Silence. Above all, silence. We are safe in this thicket, as long as we remain absolutely silent. But Kala’s baby won’t stop crying. It is weak and hungry. As is she – she has not made milk for three days now. There is a command unspoken in the leader’s eyes. Kala understands. The baby is very weak. Her face is more like a very old woman’s than an infant’s. She crawls to the river bank, holds the little bundle in the current for a while. No one thinks of Thetis. She comes back. We gather around her. We are adults, and inured to our pain. We weep, silently.
The smallest of things floats, so light. Almost not there at all. The faintest of lights. All around, fire, explosions.
The river boats were in flames. Some exploded as fuel tanks caught fire. My clothes had been blown off me, only my shirt cuffs and the tatters of my boxer shorts remained. I saw forms bobbing in the water. I leaped in. If I could even save one life…I gripped someone in that oily, roiling water. I struggled to hold on to them, swam back to land. We flopped over on the muddy earth. Another explosion. In the light I saw I had pulled a fish from the river. A sturgeon, as long as me. It looked at me, with clear, calm eyes. I carried it back to the river. It slipped into the water but remained near me. I fell asleep soon, dead tired.
The next day, I just walked along the river, away from the boats and the dead and the filthy air, into the woods. They said enemies were scouring the forest for fugitives. I didn’t care. I had to be away from everything for a while. A sleek form moved through the water, keeping pace with me. I heard bird song. Soon, there was no sign that I had been in a zone of death and destruction just an hour ago. No sign except me, in my rags.
The clean air and sunshine were doing me a lot of good. By midday, I was able to feel again. Tired, but there was silence at last in my head. I reached a bend in the river where a cloth bundle had got caught in the roots of a riverside tree. The fish swam towards it, then bumped it towards land with its nose. Again, it locked eyes with me. I lifted the bundle, opened it. A dead infant, cold but not yet stiff. Such a tiny life…almost nothing beside the tide of the dead we had swum with yesterday. But even the smallest of things has a weight and presence of its own. I knew what came next.
I selected a likely rock and started digging. After considerable struggling, bleeding fingers and a couple of upgrades to more suitable rocks, I had dug a grave. Shallow, but enough for this small one. I buried it – her – and then crawled to the river, exhausted. As I washed and drank, the sturgeon swam up to me, closer than it had been since I had dragged it out of the water the previous day. Once more, we locked eyes. Something like an eternity passed. I glanced down. It swam away.
Later that day, I met a group of resistance fighters hiding in the woods. I joined up with them. We spent a few weeks together, moving by night, hiding by day. Finally, the lady who operated their radio managed to tune into a dependable signal. It was over. Our armoured vehicles had routed the enemy. A continent away the enemy’s high command was besieged in their own capital. None of us had the strength to cheer.
We made it to a town. Over our first warm meal in what felt like forever, I told the radio operator, Kala, about the fish, and the baby. She wept and wept and wept. One of the others told me about what happened the night before I joined them.
I dreamed at night of oil burning on the water, of something slippery struggling in my grip. Of looking into dark, unhuman eyes. Words changed their meanings in my head. I wrapped heavy blankets around me but I felt chilled to the bone. Finally I slipped into one of my fellow travellers’ beds. In all that death and wounding, in that year that felt like a century of rubble and smoke and bone ash, we made the smallest of sparks and were warmed by it.
I am now married to one of the resistance fighters – former resistance fighters, I should say. We do not resist much now. It is unclear if our side truly won or lost. We live near the river. We often go for a long swim in the mornings. We lead quiet, small lives in the aftermath of history. We don’t go fishing but we often just sit and watch the river. The smallest of things floats up in memories. The faintest of lights, as dusk falls. The smallest of deaths still have meaning, even in a hecatomb.
**
Jayaprakash Satyamurthy is a Bangalore based writer and musician. His books are Weird Tales of a Bangalorean and A Volume of Sleep, both published by Dunhams Manor Press. His band, Djinn and Miskatonic has released two albums, Forever In The Realm and Even Gods Must Die.