A long journey

Jasper’s mom didn’t cry a single tear after his sister’s death. Because she didn’t cry, he took it upon himself to cry on her behalf. Enough tears to repel the sadness that gripped and enveloped his whole body. His favorite time to cry was just after dawn, after the neighbor’s rooster crowed but before the sounds of trucks echoed over their town. He would slip out of his hammock and settle into the doorway overlooking the stream. Some days he would cry 75 tears, some days only a few.

A dark shadow closed in over Jasper’s head. A cloud so dense, so pregnant with water that it was almost purple, settled over the village and covered the sky. Even the wind couldn’t budge the cloud from its resting place. A lazy but continuous rumble surrounded it, and the hair on Jasper’s arm stood up from the electricity in the air.

The rain had so far been steady but peaceful. And then the big purple cloud gave off a rumble and gave birth to enormous drops, ten times the size of the ones that had peppered the ground all morning. They hit the ground around his corrugated metal and cinder block house like small grenades, exploding as they struck the already saturated dirt. Jasper watched as an ant, moving slowly across the wet ground, got hit with a giant drop, crushing it dead. The rain fell hard and Jasper cried harder. It was difficult to know which drops came from the rain and which came from his eyes, unless one slipped over his lip and he tasted the saltiness.

Jasper sat under a small piece of misshapen tin that served as an overhang to the dirt porch. It was the place where he last spoke to his sister, and the memory of their conversation stirred his emotions. They had argued; she had asked him to get ready for school and he had ignored her, preferring to play with a shiny beetle instead. They would be late and now she would miss an important test that could help her get into university. She had loved him in a way that his parents did not and he was scared that she would go away and leave him. But he didn’t say this, instead he acted insolent and he had upset her. It was their last conversation, and he would never forgive himself.

A round tear slipped from the corner of his left eye. It slid down his cheek, heavy and strong, then fell from the edge of his jaw and splashing into the puddle at his feet, unnoticeable compared to the large rain drops. The tear struggled to stay afloat against the ripples; it gasped and bobbed under the muddy water. A small leaf from a Banyan tree had taken a hit from a large drop and was headed back to the surface of the puddle, so the tear grabbed on.

Hanging on for dear life, the tear and the leaf spilled out of the puddle and headed down a small stream of water towards the canal. Everything in the village flowed to the canal. It was a benefit and a curse to their village; the slope of the ground kept the water from flooding their homes. But when everything flowed down, the canal filled with all kinds of things that Jasper didn’t like to think about, especially when his mother made him use the old canal spout to wash his hair.

The tear drop wasn’t thinking about water quality, it was scared for its life. It clung to the leaf with all its strength. The leaf tumbled and turned and sped through the cracks and crevices in the village, speeding towards the cement-shaped U canal which eventually dumped out to the Arabian sea. The water rushed towards a small, deep crevice in the mud and the leaf became jammed perpendicular to the flow. The tear fell off and tumbled into the stream, gaining speed as it headed towards the canal. At a rocky cliff the stream ended, and the muddy water carried the tear to the steep drop. The tear braced for the fall. But just before it was launched from the edge, the tear was forced downward, roughly, into a gap in the cement. Down the water pushed and rushed, down deep underground past the hidey-holes of worms and moles and snakes burrowed below.

Two hours later, the tear slept in exhaustion against a blade of grass that floated along a stream that meandered through a dense deep green jungle. If you were to look at the water, you’d see a small spot, no larger than a half centimeter, that sparkled against the dull, lusterless color of the jungle water. The tear awoke, rippled when it recalled its perilous journey, but then laid back and relaxed in the sun that sliced through the trees, forgetting about its past and languishing in the present moment.

The tear was so busy enjoying the lazy pace, that it wasn’t until it was falling through the air that it realized it had tumbled over a giant waterfall.

The tear tumbled through the air, like a spinning coin during a magician’s trick. This is the end, the tear thought. The tear hadn’t planned to have this kind of adventure. It was the kind of tear that preferred to stay home on Friday night watching sad movies. The tear was exhausted. It couldn’t take it anymore. It closed its eyes, said a small prayer to the tissue god, and let go.

A tree, a very brave tree, had dared to grow a branch towards the mighty force of the waterfall. Daring, the other trees said. What is he thinking? the piranhas gossiped. Why risk it? said the clouds. A single flower petal from the tree caught the tear and cradled it as softly as a pillow. Droplets from the waterfall continued to fill the petal until it dipped, ever so gently, and broke away from the branch of the tree.

The tear and the pink petal tumbled through the air. The petal landed on the very tip of the rhino’s great horn. The tear struck Amangola’s forehead and splashed onto her lips. She awoke to taste the salty sadness of a tear. She wondered who could be sad enough to cry a tear that could hold its shape through such a fantastic adventure.

~ Excerpt from The Rhino Queen, a young adult novel (unpublished)