Old Setah and the River

Since Old Setah and The River was the clear winner in the poll, here we go! This story is set on the continent of Gelid, two centuries before the events of Mage Errant. We'll get Mudflat Nights, also set on Gelid, next month!

------------------------------

Old Setah, the village basketmaker, woke up one morning with a brand-new river behind her house. 

She rubbed her eyes, gave it a long, puzzled look, then pinched herself to see if she was still dreaming. The river stayed right where it was.

Setah shook her head, and went back inside to make herself a cup of tea.

Half the village was inspecting the new river when she returned to her porch, including Boral, whose house had been swept away by the flood.

Setah drank her tea and ignored Boral's yelling, and just watched the new river flow by. It was closer to mud than water, and sticks, logs, and torn-up plants floated downstream in great mats.

She couldn’t help but admit to some mild surprise that the river hadn’t flooded the whole village. Instead, it had cut itself a channel through the soft, low soil on the east side of the village, not damaging a single house save for Boral’s.

When Setah finished her tea, she took the cup back inside, washed it, then set it back in the cupboard, instead of brewing her usual second cup. Stringbone grumbled at her, and she took a minute to give the old dog some attention.

Then she slowly ambled down to the new river.

She came to a halt by the bank, next to Young Beckin, who was fifteen years older than Setah, and at least five years older than anyone else in the village, save for Old Beckin, who had been born a month and a day before Young Beckin.

"You and the other elders warned Boral not to build his house on the low end of the village," Setah said, after a long companionable silence. She should probably have been among them, but Setah had never had any interest in joining the village council- she had more than enough work to do as it was.

Young Beckin laughed. "Aye, that we did, but not because we thought a river would wash it away, of all things! It's just traditionally been bad luck, is all, since I was little. Plus, he built his house right over prime snailing ground."

"Village name actually makes sense now," Setah offered. 

Beckin laughed again. "Well, I suppose we have an actual ford, now, but I reckon all the snails have been drowned or washed away."

Setah shrugged. "Wouldn't be so sure about that."

She crouched down, her knees and back protesting, and plunged her hand into the new river. Not even a ten count of groping around later, she pulled out a crystal snail.

"They only ever dig themselves out of the dirt in the rainy season, so why wouldn't they like the river?" Setah asked.

"Always reckoned they came out of their burrows so they wouldn't drown in the wet dirt," Young Beckin said.

Setah just shrugged, and stared at the transparent snail in its angular shell.

A traveling combat philosopher had once visited Snailford, when Setah's children were still young and her wife still alive. He'd claimed the crystal snail wasn't truly a snail, that its closest relatives were the great mudflowers, jutting out of the mudflats to the southeast in the great river; the sunmaws of the mysterious continent of Ithos, where long-dead mages had stolen people’s speech; and the stonescrapers of Cloudspine, slowly crawling across the mountains, ignoring the ceaseless feuds and petty wars all about them. That the snails and the others were all remnants of a world long passed and painted over by the world that was now. 

Setah didn't know about all of that, but she knew the snails were delicious, once you boiled them out of their shells. It was the highlight of the short rainy season here on the plains. People often tried to dig for the snails during the dry season, but the transparent creatures dug too deep for that to be worthwhile.

Still, she always treasured the memory of the combat philosopher's visit- for his stories, for his display of combat magics, for the sheer novelty of seeing a stranger in Snailford.

Setah sighed, and handed the snail to Young Beckin. Then she painstakingly dragged herself to her feet and plodded over to the edge of the village.

---------------------------------

This late in summer, the grasses reached up to half again Setah’s height at the edge of the village. A few miles out, past where the villagers did their yearly cuttings and controlled burns, the grasses barely came up to her waist, if that. When she was young, and the great aurochs herds still came this far east, the grasses were all as tall as the ones near the village, but the aerial trade routes had shifted, and passing merchant dragons hunting meals had driven the aurochs away from the region.

Without aurochs or people to cut back the old stalks, the young stalks were choked and strangled, grew stunted and out of balance. Part of Setah couldn't help but mourn. Fewer predators to threaten the children and herds, with the shorter grasses, but also less mystery and wonder.

