For three days and three nights the rain fell. Dense, heavy, opaque. It fell slowly, like a theatre curtain descending at the end of a performed act. People sat in their houses. The hungry cattle moaned and bellowed in their pens and stables. From time to time a lantern would glow on a porch, then go out like a dying firefly. The earth groaned and gasped under the weight. The villagers watched in fear as it lifted and lowered its vast back, trying to shake off its heavy, watery cloak. No one was brave enough to step into the rain. Dogs, cats, and rats hid in cracks and crevices. Outside, there was no one. Life was frozen by the rain.
On the fourth morning the sky cleared. People came out to feed their livestock. Cars and carts crept once more along the wet road. The water withdrew. The fields once again embraced their ploughs. All but one.
Across that wide field trembled hundreds of puddles. The ploughs lay on their sides like sleeping animals. For three days and three nights the villagers circled the field. The puddles did not recede. On the fourth morning they found them hardened, solid, as if made of glass. In each of them the sky was reflected.
They tried to pry them up by hand, tapped them, dug around them with shovels, sprinkled them with salt and ash—nothing helped. The puddles stood untouched, like hundreds of open eyes staring into the sky. One of the villagers, in anger and despair, struck a hardened puddle with his shovel. It shattered into thousands of fragments. A sigh of relief was heard. The shards melted into liquid and, like droplets of mercury, trembled in the daylight. The villager picked up one of the drops and vanished into the air. As if he had never existed. The scattered drops gathered again into a new puddle, which hardened at once. Shocked, the villagers withdrew.
First came the gendarmes, to investigate the disappearance. They prowled around the field, staring pale-faced into the puddles. They fenced the place off and forbade anyone to enter. Then came the priests, for it was said the puddles were the devil’s work. They mumbled prayers and muttered all sorts of nonsense. They sprinkled holy water on the puddles. They invoked God and His mercy at every corner of the field. One of them tripped on his robe and fell into the mud. They cursed the villagers and their village. If the puddles were a trick, may the villagers who invented it be cursed; if not, then the punishment was deserved—for every punishment is deserved, they said, and went away.
Next came the astronomers with their strange instruments. They aimed telescopes and binoculars at the puddles; everything with a lens observed them, from near and far. They paced the field, measuring and recalculating. The results they published were no different from those the villagers had already reached: each puddle showed a different sky. And that was that. The astronomers packed up their instruments and left. The field and the puddles remained as they were.
Wrapped in twilight, Mordekai stood at the edge of the glass field. He climbed over the fence and moved slowly among the puddles. Hundreds of twilights watched him walk. He peered into the puddles and nodded.
“There’s something here. I’ll spend the night in this field.”
So he said, and sat among the puddles, careful not to touch any. Night fell. The starry skies appeared in their puddles. Mordekai rose and began his rounds.
“Hm, hm, hm,” he murmured into his beard.
He looked at all the skies: the one with three moons, the one whose stars were misplaced, the one of mists, and the one of complete darkness. Then it dawned on him.
“Each puddle is a window into another universe. That’s perfectly clear now. They shouldn’t be here.”
He thought for a while.
He approached one puddle and closed his eyes. He waited. Soon, from the puddle, a face looked back at him—his own. He smiled, and the face in the puddle smiled too.
He went from puddle to puddle, summoning his doubles, until hundreds of Mordekais from hundreds of different universes calmly looked out from their puddles.
“You know what needs to be done. Everything has its place,” said our Mordekai.
He found the puddle that matched exactly the constellation of his own sky. Then he put on gloves, took out a small hammer and a test tube. He tapped the puddle; it gave a small cry and dissolved into viscous drops. Mordekai collected them all in the tube.
In the morning the villagers found an empty field. The puddles had withdrawn, but the fear remained. The field was never sown again. Unknown shrubs grew there. No one ever dared to go near it, let alone clear it.
For the villagers knew: some things that happen are better left forgotten.
More from Mordekai Stories: The House Awoken, The Inverted Tree
