Rainbow
Read Rainbow, and other short fiction, on decentralised literary magazine Softcover.
We’ve all bought into the idea that it’s not true, forgetting that regular repetition is what settles — culturally, at least — truth. There is gold at the end of some rainbows but what’s been so well hidden in the endless sarcasm is that sometimes it’s only bauxite or copper. We know much more now and the hard light cutting through the wet earth when it rains isn’t at useful as it used to be but such is the way the Dumnonians were drawn south and east into the parts of Cornwall they turned into tin mines.
At the end of the rainbow, rather than the gold we’ve been mockingly promised, there is instead an intense heat. The edges sharp and flat like ultraviolet steel as they slice through the sodden ground with the strength of the refraction that’s made its way down through the overwrought clouds above. This was how we moved as an old species, chasing rainbows further and further from our African cradle until we found ourselves both going forth and getting busy.
Not that we were always there at the landfall of each arc. They were easy to chase by day but not so much by night though their usefulness at unearthing what we came to know through evolving language as minerals meant we followed them nonetheless. We would stop, camp, eat, sleep, then proceed again in the same general direction. And there — not always but often enough — we would find the caretakers who would become legends.
Their reputations as shoemakers came second to their reputations for being ahead of the curve. Small enough to live in the same places the ends of the rainbows liked. Amongst the rocks and in the cover of escarpments and overhung outcrops. The first to stake the claims they fast learned to sell before retreating, over eons, to a wet green island from which they also seemed to disappear. Some say they retreated to the cold north of Scandinavia to follow the aurora to wait for it make landfall in the thousands of years they saw themselves having in old stories. So far, they’ve only been correct on one count.
Modern technologies have, of course, made chasing rainbows in this fashion less useful than it once was but even in the resources sector there remains a respect for the old ways. We continue to discover, for example and with politics far aside, swathes of northwestern Australia rich in the mineral assets that will keep us rich for centuries and they’re found with charts and spreadsheets and drones. But every so often, when the rains strike the depths of the Outback and the leafy dust turns sodden and lightning glasses the sand, there come rainbows like snakes that lead the way to deposits rich beyond most of our wildest dreams. Light stretching left to right across the sky with wealth at both ends.
From what we found underneath the septecoloured beams we built tools, homes, cities, life. Structures and stability. A reprieve from the storms that summoned them in the first place. A trick of the light guiding us always. The few leprechauns that remain believe our contemporary troubles stem from misunderstanding the value of an illusion.
Perhaps the cobblers’ lesson is that always moving is best. Always chasing. The vanguard those who know better who are ready to move on.
