The Girl who Sends the Floods

i. where the fruit trees grow

The last fruit tree resided in the most unreachable of places.

This, however, did not matter to the neighboring village. The treacherous trek down the 200-foot cliffs didn’t make the journey to a strange plant worth it for many. Besides, only one family knew how to tend to it, watering it, pruning it, and harvesting it every year.

Eva still remembered the first time her mother had taken her into the barren canyon to begin the training process. She had stood in the shade of the tree’s peculiar limbs (“branches”, they were called) and watched her mother wield alien tools to cut away rough brown material.

For a moment, the tree was magic. Life amidst death.

Then her mother pulled out a metal cylinder, tipped it forward, and Eva had gasped when the clear liquid poured out.

Her mother had chuckled while she watered. “I had the same reaction the first time too. It always hurts a little, but it is a small sacrifice for the harvest it brings.”

“But we already have food,” Eva had remarked, recalling the synthetic bars and liquid packets rationed to each family. This tree’s fruit was a delicacy, like roasted lizards, something that only appeared at fancy parties or at the annual festival. Unlike roasted lizards however, the town didn’t need to sacrifice water, which was carefully manufactured in the factories each day, just for a piece of food that was barely the equivalent of a meal.

“True, but this is the earth’s gift to us. And there is a myth that says if we remember the earth, she will remember us. The earth remembers what we forget.”

Remember. The myths were always asking them to remember.

Eva was fairly certain the earth had forgotten them, snatching away all her verdure and vibrancy, leaving only a bleak pale sky and desolation that stretched out on all sides of their town. Yet still, her mother treated these myths like reality, clung to them as if they were prophecies instead of fiction. Eva speculated it was her way to cope with their dreary way of living. Her mother’s favorite was “The Girl who Sends the Floods” whose titular character lived in “the Oasis” and held the power to make water fall from the sky and spread across the earth.

Eva did not dare hope for the truth of these stories; she had made her peace with this wasteland that only promised decay and the stench of looming extinction. Nothing would ever change.

But nothing was the same after her mother’s untimely death from the wasting disease.

Now Eva missed her myths.

Now Eva scaled the cliffs alone.

And now five years later, the last fruit tree was no longer bearing fruit.

ii. where their roots find life

It didn’t make sense.

Why, after all this time standing as a defiance of death in an otherwise infertile land, was it succumbing to the same ruin that surrounded it? Was this the earth’s final act of rejection? Was this her mother from beyond the grave punishing the town that had so long ridiculed their family’s line of work?

The village leaders talked of chopping it down. “We can use more firewood.” “It was useless anyway.” “The fruit always tasted weird.”

“Well, your family tried and failed. You should find a new job,” one told her and Eva cursed herself for wasting water as tears escaped her eyes.

“Don’t let them get to you,” her friend Ren offered reassurance and she knew his empathy came from experience. Music had also slowly become deemed a useless task, but Ren still clung to his instrument and performed ballads despite the mocking and jeering.

Eva clung to her mother’s memory.

There wasn’t much to cling to in the hut she called home; even her mother’s body had been harvested for its water. But there was the frayed tome tucked beneath the floorboards of the bedroom, containing all the myths her mother had known by heart. The Girl who Sends the Floods. The Boy who Taught Nature to Sing. The Death of the River God. Sometimes she simply held the book open, tracing her mother’s handwriting.

A part of her wasn’t surprised this year when harvest time came and there was not a single flowering bud, because it had never made sense that the last fruit tree should be able to grow at all. Eva’s ancestors had passed down knowledge that the tree’s roots, which stretched down into the ground deeper than its own height, were the source of its vitality. The coarse canyon floor proved impossible to dig, so they poured water on the surface, thinking it was close enough. Yet Eva had seen on especially hot days how the water evaporated soon after it hit the ground, and still the tree bore fruit. All their rules for gardening were guesswork, yet the tree survived. Her mother chalked it up to the “miracle of life”, which meant there was an explanation, it was just unknown.

The myths told a different story.

In “The Boy who Taught Nature to Sing”, trees lived in villages of their own, conversing with one another, playing tricks on travelers, sharing birds and water and…roots.

Eva’s eyes snagged on the word as she reread the story one evening.

The main character descended into the underworld, its entrance lying beneath the forest. “Stay close to us,” the trees instructed him. “Our roots will always lead back to life.”

Wouldn’t that explain it better, if the last fruit tree’s roots somehow extended to intertwine with other trees who could share their resources, if they drew water from a source unseen to the human eye? And if there truly was a source, could there be a path leading back to it? Eva stayed awake that night, thumbing through more myths, writing notes in the margins. She kept returning to one in particular: “The Girl who Sends the Floods.” Did she also reside at this mystical fountainhead with the ability to revive the land?

