16. A WET AND WINDY LESSON

The storm drives them into a stream from which an Untouchable guides them to safety

When it came, and it did come, the wind was a blast from nowhere, going nowhere, and taking all with it. That wouldn’t have been so bad had they been prepared and diving for safety, but it was beyond even Zoz’s experience and he stood there open eyed as a fist of violent wind caught his students in its grip and dragged them towards the stream, soaking them and almost dragging their clothing from them.

An Untouchable flashed at them that they would be saved if they stayed still, but not one of them had the remotest idea what the rainbow water-spout flashes meant, and for the moment Zoz had his back to it.

“Help!” they cried, all three of them and Zoz as well, both as solo shouts for help and as a choir of ravaged voices, but the Untouchables couldn’t hear, their foshes giggled with the rippling waters, and the humans were dashed along until, exhausted, half-drowned and scared to death they were thrown onto a shelf in a cave they didn’t know was there by an Untouchable who, it seemed, was faintly amused.

To Untouchables, anything that lived on land was daft. Life, they thought, required plenty of liquid and creatures that had deserted a watery life for one that was land-based was asking for trouble. Weren’t there storms? Periodic and violent, electric examples of nature in the raw, storms that beat down the Savannahs until even they had all on to recover? But recover they did. They had to. Life was dependent on the blue grasses of immeasurable acres of savannah.

Zoz was the first to recover some semblance of normality if being drenched to the bone and cold through and through was anything like normal. But he felt a responsibility for the three students who had followed him into the eye of a storm when he hadn’t known one was due. He chastised himself: he should have checked. Storms, though not frequent affairs, were always a danger to life that didn’t have the protection of the crystal streams.

The Untouchable that had rescued them, of if not exactly rescued them had guided them to safety, was flashing water-spouts in every imaginable colour as well as some that were invisible to human eyes. Zoz had developed a rudimentary knowledge of the colour-language of the strange creatures and their language of lights, but even he had to struggle to fill in the gaps in which infra red and ultra violet flickered invisible in front of them.

“He says we can stay here until the storm is over,” he told his students, “and I wish I could communicate with him but Untouchables are deaf. They navigate by using magnetic impulses, and maybe one day I’ll be able to tap into those with a translator, but I’ve not managed so far. We fishermen use those impulses to count and catalogue them when they swim past us on lazy, lovely afternoons under the sun...” He sighed, and shook his head as of the memory was too pleasant to be compared with their present rather drab situation.

“Maybe a kind of semaphore?” asked Els, shivering, “if they can see, that is, maybe a kind of signal using arms and legs might form a kind of communication?”

“Good idea,” replied Zoz, “and one I’ll bear in mind in the future. But for now let me explain what I have learned. We’re in a cave that was formed millions of years ago when the stream ate into the banks where there was a seam of much softer rock and slowly dissolved it away. We’re not far from the manufacturing base at Clingle and there may be a route through if we’re lucky enough to hit upon one. The Untouchables know it must exist because a century or more ago men and even fems used to come this way and told tales of winding passages, some of them subject to periodic flooding and others intersected by vertical shafts down, probably for miles, in which several earlier men were lost.”

“Doesn’t sound all that ideal to me,” mumbled Pul.

“But we must try to get out,” said Zoz. “There is no way back using the route we came by unless we develop large muscular fins like the Untouchables have to beat their way against the flow of the waters. That fellow there flashes that it’s hard for them and would be impossible for us.”

“I should think it would,” shuddered Els, “I thought we were all going to die when the storm hit us.”

“We might have done had it not been for our Untouchable friend,” Zoz told her. “Now attend to me. I will try to lead you out of here and to safety away from these depths and to Clingle, which is not too far from our school and your games rooms.”

“What I’d give to be able to play with Cun right now,” whispered Pul, “seeing her twirling her hair through her fingers as I worship her wonderful flesh!”

“Shut up!” barked Din, “you’re making me wish I was back there too!”

“What about me?” asked Els, “we’ve played some games together, all of us, and at the moment I remember one thing from our games that may well help us find a way out.”

“You do?” asked Zoz, “say, fem, what might it be, for I’m at a bit of a loss myself.”

Els smiled sheepishly. “Well,” she said, “when I am with a man, any man, it doesn’t have to be Pul or Din, I close my eyes and soak the moment up, the way I’m being touched, the words whispered in my ears, the long age of togetherness, of coupling, the magic of the moment, and I always see the same thing in my head as if some spell or magic put it there...”

“I don’t understand,” muttered Zoz, at a loss for the first time for an age.

“You wouldn’t because you don’t know lust,” sighed Els, “but I do, and when my flesh is quivering and I can’t do anything but gasp and sigh I imagine, in my head, that there’s a key waiting to be turned.”

“What good’s that to us?” asked Din, puzzled.

“Just that it’s over there and my eyes aren’t shut,” said Els, and she pointed.

It may or may not have been a door, but one thing was certain: there was a large key in what looked very much like a lock, and it was the most inviting thing around.

© Peter Rogerson 26.04.19