
My grandmother was strong.
She was a trader, as we all must learn to be.
It will take a long time, she told them. But we can peel your skulls, your dull onion hides.
In our hands I promise you'll fall open like lilies of light.

         [People: "Do you know what she's talking about?"]

The diamonds were dubious.
My grandmother made it up as she went along.

         Busy: It was all lies, as far as she knew.

         Teller: But she had looked the diamonds in the eye....

         Chief: She had looked the diamonds in the eye.
And she knew who would someday need who-even if she didn't know how or why.

         Teller: And she knew we had to watch our words.

         Busy: What does watching our words have to do with it? It wasn't all that trash-talking about the diamonds that set off Chiefy's hissy fit. It wasn't then.

         Teller: I thought it was.

         Chief: Who cares when it happened? Do we split and serve seconds like fruit?

         Teller: That's good.

         Busy: Tasty.
         But that's not what we all know happened.

         Teller: That's what I know....

         People: Well? What? I had this gourd, I had this shell. I was just fooling around. And then I found out what it was like to drink and swallow.

         Busy: And worse, they were scooping out the glittering stuff and hauling it up on the bank to pour it down the gullets of everybody and his sister.

         Teller: We don't talk about that.

         People [intoxicated]: What is this? I never felt like this before! Hola! Glory, glory!
         [Chief tries to quiet them]

         Busy: No, we don't talk about that. Then we'd know what we'd lost.

         Water: I was pure joy, then. You would never have had to learn to mash up sour fruit and make those smelly drinks out of it. And I did no harm. You could drink me, and not get sick. I was unadulterated joy.....then.

         Chief: My grandmother said the diamonds warned her about you. Once they tasted you, they wouldn't care about anything else.

         Water: "My grandmother, my grandmother." Mother, mother, mother.

         Busy: Oh, didn't you know the diamonds hate you? Every time somebody blathers about the dew in the grass, they collectively pitch a diva fit.

         Teller: Now, what happened? Somebody explain......

         Busy: Don't you worry your pretty little head about it. If this all hadn't happened, nobody would ever have to listen to you.
         
         Chief: My grandmother was strong.
She was a trader, as all must learn to be.
She had made deals with the diamonds, and now she would deal with. . .us.
She picked up a branch the size of a sapling tree.

         Busy: She drove us like deer from the water.

         Chief: We all wore welts, and some of us, blood.
She hefted her weapon:
We listened.

         Teller: This is child's doings, she declared.
You are no longer small.

         Busy: Do not your roots swell and grow heavy when you gaze upon one other?
With toys are you done. Root to the ground, and each other.

         Teller: And she smashed the dry branch into shards.

         Chief: But then my grandmother seemed sad.
Do not, she told us, punish those small.
They know not. But you do.

She was always very kind.

         Teller: She was wise, She had been young, herself, and she tried then to be kind to those who played with toys--

         Busy: My grandmother, Chieftain told some of us, took her aside, later.

[Teller delivers a trug of long weeds to Chief. She chews on one]

         Chief: My grandmother told me,
Those young people were not wise.
They were not taking care of us.
They have grown big and should know better ways.

I bowed my head.

         Teller: Not one of us since has needed to ask, or be told.

         Busy: Now, that is where the Chieftain would end her tale.
You would finally get to dry off and put on beads and robes.

         Teller: We were all made fit.

         Busy: Mmm hmmm. Fit as fiends.

         But, if you snake-charmed Chieftain, if you cajoled,
If you gathered some good green stems-those tender ones juicy with green fire--
Even if you weren't the honored one coming of age,
You could finally get her to talk about Water's grief.

         Water: Ha. I never knew that.

         Teller: Hysteria-that was what Chieftain would repeat. Hysteria, she said, absolute. Chieftain met it, and won. We were flooded, but for us, she won.

         Busy:  If you could get her going, she'd talk.

         Chief: Every one of us,
Every one of us, we heard our name called for weeks.
The creeks and springs pounded like strings and like drums.

Grandmother would have none of that. She called for noise.
We blew through reeds, whirled rocks and pounded on gourds.
We warred with noise, and we won.
Soon, all was quiet when we stopped.
We all slept--
And so must we all!

         Busy: Chieftain would declare this, and to dreaming we'd go.
That is, unless Raven was around.

III.

He and Chieftain could argue through dark and light.
He called her a fool, and she called him a whirlwind's fart.
Really, it's all Raven's fault. But no, it isn't, it's hers.

         Raven: You're being stupid. There's no reason you shouldn't get wet.

         Chief: What's Water got that I should care about?

         Busy: Usually they would both just get tired and that would be it. Then came that night that Raven ruined it.

         Raven: Why does everyone have to suffer--
Just because your granny was tired and couldn't take the sun? And somebody was having fun while she wasn't?

         Teller: Chieftain would have killed him, except that he could fly.

         Chief: Suffer?

