Bringing It Back

“This was a water-garden once,” Sarah says, putting down her bucket of topsoil. Unshouldering the shovel she’s been carrying, leaning it against the damp mossy wall of the gorge.

“Really,” Telan says, trying to avoid sounding out of breath. A few steps behind, she reaches the landing, sets down down her bucket beside Sarah’s. Rolls her aching shoulder casually.

“Yeah, or the beginnings of one, anyway,” Sarah says. “From what I’ve heard, it was never finished. Hard to tell now, but here and there, you can still see what it was, or meant to be, maybe. Some of that’s just guesswork. But we’ve got some photos, too- And yours will help.”

“Good,” Telan says. She uncaps her water bottle, takes three or four swallows before she has to stop, breathe again. A five-gallon bucket of topsoil doesn’t sound like that much, at first. Maybe the soil was wetter than it looked.

“Up there, where the light’s falling?” Sarah says, pointing.

“Uh-huh,” Telan says, squinting a little against the fine spray of mist from the waterfall nearest them. The falls’ throaty rumble, felt as well as heard, makes it a little hard to hear much else, and she’s not sure where she should be looking, exactly. Up ahead, a smaller waterfall pours from an opening in the shadowy side of the gorge- Then a patch of sunlight draws her eye beyond, and she sees. New-cut stone defines, encloses a small triangular space atop a sharp outcropping; within the low walls, close-cropped grass grows, startlingly green and lush.

Telan unbuckles her backpack, kneels, rummages, find the printout tucked in her sketchbook. Compares the creased, grainy image to their surroundings, looks up, smiling.
Sarah grins back. “Look familiar?”

“This is it,” Telan says. “The angle’s different, but this is the place. The photo was taken looking down into the gorge, I think. Someplace higher, maybe back that way…”

Sarah nods, looks downstream. “Up there, where the face has broken away, above those big slabs at the edge of that pool? There was something built there once, you can still see a few laid stones along that ledge, and what’s left of the steps that led up to it. Can’t be sure, but there’s no sign they went on any farther- So I’m guessing they led to an overlook, stopped there.”

Telan looks at the printout again, up at the opposite wall of the gorge. Bright sunlight renders massive, blocky, randomly fractured faces in sharp relief, etches crevices and overhangs in deep shadow. Telan calculates angles, imagines herself looking down from somewhere up there, leaning her elbows on a sun-warmed parapet long since fallen to rubble. Bracing herself to hold an old camera steady, bending to peer through a tiny viewfinder, shading the lens with one hand…