Riders of the Storms

Riders of the Storms

“Now another urgent warning for the communities on the Frisian North Sea coast line: the storm front approaching is still increasing in strength. The coast watch team and all emergency teams urge everybody to keep away from the coast line and the beaches from now until the storm has passed and subsided. Don’t get back on the road until the warnings have been rescinded or downgraded and expect extensive flooding following the storm.”

Anna had jumped up from her lunch to turn up the volume of the radio not to miss anything. This was getting worse than she expected but she was not surprised. 

Everybody knew a mega storm would hit one day again even if nobody with living memories could recall any major storm tide since the 60s, when many lives were lost due to late warnings and late reaction of residents and helpers at the time. 

For sure nothing like that could ever happen again, not with modern science and technology, not with constantly improved storm and flood defences, not with all information available on the internet to warn and prepare people living in storm areas?

History had taught a different lesson though to the coast line and island communities: the North Sea was relentless and ruthless, water even more dangerous than fire when unleashed. The water demons would take what they demanded and what they were owed and they had been ignored for too long. 

Superstitious nonsense her children called her dreams but she knew better. With every storm warning her dreams and fears increased and her face bore witness of the sleepless nights when she didn’t even dare to close her eyes, not to wake up crying and shouting her children’s names and fleeing the waterfront nearing the dykes with a vengeance, determined to claim back the lands stolen from the sea.

When she woke up, she could remember every little detail and threat of the dream, while struggling to remember who she was and where she was. She knew this was a sign that the dreams would become reality very soon and her anxiety grew night by night.

Even more so since she had seen him every night now, looking at her with deep sadness, pity, pain and guilt, what had killed him hundreds of years ago in the worst ever storm tide in the history of the Frisian coast. He was riding his white horse, the ghost horse as it was known, visible only for some and only some survived having encountered the Rider of the White Horse. 

When she closed her eyes, she could still hear the roaring storm, smell the see water encroaching the defence lines, man-built, and rushing through any nook and cranny it could find to get through any way possible until finally all man-built walls crumbled and the water overpowered and covered anything and everybody in its path, a bad omen for the storm approaching now the shores of her homelands.

At some stages she couldn’t distinguish anymore what had been there first, the dreams, the stories or the knowledge but by now it all emerged together in one big outcry of fear, despair and warning. Recently her dreams had become more vivid, colourful but darker, more realistic and frightening each night. All she ever heard or learned about storm tides invaded her dreams and the night mares became night terrors.

The few who survived the major storm tides would never forget what they witnessed and the memories were carried on from generation to generation, until they became bed time stories to warn children not to wander into the dunes and onto the beaches during the winter storms until they were just diminished to fairy tales. For that reason Anna had become more and more desperate to remind people of the memories of storms gone by, which should have never been forgotten but kept alive forever.

Anna had relived those memories through her great grandparents and grandparents, her family having lived in the coastal areas for centuries. No wonder she’d become a coast watcher at a young age and studied the phenomena of the coastal areas, their history and geological changes, the impact of storms on lives and livelihoods, the impact of coastal erosion and destruction by overdeveloping the land and the dangers of cultivating land from the seas at any cost for an ever-growing population.

With the renewed vigour of warnings about global climate change, the demand for climate action and the growing knowledge of the impact of any development on nature’s habitat and the cause and effect of the imbalance of the power between nature and human determination for constant growth, Anna had had high hopes of some actions to reverse damages already done and reclaiming land and wild life to the benefit of all. 

It was too late though to stop the storm damages looming just now, they had ignored the warning signs for too long and downplayed the possible impact. Now they could only try and keep the damage as low as possible and hopefully avoid any loss of lives.

Anna spent the remainder of the day trying to convince the residents of her area to move to grounds further away from the storm and flood defences, to move the live stock from the fertile grounds inside the defences to grass areas further inland. But North Sea folks could be stubborn and fatalistic, she had run into a lot of brick walls until at least most families agreed to get the children and elderly residents transported to community halls inland.

All the time the wind was increasing, slowly but steadily, the sky was darkening much earlier than usual for the time of year and the tide was coming in fast and early. Very few boats were still out chancing the last lights but Anna knew the scenery would change very fast until the point of no return.

There was no rain at all, just the eery feeling of some electricity building up in the air, the last attempt of the storm to dupe its victims into the false sense of security, the sense that this was only another storm front, one of many coming and going, luring folks to the beach and dunes for pictures, dares of swimming in the churning sea and even a few surfers had pulled their boards out, disappointed that the power pulled them inland again, nowhere near the huge waves looming still further away from the shore. Most of them were clearly no locals, this wasn’t the shores of Hawaii or Australia, this wasn’t the Atlantic either, just the North Sea, more vicious and powerful when angry and upset, and this Sea was visibly in uproar. This could only end in disaster and the North Sea would regain it's power.

Anna was getting more and more antsy, not only did the campaign of helping people prepare for the storm not go as planned and she and the teams were racing against the time now. The local radio station was now repeating warnings and instructions every half an hour but that seems to only lure more people to the shore and the beach, following the local TV crew in. Most still stayed outside of the defences but that wouldn’t save them if the storm turned out as bad as forecasted. The TV stations had played video and film clips of older storms and the damages caused, people being swept to sea while taking pictures or walking along the shores, people cut off by the tide and caught within the pots and pitfalls of sand and water pools cutting them off from safety and threatening drowning in some cases.