Setah took her time choosing blades of grass for her new basket. She didn't usually harvest this time of year- the grass was too dry and woody, not flexible enough without an excessive amount of magic. Nor did she usually need grass this tall.

She eventually found enough, though. Grasses that were at their tallest height, but not dried and dying yet. Ones that were still flexible, but also thick and strong.

Setah returned to the village, a bundle of grass the size of a shed hovering in the air behind her. Any other day, she would have drawn attention, but the whole village was at the river today, harvesting the unexpected bounty of snails. They teemed on the riverbed and banks in numbers greater than anyone had ever seen before.

Setah watched the activity for a few minutes, then took the great pile of grass to her workshed, just next to her house.

---------------------------------

Weaving a basket with magic was faster and less painful than doing it with aging, arthritic hands, but it certainly wasn't any easier. Setah could put together a basket purely by muscle memory with her hands, while carrying on a conversation, but doing it by magic took her full attention, split between her grass affinity spellforms and the basket itself. 

Stringbone wandered in early and lay on her feet, as was his custom when she wove baskets. The old dog's company was welcome, of course.

Less welcome were the endless chain of interruptions.

First came Boral, ranting and raving about his house. Setah had no idea what he thought she could possibly do about it, and said as much. He stormed off in a huff, and didn't even notice the basket she was working on.

Her third-youngest great-grandchild was next, though, and the boy most assuredly noticed what Setah was weaving, then promptly told all his siblings and cousins.

Soon, everyone in the village was wandering by to see her new basket, ruining her grass spells at least a dozen times.

Somehow, Setah managed to get through the interruptions, even drying and curing the grass with her magic once the weaving was done, and just after lunch, she carried her new basket down to the river with her magic.

The whole village followed her as she set the basket down on the water. Dozens of long blades of grass hung loose from the rim, sides, and bottom of the basket, and she reshaped some of them into a set of steps with her magic.

Setah hauled herself into her new basket, sat down on the bench woven inside, and smiled as the her new boat bobbed in the water.

Then she sent her magic into the blades of grass dangling from the sides again, and used them to push off from the shore.

Setah paddled around the river for hours, taking her great-grandchildren and their friends for rides. When it started to get dark, Setah levitated the basket back to her workshop.

---------------------------------

The river was still there the next day, to Setah's mild surprise. Its level hadn't dropped at all, but the water ran clearer today. Not enough to see the bottom, but the river wasn't a soup of mud anymore.

Setah took a few more children for boat-rides, but she had work to do today- a whole mess of baskets other villagers needed. A new river was strange, but life went on, after all, and the chores still needed doing.

Normally, it would be the work of a week or more, but Setah pushed herself unusually hard today, weaving two baskets at once all day- one with her hands, one with her magic- and finished before dinner.

-------------------------------------

The third day of the new river, the water was even clearer, fewer debris drifting by, and Young Beckin even went fishing. Pulled in a surprising number of fish, and the hunters spent a few hours figuring out how to gut and clean the things. Fish weren't exactly common out here on the grasslands, where all the water came from rain-fed pools.

Setah spent the day making even more baskets, more than she'd ever made in a day. She only stopped to enjoy the fish feast the whole village shared that night.

Setah the basketmaker wove baskets on the fourth day.

Setah the basketmaker wove baskets on the fifth day.

Setah the basketmaker wove baskets on the sixth day.

Setah the basketmaker wove baskets on the seventh day.

Setah the basketmaker wove baskets on the eighth day.

And each day, the river grew clearer and clearer, and rainy season plants began to sprout on its banks.

By the ninth day, her fingers hurt enought that she needed to see the village healer, but she was done with basket-weaving. She'd made enough baskets to keep the whole village for a year, if need be.

She spent that day packing a series of flat-bottomed, watertight baskets with clothes, tools, and food stores.

On the tenth day, the river ran clear, and Setah loaded everything into her boat. Her children and grandchildren protested, but old Setah just smiled and gave them the huge pile of new baskets to distribute.

Her great-grandchildren all thought it was a grand adventure, and no less than four of them tried to stow away in her boat.

