The Man Who Rained (13 page)

She did so, wondering if he was going to take hold of them. Instead he produced from his good pocket a sachet of seeds, and placed one fat grain in her palms. Then they waited. A canary bustled
through the treetops, springing and zipping from branch to branch, getting closer in stops and starts. It paused for a while on the twigs above Finn’s head, leaning its head left and right,
its eyes swivelling hard at Elsa. She smiled at it, in case that would help.

Then it flicked wide its yellow wings and whirred down to perch on her hands. She felt the pin-tip of its beak tapping against her skin as it gobbled up the seed.

‘Catch it,’ whispered Finn.

Nervously – it felt wrong to touch a wild creature – she slid her free hand over the canary and cupped it to trap the bird in her hold. It burbled at her furiously, and she yelped
when its wings whirred and tickled her skin. Still she kept it trapped, and then she felt a change come over it.

‘Finn ... something’s happening!’

‘Don’t worry. It can’t hurt you.’

The canary had stopped struggling. It crouched still, virtually weightless in her hands. It was getting hot – not just with the compact warmth from its small heart and muscles, but with
the penetrative warmth of a summer afternoon. And now around her hands a dim light glowed, getting brighter as she watched it, until golden shafts shone through the cracks between her fingers.

Some fearful switch tripped inside of her and she let go of the canary with a start. But her hands were empty and the bird had vanished, as had the light she had been holding, gone in a yellow
shimmer of air. The only evidence that remained was the warmth in her palms, as if she had been holding them to a campfire.

Finn laughed and clapped his hands, but she needed a moment to compose herself. ‘I ... I ...’ she stuttered. ‘I didn’t kill it, did I?’

‘No, of course not. You can’t kill sunlight, can you? It’ll come back in a minute or two. Unless the sun stops shining.’

He started to climb down from the tree. She stayed put for a moment, then scrabbled after him.

‘Finn, I ... I saw a dog the other night. It led me to a path and then it vanished. There was only thin air and a wind that barged back past me.’

Finn nodded. ‘If you know where to look you will see other such things. They exist in these mountains. You might see a horse cantering out of a flood. You might see swifts and swallows
vanishing on the breeze. Some will be manifestations of the weather. If we stayed here until sunset we’d see many of these canaries turn red, and if we stayed longer, until nightfall, most of
them would disappear.’

She dwelt on this for a moment. ‘So ... what about you?’

‘I ...’ he started. He looked so crestfallen that she had made the connection that she wanted to retract it.

After a moment she tried to prompt him. ‘You said yourself that you are part weather. And I saw what happened to you at the windmill.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

The canaries trilled and warbled overhead. She wanted, she realized with a thrill like an electric shock, him to be the same as them. She wanted him to be weather entirely.

‘You want to know,’ he said slowly, ‘whether I am any different from the dogs and the canaries. I ... I feel like I am, although I’m not sure if that counts. There is one
big difference: these creatures have materialized out of thin air, whereas I was born and grew up. There are photos of my pregnant mother, and pictures of me as a baby and a boy. So I must be a
man.’

‘Of course,’ she said, trying not to sound disappointed. ‘Yeah, I guess that is different.’

‘But ... sometimes I don’t feel substantial enough to be a person. I feel too light, like I might be blown away at any moment. And I, um ... I ...’

‘You can trust me, Finn.’

‘I don’t have a heartbeat.’

‘But ... that’s impossible!’

‘Is it?’

She held a hand to her head. She had a feeling like vertigo. ‘No heartbeat,’ she repeated, and she found herself staring at his chest. ‘Then what keeps you going?’

He laid a palm on his breast. ‘Maybe the thunder.’

She licked her lips. She felt like she was standing on the edge of a precipice, and she had to either back off or let herself fall in. ‘Can you hear it?’

‘Yes. Sometimes.’

And because she knew no other way, she let herself tip forwards. ‘I want to listen.’

She held her breath. He looked at her as if she were mad. ‘I don’t want to scare you again.’

‘I won’t be scared this time. I know it.’

‘Then ... all right.’

She nodded, but did not move towards him. She was all of a sudden aware of his height and breadth, and of her own body and her hot pulse intruding through it, of a film of sweat on the small of
her back, and of the air between them that had turned into a giant obstacle.

‘Now?’ she asked, to buy time.

‘Y-yes,’ he said. ‘Whenever you are ready.’

She took a deep breath then plunged forwards, bending in towards his chest so fast she almost headbutted him.

His chest was firm against her ear. She felt him tensing. She closed her eyes and listened.

It was like putting an ear to a conch shell and hearing the sea: through his breastbone she could hear a noise like a distant storm. The steady strokes of falling rain, the whistling of winds,
the unmistakable base notes of thunder, then a whiplash fizzle of lightning. She didn’t flinch. She was as absorbed as she had been when she was a little girl, her hands and face pressed to
her window to watch black clouds scud across the horizon.

‘Elsa ...’

His voice brought her back to her senses. Senses that were clearer now, clearer than they had been in a very long time. She felt as if she had just stepped in from a long and bracing walk.

‘Elsa ...’ he repeated.

She stood up straight. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

Then she kissed him.

At first he made a feeble resistance, but she could tell he didn’t want her to stop. Then he was kissing her back, wrapping his arms tightly around her even as she slid her hands over his
shoulders and thought,
Maybe I’m kissing a storm. Maybe I’m kissing the thunder
.

Finn kissed with his eyes closed, she with hers open. Then after a minute he opened his too and she looked straight into those storm-tinged irises. She lost herself in the rough circles of his
pupils, like the centres of a labyrinth, towards which she had been stumbling and lost for a very long time.

