After the Flood

by Kassandra Montag

But under my rationalizations, I feared that my heart had shrunk as the water rose around me—panic filling me as water covered the earth—panic pushing out anything else, whittling my heart to a hard, small shape I couldn’t recognize.

There isn’t always room to care more.”

Communication was breaking down by that point, the whole world reduced to a rumor, and I stopped listening.

“I know I sound idealistic,” Abran said. “But you have to risk idealism to have hope.”

“I don’t know if what we’re meant for really plays a role anymore.” Abran stopped and lifted the kerosene lamp from the hook. “We should go back to the deck. Check on Daniel.” “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to mock. I’m just cynical, I suppose.” “You may think you have no beliefs or hopes, but you do. It’s better you be aware of them since you already have them,” Abran said, turning and leading the way out of the armory. We climbed up the ladder and onto the deck.

I’d never imagined having to choose between them. Before them, I’d had few difficult choices to make. It was more like my life was an open expanse and I was waiting for something to appear on the horizon, waiting for my life to begin. With the world changing so quickly, it was hard to be ambitious or to make plans.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that Pearl knew we weren’t just deceiving them; we were using them for our purposes. Undermining them and everything they’d fought and suffered for. As she smiled at everyone smiling back at her, she knew.

can’t help but wonder if your responsibility to Pearl is greater. Because she’s here,” Daniel said. My bones felt loose in my joints. I opened my mouth to speak but had no words. I stood up and slammed my chair against the table. “You know nothing about it.” He looked up at me. “That’s how it is with me. I love the people who aren’t here.” “Well, that’s you. You know—you don’t know the half of it.”

I was beginning to accept I’d always feel like this—caught between my daughters, caught between my past and future, wrestling toward an uncertain hope. Like being caught between the sea and sky, always hunting the horizon.

I could have told him what I knew now: that you could choose to be alone like you could choose anything else. Nothing out in the world ever changed it being your choice. Hope would never come knocking on your door. You had to claw your way toward it, rip it out of the cracks of your loss where it poked out like some weed, and cling to it.

“You get used to loss like you get used to water. You can’t even imagine what it’d feel like to not be with it, not have it all around you.”

I looked at each face around me in the firelight. Before all this, it had been just Pearl and me, alone in the world. And now, each face was like a buoy in the dark sea. Thomas with his spirit that seemed untouched by darkness. Wayne with his willingness to step into the fray. Daniel with his steadfast presence. And Pearl, with the wildness of an animal I’d never want to tame. I felt a maternal protectiveness toward each of them. I would lead them into whatever would come, would try to fulfill my promise to Abran. When the water buried the earth, it felt like it was erasing us. The whole world a grave. But we would rise with the horizon if it continued to rise; we’d mark the sky with our silhouette before disappearing over the edge of the earth.

I had waited so long to prove myself wrong. To prove that I have room in me for everything I’ve lost and will lose, that the room in my heart will grow with loss and not contract. And I hadn’t just found it to be true; I’d made it true. I am not the shards of a broken glass, but the water let loose from it. The uncontainable thing that will not shatter and stay broken.

This to me was what the book was about!