Then she told Boral he could live in her house until she got back, loaded old Stringbone into her boat, and sail up the river. 

Crystal snails glimmered like jewels on the river bottom as Old Setah the basketmaker waved goodbye to her family, and left the village of Snailford for the very first time in her long life.

The current wasn't too strong, and the dozens of dangling grass blades swam Setah's boat upstream at a good pace. Stringbone dangled his droopy-eared head over the side, his tail slowly wagging as he enjoyed the adventure in comfort. 

When the day grew hot, Setah withdrew a couple dozen blades of grass from the water, and wove them into a canopy over the boat for shade. It slowed their progress a bit, but Setah wasn't in any hurry. No hurry at all.

-----------------------------------

Just a few hours into her voyage upstream, something small bumped into her basket. Setah lifted it out of the water with a long strand of grass, then carefully took it in her hands.

It was an empty snail shell, glittering in the sun.

The old basketmaker gave it a puzzled look, then showed it to Stringbone. The old dog sniffed it excitedly, then snorted in disappointment when it proved empty, and shook his sagging jowls, scattering drops of dog spit across the boat.

Setah laughed and set the empty shell next to her.

It wasn’t even ten minutes later that she found a second empty, floating shell. Then a third just a couple minutes after that, and soon she was drifting up through a trail of dozens and dozens of empty snail shells. 

She collected quite a few of them, weaving the crystalline spirals into her basket, but most of them she just let pass.

She didn’t understand where they were coming from, though. Had they drowned? Had the snails decided to willingly leave their shells to swim about? Setah had never seen anything quite like this in all her years. But then, snails had been rare before the river.

She was still puzzling over the mystery when a village came into view, and there, on the riverbank, were a group of children floating empty snail shells downriver like little boats.

Setah laughed at the answer to the little mystery.

------------------------------------------

The village of Beyle’s Field wasn’t much different than her own. She’d never made the trip, but a few people traveled back between the two villages, so she recognized a few faces.

Setah was a little surprised that Beyle’s Field lay along the course of the river so well too, and that the river had cut so cleanly through the dirt without damaging any buildings here— but it wasn’t that surprising, she supposed, considering how close the two villages were.

The villagers invited her to their evening snail feast— they’d had snail boils every night since the flood. Setah thought about declining, having eaten plenty of the glassy-looking, chewy snail flesh back in Snailford over the last week, then shrugged and accepted. She wasn’t in any hurry.

She slept in her basket quite comfortably that night, then set out early in the morning, brewing her tea with a cantrip as her basket swam leisurely upriver. 

The next week passed much the same, as the river wound its way lazily through the grasslands. To Setah’s continuing surprise, the grasslands accepted the river as though it had always been there. Gazelles drank peacefully alongside hut-sized grassback turtles, and ground-nesting grass drakes played above the water. 

She even spotted a pack of hunting lizards, each nearly the size of Stringbone in his prime, swimming gracefully through the water. The tall, sleek reptiles were the fastest runners on the plains, save for spotted cats, but Setah would never have pegged the lizards as swimmers. There was hardly enough water on the plains most of the year to swim, anyhow, so it’s not like they could have had any practice.

Setah passed village after village— like hers in some ways, wildly different in others. 

She supposed a certain dining custom misunderstanding one night might make for a funny story, but Setah had never been able to find humor in embarrassment, her own or that of others. It just made her feel bad.

At first the fact that the villages paralleled the river so closely was surprising, but within a week, a suspicion had begun setting in for Setah. 

That suspicion became more solid as she listened to the stories of those houses and buildings that had been washed away by the flood.

In one village, the home of an arrogant merchant who had settled down and refused to listen to the village elders.

In the next, an archmage of obsidian and mushrooms had taken over the village as his personal kingdom, had abused the populace and treated them as slaves. He’d had them build his manor right in the path of the river, and he’d been washed away in the night, crushed and drowned in the wreckage. The village celebrated, for not a one of them had been lost— the mage had been too paranoid to allow any of them into his manor at night.

Again and again, almost all of the homes that were lost were built on that softer, lower soil that the old ways told not to build on.