Sunday morning had come around, and Elsa lay in bed thinking about Finn. She’d hoped to see him again today, but he’d said they should wait until Monday. In
Thunderstown, he explained, the Sabbath was still a day of rest and observance, when families would come together. Daniel Fossiter would often materialize at the bothy, driven there by guilt to
share an awkward meal. Finn thought it best that, for the time being at least, the culler did not see them together.

Elsa had no intention of letting Daniel dictate who she could and could not see, but his interference was a problem for the future, one she hoped Finn would confront sooner rather than later.
For the time being, she let herself be satisfied with a kiss.

A knock at the door. She yawned as she climbed out of bed. She answered, rubbing sleep dust from her eyes. Kenneth Olivier was wearing a crumpled suit with a fresh yellow flower through its
lapel. His tie was as gruesomely patterned as one of his multicoloured jumpers. Elsa was still dressed in her bed boxers and a t-shirt, and he looked embarrassed to see her in such clothes.
‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled, backing away from the door. ‘I thought you would be getting ready for church.’

‘Er ... no. I’m not religious.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Oh, I see. Oh.’ His expression fell, not because he judged her on it, but because just yesterday he’d told her with a level of enthusiasm
she’d only seen him display before when talking about doosras and googlies in cricket matches that he’d become the church choirmaster, and this Sunday would be the first time his
charges would sing in the service. She wished she hadn’t said anything.

He blushed, apologized for disturbing her, and turned to shuffle back down the stairs.

‘Wait!’

He looked back hopefully.

‘The Church of Saint Erasmus?’

He nodded.

She grinned. ‘Five minutes.’

She closed the door and hurried to her wardrobe. She immediately caught sight of the presents from her mother, still wrapped and in their bag, forgotten in the wooden shadows. She bit back a
wash of guilt that their taped-up paper brought her, but still she would not open them.

Church, then. It had been a while. She couldn’t stomach her mother’s church, a place she was obliged to attend if a visit home took place over a Sunday. The way that the congregation
raised their hands in the air and pulled pained spiritual expressions as they sang made her feel self-conscious, even though she liked the idea that God could be like lightning, that raising a hand
might increase your chances of being struck. She hoped the Church of Saint Erasmus, that cavernous minster so closed to the elements, would prove to be different.

She’d have to dress smart, like Kenneth. Her only appropriate clothes were her office skirt and blouse, which she pulled on with regret, since they made her feel like a workday had come
around early. She tied her hair up to disguise the fact she hadn’t washed it, then hurried down the stairs, still stamping into her unpolished black shoes. Kenneth was waiting in the yard
outside the house, whistling a hymn she half-recognized. The noise of a dull bell tolling rang out from the direction of the church. She put her arm through Kenneth’s and they set off.

‘Daniel Fossiter stopped by earlier, while you were sleeping,’ he remarked as they walked.

‘Why? I mean, are you guys friends?’

‘Not really, no, although we get along all right. But this morning he had actually come looking for you. He said he’d heard I had a guest. And that she was an American girl.
He’s going to come back later, but perhaps you’ll see him at church.’

‘That’s all? He was just paying a friendly visit?’

‘Yes. I suppose so.’

They turned off Prospect Street and into Bradawl Alley, where the walls wore a green stain like a tidemark and every so often the pavement hopped down a few chipped steps.

‘Weird,’ she said. ‘He didn’t seem like the type.’

Kenneth frowned. ‘You’re still thinking about the dog you saw him kill. I don’t think you should judge him too harshly for that. Daniel is dependable and decent. You’ll
find far worse than him in Thunderstown.’

‘That doesn’t paint a pretty picture.’

He chuckled. ‘You wait until you see some of the folk in my choir. I’m afraid that the people of Thunderstown have good reasons for many of their beliefs. Some of the things they
think are, frankly, nonsense, but others are born out of very real and painful memories. Lots of people here are old enough to remember the terrible flood that destroyed the mines, and many of them
lost loved ones that day. It is important for them to know that a culler is here with them, to protect them from the weather.’

Bradawl Alley ended under a blackened stone arch, beyond which lay Corris Street, whose windows were all shuttered up. Saint Erasmus’s belfry poked above the chimney stacks, its tolling
bell sounding closer with every step. Behind it, Drum Head watched the town with one sleepy eye.

‘What on earth,’ she asked, ‘could Daniel Fossiter do to protect Thunderstown from another flood?’

Kenneth chuckled. ‘Nothing, of course, although the more superstitious residents would disagree. They still hope he’ll catch Old Man Thunder.’

‘What? Who’s Old Man Thunder?’

He cleared his throat. ‘Some people blame a sort of devil for the bad weather that has, in the past, devastated parts of the town. Legend has it that he lives somewhere up in the
mountains. He’s old and bald and wicked, although they say he didn’t start out that way. They say he was a thunderstorm once, who got so lonely up in the sky that he turned himself into
a man of skin and bones. Only, when he tried to speak, his words were lightning, and they set the meadows on fire. When he tried to touch another person he blew them away with a gale. He became so
sad that he could not be a proper human being that he wept, and his tears became a flood that rushed down to the town, drowned the livestock and filled the mines with poisonous water.’

They walked in silence. There was no noise of bird or wind, only the clang of the church bell.

‘Kenneth,’ she asked warily, ‘do
you
believe in that story?’

‘Oh no, no. But I can understand it. Sometimes people need someone to blame.’

Corris Street arced into Saint Erasmus Square, and the colossal church appeared before them. The knowledge that she was about to enter it, not just to explore it but to be there with the
worshippers, gave the building an even darker aspect. It didn’t feel like a church from the modern world but some solemn temple from ancient times.

She shook her head as if to clear out her overactive imagination. It was just a huge stack of bricks and mortar. Inside there would be nothing but empty space and elderly churchgoers.