“He wouldn’t,” he was saying as they approached, his voice echoing across the empty space between them. “There’s no way.”
Otis was about to say something, but Ruby walked up beside her brother. “Come on, Simon,” she said gently. “You saw him that night, too. It wasn’t all magic and fireworks. It was horrible.”
Still, Simon continued to move his head mechanically from side to side. Ruby pictured his face the night London set the field on fire, how he’d looked on in such awe. Now it was as if a part of him was still trying to hold on to that, and even Ruby couldn’t entirely blame him. Because hadn’t it been the same when she’d been counting on Otis to return? Hadn’t she, too, been clinging to a kind of desperate belief in something larger than herself?
Simon looked up miserably. “He said I was the future.”
“You are,” Otis said. “Just not in the way he thinks.”
“There hasn’t been a Storm Maker powerful enough to take him on in years,” Daisy said, her eyes drifting over to Otis, who looked away. “Maybe ever.”
“London has the Society on his side, but only because they’re intimidated,” Otis explained. “There are plenty of others out there who are furious about the direction he’s been going, and that’s what I’ve been doing this week—talking to them, telling them about you.”
Daisy was beaming at Simon. “You’re the youngest Storm Maker ever. Do you know what that could mean?” she said. “You’ve given everyone a reason to hope again. And it’s been a really long time since we’ve had that.”
Otis looked at her over the rims of his glasses, his eyes soft. “Since your dad was Chairman.”
“And since you were part of the Society,” she said with a smile.
The sky had faded to purple now, and the stars were beginning to emerge in the twilight. Beside Ruby, Simon let out a breath of air.
“So you see?” Otis said with a small smile. “You’re the one we’ve all been waiting for. You can help us make things right again.”
When Simon finally spoke, his voice was heavy. “Then I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
“You haven’t—” Daisy began, but Simon cut her off.
“I have,” he said quietly. “Because there’s no way I can possibly be the most powerful Storm Maker ever.”
They were about to say more when Simon shook his head.
“I can’t be,” he said. “Not when I can’t make any weather at all.”
He kept his eyes turned to the ground, as if afraid of their reaction, but Otis only swept an arm out over the darkening fields.
“Where do you think we’re going?” he said with a smile, and Simon looked up in surprise. “It’s time we had our first practice.”
nineteen
WHEN RUBY AND SIMON APPEARED in the kitchen the next morning, Dad dropped his doughnut in mock surprise.
“I don’t think I’ve ever laid eyes on you two at this hour,” he said. “I hardly recognize you.”
Mom handed them each a piece of toast. “I’d probably be incorrect to assume you’re up at five AM to help me with chores.”
“Yes,” Simon said with a matter-of-fact nod. “That would be incorrect.”
“So, what, then?” Dad asked, and Ruby shrugged.
“Couldn’t sleep, I guess,” she said.
Across the table, Simon grinned at her.
They were still yawning as they stepped outside later, the dogs following closely at their heels as they made their way down toward the pond. The night before, she and Simon had stayed up talking until late, and he’d fallen asleep curled at the foot of her bed, the way he used to when they were younger. When the first pieces of sunlight had come through the curtains this morning, Simon had sat up—his blond hair sticking up in the back, his eyes still sleepy—and smiled at her in wonder.
“Wow,” he said, and Ruby had nodded. She understood exactly what he meant.
Lately they’d been feeling like a couple of Ping-Pong balls, batted this way and that, hopeful and excited one moment, terrified and anxious the next. It was an odd mixture of fear and wonder, this weather business; at times, all they could think about was the miracle of rain, and at others, like last night, they were reminded of the grim odds against them, the battles still to be waged, and it was then that the doubt crept in again.
But this morning was bright with promise, and it seemed to Ruby that she and Simon were once again on the same team. And that had always—always—made everything better.
When they neared the trees, the dogs wandered back toward the farm and Simon and Ruby trotted the rest of the way, crashing through the branches to find Otis and Daisy waiting for them on the dock.