They weren’t all joyous stories- in one village, a group of refugees from one of the wars to the northeast had settled down there, and many of them drowned. But all the stories of destroyed homes that Setah heard all featured similar explanations.

The ancestors had punished the drowned for violating the old ways, or the land had risen up against those who hurt the village, or a great and benevolent immortal had brought the flood to punish those who brought foreign plants and crops into the grasslands. Each and every village seemed to have some new explanation, but all of them had the same moral.

The old ways were best, and anything else was foolishness.

But Setah had become convinced of something else entirely. An idea born not only from the experiences of the village, but from her observations of the life along the river, and most of all from the snails, who had started laying glittering, gemlike eggs on the grasses alongside the river.

The river had been here, long before, when these villages were young, and had gone away. And now it had returned.

Setah was going to find out why, and find out whether it was going to go away again.

----------------------------------

It wasn’t even a week more of leisurely travel when Setah found the answer to why, as well as her first real city.

She’d heard a lot of stories about Barlakhou over the years, met a few merchants from there. There wasn’t enough wood or stone out here in the grasslands to build a city, but the Saldist River that ran through its center had plenty of clay in its mud. The flame, water, mud, and clay mages of the city had, over the last century, built an entire pottery city. Some of the buildings were boring cubes of ceramic, but most had been shaped like giant clay pots for people to live in. The gargantuan ceramic ziggurat in the center of the city, where the city’s sphinx lord nested, loomed far above the rest of the city.

Barlakhou wasn’t the grandest city in the world, but there wasn’t another that looked like it.

At least, that’s what Setah had been told over the years. Never having seen another city before, she wouldn’t know otherwise.

As her boat swam upstream and Barlakhou drifted into sight, Setah immediately realized where her new river had come from.

It WAS the Saldist River. It had jumped its banks and cut to one side of the city entirely. Thankfully, it seemed to have just barely missed the slums, but she couldn’t imagine the river shifting course would be good for the city.

Setah frowned, and looked down at her course homespun. Snailford’s mage-weavers weren’t especially skilled, and merchants that traveled through always seemed to look down at the villagers.

She’d need to do something about that.

Setah was tapping her fingers on the rim of her basket when a thought occurred to her. She glanced at the grasses on the bank and smiled.

------------------------------------

Harlo was digging when the grass mage sailed up to the bank.

He knew his digging wasn’t going to achieve anything. The city had been fighting to keep the Saldist from jumping its banks for decades now, and more powerful mages than him had exhausted themselves again and again trying to fix it now that it had. 

Harlo wasn’t going to complain, though. Not many jobs out there for dirt mages as weak as him— his magic was only strong enough to loosen the dirt and make shoveling easier, not even enough to dig out the dirt on its own. Even if his job was pointless, he could use the money.

The grass mage’s basket ignored the temporary docks nearby and sailed straight up to Harlo’s work crew.

Harlo’s boss only glanced up briefly from his own work, then gestured at Harlo to take care of it.

The old woman was an archmage, or he’d eat his own boot. Her grass boat swam unassisted through the water, adorned with hundreds of glittering crystals, and she wore clothing entirely woven of living grass strands. 

Harlo immediately resolved to be extra polite to her, to prevent her taking offense and cutting him to ribbons with grass swords, or strangling him with stalks of grass, or rooting living grass in his flesh, or something even worse he couldn’t imagine.

And, even if she wasn’t so dangerous, his ma had raised him to always be polite to his elders.

“Can I help you, grandmother?” Harlo asked.

At the sound of his voice, a dog lifted its head from out of the basket and began wagging its tail. The dog had to weigh nearly as much as the old woman did, but Harlo immediately started to relax— it was a ridiculous-looking creature, and clearly friendly.

The grass mage eyed the worksite for a moment before responding. “Trying to get the river back into its old course?”

“Trying,” Harlo said, then lowered his voice a little. “Between you and me, though, I don’t reckon we’ll have much luck. The lord’s more concerned with his fellow sphinxes in the northeast— the civil war in the Noon Choir seems close to ending, and the upstarts seem the clear victors. And, well… the Saldist is a gentle river most of the time, but it’s foolishness to think you can ever control a river. My ma always said that water always has its way.”

