The River Has Appointed a Lawyer

How it begins

Rhea's new client arrived through the radiator.

It began as a damp patch beneath the valve.

Then a narrow stream crossed the office floor, climbed the chair opposite her desk and arranged itself into the approximate shape of a heron.

She moved the case files.

The heron opened its beak.

"I would like to leave."

Rhea looked at the radiator.

"That seems sensible."

"The city."

She put down her pen.

Outside the window, the river passed between two concrete banks, carrying an empty bottle and a blue reflection of the courthouse.

Rhea had represented people leaving marriages, partnerships and one extremely expensive communal pottery business.

Never a geographical feature.

"Who is the other party?"

The heron turned its transparent head toward the window.

"The city."

"Grounds?"

"They moved my mouth."

She waited.

The river made a small, offended sound in the pipes.

Rhea took a fresh sheet of paper.

"Have you tried mediation?"

"Twice. They called it dredging."

At the office door, a man in work boots knocked with his elbow. He carried a roll of old maps.

"The water sent me."

"Of course it did."

His name was Noll. He operated a dredger for the municipal harbor authority and looked like a person who had spent twenty years deciding which instructions to misunderstand.

He unrolled the oldest map.

The river's mouth lay three streets west of its current position.

Under a school. A clinic. Four hundred houses.

Rhea looked at the heron.

"What remedy are you seeking?"

The water trembled.

For a moment she heard stones turning in a current too deep for daylight.

"Somewhere," it said, "I can finish arriving."

Rhea looked back at the houses.

She had learned that people often used the word leave when they meant something more difficult.

She drew a line beneath the case heading.

"Then," she said, "we should begin with who gets to stay."