Even cars had been shown being swept into the see off the coastal roads at times but nothing seem to deter the spectators and fame hungry. There had been injuries and even lives lost in previous storms over the last decades, but most due to people ignoring dangers and not heading any warnings but this would be off the scale and only hindsight would prove her and the old folk’s tales right.

Anna desperately tried to find her children in the crowds while redirecting children and teenagers with the elderly to the shelters. They weren’t with the teens on the beaches and the stone coast either as it seemed but Anna knew, they would be there at some stage, just kept hidden for now.

She had warned them, threatened them, grounded them from nearing the shoreline during the storm, but she knew there’d be little chance they head her demands. She couldn’t tell them about the dreams, the water threatening to overcome the defences, the rider showing her the future doom. They already believed her to be crazy, not a messenger from the past or future.

She could hear the water again roaring behind her, she could hear the demons laugh while stretching their fingers to touch her and the kids and pull them into their caves, she could see the sky go dark before turning to purple as even the sun disappeared in the sight of danger much earlier than on the calendar.

She didn’t dare to turn around, terrified to see the danger already engulfing the crowds on the beaches, but she knew the water was still out, the sea by far not as strong as it would be in a short couple of hours, the white waves taunting but not threatening yet. She could hear the voice of people on the beach and in the dunes shouting and pointing, unpacking food and beverages to celebrate a once off nature’s spectacle and already celebrating their videos of humans rejecting nature’s power and surviving as the stronger power. Fools for sure, risking their lives and not even understanding the anger and desperation of nature.

She could hear the seagulls screeching and the sun was still just above the horizon, giving them a last peaceful light before they were left alone with the darkness and the disaster. She could finally see her children, laughing and dancing at the beach, their phones all pointed to the sea now coming in ever faster. Most people had already abandoned their prime seats directly at the shore not to get caught or overwhelmed by the tide but were still within the danger zone. Some seem to be disappointed about the seemingly still calm strength of the waves coming in, not worthy enough for sure for pictures, they wanted and needed more drama.

Well, they’d get it much sooner than appreciated, most phones won’t even survive the watery onslaught when their owners would abandon them running for their lives.

Anna was relieved to see that Katie and Peter had finally moved back inland in front of the dykes and when she approached them to urge them further away from the water front she saw the rider again.

Nothing in her dreams and anxiety attacks had prepared her for what she saw now: She had heard the cries of fear from people running from the water, she saw the towers of the water looming over the dykes and starting breaking through the defences and there was the rider patrolling the dyke. Time was finally up, the storm tide now approaching with terrifying speed and power. 

The mood had changed within seconds and people had started running finally gripping the earnest and the danger of the situation they were in.

The rider on his white horse, all covered in black cloak, was only visible to her she was sure but his message was felt by all. The dyke could break at any minute now and the water would swallow all in its path, humans, livestock, land and earth, all could be gone in minutes.

He was the messenger doomed to ride the earth still to warn and remind them what needed to be done, that was his penance, his punishment and his redemption for what he’d done.

He had been the embodiment of the arrogant and ignorant human race, not taking seriously the dangers he knew so much about. He had constructed the storm and flood defences hundreds of years before, a licensed surveyor, a man of science (mathematician and astronomer), and when he was tasked to rebuild the old storm and water defences he had used his scientific knowledge to overturn old understandings and traditions against the old folks’ warnings and the stubborn rejection of the changes by the local folks. So convinced was he by his construction and predictions that when the storm of the century approached, he’d neglected to act early enough when the constructions showed signs of failings as deterioration had been overlooked and repairs had been pushed out too long. 

Only after his wife and daughter were swept to sea in their buggy due a part of the dyke breaking, he urged the helpers and builders to strengthen and repair the damages but it was a doomed task. Parts of the new dyke had been near breaking through and the old parts of the dykes had been already lost, threatening the biggest catastrophe the community had ever faced, threatening the devastating loss of lives they had ever have to fear.

In a last act of desperation and sacrifice the Rider of the White horse followed his wife and daughter into the churning, raging see and disappeared out of sight like a ghost. To the disbelief of all witnessing what happened while fighting the forces of nature with little of no avail the storm calmed down without any reason and the water’s speed and strength reduced and the water demons returned to their sea coves far beyond the ocean. For now, the powers were appeased and catastrophe averted, for the story to be told for centuries. The dykes built by the Rider of the White Horse had never completely broken since, of course improved and upgraded as per science and technical knowledge developing even more.

Anna looked at the rider in fear and hopelessness as last resort, when he turned his horse around and disappeared in the waves of the ocean once again, taking the storm and the imminent danger with him just as centuries before.

No lives or lands were lost this time, leaving a lot of people shaken but alive, understanding how near the disaster had been. 

And the rider still appears to some at times to keep warning and reminding people of the dangers. Unheard, unacknowledged, but he will never give up unless there will be peace between nature and the stubborn human mind.