The Destined Path of Water Chapter 1: Chapter 1: The Festival Morning

Read chapter 1 of The Destined Path of Water by Simply No One on NovelPedia.

Sae | Age 10 The smell of the festival came before anything else. Incense and marigolds and something frying in oil somewhere down the lane. I knew that smell the way I knew the sound of the river, it was just part of what mornings were supposed to feel like, except this morning was different from every other morning that had come before it because this morning I was finally old enough. I had been waiting for this for two years. Mother had told me last year that nine was too young, that I needed to be at least ten that the ritual required a steadiness of spirit that little boys did not yet have. I had argued, obviously. I had told her I was steady. I had stood very still in the kitchen to prove it while she stirred the pot and pretended not to notice me. She had said the answer was still no and I had gone to my room and been very dramatic about it for about an hour before getting distracted by something else. But now I was ten. And today was the day. I came out of the house before anyone asked me to. The lane outside was already filling up neighbours in their good clothes, old women with brass plates covered in marigold and vermillion, children younger than me chasing each other between adult legs. The hills sat above the village the way they always did, green and enormous and completely unbothered by any of it. From where I stood I could see the river. Our river. The one that ran along the edge of the village like it had drawn its own boundary line and decided to stay. It was not the river I was going to today. Today we were going to the temple on the hill. I had been there before, of course, plenty of times. But always as someone watching. Today I would be someone doing. I went back inside to find my father still tucking in his shirt. "You are ready," he said, looking at me. It was not a question. "I have been ready since last year," I said. He laughed. My father had a laugh that came from somewhere low in his chest, slow and warm, and when he did it his eyes went small. I liked that laugh. I wanted to make him do it as many times as possible before I grew up and became serious. We ate quickly. Mother kept putting more on my plate and I kept eating it because I was nervous and eating helped. Outside the sounds of the festival were getting louder, the drums starting up somewhere near the main road, that deep hollow sound that meant things were beginning. I was ready to go when Mother called from the balcony. "Sae." I stopped at the gate and looked up. She was leaning over the railing with that look she got when she had already decided something and was only now telling me about it. "Don't go to the river here," she said. "Go to the one on the hill. Your uncle and aunt are coming there." I looked at the river visible from our gate close enough to walk to, close enough to see the light moving on the water from where I stood. Then I looked up at my mother. "The hill one is better anyway," she said, as if she knew what I was thinking. Maybe she did. So I got in the car with my father. The road to the temple wound up through the hills and I sat with my face almost against the window because I did not want to miss anything. The trees here were tall and very green, the kind of green that felt personal, like the colour was trying to tell you something. Mist sat in the lower parts of the valley and the morning light came through it sideways, turning everything gold at the edges. There were small roadside shrines with fresh flowers on them. A woman carrying a basket on her head walking uphill as if it cost her nothing. Then I saw the waterfall. It came from the temple above, or that was how it looked, like the temple itself was pouring water down the mountainside. White and fast and catching the light in a way that made it look almost solid. I had seen it before but not like this, not from this angle with the morning behind it. "Father," I said. "I know," he said. He had seen it too. We drove the rest of the way without talking. There