ATALIS

CHAPTER 13: THE STORY

“There was a silence like time itself drew it’s breath. A deep intake, defying everything telling it to stop. Then, the silence broke. A single voice cried out from the middle of a sun-drenched land. The voice said, ‘give me rain’.

Another voice rang out. ‘Why should I give you rain?’

The first voice stood defiant on ground cracked and broken from years without rainfall. ‘Because, don’t you miss the flowers?’

The second voice had thought the first would demand rain because they wanted it, because they needed it, and they valued their own life above all else. The flowers put them off guard. ‘I do miss the flowers.’ The second voice admits.

‘Bring the rain, and I will tend a beautiful garden for you, and as long as you rain periodically, the garden will grow. I will tend it, and I will grow it.’ The first voice promises.

‘The rain will come,’ the second voice agrees. The rain came, and the garden grew. But a promise is a promise. The first voice took care of the garden and every three days it rained. After a year, the garden was large and lush.

‘I’ve done what I promised.’ The first voice says. ‘The garden has grown. How do you see me, bringer of rain?’

‘I see a child, making promises that they underestimate. You did not tell me when you would stop tending my garden. As long as rain continues to fall, you will continue to tend the garden. Your children will do the same, until your lineage dies.’

‘Will you continue to bring the rain?’ the first voice asks.

‘I will.’

‘And seven hundred years passed, and the first voice, and all the voices of all the children took their turns tending the garden. It became a sacred duty to them, a tradition stronger than blood or will. One day, a fire broke out in the garden, and most of it burned down. The descendant of the first voice saved a corner of the garden, walling it off with mud. With most of the garden gone, the voice cried out.

‘Voice of rain and water and wind, the garden is destroyed! We have failed you.’

‘Not so,’ said the voice, ‘there remains some of the garden left. You have not failed, and you are not a failure. Keep tending the garden you have left.’

‘I will!’ the first voice promises. Years pass, and their descendant keeps the garden walled and small, but tends to it daily. They water the garden, tend to it, and get rid of the weeds. Invaders enter into the sprawling village, with the garden at the center. They attack and pillage the garden, and a voice enters into the garden, a young one, and hides among the plants.

‘Little one, what happens in the village?’ the second voice asks the first, who trembles in the foliage.

‘They hurt us because we have a garden, because it always rains here. They bring us pain. Help us, voice!’

‘I will.’ The second voice booms across the sky, a noise louder than a thunder crack, and then a small voice talks to the voices in the city, harming the other voices.

‘If you do not harm my gardeners, I will bring rain to you too,’ the second voice promises, and finds that the attacking voices are from a land far away, and without much water, or many flowers. They do not believe the voice, and they kill many in the village before going to the garden and setting it on fire. The first voice watches the garden burn, and in death, says to the second voice, ‘Our pact is broken, O voice. My descendants did not defend the garden and now it burns, and ash fills it’s place.’

‘Not so,’ says the second voice, showing memories of every fruit and every vegetable grown from the garden, eaten and used to make the village strong. ‘You are my garden, little one. And I have watched you grow and mature and bring forth new fruit, generation after generation. This is not the end of the garden. This is another beginning.’

In the wreckage of the village, they clear the dirt of the garden, and they plant what few seeds they have, and the rain came on the third day. Life suffused the garden, and near the end of the great-descendant’s life, the garden bloomed bigger than ever.

‘We rise because we choose to rise. You have become my garden.’“