The myths made it make sense. And the myths were the last hope Eva had.

At dawn, tucking the book under her arm, she shot out her door and hurried down the street, passing confused glances and men sharpening axes.

She knocked on the door of the only other person she knew could believe in stories.

Ren appeared with tousled hair and a yawn. “Eva?”

“I know where to find more water.”

iii. where the river’s drag path ends

The two left the village without fanfare, wrapped in travelers’ cloaks and laden with backpacks stuffed with each of their remaining monthly rations. They did not know how far their journey would take them, nor whether it would take them back home.

As Eva unraveled the rope and hooks to begin the descent down the cliffs, she noticed Ren was turned towards the horizon. She followed his gaze to the vanishing point where the maw of the seemingly infinite canyon met the pale cloudless sky. If he was having doubts, she couldn’t blame him, but he’d seemed to follow her explanations before their departure, nodding his head as she attempted to prove the existence of the Girl who Sends the Floods and the path that would lead back to her. It felt foolish to think there existed a mythological being with that much power, but if fruit trees could grow in dead canyons, then perhaps anything was possible.

“The old ballads I sing speak of things like waterfalls and meadows as if they were real," he said now. “But if those were real, if the myths are true and if these beings and places do exist…how did we end up in this desert?”

Eva handed him a harness. “I don’t know. Perhaps we left paradise once and forgot how to return.”

Ren took it, then met Eva’s eyes. “Is this us remembering? Or is this just us walking to our deaths?”

Eva pulled her hood up, fastening it to her hair. “Only one way to find out.”

From cross-referencing myths, Eva had deduced a river was some kind of body of water. “The Death of the River God” told of the Great Creature War, where the Serpent had persuaded humanity to side with him instead of Earth. Enraged, Earth rose up, creating mountains in her wake during her march to subdue the Serpent. She dragged him through the land as a last humiliating punishment for daring to steal her precious humans. But the Serpent could still bite, and Earth in her stubborn fury would not let go even as his poison seeped through her. She eventually collapsed, crushing the Serpent beneath her, falling into a deep slumber. Other myths described her resting place as “the Oasis.”

The path left behind by the Serpent’s body filled with water as nature wept over those lost in the war. And so, he posthumously became the river god.

All Eva could imagine when she remembered that myth was the slithering, winding canyon where the last fruit tree resided.

The further they traveled, the more she believed she was right. For the sake of keeping that last fruit tree alive, and with it her mother's memory, she had to be right. Something, whether it was the source of the dried-up river, the Oasis, the Girl who Sends the Floods, or even Earth herself, had to be waiting for them at the end of this canyon. Even as days and nights wore on, as they passed bones of creatures they didn’t recognize and the bleak scenery remained unchanged, she nurtured the kindling of that belief.

The first spark of hope came when they heard whistling.

At first, the sudden noise sent them hiding in the cliffs’ shadows. Then, Ren pointed at the opposite canyon wall, where something perched on a ledge. It looked like a bird, yet none of the birds Eva had seen were as petite and delicate as this animal. The birds she knew screeched and fed on carcasses; this one was warbling broken notes.

Ren laughed, and perhaps driven by some delirium, walked into the sunlight and whistled a tune out of those notes. More of the creatures arrived from above with vocalizations of their own. Eva eyed them warily, ready to protect him if they attacked.

Soon, he started singing his own ballads. Groups of birds mimicked each line until he was conducting his own ensemble. He caught her gaze and with the brightest grin she’d ever seen, motioned for her to join him.

Her breath caught. Perhaps she was delirious too, but with her mother’s myths swirling in her mind, fiction blurred with reality until it was no longer Ren who stood there but…the Boy who Taught Nature to Sing.

The myths were real.

They were living them.

iv. deep in the Oasis

The birds led them to the Oasis and that’s where they learned everything was real.

Waterfalls. Meadows. Groves of fruit trees sharing animals, water, and roots.

They spent the first day in lightheaded elation, scooping water into their mouths, gorging on fruit until they felt sick, rolling in the grass until the world was spinning. That night, they let their exhaustion catch up to them and Eva’s dreams were full of blue and green.

When she awoke, Ren was already creating his own plans. “How many trips would we need to take everything back to the village? Or maybe we could all migrate and settle here!”

But something tugged in Eva’s gut, as if they were forgetting one last thing; the only loose end, however, was the whereabouts of the Girl who Sends the Floods. The myths said she was waiting for a worthy supplicant to approach her so that she could open the floodgates and restore the land.

If everything else was real, surely she was too.

Eva convinced Ren to stay for one more day. She recalled her myths, how Earth laid dormant at the end of a river, how the entrance to the underworld laid beneath forests. Sure enough, behind a massive fruit tree, she found the yawning mouth of a cave, its path spiraling downwards into darkness. Ren lit torches and they descended into the Oasis’ underbelly.