         Busy: He cowered in the rafters. She slammed down the bar on the door.
Everyone else in the lodge found something else to do.
She shook her fist at him, gripping the apple he had pecked.
She lowered her arm, and broke the fruit open with her thumbs.

         Chief: And this?
What sweetness did you taste, before she brought us this?
She bargained and suffered, that's what my grandmother did.
She did it for us, and you're better for it, too.

Her eyes were never the same, you know.
She wouldn't let anyone lead her, but she could barely see.
She gave that for us!

         Raven: I didn't know about her eyes.

         Chief: There's a lot you don't know!
I've had enough, she told him.
You talk too much about things that no-one needs to hear.
What's water do?
What's it do for these kids?
Their mothers and fathers obey.
The small ones can too.
The earlier they shun foolishness, the sooner are we strong.

[Unbars door, points into the night]

I will complete, she said, my grandmother's goals.
She was kind. I will be stern.

         Busy: Raven tried to argue, flapping and scratching,
But that very next dawn, it was done.
Water, we were told, was to be by no one touched--
Even the babies and children, even the laughing parents minding them--
Water was to be by no one touched.

         Water: For my part, I, Water, had already grieved.
I liked all the tickling.
I purled around lean thighs
And floated up the bellies of the fat.
I liked pressing silken through the keyhole of each pair of legs.

I loved revealing sun could be amethyst
And magenta and aquamarine, and topaz and bronze.
I loved the voices, even though they could only sing one tone at a time,
And nursed some ideas
of how we might all dance.

         Busy: She was sure she could talk to us, and we to her.
All it would take was a lot of afternoons
And skin she could caress and enclose.
We were all sure. We were.
But now all that was gone.

         Water: Raven flapped that morning, right at my brink, right in the deep crook of the creek.

         Raven: I tried, I tried.
I don't care much for you, but I like them.

         Busy: Nice....
You're an even bigger idiot than they, Water replied.

         Water: None of you can think about anything but what you say ought to be.
You, black bird, can see and hear even while they've blocked themselves as with sleep--
But even you won't dive your beak and rip out wrong.

         Teller: She pushed up a sparkling fist and took Raven by the throat.
Raven struggled, but Water's grip coiled tight.

         Raven (choking): Why hurt me?

         Water: Your excuses.
{following: straight copy with some attributions}

[Raven, injured, staggers forward]

         Raven: She drew herself up.
She crashed wide a kaleidoscope  of drops.
They hardened-they became perfect diamonds-- and fell. [scandalized noise]
She opened a sack of fog,
And it bulged.

         Water: Me, treasure. Treasure, beyond your dearest nightmares.

         {Raven, cowering before Water, speaking of himself in the third person}
She still had Raven in her grip.
His throat she throttled  with mist.
Fly, she commanded.
Raven choked, and struggled his burden high.

Water had never visited the sky;
What play! She cried.
Off Raven's back she dumped the sack
And with no word to him, she jumped.

His burdens gone, Raven dived.
He sped, and tried to warn.

         Busy: Water in the sky? We all said.
You're insane.

         Raven: Raven, he talked till he was raw.

         Teller: Beyond words he rasped and squawked. But nonsense was all he could talk.

         Busy: He has never been able to talk since, not as he once could.
He gave his voice to us, but no one took the gift.
He was still flapping and croaking in the skeleton of a tree,
When what had once been harmless, hit.

         Teller: For the first time, we knew rain.
Water's sack had bulged, a fearful thing:
The gems transformed back into liquid
And swallowed all.
The creeks and rivers roared.

         Raven: Some of the kids had still been out when they all hid.
The drops, having been gems,
Blazed and dazzled, and the smallest of us ran in trances after their fire.
Water had discovered them.
We had had them, safe; and then,
All were lost.

         Teller: The Chieftain--that hero--did the needful.
Chanting swelled, shields clattered, quartz spear-points filled with the light.
The summoned ones rattled and yelled, ready to act:
But all the paths were drowned, and these warriors had never fought mud.
When three days were gone, all those brave ones' food was foul, and no one from home could reach them.
The hides they wore loaded them down with dirt and clay.

         Busy: They were inside an hour of home, and irreparably lost.

         Raven: Raven wheeled above, but had no voice. He could barely creak out words, and did not dare to fly down close enough to be heard. But he had been spotted with Water riding on his back, and the spear points, having nothing else to skewer, glinted for him.

         Busy: Chieftain needed a plan. Any plan.

         Chief: Follow the traitor! He returns to his home!

         Busy: Those in the rear sent up a great shout and slogged forward, but some up near her said that Raven had wheeled above her for hours, and that she had sat silent-staring down at the mud, then up at him, over and over and over.

We tell how Raven wheeled and wheeled, with no pause for anything, not even--
Those up in front snickered privately about the Chieftain's black hair, that day streaked birdshit white.

