One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries (14 page)

The second time the wicked stepmother tries to get her way, it’s high summer. They have real summers in the part of the country that my grandma is from. It’s hot like Coober Pedy: a real dry, baking heat. The ice has melted and trickled away months before and it hasn’t rained for weeks. My grandma’s dad works for the king, so their house has a good, deep well in the courtyard and it really shouldn’t be a problem, but my grandma’s stepmother takes it into her head that what she really needs to regain her youthful complexion is a bath of purest spring-water.

“
Girl,” she says to my grandma, “I need you to fetch me a bucket of spring-water. Only the purest will do.”
 

Grandma looks up from her work, wondering what’s coming next.

“
I know you’re scheming, girl: I can see it in your eyes. You always were a lazy child, but don’t think I won’t know if you try to cheat me. I have a little spell which will tell me where the water has come from and just how pure it is.”
 

Grandma knows it’s probably true, because her stepmother is a witch. She’s not a very good witch, but she can manage one or two tricks and her magic will not let her lie outright, or she will lose it. That can be a great hindrance to a wicked stepmother.

“
But Ma’am,” says Grandma, “I don’t know where to find spring-water in the summer. If we wait for autumn, there’s a little spring that may pop up near the river after rain.”
 

The river in summer is a dry, parched bed. A place to kick red dust into the wind until even the dust has blown away.

Stepma won’t have it. It isn’t really about the water after all: it’s about getting rid of Grandma.

“
It’s a long time until autumn, my dear, and you’ve nothing else to do. Take this bucket and head west. I’ve heard there’s a spring out that way, and if you keep up a brisk pace, you can get there before sundown tomorrow. If you dawdle like you always do, it’ll
take three days or four, but that’s up to you.”
 

So she sends my grandma out on her own, with just a hunk of cheese and a knob of bread and an orange so she can squeeze out the juice when she’s thirsty, and she tells her where that spring is, and not to come back without a bucket of spring-water. Grandma hears the door slam shut behind her, though she hasn’t even had a chance to fill that empty bucket from the well.

My grandma at this time is just eleven years old, but she grew up in this part of the Old Country, so she knows the desert like she knows the hard, bony back of her stepmother’s hand. She knows she’ll never make it if she sets out with just these three provisions, all on her own. So instead, she climbs up into a baobab tree and she sits very still and hidden, and she makes a noise like a cicada.

“
KrrrrEEEE! KrrrrrrEEEE!”
 

(I don’t know why the baobab tree didn’t explode in winter, cold as winter was. Must be a different species over there.)

It’s hot and it’s dry and the desert sun is beating down, but the little girl (who is not so little, for her age) has a bit of shade in the tree, so she stays there until who comes pat-padding along but a dingo?

“
KrrrrrEEEEE!” says my grandma, pretending to be a cicada in that baobab tree. “KrrrrrrEEEE!”
 

Pat-pad
go the dingo-dog’s feet on the hot, red sand, and
huff-puff
goes the dingo’s breath as he tries to cool down.
 

“
KrrrrrEEEE!” calls my grandma, from her tree.
 

And the dingo stops.

It’s an unexpected sound, a green grocer cicada in the desert, because although they like the heat, they need fresh, flowing sap, and where there is fresh, flowing sap, there’s water.

So the dingo stops, and he looks around, because he’s really pretty thirsty and would like to find that water. My grandma keeps on pretending to be a cicada until the dingo comes close enough that he’s right underneath her spot in the tree, then she leaps down from her nook and she drops her bucket over his head before he knows what’s hit him.

That old dingo-dog, he bucks and he thrashes and wears himself out, trying to get the bucket off his head, but my grandma is not so little, and she’s strong and determined. She holds on tight and keeps holding on, until after a while the dingo knows he’s beaten.

Now that she’s got him listening, my grandma says she knows he’s thirsty and she can tell him where there is a big pool of clear, fresh water, but she needs his help to get to it and maybe they can cut a deal.

The dingo doesn’t reply, but he cocks his ear so she knows he’s listening.

“
I can’t get there all on my own,” she says, “but you’re fast and you’re strong and you’re light on your feet and I think it won’t take you so long to make your way across the desert to the spring.”
 

“
How far is this spring?” asks the dingo. “If it were close, surely I
would know of it already.”
 

“
I will not lie,” says my grandmother. “It is not so close. A day’s run and a night’s run, too, across the desert.”
 

“
Then it is too far,” said the dingo. “Why do you waste my time? If I stay here and hunt, I can take moisture from the blood of a wallaby, and suck the dew from the morning earth and I will survive another day, but if I run with you across the desert and do not hunt, we will neither of us survive.”
 

“
Aha,” says my grandmother. “Tonight, perhaps you will run down that wallaby, but how many nights will pass until you fail? And how many days more until the dew does not come?”
 

The dingo shakes his fur impatiently. “Maybe autumn will be upon us before that time. Autumn will bring rain.”

“
Well,” says Grandma, “you may be right. It may be so. If you would rather chance it here, I suppose that’s your right. At the spring, though, you could live through the summer without worry.”
 

The dingo sighs. “Child, what possible help could you be to me in getting to this spring, if it’s a day’s run from here and a night’s run, too?”

“
I have this bucket,” said my grandma, showing the dingo the truth of it. “I can fill it with water from the king’s well so you can drink your fill before you set off.”
 

“
The king’s men shoot those they catch stealing water from the king’s well. If they did not, there would be no need to find this spring.”
 

“
But you, Mr Dingo, are both fast and strong. If you let yourself be seen approaching the well, you can lead the king’s men away on a vigorous chase while I sneak in and fill the bucket.”
 

“
A dangerous plan,” comments the dingo.
 

“
But consider the reward!”
 

