Isaura

Note

Isaura is said to rise over a very deep subterranean lake: wherever a well is dug, water comes up, but only as far as the city extends, and no farther. Its green border repeats the dark outline of the buried lake beneath: an invisible landscape shaping the visible one. Some say the gods live in the black lake; others see them in the buckets that rise on their ropes, in the pulleys, in the pipes: a city that moves entirely upward.

The scene cuts away a wedge of earth, like a slice taken from a cake, to show what Isaura cannot see of itself: bands of ochre and terracotta, sand, and a dark plum-soot floor, with a cavern at the centre where the lake waits, motionless. On the surface, limewashed houses trace the submerged shoreline exactly; beyond it, only bare earth. Twenty-four wells drop their ropes straight into the open cut, showing, as Isaura itself never could, where every drop of water actually comes from.

Touch a well, or the ground nearby, and the nearest bucket will drop quickly to the water, rippling it, before rising full; touch the lake itself and every bucket will jolt upward together, as if something below had answered back. The whole city rises from one source: take the lake away, and there would be nothing left to draw.