The Book of Storms

by Ruth Hatfield

  “What are you watching the rain for, Torwek?” ASK asked his brother.

  Torwek said, “The rain soothes my headaches. It promises me that the lightning will make me better, next time.”

  “What do you mean? You are not ill, are you?” ASK asked.

  “No,” said Torwek. “But the headaches, they hurt so much. And the rain says that’s because the storms were making new lightning to see what it did. She says it’ll be all right, next time.”

  “She?” asked ASK, wondering if his brother had been struck a little simple by the lightning.

  “The rain,” said Torwek. “Oh … I can’t explain it to you. But she promised that it would be better soon, that soon I’d fall into sand and never hurt again.”

  With this he began crying softly, and ASK could not provoke from him a single further word on the matter.

  But it was a small step to deduce that if the rain could communicate with Torwek, then the reverse might also be possible. And if Torwek could speak to the rain, might he also be able to beg that it send no more floods but only pour gently onto the earth at the times it was needed?

  Torwek was adamant that he neither could nor would attempt to ask any such thing. He said only that the rain was always different but he could not explain how. The following summer he was struck by another bolt of lightning and killed instantly, thus bringing to four the total number of siblings ASK had lost, in one way or another, by means of the weather.

  When ASK reached the age of seventeen, his parents died within a month of each other, and he was left with his remaining brothers on the useless family land. He realized quickly that if he truly wanted to discover the mystery behind Torwek’s rain, then he should go elsewhere and seek other people with similar interests. Besides which, he did not particularly want to talk to the miserable farmland rain that had so blighted his life. So he bade farewell to his brothers and headed for the capital city, Warsaw.

  However, his hope of discovering an enlightened and broad-minded section of people in Warsaw was an entirely vain one. ASK became an outcast in what little society he found around his job sticking labels onto jam jars. The outbreak of the Second World War brought some hope of change, but the production of jam continued largely uninterrupted, and after seven years ASK was promoted, partly due to his not-insignificant contribution to the Polish resistance, to the peerless heights of label-sticker supervisor. By then, ASK had saved enough money to afford his passage to England, a land then regarded by a great many people as the center of the freethinking world. So he bade good-bye to his own country and set off for distant shores.

  What can a man say when he feels he has finally reached the home for which he has been searching all his life? It was England’s green, golden, and brown fields that welcomed him, England’s quiet lanes and blue mottled skies. He soon discovered, however, that these skies never remained blue for long: they could roll through every shade between white and black in a single afternoon and turn from sweet fluff into lashing hail as quickly as a squirrel could scamper up a tree. Clearly, England was a crossing point for all possible kinds of weather.

  In his first month in England, ASK found a job working at a telephone exchange in which the hours were irregular, giving him the opportunity to be outside at different times of the day. At the telephone exchange he also met a young woman, Sarah Ellerton, with whom he began to enjoy a kind of lively banter.

  It was to Sarah that he first admitted his reasons for having come to England, and her response was not to ridicule him but to show a genuine interest in his theories. After some while, she admitted to him her own wishes for the future: that she would be able to live in a small village and become a teacher. ASK began to see a future in which he, too, might live in an English village of the kind he found so beautiful and welcoming after Poland’s cold fields. And so it was that when he was twenty-nine, ASK married and came to live in Puddleton Lane End, Hopfield.

  However, although ASK missed no opportunity to closely observe the patterns and behavior of the weather, he found that in general, the English were as ignorant about weather as the Polish. They discussed what was going on but came to no more spectacular conclusions than that a lot of rain would indeed fall when the skies turned gray, or that it would indeed be a cold night when the skies were black and clear.

  But one morning, in his fortieth year, ASK woke up with a strange notion in his head. He became fixated with the idea that he could invent a machine that would produce both clouds and lightning, with which he could replicate an entire storm, thus enabling him to understand better how to control aspects of storm formation. A few months later, he was gathering dewdrops in a nearby field, so he could analyze the difference between them and some wisps of cloud he had collected, when he met a man picking mushrooms. The man asked him what he was doing.