“
A deep drink from a bucket would be a welcome improvement on dew,” says the dingo, his voice a little croaky from the dry. Grandma can see that he wants to be persuaded, now. “And I am a creature of the desert: one deep drink will sustain me for the run. But what of you?”
 

“
I will drink, too, and stay here very still in the shade of the baobab tree.”
 

The dingo looks amused, now. “An excellent plan,” he says. “Then let us be away!”

“
Not so fast,” says my grandma, reaching very quickly to pluck a hair from the dingo’s tail. The dingo yelps and snaps at her hand, but he does not bite because he has a clear, cool spring on his mind, now.
 

“
You think to outwit me, to get to the spring and not return.” She holds up the hair so the dingo can see it, and looks him in the eye. “My stepmother is a witch and she has taught me a few things. You know this is true, because a witch cannot lie. You may leave now without harm, but if you take the deal I offer and do not return with a bucket of spring-water, I will use this hair to cast a spell that will
cause your balls to drop off and never grow back!”
 

The dingo’s hackles rise and his tail droops at the thought. His voice rises in pitch to a whine. “If I return with a bucket for you, how am I to make my own way back to the spring? I will be back to sucking dew from the ground and water from wallabies’ blood.”

Though Grandma is no witch, she has the dingo fooled, so he has to trust when she says, “You have my word that I will provide another bucket of water to get you back across the desert, drop for drop to match the water that you bring back from the spring.”

So they put the plan into action, creeping east to the edge of the King’s courtyard. Grandma hides behind the corner of a wall while Dingo darts ahead and makes for the well. A shout goes up as a guard sees him, and he turns tail and runs. The guard’s first shot clips off the tip of the dingo’s tail, but he is strong and fast and out of range before the second guard can take aim or the first guard can reload his gun. The two of them make chase, leaving the well undefended.

Seizing her moment, my grandma runs out into the courtyard, pushes the bucket on its rope from the well wall to splash into the water far below, sets her own bucket on the ground and begins winching.

It is a very deep well because this is a very parched land, in summer. It takes one hundred turns of the winch and one hundred more before the water is brought to the surface. My grandma works as fast as she can because she doesn’t know how long the dingo will be able to keep the guards distracted, or how long before someone looks out of a castle window and sees her at the well, where she has no leave to be. But at last the bucket reaches the top and Grandma is able to reach out and pull it to the edge of the well to fill her bucket for the dingo.

She has promised the dingo a full bucket of water, but she has sweated a great deal with her exertions, so Grandma, too, must drink. She pushes the well-bucket back into the water and begins winding it up again just as fast as she can. One hundred turns of the winch-handle, and she hears shouts in the distance that tell her the men are still on the dingo’s tracks. Fifty turns more, and the shouts stop, and she fears the men have given up the chase. Twenty-five turns more, twenty-five still to go when she hears another shout and running feet that tell her she has been spotted. Grandma grabs hold of the rope and hauls it up by hand, abandoning the winch and using her own strength of arm to pull up the bucket just as fast as she can.

She lifts the bucket to the edge of the well, dunks her head into the water and swallows as much as she can in a few swift gulps, dunks her bread into the water, too, then grabs her own bucket and runs for home. A few shots fly past her head, but the guards do not give chase, fearing to fall for the same trick twice.

Back at the baobab tree, the dingo is waiting for her, panting from his run. She binds his injured tail with a strip torn from the bottom of her skirt while he drinks his fill from the bucket. Then he picks up the bucket by its handle in his teeth, and sets off to the west at a loping run.

∞
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Ω
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∞
 

As the dingo runs, Grandma sits quiet and still in the shade of the baobab tree. She pushes her water-soaked bread into a cranny in the tree to keep it moist, and she waits. Her wet hair dries quickly in the parching sun but the day passes slowly. When night falls, scarcely cooler, Grandma eats her bread and tries to sleep.

Day breaks: a hotter day than the one before. There is no hint of dew on the ground. Still, my grandma waits beside the baobab tree. As the sun rises high, her tongue thickens in her mouth, her lips crack in the heat and her eyelids scrape like sandpaper over her eyes, they are so dry.

At sunset, she opens the orange and sucks out its juices. She waits.

Another night passes, perhaps a little cooler than the night before, but no less dry. My grandma waits.

By the afternoon of the third day, Grandma is near delirium and thinking about going back to steal from the king’s well or
—
just as dangerous, she knows
—
returning empty-handed to her stepmother to beg for water. But she is a patient child. Still, she waits.
 

At last, as she lies near death, she feels the cool splash of water over her dry, parched face. The dingo has returned and dropped her bucket on the ground beside her.

Slowly, stiffly, my Grandma rises from her place on the ground, bows to the dingo and takes up the bucket to deliver inside to her stepmother.

The stepmother is frankly astonished to see the child alive. Her spells show that it is indeed true spring-water, so she can do nothing more than complain about the time my grandma has taken to fetch the water back. Once her stepmother has tipped the bucket into the basin and is occupied with her bath, Grandma takes the bucket away, fills it from their courtyard well, and takes it outside to where the dingo is waiting.

The dog drinks deeply, then sits on his haunches and looks at her. “I’ve had some time to think,” he says. “Are you really a witch?”

My grandma shakes her head, no. Taking the stolen hair from her pocket, she offers it back to the dingo, who lets it blow away in the wind.

“
I thought about not coming back, you know,” says the dingo, “but I wasn’t sure.”
 

“
Thank you for coming back, then. It has saved my life.”
 

Picking up the bucket again, with the rest of the water, the dingo harruphs and heads off west.

∞
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Ω
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This is kind of a long story, isn’t it? I know I haven’t explained anything yet, about my parents, or why they came here. I’m getting to that part. It’s soon.