“You’re late,” Daisy pointed out.
“We brought doughnuts,” Ruby said, handing over a brown paper bag.
Daisy grinned. “You’re forgiven.”
Ruby and Daisy sat cross-legged on the dry grass near the edge of the pond as Otis and Simon got to work. The night before, they’d all stood in the dark field and watched Simon try to make it drizzle without any more luck than he’d been having on his own. Otis had paced back and forth, offering tips like a baseball coach, readjusting Simon’s hands, suggesting mental exercises—Picture the rain cloud!—and just generally shouting encouragement.
“It’s not all magic,” he’d said. “It’s about tuning your mind to the exact weather phenomenon you’re attempting to conjure.”
Simon had looked at him blankly, then wiggled his fingers at the sky one more time without any sort of results. After that, they’d called it a night.
Now they were working on wind. Simon was perched on the edge of the dock, eyeing the glassy surface of the pond.
“Just a slight breeze is all you need to start,” Otis was saying, but when Ruby craned her neck to look at the water, the only movement she saw was the ripple of the minnows below. Simon threw his head back in frustration, blowing out an exaggerated sigh.
“You just need to—” Otis began, but Simon cut him off.
“You do it,” he said, his voice full of challenge. “Let’s see you do it.”
From where she and Ruby were sitting near the edge of the pond, Daisy narrowed her eyes as she watched the scene before her. Simon drew himself to full height, straightening his scrawny shoulders, waiting. But Otis only took a step back to lean against one of the rails of the pier.
“You’re the one…” he said, then hesitated; there was a catch in his voice. “You’re the one who needs to know all of this.”
Simon seemed to deflate somewhat, and he bowed his blond head, his shoulders once again curved. “I can’t.”
Beside Ruby, Daisy sat absolutely still, her forgotten doughnut dangling from one of her fingers. Her blond hair was whipping around her face, stirred by a breeze that apparently none of them had created.
“I know this isn’t easy,” Otis said. “But think of it like baking a cake.”
Simon gave him a wary look.
“You don’t just fling everything into a bowl and hope for the best. There’s an order to things, a correct way of doing it. And if you don’t follow the steps, then no cake.”
“Simon’s worst nightmare,” Ruby couldn’t resist muttering under her breath, and her brother shot her a look.
“Fine,” he said, turning back to Otis. “How do I do it, then?”
“First you need your ingredients,” Otis said, running a hand absently through his salt-colored hair. “So say we’re aiming for rain. What would we need?”
“Water,” Simon said dully.
“Water vapor, actually,” Ruby chimed in, and beside her, Daisy bobbed her head.
“Exactly,” said Otis. “Water vapor. Moisture. Condensation. Like with a cake, the ingredients in the atmosphere have to be just right for rain.”
Simon blinked up at the milky sky through the branches of the trees. “But if it’s not already there, how do you make that happen?”
“Ah,” Otis said, his face splitting into a grin. “That’s where the
magic comes in.”
“But how?” Simon asked, looking frustrated again. “You can’t just say that part of it is magic and then not tell me how to do it. That’s like telling me to just start juggling. I have no clue how.”
“Storm Makers don’t flare up unless they’re ready,” Otis said. “So much of it is just instinct, and that part will kick in soon.” He flashed Simon a little smile, but Ruby didn’t think he looked completely convinced. “Until then, we just need to practice.”
“But practice what?” Simon asked, his voice tight. “Practice imagining rain? Staring at the sky? Thinking about weather?”
“I know it’s hard to understand,” Daisy said, crossing her legs and sitting forward. “It’s hard to explain, too. It’s like—” She furrowed her brow in concentration, trying to come up with an example. “It’s like tying your shoe,” she said finally. “You had to learn how to do it once, but now it’s just automatic. You don’t think about it at all. Your fingers just fly, right?”
