The tower lay on its side, stretched out for a half a mile along the desert floor, half buried by wind and sand, only the windows on the upper half still visible, like implacable black eyes. No one knew when it had fallen, but all the legends spoke of the time when it had pointed straight up to the stars, a long metal tube, its purpose, surely, to talk with the heavens.
A town had grown up, long ago, sustained in the barren dryness by the magic from the tower: the lake. No-one knew how this gift worked, but they knew the great ancestors had discovered the secret of endless water, pouring into the lake. Water was taken by the townsfolk and water must be given, a mantra every child learned at their mother’s knee. All wastewater was siphoned back to the tower, emerging, like a miracle, into clean lake water. Blessed Water. Not a drop was spilled, to knock over a glass of water was a dreadful act, to spit was a sin.
Later, the town was moved, and the palace was built on the shores of the lake, along with the merchant houses, men made rich by the caravan route that passed through the town, an oasis in a world of deserts.
Did anyone go into the tower? Of course, for the great miracle of the water needed tending to continue, but this was the job of the priests, men who braved the interior, for the heat inside the metal tower was ferocious, and at night when the sun had sunk, the heat rolled off the tower’s sides in blistering waves, as it cooled. Then the shaven-headed priests would enter the tower, dressed only in loin cloths, through the base and work their prayers to keep the life-giving water flowing.
Melissa had lived in the town near the tower base for all her twenty-four years, and she could not imagine any other life, for she had never heard tell of another way, except the stories she loved, passed on by the caravan traders, whispered and contorted by each mouth they passed through until they became wild tales, of fact and fiction melted in the same pot until one was indistinguishable from the other; stories of far off cities with unbelievable wonders, metal carts that powered themselves, towers almost as tall as their fallen one, where people lived in the clouds, or, even stranger, of places with lakes so big their far shores were invisible. So much water, but in a cruel twist, the gods had salted it. Her mother scoffed at these tales, ‘stories for children’ she said, rolling her eyes. But she believed the one about the giant lakes, because the undrinkable water was proof, in her eyes, that the gods punished the sinners. Melissa knew her mother was fond of stories of retribution and punishment by the gods.
