Country Without Water

"In my country, there is no water."

"Isn't it terribly inconvenient, if there is no water?"

"Not if you have never had any."

I thought about that for some time, but I still could not see what it would be like.

So I asked him to describe it for me.

And this is what he said:

"There are dunes, dunes like waves. Always shifting, flowing.

Crests after crests.

Valleys shallow, valleys deep.

The horizon is fluid and the sky is flat.

At night, when the moon is full, the dunes stretch out the shadows for many miles."

"Will they ever meet?"

"The shadows may. But those who make the shadows may never."

"In the middle of our country, there is a large hill. The largest.

On this hill, there is a castle.

It can be seen from afar.

It is white, made of the same white sands that make the dunes."

"All white?"

"All of it.

Everything is white there.

The sand, the castle, and the towers."

"There are towers?"

"There are eight of them, but only five can be seen at any one time.  

Each tower has eight sides, but two are buried in the wall.

"They must be very tall."

"Yes, quite so. They are as tall as they are old."

"What do you do in the castle?"

"We make hourglasses."

"Hourglasses." I thought for a while.

"Yes, hourglasses.

The sand there is perfectly suited for making glass.

And, we do have rather a lot of sand."

The wind twirled around my calves and started a small tornado by my ankle.

"We make hourglasses of all shapes and sizes. Big ones, small ones, long ones, short ones.

In fact, the towers in the castle are also hourglasses."

"That is really big." I was impressed.

"The top of the tower sometimes touches the clouds."

I thought about the white sand, the white castle, the white towers and the white clouds.

“What do you do with all the hourglasses?”

“The hourglasses are to keep the time.

We are the time keepers. And there are a lot of times to keep.”

“How small are the small ones?”

He showed me.

From the folds of his clothes, came out this.

“That is very small.” I said in awe.

“It has to be. Somet things need small ones because…”

“Because they are small?”

“No. Because they pass so fast.

We have even smaller ones, but they are so very small so that you cannot see them.”

“Like the sand?”

“Like the sand. And even smaller.”

“There must be indeed many hourglasses in your country then!”

“Yes. Anywhere there is sand.”

“That is quite a lot.”

“There are many times to keep.”

“And there are many shapes, too.”

“Some are attached, top to bottom, making a long chain. A chain of time.”

“Some are connected at the sides. The sand in one can flow into the other, sharing time.”

“Some are circular.”

“Some divide.”

“Shapes, as many as times?”

“Yes. As many as needed and more.

There are really many times to keep.”

Then it occurred to me: “They all must be turned!”

“Of course.

Some, we do by hand.”

“But there are so many!”

“Some, the wind turns.”

“It does?”

“It does. See?”

He opened his hand and the wind carried away those tiny hourglasses.

They glittered like stardust.

“Isn’t that rather, random, though?”

“Aren’t all times?

Time is fluid. They do not always flow the same way.

Some forward, some backward.

But they all flow and they keep with the flow.”

“The tower—the wind cannot turn the one in the tower!”

“It can. From the side. See the small windows up there, beneath the crenellations.

The wind enters through the windows and spins the hourglass.”

The window was very high and very small.

“That is not enough. The sand will still fall.” And when all the sand had fallen…

“Yes, it will fall.”

“Then eventually, even an hourglass as big as that will be empty.”

“Yes, it will. But not for a long time.

The spin slows the fall.

And from time to time, the Master Keeper adds more sand.”

I raised my head up. “How does he add more sand?”

“Can you see the ladder on the side of that tower?

When the time comes, we all go to the ladder, with buckets of sand.

Then one by one, we pour the sand through the window into the hourglass.

My eyes followed his fingers up the ladders.

I imagined glass pitchers moving up and down the side of the tower.

A pilgrimage of sands.

“We only add on nights when there is no moon out.”

“When the sand falls, it is to the sound of rain.”

I felt the rain stroking my shoulders.

“The cool, gentle rain of the spring, quietly moistening the early petals.”

“Sometimes when we pour in a lot of sand, very fast, it is the sound of a summer river, swollen by a storm in the mountains.”

I heard the river gushing through my veins.

“There are a few times, we add the sand, grain by grain, sand by sand.

Then it becomes the sound of yellowed and browned leaves, falling and falling into a long sleep.”

I have never heard that.

“You will. One day.”

“Does the sand also fall like the snow?”

“Certainly, it does. Only we cannot hear it.

It is only when we are not listening, it falls like the snow.

Like the first snow on a winter morning, very new and very old.”

I became very sad.

I was sad because now it all had come to an end.

“Does sand melt like the snow, too?”

“Yes, it does.

You see—the sand are actually tears.

They are the dried, ancient teardrops, fossilized and forgotten.”

Tears—.

“They have been coming here for a very long time.”

And he showed me.

The tears shed but not collected.

The tears shed but not found.

“They come here when the wind blows.”

The tears unshed and swallowed.

The tears unshed and unborn.

“They crystalize and become glass. Very hard glass.”

He scooped up a handful of sand, and let it fall through his fingers.

“Can you hear the tears?”

“Your hand is an hourglass.”

“Yes, it is.”

The sand continued to fall.

It fell to the sound of spring rain, summer storm, fall foliage, and then, the silent snow.

“Each sand is a tear.

Each tear is an hourglass.”

“Ah, here is another.”

His finger picked up a tear, which fell from my eye.

“There is a whole world in this tear.”

More tears welled up and fell.

One by one, tears began to fall on the sand, the dunes, sinking in.

The tears became a pond.

Then the tears formed a lake.

The tears, which were sands, became an ocean.

“The world is dissolving.”

But I did not know how to stop the tears.

The wind picked up the waves, and the waves turned into clouds.

The dunes became islands.

Then they crumbled and turned into waves.

The waves rocked the ocean, and the splashes reached for the sky.

“What happens to the hourglasses which have gone away?”

“I don’t know. They do not come back.”

“What happens to them?”

“They stop when there is no more sand to fall. Then they become sand again.”

Or tears. As all is.

“The world is ending.”

As I spoke the words, it began to rain.

Cool, tentative drops fell on my eyelashes, and they rolled down my cheeks.

“It is. Look at the castle.”

The towers were melting, giving into the rain.

The hourglass became visible, but only for a short while, because they, too, crumbled into the sea.

“You must leave now.”

The water was reaching my thighs.

I opened my mouth but no words came.

Instead, a drop of rain, blown in by the wind, fell into my mouth.

It was bitter, and briny.

“It has come a full circle—the towers, the sand, the ocean and the rain.

There will be no end and there was no beginning.”

“Now, go.”

He closed my eyes.

His fingers were as cool and gentle as the rain.

The water rose higher.

Warm and cool and undulating.

“I am returning.”