Simon nodded.
“So that’s why it’s hard for us to give you specific instructions,” she said. “It’s been so long that for us, our fingers just fly.”
With that, she twirled a hand above her head, and the trees around them shuddered, a few stray leaves sailing to the ground, before everything went still again.
Daisy grinned. “The science is important,” she said, “but the magic is what makes it all come together, and it’s not something that’s easy to teach. It’s something that’s inside you.”
“Exactly,” Otis said. “And now we just need to find a way to get it out.”
twenty
LATER, AS SIMON AND OTIS CONTINUED TO PRACTICE, the day around them quiet and still and completely uncooperative, Daisy finished off the last of the doughnuts, licking the powdered sugar from her fingers. When she was done, she turned to Ruby.
“So who’s building an energy converter out in your barn?”
Ruby raised her eyebrows. “You could tell that’s what it was?”
“Of course,” she said. “It’s a great idea.”
“It’s my dad’s invention. It’s part of the reason we moved up here.”
“Oh yeah?”
“It’s not really working out, though,” Ruby said, unable to hide the catch in her voice. “And if it doesn’t…”
Daisy raised her eyebrows.
“Then I guess maybe we move back,” Ruby admitted, pulling at a few blades of grass. “Which wouldn’t be the worst thing, you know? I mean, Dad could be a science teacher again, and Mom could go back to work at the flower shop. And we’d get to live in the suburbs again, instead of out here in the middle of nowhere. And…”
“And?”
“And then maybe we’d just be normal kids again,” Ruby said, raising her eyes.
Daisy reached out and placed a hand on hers, just briefly, before taking it away again. She shifted her gaze out past the water and the trees, through the small thicket where the golden fields peeked through. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way,” she said. “Simon is what he is. It has nothing to do with geography.”
Ruby was silent for a moment. Her brother was now crouched like a frog on the wooden panels of the dock, staring down at the water with a fierce intensity.
“You know, I was the opposite of you,” Daisy said, leaning back. “We lived up here when I was little, my dad and me, and then we moved down to Chicago when I was about your age.”
“How come?”
“He got a big job with the Society,” she said, smiling. “And it would’ve been a mighty long commute.”
“Did you always know he was a Storm Maker, your dad?”
“Not at all,” Daisy said, shaking her head. “You’re a complete exception to the rule. Usually even the families never know.”
“So what did you think he was?”
“He was a mechanic,” she said. “That was his first love. We used to spend hours out in our old garage together. I knew he was fascinated by the weather, too—always keeping an eye on the sky, obsessing over the satellite pictures on the news—but I didn’t find out until much later, when I flared up myself. As a kid, I never could have imagined he had this whole secret life as the Secretary of Hailstorms down at headquarters.”
“But he always planned to go back to being a mechanic?”
Daisy nodded. “He did,” she said. “But that’s the thing. It’s not like a job or a hobby or a piece of clothing you can just take off whenever you feel like it. You can’t ever give it up entirely. It’s a part of you, being a Storm Maker. You don’t have to be all that involved with the Society, but you still have to play by their rules. At least until you fade out.”
Ruby glanced over. “Fade out?”
“It’s like anything else,” Daisy said. “After a certain point, the older you get, the weaker you become. Think of it like a baseball player; one day you can throw a hundred-mile-an-hour pitch, and the next, you start to feel a weakness in your arm. Eventually you’ll barely be able to make it out to the pitching mound at all. Happens to everyone. Even Storm Makers. Eventually, you can’t make a single raindrop.”
Ruby thought about this for a moment. “Is that what happened to your dad?”
“No,” Daisy said, shaking her head. “He was still pretty powerful when he died.”
“How did he become the Chairman?”
“He was chosen.”
Ruby wanted to ask more questions, but it was clear that the conversation was over. Daisy was brushing grass from the back of her jeans, and her eyes moved out over the pier, where Simon was still facing down the water.