The grass mage nodded cryptically. “Sounds like a wise lady.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, how bad is the devastation downriver in the new channel? You’re the first person I’ve seen come upriver.”

“Handful dead, few flooded houses, but the river mostly just slipped into our end of the grasslands like it was coming home,” the mage said. “Runs right along a few dozen villages, resting right across every one. The plants and animals all seemed fine with the change, too. I reckon the villages were built alongside the river, long back, and that it’s switched paths before, and will again.”

Harlo frowned. “I heard some combat philosophers arguing that in one of the fountain plazas, that it had switched before. But hopping back into the same route it did before? That’s… a little odd. Been working on or around the river all my life, and it’s constantly moving, shifting its banks around. Winds around like a snake, it does.”

The grass mage shrugged, then tapped one of the crystals on her boat. “I reckon it might have something to do with the snails. That they did something to keep the soil ready for the river, when it returned.”

Harlo blinked, and realized that the crystals were, in fact, shells of glass snails. He’d never seen so many in his life, and he’d only gotten to try a bite of one once, when he’d gotten lucky and found one on a riverbank. There were supposedly more, once, but they’d long been much more prized on the dining tables of the wealthy than in the river. The glittering shells alone cost as much as a week’s wages these days.

Harlo reached out to touch one, but the dog promptly intercepted his hand and started bathing it in kisses. He chuckled, and scratched it under the chin.

“How’re things in the old riverbed?” the archmage asked.

“Pretty rough,” Harlo said. “Lotta people depended on the river, and if it really doesn’t want to go back in its old route, they’re not going to have enough water or trade. City’s going to see a lot of refugees soon. Though it’s not all bad news— I hear the water drying up revealed some caves where the Saldist ran into the Greenhair mountains.”

The archmage nodded slowly. “You know, that sounds like something I wouldn’t mind seeing. Though I do plan to spend a little time in Barlakhou first, at least. Thanks for humoring an old woman.” 

A long blade of grass reached inside the basket, then gently carried a grass-wrapped bundle the size a fist over to Harlo.

Then the whole boat lifted itself out of the water, and started walking to the city, dripping river water from its underside.

Harlo stared after the boat for a long while, then turned to the bundle.

It was filled with steamed glass snails, removed from the shell. 

As Harlo began to eat, he stared off thoughtfully after the mysterious mage. 

His’s brother-in-law was a decent water mage, and Harlo’s friend Agria had been making big claims about some sort of clay boat for a while now.

Harlo thought about mysterious traveling archmages, about snails, and about fortunes to be made. And while he thought, the world kept turning to water’s whim, just as it always had and always would.

-------------------------------------------

I'm obviously a fan of experimenting with the structure of short stories, but this is an odd one, I think- especially given that it's also a science-inspired story. I don't know how well it worked, but I was trying to write a story that feels like a river, rather than like a journey. And speaking of rivers, a few science notes on the story (I've been writing these for many of the short stories, for inclusion in the eventual anthology- let me know if you'd be interested in reading more):

- Rivers switching course is a common occurrence on Earth. Rivers never hold still- they writhe and twist in their beds like snakes, never holding still. Rivers in depositional zones, like the Saldist in the story, flow over countless fossil riverbeds, ones that modern geologists have learned to peer down through the soil to see with various scanning technologies, giving them a glimpse of the history of rivers. (In erosional settings, like canyons, water plays by different rules- but its power over the land is even more obvious there.) 

- The Mississippi River, down in Louisiana, has been straining to jump its banks and flow down the Atchafalaya River instead for more than a half-century now, and only the waterworks of the Army Corps of Engineers stand in its way.  Water is patient and relentless, and someday, the Mississippi will get its way, and it’s going to be a lot messier than the Saldist’s shift. The most important industrial zone in America will lose the waterway essential to its shipping, New Orleans’ sinking into the Gulf of Mexico will accelerate even faster without the Mississippi sediment to renew the delta, and a hundred towns along the Atchafalaya will be drowned. And then, someday, long after, the Mississippi is going to jump its banks again. Maybe it will go back the way it goes now, maybe it will go another way entirely. Water always gets its way in the end.