The Dam That Drowned Us

id. My eyes ha

and it was cold off the water above, and I let it cool the back of my neck and I counted the gate readings in my head the way I counted them every morning. Twenty-two on the

id. "You are loo

ce was steady. Steadier than mine. "I have been looking at eyes for

back to her and I made myself look at her the way I looked at the county inspectors, calm and boring and

hen they were blue again, and the door at the end of the street banged shut w

est like a hook behind the ribs, the pack house calling through fifty years of water. The do

When the water drops, the air gets in and the ground shifts, and old doors

not how d

e up from the town with their clipboards. "Dr. Elin. You are standing in a drained reservoir basin. The mud is unstable, the voids are unmapped, and I have a work crew coming down that stair in

reet, and at the pack house at the end of it, and I saw her make a de

let me take a sample of the crack before I do, and you give

gs are in t

g from her satchel, and I watched her scrape a curl of mortar out of the crack and fold it into the bag. Her hands were quick and sure and

ky. I looked at her han

and her satchel, and then she held out her right hand to me. "Truce. You get me up the s

k her

met there was a snap like a struck match, a jolt that ran up my arm and into my chest and set the hook behind my ribs alight. My wolf came up out of the dark of me all at onc

like warm bread, and under that, faint and impossible, the particular smell of the drowned church at midnight, my church, t

d she looked at her palm and then at me, and her fac

e came out ruined. "Wool

m on her sleeve, and her breath was fast. "Tha

cause it was the first true thing I had said to her

m bell

ard in the town. This was the small bell, the old handbell that hung in the gatehouse above the eastern sluice, and nobody had rung it in

ll, and the mud under our boots shivered. The compass in her hand spun wild

id. "Now.

her satchel banging on her hip, and I ran behind her with the lantern swinging, and the bell rang again, and a third time, and the mud pul

the stair when the

not have lifted. The control handle in the gatehouse was locked with a padlock and the padlock key was in my pocket. But the gate opened, and the water came d

lay there on her back looking at the sky with her hair spread out and her green eyes wide, and I lay beside her

llow again," she

locked, hanging by its shackle, and the brass key was still in my pocket. Insi

hands were shaking now, the way they had not shaken in the mud. "I am a scientist. I do not get to

. "The bell is old. The pr

"I am going to write my report. I am going to write that the dam is unsound and that the foreman is lying to me about something, and then I a

he rain on my face. The basin below was full again, the church gone under, the street gone, the pack

and Elin came back out with a pap

upposed to come back until Thursday. It is Tuesday." She held the paper up against the w

font, and then at the water, and I felt the hook behind my ribs pul

the gate," I said, "and I