  “Gathering dew,” said ASK. He was always wary of revealing his true purposes.

  “For a cloud machine?” asked the man.

  ASK’s breath caught in his throat. “How did you know?” he said.

  “I invented it,” said the man.

  “No,” said ASK. “I invented it. I have the prototype in my shed.”

  “Got the idea in a dream, did you?” asked the man.

  ASK took a better look at him. He was a very thin man with a face the color of rain and hair as black as the darkest thundercloud.

  “No,” said ASK. “I’ve been inventing my machine for years.”

  “It came to you in a dream,” said the man. “Three months, two weeks, and four days ago.”

  This was entirely true, and ASK himself had taken to counting the days, so he knew that the man was correct.

  “How did you know?” he asked, beginning to tremble. Had he found, at last, a man to share his dreams with?

  “I put it there,” said the man.

  ASK didn’t understand at first. And then he looked at the man and realized that he was not quite a man, in the proper sense. His arms were too thin, for a start, and he looked both like ASK’s mother, a small, fat woman with a bulbous nose, and like a streak of lightning. ASK’s mother had looked nothing like a streak of lightning: the exact opposite, in fact. To have both of these things combined inside the same body—it was beyond any possible contortion of humankind.

  “Am I dreaming now?” asked ASK. That would have been acceptable, although it would mean that he had to gather another supply of dewdrops when he did wake up in the actual morning.

  “No,” said the man. “Or you wouldn’t see me. I can put ideas into people’s dreams, but I don’t put myself in them. Nobody would want to follow an idea that they’d dreamed about if they remembered me standing next to it.”

  The man was correct. No one advised by such a disturbing creature would feel comfortable about following his suggestions.

  “Then why are you here?” asked ASK.

  “I’ve got something you might like,” said the man. “I follow the ideas that I plant closely: you seem to be making a good effort with yours. Perhaps you’d like something else to help you with your study of storms?” He took out a book from inside his coat and held it out.

  ASK took the book. It was entitled the Book of Storms.

  “Who are you?” he asked the man. “What is this book?”

  “You know who I am,” said the man. “And this book will tell you almost everything you want to know. And it will protect you from storms, so you can study them right up close if you want to.”

  And ASK looked at the book only once before he made the unforgivable decision. For each of us, there are one or two terrible things we have done in our lives of which we may not write. They are made all the more terrible because they are the things we cannot find it in our hearts to regret. We know they pull us beyond redemption, but we cannot repent them.

  And so for possession of the Book of Storms and the assurance of fifty years of life in which to read it, I made the unforgivable decision.

  The man had not lied about the book. ASK took i
t up onto a nearby vantage point to watch a storm and was struck by lightning. And although Torwek, all those years before, had cried out in pain as the lightning coursed through his body, ASK found to his surprise that the feeling he got was more as if a giant snake were coiling itself about his skin. He felt crushed, like a nut in a nutcracker, but at the same time with the conviction that his body would easily resist the external pressure, imbued as it was with the force of the lightning.

  From that second, ASK began to hear the voices of storms. He discovered that at the height of their fury they would often crack jokes and pass around the kinds of stories housewives might swap, before wreaking their devastation on the lands below. This careless attitude upset ASK greatly. He remembered his long-dead sisters and brother, in particular Torwek, who had suffered so much, and he determined to at least try and ask the storms whether or not they realized the seriousness of their actions.

  A month later, when ASK was sure from the feel of the air and the bunching of the clouds that there would be another storm, he fought his way to the top of a nearby hill and the storm broke over his head. Once at the top, he hailed it.

  “Storm!” he said, loudly. “Can you hear me?”

  The storm broke off its chattering and listened in shock.

  “I can talk to you, then!” said ASK in triumph.