Some who were up front-they say that did it.
Into the water she plunged her streaked head, and by the hair she was got.
All Chieftain could do at that point was lead:
Water was hauling her by the hair along the banks.

         Teller [joining in/apologizing]
Struggling with our enemy,
Chieftain raised her crystal-pointed spear--
She bellowed command,
And charged after what attempted to yoke her on.

         Busy: O, the tales we tell of that charge!
O, the brave ones who died!

         Teller: Those brave ones saw Chieftain wrestling with they knew not what, and rushed to fight.
Water let them draw near, then swallowed them whole--
And their comrades that swelled in behind--she ate them up too.

         Busy: Chieftain, ignorant that her warriors were being blanked out behind her just as surely as the pressings of her feet, was dragged along the bank to a valley that once had been dry.
Now it was a whirlpool's core.

         Teller: Our children had been herded here: this gold-streaked rock we'd every one of us climbed and played on was now a still point in a bath of rage.
The children huddled. If one tried to swim, the current garlanded the child's feet and wrists--and lifted itself, and the child, smack back on the rock. Any knocked into the whirlpool were treated the same.

The warriors saw their babies, and surged: no such flower gentleness was granted them.
Fathers and mothers drowned, and their little ones saw.

         Teller & Busy: May I never hear that again.

         Water: Relent.

         Teller: We say that Chieftain, in mud, broke down.
We say her tears calmed the goddess' heart.
But then,
There are those who go ahead and tell it.
How Chieftain came back.

         Busy: Speckled with little dried rubies all over her ribs--
And how they noticed how many of those crystal spear-points hadn't been cleaned.

         Teller: We say that the vortex stilled,
And how it became but a pool, light and shadow strewn with floating blue leaves.
And we say how the children-the only ones of all of us who could still remember how to swim--
Paddled through the cold shade to shore.

When the small ones had crawled onto dirt,
And we got them, scraping them clean of the mud, we tried just to care for them, and ignore our tongues--

         Busy: Our tongues had never shriveled down to stumps.
We tried to ignore it, while the kids bashed bright with joy.
They kept talking to us--they told and they asked, again and again.
They did not understand why we could not talk.

         Teller: We fell, one by one.
Our children, so lately safe, stood in shock: then they too, each, fell to Thirst.

         Busy: And the waters, they troubled again.
A black-shelled geode, a star-spined basin, bobbed up on the waves, as no rock ever had before.
It drifted over to where Chieftain lay,
And it clouted her in the head.

         Teller: Chieftain, we say, rose up from her pain. She gazed at the rock.
It floated: it had all the time in the world.
She opened her desert throat:
She tried to make a deal.

It is too much, she croaked. You want us your slaves forever.
The rock bobbed gaily. She stared. As if a counter-offer would come.

Someone cut a branch, and began to whittle. We don't tell this part.*

         Busy: Somebody else took out an obsidian blade, and with it some sharpening rocks.
One by one, we all did the same.
Chieftain heard us all around her-the grinding of knives, the whetting of sticks, the gnashing and scraping of dessicated lips.

         Teller: We do tell how Chieftain caught the sparkling bowl between her hands. She held it high, standing against the sun, long enough for all to see.
She issued commands!

First the children, then the warriors, and lastly-finally-Chieftain herself--
Everyone pressed lips to the lip of the stone.
Throats fell open,
And Water came in.

         The children lapped it, spat sprays at each other, as if their terror had never been. The warriors, to whom this was a new sort of pain, drank, but slowly, and debated it the rest of their days.

Chieftain's own water bowl was thereafter to be squeezed full of berries and herbs and left out to cook in the sun and then chilled for later in a small pocket cave. We did it--it kept her quiet and calm. Others discovered that they liked such a drink as well, and this is how we came to use our purplest creek pearls as money--
Because some that lived up on the hot bald hill could make this drink easily
While those that lived tucked in the valley could not.

Those down below had to give something everything liked.
Those up above had to be willing to give it back.
After all, everyone now had something that someone else lacked.

When Chieftain and the warriors and the children returned, they discovered us all near death: we had never  been thirsty and did not know what to do. Some of the children grabbed gourds and tried to scoop for us from the creek, but the warriors blocked their way.
The warriors waited, and stood with spears.

Chieftain, with hair so tangled that none of us could ever comb it out, herself fetched geode after geode and gourd after gourd, and pressed the priceless cure to our mouths.
She pressed it, herself, to each mouth.
I heard that the warriors snickered as they watched every sip.

When we chant the tale, we tell of how Chieftain accepted Water's bargain-that Water must never again be refused. We chant how out Chieftain ransomed us from death. We chant of the sparkle of a cup of stone. We chant--with dancing and flowers and clay paint-the spilling of the geodes and the gourds.
All of this we chant. We chant what we shall remember,
We chant what we will know.



         Busy: All the rest of it is jokes--
But we keep on telling them,
And Water,

         Water: Water always laughs.