Piper needed a miracle, not a bedtime story. But right then, standing in shock as black water poured in around her legs, she recalled the legend Achelous had mentioned—the story of the flood.
Not the Noah story, but the Cherokee version that her father used to tell her, with the dancing ghosts and the skeleton dog.
When she was little, she would cuddle next to her dad in his big recliner. She’d gaze out the windows at the Malibu coastline, and her dad would tell her the story he’d heard from Grandpa Tom back on the rez in Oklahoma.
“This man had a dog,” her father always began.
“You can’t start a story that way!” Piper protested. “You have to say Once upon a time.”
Dad laughed. “But this is a Cherokee story. They are pretty straightforward. So, anyway, this man had a dog. Every day the man took his dog to the edge of the lake to get water, and the dog would bark furiously at the lake, like he was mad at it.”
“Was he?”
“Be patient, sweetheart. Finally the man got very annoyed with his dog for barking so much, and he scolded it. ‘Bad dog! Stop barking at the water. It’s only water!’ To his surprise, the dog looked right at him and began to talk.”
“Our dog can say Thank you,” Piper volunteered. “And she can bark Out.”
“Sort of,” her dad agreed. “But this dog spoke entire sentences. The dog said, ‘One day soon, the storms will come. The waters will rise, and everyone will drown. You can save yourself and your family by building a raft, but first you will need to sacrifice me. You must throw me into the water.’”
“That’s terrible!” Piper said. “I would never drown my dog!”
“The man probably said the same thing. He thought the dog was lying—I mean, once he got over the shock that his dog could talk. When he protested, the dog said, ‘If you don’t believe me, look at the scruff of my neck. I am already dead.’”
“That’s sad! Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you asked me to,” her dad reminded her. And indeed, something about the story fascinated Piper. She had heard it dozens of times, but she kept thinking about it.
“Anyway,” said her dad, “the man grabbed the dog by the scruff of its neck and saw that its skin and fur were already coming apart. Underneath was nothing but bones. The dog was a skeleton dog.”
“Gross.”
“I agree. So with tears in his eyes, the man said good-bye to his annoying skeleton dog and tossed it into the water, where it promptly sank. The man built a raft, and when the flood came, he and his family survived.”
“Without the dog.”
“Yes. Without the dog. When the rains subsided, and the raft landed, the man and his family were the only ones alive. The man heard sounds from the other side of a hill—like thousands of people laughing and dancing—but when he raced to the top, alas, down below he saw nothing except bones littering the ground—thousands of skeletons of all the people who had died in the flood. He realized the ghosts of the dead had been dancing. That was the sound he heard.”
Piper waited. “And?” “And, nothing. The end.”
“You can’t end it that way! Why were the ghosts dancing?”
“I don’t know,” Dad said. “Your grandfather never felt the need to explain. Maybe the ghosts were happy that one family had survived. Maybe they were enjoying the afterlife. They’re ghosts. Who can say?”
Piper was very unsatisfied with that. She had so many unanswered questions. Did the family ever find another dog? Obviously not all dogs drowned, because she herself had a dog.
She couldn’t shake the story. She never looked at dogs the same way, wondering if one of them might be a skeleton dog. And she didn’t understand why the family had to sacrifice their dog to survive. Sacrificing yourself to save your family seemed like a noble thing—a very doglike thing to do.
Now, in the nymphaeum in Rome, as the dark water rose to her waist, Piper wondered why the river god Achelous had mentioned that story.
She wished she had a raft, but she feared she was more like the skeleton dog. She was already dead.
