“Power outages struck in the days leading up to the floods, he told me,” Sam told Nina. “To exacerbate things, all the power lines collapsed an hour ago. These people started evacuating in earnest a few hours before, so they knew this was going to get bad.”
“Poor buggers. Sam, we have to stop this. Whether it really is an alchemist with special skills doing all this is still a bit far-fetched, but we should do our best to stop the fucker before the whole world is destroyed,” Nina said. “Just in case he somehow has the ability to employ transmutation to enable natural disasters.”
With compact satchels on their backs, they followed the willing loner a few blocks away to the College of Agriculture, all three wading through the knee-high water. Around them residents were still trudging along, shouting warnings and suggestions to one another as some tried to save their homes while others wished to escape to a higher escarpment. The young man who led Sam and Nina finally stopped short of a large warehouse on the campus grounds and pointed to a workshop.
“There, that is the metal workshop where we do classes for construction and building farming equipment. Maybe you can find one of the tankwa kept by the biologists in the shed, mister. They use it to take samples at the lake.”
“Tan—?” Sam tried to repeat.
“Tankwa,” the young man smiled. “A boat we make of um, pa-p… papyrus? It grows in the lake and we have been making boats from it since our forefathers,” he explained.
“And you? Where are you going through all of this?” Nina asked him.
“I am waiting for my sister and her husband, ma’am,” he replied. “We are all going east on foot to a family farm, hoping to get away from the water.”
“Well, be safe, okay?” Nina said.
“You as well,” the young man said as he started back hastily to the stairs of the town hall where they had found him. “Good luck!”
After an uncomfortable few minutes of gaining entry into the little warehouse, they finally came upon something worth the trouble. Sam pulled Nina long through the water, lighting the way with his flashlight.
“You know, it’s a godsend that it isn’t raining as well,” she whispered.
“I was thinking the same thing. Could you imagine making this trip through water with the dangers of lightning and pouring rain impairing our vision?” he concurred. “There! Up there. It looks like a canoe.”
“Aye, but it is awfully tiny,” she bemoaned the sight. The handcrafted vessel was hardly big enough for Sam alone, let alone the both of them. Finding nothing else remotely useful, the two had to face the inevitable solution.
“You will have to go alone, Nina. We just don’t have the time to fuck about. Daylight will hit in less than four hours and you are light and small. You’ll travel much faster on your own,” Sam explained, dreading sending her off alone to an unknown place.
Outside a few women screamed as a house roof collapsed, spurring Nina on to get the diamonds and put an end to the suffering of innocent people. “I really don’t want to,” she admitted. “The thought terrifies me, but I’ll go. I mean, what could a bunch of peace-loving, celibate monks possibly want with a pale heretic like me?”
“Except burning you at the stake?” Sam said without thinking, in an effort to jest.
A slap to the arm conveyed Nina’s dismay at his thoughtless conjecture before she gestured for him to bring down the canoe. For the next forty-five minutes, they drew it behind them on the water until they found an open area without any buildings or fences to deter her way.
“The moon will light your way, and the fires on the walls of the monastery will mark your target, love. Be careful, alright?” He shoved his Beretta, with a fresh clip, into her hand. “Mind the crocodiles,” Sam said as he gathered her up in his arms, holding her tightly in his embrace. In truth, he was worried sick about her lone effort, but he dared not aggravate her apprehension with the truth.
As Nina covered her petite body in a cloak made of burlap, Sam felt a lump in his throat for the dangers she had to face alone. “I’ll be right here, waiting at the town hall for you.”
She did not look back as she started paddling, nor did she utter a single word. Sam took it as a sign that she was focused upon her task, when in fact she was crying. He could never know how terrified she was of traveling alone to the ancient monastery, having no idea what awaited her there while he was too far away to save her if something happened. Not only did the unknown destination frighten Nina. The thought of what lurked in the elevated waters of the lake — the lake from which the Blue Nile sprang — scared her senseless. Fortunately for her, though, many of the townspeople had the same idea as she did, and she was not alone on the vast stretch of water that had now obscured the true lake. She had no idea where the actual Lake Tana started, but, as Sam had directed, she was only to look for the blaze of fire pots along the walls of the monastery on Tana Qirkos.
It was eerie to be afloat among so many canoe-like boats, hearing people speak around her in tongues she didn’t understand. “I guess this is what it feels like to cross the river Styx,” she told herself in amusement as she paddled with a strong pace to make her way to her destination. “All the voices; all the whispers of many. Males and females and different dialects, all floating in darkness upon black waters at the mercy of the gods.”
The historian looked up at the clear, starry sky. Across her brow her dark hair fluttered in the cordial wind on the water, peeking from under the cowl. “Twinkle, twinkle, Little Star,” she whispered, clutching at the butt of the firearm as the tears rolled gently over her cheek. “Fucking evil is what you are.”
Only the shouts echoing over the water reminded her that she was not bitterly alone, and in the distance she beheld the faint glow of the fires Sam spoke of. A church bell was ringing far away, and it appeared at first to alarm the people in the boats. But then they began to sing. In the beginning it was a myriad of differing melodies and keys, but gradually the people of the Amhara region started singing in unison.
“Is that their national anthem?” Nina wondered out loud, but she dared not ask for fear of betraying her identity. “No, wait. It’s… a hymn.”
Far away, the clang of the somber bell reverberated across the water as more waves were born from seemingly nowhere. She could hear some of the people break their song to exclaim in terror while others sang louder. Nina pinched her eyes shut as the water fluctuated violently, leaving her no doubt that it could be a crocodile or a hippopotamus.
“Oh Jesus!” she yelped as her tankwa careened. Grasping the oar with all her might, Nina rowed faster, hoping that whatever monster was under there would choose another canoe and let her live a few more days. Her heart went wild as she heard people scream somewhere behind her along with the vociferous commotion of splashing waters that ended in wailing sorrow.
Some creature had claimed a boatful of people and Nina was horrified at the notion that in a lake this size, every living thing had siblings. There was bound to be many more onslaughts under the indifferent moon, where the fresh meat ventured out tonight. “And I thought you were joking about the crocodiles, Sam,” she panted in fear. Unknowingly, she imagined the beast to blame to be exactly what it was. “Water demons, all of them,” she wheezed as her chest and arms burned under the effort of rowing through the treacherous water of Lake Tana.
By four o’clock in the morning Nina’s tankwa had carried her to the shores of the island, Tana Qirkos, where the remaining of King Solomon’s diamonds were hidden in the cemetery. She knew the location, but still, Nina had no exact idea where the stones would be kept. In a case? In a bag? In, God forbid, a coffin? As she approached the fortress built in ancient times, the historian was relieved about one bad thing: it appeared that the rising water levels brought her right up to the wall of the monastery and she would have no need to make her way across perilous ground teeming with unknown guards or animals.