Mute, unable to move, to even turn his head, Josh fell through the clouds and watched as the world grew larger, vast landmasses appearing, though there was none that he recognized. He raced toward a red speck on the horizon, the clouds dark and thick above it, flying high over churning grass green seas.

Volcanoes. A dozen stretched along a ragged coastline, huge monsters belching fire and molten rock into the atmosphere. The seas roared and foamed around the red-hot rock.

“Water can extinguish fire. Even lava from the molten heart of the planet cannot stand against it.”

When the lava hit the pounding seas, it cooled in a detonation of smoke. A steaming black landscape of congealed magma appeared out of the waves.

Josh was soaring again, the only sound the heartbeat-like throb of the king’s voice, powerful yet soothing, like the crash of waves on a distant shore. The boy rose high over the ring of fire, heading east, toward a dawn. Clouds gathered beneath him; wisps giving way to fluffy balls that thickened into clumps and then blossomed into an expanse of roiling storm clouds.

“Without water, there is no life…”

Josh fell through the clouds. Lightning flashed silently around him, and torrential rain washed down onto lush green primordial forests, where impossibly tall trees and enormous ferns covered the earth.

The landscape changed again, images flickering faster and faster. He soared across a desert wasteland where vast dunes undulated in every direction. A single spot of color drew him down, down, down toward an oasis, vibrant green trees clustered around a sparkling pool.

“Mankind can survive with little food but cannot survive without water.”

Josh rose and dropped down onto a mighty river cutting through high ragged hills. Dotted along its curved banks were tiny habitations, lit by fires sparking in the gloom. Racing low along the length of the river, he was aware that time was speeding up. Decades, then centuries, passed with each heartbeat. Storms lashed across the mountains, weathering them, softening them, wearing them down. Straw huts changed to mud, to wood, to stone; then clusters of stone houses appeared, a wall wrapped around them; a castle appeared and crumbled, to be replaced by a larger village, then a low town of wood and stone; then a city grew, polished marble and glass windows winking in the light before it transformed into a modern-day metropolis of glass and metal.

“Mankind has always built his cities on riverbanks and sea-coasts.”

The river opened out to a vast ocean. The sun streaked across the sky, moving almost too fast to see as time raced by.

“Water has been his highway…”

Boats moved on the water, canoes first, then rowboats, then ships with banks of sails, and finally vast oceanliners and supertankers.

“… his larder…”

A flotilla of fishing boats pulled huge nets from the ocean.

“… and his doom.”