CHAPTER14. THE FLOOD
Rushing, rushing through darkling sky, ferebántur, and not alone, cum
spíritu Déo ferebántur, with the Spirit moving, though all was dark, ómnes tenébrae, moving as one with the Spirit. The light of stars shimmered far below in the depths, scintíllaeinlúcestelláruminfraabýssi, darkness on the face of the deep, tenébraeérantsúperfáciemabýssi, starlight piercing the moonless sky, et nítor sidérum sicórtus est.The poet might say,
Utáutemérat inánis et vácua, et tenébrae érant
adfáciem abýssi, et ómnes tenébrae cum spíritu Déo ferebántur transáquas,
scintíllaein lúce stellárumde ínfraabýssi, et nítorsidérumsic órtus estíllei.
Across and across they flew, pine mountains flaming up before green Northern Lights, and dark milky water beneath, spangled with stars and spattered with ice; and clouds, noctilucent below, scattered about in a soft glowy blanket rising up off the water.
At a throat of a deep mountain pass, a faint line arose in the distance, shadowy, sharp and white, a line leaping across the lake near the moun- tains, high white col ridge line. Towards it they sped.
They raced downward, lowering fast, below the tips of the mountains embracing the great chill lake. The white line gained form, roughened, it rose and widened, it towered over the lake's white waters. The line now a white cliff soaring over milky grey in the starlight. Upon the craggy heights of that chill cliff, they alit in the gloom. Her shadowy partner stood in the starlight beside her, a tall woman, twice her height.
Upon the harsh ice, she struck her staff sharply; the cliff shuddered
faintly, then in a crisp flash, the moon appeared full overhead, blazing with frozen white fire, lighting the world in a pure silver glow.
"Who are you?" asked Judy.
"Anna Olivia,theShepherd ofWaters. Overwaters andsprings andlimit- less oceans, I am."
She was robed in clean white, a deep hooded mantle of radiant blue drawn over her gown. Her hood was thrust back, and long cinnamon hair swayed lightly in the breeze. Her face was as pale as the ice.
Judy looked up. She stood just by her companion's waist. Wordlessly, Anna handed down a deep blue mantle to Judy. It was soft and comfort- ing. The chill of the night's air vanished. Judy felt warm and embraced.
Judy asked, "Where are we?What is this place?"
No answer. Down the steep cliff to the water's edge, the wind whipped up whitecaps on the water. A soft susurrating pulse of sound raised up from the waters now and again, in swaying rhythm. Judy could see a line of lake surf below, beating the base of the great glacier, a thread- like line waxing and waning. A gull.
Wordlessly, Anna Olivia reached for her hand. They darted away from the cliff, above the blocky ice. They alit on the edge at the far side of the great icy wall. This cliff stood above the black gulf between the mountains, tenébrous, unseen.
Peering into the void and the moonlit mountains, Anna Olivia struck her staff again on the ice. Suddenly all glittered with sunlight; Judy was blinded in brightness, snowy and dazzling. The mountains and hills were solidly shielded with dappled green. At a dizzying distance be- neath, small streams led the meltwater out from the great dam of ice to a
shimmering sapphire lake. In the numinous North, velvet black clouds
loomed afar, over a horizon of ice scraping the sky.
Great streams gathered far below – how far? Trees, a carpet of green, like nubbly moss, a chasm in shadow below the enchained lake. Leaping into the misty distance, the broad icewall marched straight from their standing-place, on to the mountains Southwest on which it was leashed.
Wordlessly waiting, Anna Olivia snatched Judy's sleeve, held her hand and they soared up the side of the mountain that anchored the north end of the dam. They stood and watched the little rivers gleaming as they poured down the valley, heading West.
To the east was the lake, beautiful but sterile; opalescent turquoise, but milky, filled with the pulverized mountain, glacial flour that was ground from the granite bedrock into the finest powder. It pervaded the lake, far too fine to settle to the bottom, but endlessly scattered through the lake water; no life could survive. The lake shimmered, beautiful, dead.
Anna Olivia raised her staff, and called out in a great clear voice that echoed across the waters:
LÍBERUM! Líberum fáctumáquae. Gláciesfrácta! Erúmpe! Profúnde! Haecáquaerevívent. Revivitóte!1
Then rapidly and quietly, in prayer: "SicénimdíxitDóminusDéus:
Cong reg éntur á q uæ, qu æ su b c aé lo su nt, in l ócu m únum :etappáreat
1 FREE!Let the waters be free. Let the icebe broken! Break forth! Let thedeep flow!Thus shall the wa-
ters be restored to life. May they live!
árida. Etfáctumestita. EtvocávitDéusáridamTerram,congrega-
tionésqueaquárumappellávitMária. EtvíditDeusquodessetbónum. Fiat volúntas túa.2"
She cried out a loudly a second time, Fíatstátim!3 And struck her staff on the great mountain.
The rocky heights heaved and swayed. Steep slopes of the mountains over the lake broke free and slowly slid, tumbling covering trees and chill soil towards the white-green water that surged into surf far below.
In the dark valley, a hillock arose, still topped by trees, soaring straight up above the lap of the valley, a round high mountain that instantly burst with a blast echoing across the timber. A great gout, like lava, leaped skyward from cracks in its crown, soaring, muddy and flecked with trees, a great brown trunk thrust up from the Earth, rising and rising as high as the lake behind. A heaved hill of mud raced from the great earth eruption and burrowed under the icy dam, lifting it upwards, an icy wave under its arc, and the dam shrieked. It began slowly to belly out, deliver its water into the chasm beneath. It cried out with deafening booms and tormented screams as the lake pushed it forth.
The icy massif exploded. Ice heaved forward in great shimmering tab- lets upon the massive leap of turquoise water born groaning from the lake. The deep-earth ripple raced southward under the belly of the ice wall, soon far away, lost in the mist.
The massive, boiling lake launched into the living valley beneath the high mountains. The noise might have deafened Judy, but for the hood
2 Thussaid the Lord thy God, "Let the waters thatare under the heavencome together into one place, and
let dry ground appear. And it was so. Let thy willbe done.
3 Let it be done now!or Itwillhappenimmediately!
of the cloak, muffling the dissonance. The cacophony pounded her body
like hail.
A muddy mist leaped up high over the mountains, and in the Western sky, a rainbow appeared.
Anna Olivia seized Judy's shoulder, and they soared upwards, saw the great lake sliding into the valley's chasm. It tore the horizon, blazing into the virgin valley beyond, hurling gouts of dust and trees aloft.
Judy and Anna raced far downstream, ahead of the tumult, watching the wreckage of the water, as it drowned tall hills and leaped from high cliffs. A grey sea of antelope were grazing upon the prairie, when the rolling holocaust blasted in from afar; they fled the roaring monster in terror, but not fast enough; they were overtopped and caught up in the churning of boulders and trees and soil in the awful race of the storm.
The monstrous horizon of wreckage exploded over great hills and swallowed wide meadows. It scoured the deep valleys and laid low the mesas under its brown wrathful surge.
A village, far off in the distance, in the valley, scattering, screaming at the wall of wreckage thundering at them. They were overtopped, they were gone.
Judy wept.
They veered back over the valley, the turquoise sea boiling and racing, across the waters, the darkness crept in. Anna Olivia snatched her up in flight and tucked the brim of Judy's hood down deep over her bosom, cloaking her in dark warmth.
Judy slept.