The Fall of Man

Part III chapter 7

Chapter 7

Eve wakes, curled foetally on herself, with an intense pain at her temples. It is dark and her wet, heavy clothes cling to her skin. They hold her to the ground which is cold and waterlogged beneath her legs and arms. Grit and hair are caked across one side of her face. She is shivering violently, and her fingers and toes are devoid of sensation. She knows that if she doesn’t get warm soon, she will die.

Face down on the riverbank, she recalls the expression of horror etched on her father’s face as they balanced on top of the weir, and the paralysing disbelief that overcame her as they slid towards the churning wave at the base of the ramp. In a flash of white, his body disappeared. Eyelids tightly shut, she wills him not to be gone. More tears gather at the tip of her nose and mingle with the mud beneath her face.

In the darkness surrounding her, the thunder of the wave has been replaced by a churning rushing sound. Eve opens her eyes and wipes her face with a leaden hand. Overhead, no stars are visible. The moon is full, but obscured - a fuzzy white saucer sat high in the black sky. As her blurry sight adjusts to its faint light, she is able to make out more of her surroundings. She is lying along the muddied concourse of the eastern riverbank, at the summit of the weir. The white water is gone, but the river remains swollen, and laps at the top of its banks. Periodically it overflows to puddle where she lies.

Holding onto a bent post – part of the battered railing that runs alongside the river edge - she pulls herself up and onto her feet. Her socks are gone and thick mud oozes slippery between her toes. The treacherous ground sways around her and nausea rushes up from her stomach, but she clutches onto the twisted handrail for support. A few seconds elapse and the sickness passes. Turning away from the weir she hobbles gingerly downstream, along the river’s edge. She feels only a dull sensation from the gravel and broken twigs that press into the soles of her feet, which are soft and swollen.

A few hundred yards downstream, she finds the shallow waters where she finally managed to pull herself free of the river. The gouges made by her feet, hands and knees are still imprinted in the soft clay bank. Her waterproof coat lies tangled in thin bracken tendrils where she tossed it. Lifting aching arms over her head, she struggles to peel the sodden fleece top from her frozen body. Underneath, the creases in her white vest are soiled with sediment. Shivering, she drags the stretched fabric over her neck and shoulders. With all the leverage she can muster, she wrings the water from her clothes, which pools about her feet and mixes with the red mud. Once unbuckled, her encrusted trousers slump heavily to the ground and she picks her way with stiff, awkward steps down to the water’s edge. Her feet barely protest against the sharp stone and metal arrises of the gabions beneath. Clumsily, she lowers herself onto a relatively clean rock. The river is a shifting, oily mass against the still black of the banks to either side. Immersing her feet in the cold, fast flowing water, she rinses away the worst of the mud from her legs and arms. Then she leans forward to inspect her reflection. Against the dark liquid, her skin is a luminous snow white. She runs her fingers through her hair, which hangs in knotted clumps against her face. Its eyes stare back at her, two dark pools in an alabaster mask.

She sits there for a few minutes and the wind blows across her skin. Tiny dimples rise between the fine hairs that trace across its exposed surface, and every bead of water stands proud. Her heels are raw and bloody, and the calloused rock behind them stings the flesh it touches. Shivering, she breaks away from her own hypnotic image and something else catches her eye in the dark, shifting mass. Off to her left, one of the large water bottles bobs gently in the shallows, spinning in the rhythmic swell. It appears to be undamaged. After retrieving it she returns to the top of the bank, stepping from dry patch to dry patch. She shrugs her arms back into the waterproof jacket before zipping it fully up to her chin. The thin plastic sticks to her cold, damp skin, but feels mercifully dry. Amongst the churned up froth, foliage and debris gathered along the top of the bank, she finds the tattered remains of a carrier bag, into which she drops her heavy wet clothes.

Dawn light is spreading almost imperceptibly across the sky from the east. On the other side of the water, anything beyond the foremost fringe of foliage remains shrouded in darkness. Up and down the river’s edge, broken concrete haunchings recede into the gloom. Across the fields behind her, a delicate morning light kisses the barren land, turning it from grey to gold. On the horizon, the Wall of the city is lost in a low-lying mist. Above it, slender towers hang suspended like the masts of ships moored in a ghostly harbour. As she watches, a pinprick of light flashes for an instant at the top of one of the obelisks. It disappears for a second and then returns. A faint pulse – too weak to see in daylight – blinks somewhere high up above the streets.

With a deep breath, she steadies herself and rubs the heels of her hands hard into her swollen eyes. She cannot leave the river. If by some miracle Noah has survived the battering that the weir must have given him, she risks leaving him stranded – probably hurt, and possibly dying. She decides she must find him, and begins to pick her way further downstream along the broken concrete.

Progress is agonisingly slow over the broken ground; half an hour later, she has gingerly picked her way maybe a hundred yards further downstream along a riverbank that remains shrouded in darkness from overhanging trees. With every step, the rough concrete tears another wound into the soles of her hands and feet. Her skin is peppered with barbs, and blood flows freely from red lines traced across her arms and legs by the ever-present hawthorne and brambles.

Eve feels for a place in the shadows where she can pause on all fours to rest her body, and peer further downstream. Squinting into the gloom, she pictures him at every turn; each projecting tree limb could be an arm, every rounded rock a slumped body. There is nothing to be certain of; just darkness and more foliage, and the occasional glimmer of hazy moonlight on the broken water’s surface. She has no choice but to go back.

Blinking away more tears, Eve swallows a last sob before it can claw its way from her chest, and whispers a silent goodbye to her father. Turning her back on the river, she heads out across the empty fields, towards the city.