The Flooded Kingdom

It rained for four days, until all the roads were impassable.  It rained because a magician named Sory mixed up his weather spells and couldn't remember the remedy.  Frantically Sory tried to undo what he had done, but the rain continued to fall.

Soon after the rains began, a baby boy was born to the queen of the kingdom.  The king and queen consulted together and came up with the name Noah.  Noah was a normal boy, except that he was born at a soggy time and place in history.  He learned to swim before he could walk, and was taken out in a boat instead of a baby carriage.

Sory tried to make amends to the young prince for all the rain by inventing the first raincoat, but he could do no more, and died of guilt for having made it rain so much.

By this time, the kingdom was nearly completely destroyed.  Most of the poor had lost their homes and come to take refuge in the castle.  The king sent out an appeal to all the wise men in the land to find a way to stop the rain, but no one could locate the elusive remedy.

Finally the castle itself was flooded, and the whole kingdom took to their boats, and sailed down the flooded waters all the way to the sea.  They became refugees on the seashore and built huts out of palm branches.  They lived for awhile on coconuts and wild game, until they were able to prepare fields and plant crops from seeds they had prudently brought with them.

Years passed, and little Noah grew into a youth.  He pestered his father to let him study magic in order to stop the rain in their homeland.  His father allowed it, but with this advice, "Dear boy," he intoned, "study all you want, but if you find you are prone to confuse your spells, by all means desist!"  To this advice Noah promised to adhere, and went to study Sory's magic books.

Several years later Noah stumbled upon the lost remedy for deluges.  He found it in one of Sory's old cookbooks, between the recipes for scrambled eggs and ludafisk.

A shiver of destiny swept over him, and he went to his father with the discovery.  "Father," he declared, "I have found a possible solution to the flood:  I will need a boat to return to our inundated kingdom where I must work the remedy for the deluge."

"Very well,"said the king, "you may go."

Noah sailed one of his father's ships all the way back up the floodwaters to the site of the old kingdom.  He sailed up to the highest mountain and began to climb until he climbed above the rainclouds.  He climbed till he came to the very top of the high mountain.  For the first time in his life, he saw the sun shining above him.

From where he sat, he began to work the remedy for the flood.  He took two teaspoons of cloud, mixed them with one tablespoon of rain and one teardrop.  He added some artificial tears for good measure and shook everything together.  Then he sprinkled the mixture over the raincloud nearest him.

Soon the raincloud turned blueish pink and evaporated, followed by the next raincloud, and the next.  Noah watched in awe as the rainclouds all disappeared, one at a time, and the flooded kingdom slowly appeared below.