Easier when doom came all at once, as something that had to be fled on foot or else. As something slow, there was time almost to believe they could adapt to it.
They even dared to keep drawing water from the river at first. There had always been plenty, so what did it matter if they had to stoop a few inches lower to dip the pail into its flow?
It had always coursed black and strong between banks of chalky umber rock, for as long as Gillespies had lived in those parts. A great-great-uncle no one ever spoke of by name, only as ‘the poor dear’, had fallen into it and drowned enough years ago for a great-great-uncle to be a child. That might have been what had bound them to the land, a faith of unwitting sacrifice and high, roaring water.
That might have been what had protected them. Some said so – that the poor dear’s death had sated the river and shown their family to be faithful to it, if only by accident. So its cold torrents, faithful in turn, had kept them safe from what lurked on the far bank.
But now the river was half what it had been, less, shuffling weakly between sheer, muddy banks. Not even those who believed with bedrock confidence that old death protected the Gillespies had an answer as to why.
They were all as rooted as what few crops the river fed for them. None of them were about to trek upriver to see what might be ailing it there. But what else could be done? At that rate, they would be scraping their buckets on the muddy bottom by fall. And that was assuming the things that showed themselves on the far side at dawn and dusk didn’t find sooner that the river was no barrier to them anymore.
What was to be done? There was one thing. None of them said it, but those rooted in bedrock confidence and those just in fear both knew. Saying it would make it evil, and none of them were that. They were just thirsty, and vulnerable out there alone on the plains, and knew only one way to protect themselves.
So they stayed quiet, and just stopped minding the littlest of the Gillespie children quite as well when they played near the river.
