The Man Who Rained

by Ali Shaw

  When she got out of bed her legs stiffened with pain and she walked as if on stilts to the window. The stars and a sliver of moon made the mountainside light, but at the bottom of the slopes it was as if Thunderstown had vanished, for Finn’s storm had cut the power to the streets and they were lost in the gloom.

  This time she saw the wind before she heard it. It was patrolling along the length of the nunnery wall, pausing here and there to sniff the mortar before trotting on with its silver tail wagging behind it. She knocked on the window and it looked up at the noise.

  ‘Hey,’ she said.

  It yapped at her, once, then sprang away as if she had thrown a stick. When it came running back it barked more aggressively, as if it were frustrated that she hadn’t followed.

  At that she felt as if the lethargy in her bones had run off into the night. She dressed in impatient silence, pulled on her sneakers and her jacket, then slipped out of the door, turning the handle and gripping it on the other side before closing it gently, so that the mechanism lowered silently into the latch and did not cause a sound. She did not want to be stopped by a well-meaning nun.

  She padded along the corridor, down the stairs and out into the cloister. The moon was only a crescent, but still it seemed especially bright, glazing the stone walls white.

  It was impossible to open the big cloister doors without their beams clunking, but their sounds did not seem to disturb anyone and she swiftly closed them behind her. She was in the antechamber that kept the weather at bay, and only the outer door remained between her and the mountainside. She paused there, wondering whether this was such a good idea. She was in no fit state to wander off on the Devil’s Diadem at night.

  No sooner had she doubted herself than the wind thumped against the door. Another blustered past, and then another, and then one that whined and one that howled and she listened with her hands around the door handle as the noises built into a great, hollow, gale-force roar. A charm hammered into the wall beside her began to jingle on its hook, until it worked itself loose and smashed against the antechamber floor.

  She took a deep breath and opened the door.

  Outside, the world lay motionless. She’d thought she’d be immediately overwhelmed by the in-rushing winds, but the air hung still and delicate. More stars than she had ever seen shimmered in the blue night. Together with the moon they paled the dusty mountainside, making boulders into alabaster and the grass into etched silver. And, all down the slope before her, they shone on the fur of at least a hundred wild dogs.

  The beasts stood or sat on their haunches as far as the eye could see. Their alert poses made them look more like sculpted statues than flesh and blood creatures. They watched her expectantly. The moon reflected as a white arc in each canine eye.

  She waited, unsure of what they required from her. Then, as one, they turned their heads and gazed down the slope.

  She had to take a few steps forwards to see what they saw.

  A man, toiling up the uneven path to the nunnery.

  He had not yet seen her, for all his focus was on his struggle with the steep ascent. Her heartbeat trebled when the moonlight told her he was bald and big-framed, but she would not believe her eyes, since it was impossible for him to be the one she wanted.

  Her feet believed them. She stumbled down the slope towards him.

  He looked up. He seemed different. Details had altered. He had worry lines on his forehead and crow’s feet around his eyes. His physique had become more precise and more world-worn. Yet who else, she thought as she stumbled over the last few paces and halted an arm’s reach from him, could have irises that looked like hurricanes? She would recognize him even if half a century had passed between them. He was like a cherished soldier coming home from a long war.

  He smiled at her. She threw her arms around him so hard he lost his balance and they fell with an oof to the dusty ground.

  They were laughing. She was poking his face and pulling at his cheek to confirm it was real. He was grinning. He was nuzzling his face close to hers.

  The winds took off in unison and yipped beneath the gleaming stars.

  She gave him her lips. They kissed.

  And she was in love with the thunder.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to Susan Armstrong for her constant encouragement and her commitment to this novel, to Sarah Castleton, Margaret Stead and Clare Hey for their editorial contributions, and to the Desmond Elliott Charitable Trust.

  Ali Shaw grew up in Dorset and graduated from Lancaster University with a degree in English Literature. He has since worked as a bookseller and at Oxford’s Bodleian Library. His first novel, The Girl with Glass Feet, was a huge commercial and critical success, won the Desmond Elliot Prize and was shortlisted for the Costa First Book Award. He is currently at work on his third novel.