down the stream towards her. It stirred up the mud as it went, turning the water the reddish colour of the earth – the colour of blood.
How long before it reached here? Ten minutes? Five maybe. Then the water in the pool would be spoiled too. Unless. She looked at the land, the way the river split, half of it flowing down into the pool.
‘We must dam the stream into the pool,’ she called out.
She moved quickly without waiting for a response, heading back to where the water split in two. Most of the flow was coming towards her, down a shallow, two-metre wide stream that was feeding the pool. She picked up one of the boulders that littered the broken ground and stumbled forward, the weight of the rock dragging her down. She reached the fork and the boulder splashed into the water, sinking almost without trace beneath the surface despite the shallowness of the stream. The water continued to flow around it unimpeded. She cast around for another rock and scrambled over to a large, brittle stone that fell apart as soon as she tried to pick it up. She grabbed the two largest chunks and hauled them back to the stream, dropping them next to the first one. Again they sank with barely a trace – and so did her spirits. She was already exhausted; she couldn’t possibly dam the stream on her own. It was hopeless.
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