They walked in silence, one arm outstretched to illuminate the narrow tunnel, the other arm finding support on the walls to avoid stumbling. Eva wasn’t sure what she was expecting to find. A girl in a glass coffin ready to be awakened? An inhuman creature whose mouth spouted smoke when it spoke?

When they reached the end, it was nothing like Eva had imagined.

The tunnel spat them out into a vast dome-shaped cavern. Eva held out her flickering flame but she could only see the faint outline of rocks jutting out like fangs from the ceiling.

“Eva,” Ren called and she ambled to his side of the cave. He held his torch to the wall, leading her gaze. “Are these…?”

Eva sucked in a breath.

Paintings.

Shapes and figures in reddish ochre that seemed to glow in the firelight, simple in form but recognizable: trees, rivers, people, birds, villages. She lifted her torch higher. There was Earth dragging the Serpent, there was the Boy who Taught Nature to Sing. All her mother’s myths.

“Wait,” Ren’s voice echoed from where he stood further down the wall. “Is this a water factory?”

Eva joined him in studying this new section, puzzled. Their factories had unmistakable architecture, but how could this mystery artist have known about them? There was no need for them in a place like the Oasis. And yet, the outline was a perfect match. Above it were triangular huts that seemed to resemble the layout of their village.

Eva retraced her steps towards the beginning of the wall, where Earth slept beneath a waterfall after defeating the Serpent. Slowly, she walked sideways, her torch illuminating each part of the story one at a time.

The Serpent’s head laid crushed beneath Earth’s sleeping figure, but his body zigzagged out from the waterfall, eventually turning into undulating lines to represent a river. The river snaked past a village, wavy brushstrokes branching off to connect with the bottoms of polka-dotted trees. No, those weren’t just dots. They were fruit.

Eva gently touched the image, a breathless, astonished laugh escaping her lips. “Of course. The river fed the trees. The water came from below ground. Deep in its roots.”

Then, there she was.

The Girl who Sends the Floods, tear-shaped drops at the end of her crudely painted fingers.

She was at the Oasis, where the Earth rested, taking all its water into her arms. But she tried to carry too much, and the liquid spilled out into a flood, destroying the village and its fruit trees. In the next image, the one Ren had first noticed, she and the Serpent-river were gone, leaving behind only houses and water factories.

Eva’s heart sank.

That couldn’t be how the story ended. And yet, the myths had never truly clarified whether her floods would create life or destroy it.

Only one section of the wall remained.

Shaking, she lifted her torch.

There she was again. The Girl who Sends the Floods stood above sleeping Earth. This time, she did not steal; instead, she kneeled and from her fingertips flowed streams of water onto Earth. The last image depicted another flood, but this time underground, slithering past the village, now teeming with fruit trees, until it careened off the edges of the wall as if the artist had not expected to run out of space. Eva stepped closer; there was an opening to another tunnel. Only now did she notice the distant rumble of the waterfall above them.

Hope blazed alive again in Eva’s chest.

She turned to Ren, words spilling out in an excited rush. “You still have some water with you, right?”

He patted his backpack. “Yes, why?”

“We’re not bringing the village to the water. We’re bringing the water to us!”

“I don’t understand,” Ren said but still followed her to the edge of the cavern. “Where is she? The Girl who Sends the Floods?”

“She’s already here.”

v. is the Girl who Sends the Floods

Eva knelt beneath the Oasis’ waterfall, light from outside streaming through cracks in the canopy of rock and grass. She poured water into her hands and let it slip through her fingers onto the patch of dirt below. Ren gasped and it reminded Eva of a long-ago memory: “It is a small sacrifice for the harvest it brings.”

The earth trembled.

Then the floodgates burst open.

vi. remember her

Earth awoke to something soft, bright, and golden caressing her face.

What was it called again?

Ah. Sunlight.

Two creatures hovered above her. Her root-gnarled heart leapt.

It was them.

The Girl who Sends the Floods. The Boy who Taught Nature to Sing.

The myths the lizards whispered had been true; the humans had come back for her, her sweet destroyers, her imperfect caretakers. They had not forgotten about her. Had they followed the clues she’d left, the canyon trail, the last fruit tree she’d kept alive with her dwindling power?

An awareness spread that something had opened deep within her, flowing out of her even now.

“What’s happening?” the Boy looked behind him.

“She’s watering the land,” the Girl smiled. “The earth remembers what we forget.”

The Girl leaned forward and brushed away dead leaves that had fallen on the once-parched soil. “We remembered. We found you.”

Earth ached to lean into her touch.

Oh, how she’d missed her humans.

It was not the time for rain. It couldn’t have been, not according to the laws that had eternally governed nature. And yet the clouds formed, the desert blanketed in shadows.

And Earth cried anyway.