The dry river

Source: an original fiction extract.

“When Asha returned to the village, the river was a road of pale stones. She had remembered water reaching the lower branches of the willows, but her aunt said that had been during a flood. Most summers it ran shallow; this summer it had stopped. They crossed the old footbridge because habit took them there, although they could have walked beneath it. On the far bank, a boy was searching among the stones with a metal colander.

The exposed bed curved through the village like a scar uncovered after years beneath a sleeve. Bottles lay between smooth stones, their labels bleached to ghosts. A shopping trolley leaned against a root, absurdly ready for customers. The willows held their long leaves over nothing. In the heat, even their shadows seemed tired of reaching for water that was no longer there.

Asha asked the boy what he was looking for. He said his grandfather had lost a ring near the bridge before the boy was born. His mother had told him the story when the water disappeared. Asha looked at the length of the riverbed and nearly laughed. Her aunt asked whether he had found anything. He showed them a coin, a bent spoon and a piece of blue glass polished smooth at the edges.

They came back after lunch with gloves and two sacks. The boy watched them collect bottles. Asha's aunt said they might as well remove what they could before the river returned. 'If it returns,' Asha said. Her aunt looked towards the hills. 'Before,' she repeated, but without certainty. By evening the sacks were full, and the boy had found another spoon. He gave Asha the blue glass because she had admired it.

That night, rain tapped the kitchen window for less than a minute. They stopped talking to listen, then continued when it ended. Asha put the glass on the windowsill. In the morning it caught a narrow strip of blue sky, looking briefly like water. Outside, the bridge still crossed the stones, and the boy was back beneath it, searching.”

Refer only to the second paragraph. Analyse how the writer uses language to present the disturbing appearance of the exposed riverbed. Support your ideas with quotations from that paragraph. You could consider words and phrases, language features and techniques, and sentence forms.