As Ruby watched, there was a sudden stirring of wind, and the surface of the pond began to move out in waves. They were tiny at first, mere ripples that grew larger as they reached the banks. Simon looked so surprised he nearly fell off the dock, but Otis was frowning at Daisy, who laughed as she joined them.
“Sorry,” she said with a grin as the water began to settle again, swaying gently near the edges of the pond. “But even the fish were getting bored.”
Simon groaned in frustration.
“Let me take a shot at this,” Daisy said to Otis, who nodded. As Ruby hoisted herself onto one of the railings along the pier, Simon shot her a desperate glance, then turned to face Daisy with a look of utter defeat.
“It’s hopeless,” he said. “I can’t do anything.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she said, pacing around him. “Because I’ve already seen you nearly electrocute yourself, and you broke a window in my house with that fever storm of yours.”
“Fine,” Simon said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Then I can’t do anything on command. Are there Storm Makers who turn out to be duds?”
Daisy shook her head. “Sometimes people lose their abilities, but not when they’re just starting out,” she said. “Stop being so hard on yourself.”
“How do people lose their powers?”
“Sometimes due to age, sometimes due to other circumstances,” Daisy said vaguely. “But that’s not important right now.”
Simon, however, refused to be deterred. “What kinds of other circumstances?”
Daisy hesitated, and when she finally spoke, her voice was soft. “Down at headquarters, there’s this machine.”
“Daisy,” Otis said. “Don’t.”
But she ignored him. “It’s called the Vacuum, and it basically saps you of all your abilities to make weather. The longer you’re in there, the more power you lose.”
Ruby and Simon were both speechless.
“It’s supposed to be used only in emergencies,” Otis told them, his voice as weary as a teacher’s. “Like during the Snowball Riots of the late 1800s, and the Waterlogged Uprising in 1972—things like that. It was meant to help control those who used the weather to cause damage.”
“And now,” Daisy said, “it’s controlled by those who use the weather to cause damage.”
“But that’s not important right n
ow,” Otis said, removing his hat to run a hand through his graying hair. “And it has nothing to do with Simon.”
“True,” Daisy said. “At the moment, we need to figure out how to get you to cook up some weather.”
“What if I can’t?”
“Every Storm Maker has to start somewhere,” Daisy said. “Rupert London might now be powerful enough to cause a massive avalanche, but there was a time when he couldn’t even blow the seeds off a dandelion, and that’s when he was a whole lot older than you are.”
Simon looked skeptical. “How big an avalanche?”
“Big,” Daisy said. “The kind that’s made by a completely unprecedented earthquake beneath a mountain range near a ski resort.” She seemed to trip over the word earthquake, and Ruby couldn’t help wondering whether she’d told Otis about her own mishap at the garage the other day. But it was clear that her mind was elsewhere now, and she lowered her eyes as she told them the next part. “The kind that’s big enough to kill more than a hundred people in one fell swoop.”
“I remember that,” Ruby said. “It was just last year, right?”
“March twentieth,” Otis and Daisy said at the exact same time.
“London did that?”
Otis nodded, but said nothing. He was watching Ruby with watery eyes, his face impossible to read. He looked as if he were arriving at a decision of some sort, and she thought of the barometer tucked away in her pocket and felt suddenly desperate to ask him what sort of change they were waiting for, and how to know when it might be coming. But Daisy had already turned back to Simon.
“Let’s see what you can do, kid,” she said, reaching out to spin him by the shoulders, maneuvering him toward the end of the dock. For a moment, Ruby was worried she was going to push him off the edge, but instead she whispered something in his ear. The two of them directed their gazes at the water.
Otis and Ruby watched as the pair of towheaded figures eyed the murky pond, the brackish water flecked with leaves and algae. Ruby held her breath, expecting to feel a breeze on the back of her neck, a gust of wind, anything. But several minutes passed, and still nothing happened.
The Storm Makers Page 11