The Silence After

The crowd did not disperse at once. They stood on the bank, wet to the knees, staring at the brown water where three men had gone down and had not come up. No one spoke. The wind came off the river and moved their clothes, and still no one spoke.

Then an old man, at the back of the crowd, made a small sound — not a word, only a sound — and the crowd began to break. They moved away from the water the way men move away from a fire that might still burn them: slowly, glancing back over their shoulders. They did not cheer. They were not yet sure they were allowed to.

Zhinv's father carried her home. She walked between his arms, still wrapped in the red robe that had been meant for the water. The villagers stepped aside for them. A woman pressed a hot cake into the girl's hand. Another covered her shoulders with a shawl. No one said the words they were all thinking: that the river would be angry, that the old sorceress had warned them, that now the flood would come.