  The storm turned, one part to all the rest, and said, “By the breath of a rancid stoat! Get the lubber!”

  Then a cloud of hailstones as big as golf balls lashed onto ASK’s head, and the only way he could protect himself was by curling up on the ground. After the hail had passed, ASK had no wish to endure another deluge. So he listened to the storm’s voices as it continued on its dreadful way and then he went home.

  Never would any voice respond to ASK’s questions. He tried all methods that he could think of, from politeness to the curses that he had heard the storms themselves use, such as “elf-bladdered windbag” and “oozing nettlespit.” Use of this type of insult generally just provoked laughter and sometimes an increase in hostility.

  Many times ASK came close to death; trees were pushed over toward him, gales tried to sweep him off his feet, rain tried to blind him so that he could be pelted with roof tiles. But carrying the Book of Storms, he survived them all.

  And now, as the last few moments of that long and fruitful life draw close, ASK has compiled a chart of all that he has come to know about storms. He has learned many things, although he cannot claim to have understood the whole, and he never did manage to create a storm entirely from scratch using the cloud machine. But he came to know very well the truth of the old phrase “You rest the way you have made your bed.” Because when the time comes for him to rest, he will put down the Book of Storms and go gently, with no fear, and know that he has lost himself utterly in lightning.

  Except, thought Danny, it hadn’t been like that. There had been nothing gentle about the way Abel Korsakof had died. Danny had been there, he’d seen it—he’d caused it—and it had been horrible. And Korsakof’s bed, the bed he’d made—Danny looked around at the dead garden, the ruined cottage—that bed had been black, and burning.

  Mitz began to cough and choke beside him, her body heaving with spasms. Spittle ran from between her tiny jaws, and a milky white sheen settled over her eye.

  Tom would know what to do. Danny shoved the old man’s story into his schoolbag, slung the bag over his shoulder, and picked up Mitz with both hands, carrying her like a tray over to his cousin.

  “I found Mitz,” he said. “She was stuck in a hole, but she keeps choking. D’you reckon she’s okay?”

  Tom stopped trying to identify burnt things in the ruins and tickled the top of the cat’s writhing head with the tip of his finger.

  “Poor thing,” he said. “Needs a bit of a scrub, doesn’t she? Put her down. She can’t breathe properly with you carrying her about.”

  Danny put Mitz back onto the ground, where she gave three retching gasps, coughed up a hairball, and immediately began to lick herself again.

  “You’ll make yourself sick if you do that, lady,” Tom said.

  Danny felt the stick under his palm. “He says you’ll make yourself sick if you lick that,” he said to Mitz.

  “Translating my words into Cattish, are you?” said Tom. “Sounds a bit like, well, English, really.… I’m not sure you’re quite fluent yet.”

  Danny tried to ignore Tom’s mockery. The cat stopped licking and glared at Danny. “So how am I supposed to get clean?” she said.

  “I could wash you? In a stream, or something?”

  Mitz’s single eye remained still. “Not even if I lose my tongue in a freak mousetrap accident,” she said, “will I ever let that happen.”

  Danny turned to Tom. “Can’t you hear her?” he asked. “She’s talking—you must be able to hear her.”

  Tom sighed. “Don’t be stupid, Danny. Cats can’t talk. Come on, there’s nothing left here. Let’s go to your bird-blind place, then we can go home. It’s a long way to Great Butford, and that old pony doesn’t do fast.”

  “But what about Mitz?”

  “Bring her,” snapped Tom, deliberately misunderstanding the point of Danny’s question. “Stick her in your bag, or put her on the pony’s back if she’s steady enough to stay on. Don’t put her anywhere she’ll be able to dig her claws in, though, or I won’t be responsible for you. This is ridiculous. I should be doing the milking, and now I’ve got to call Mum, and she’s going to rip my head off. Sticking that axe through your bed. What on earth were you doing?” And he stamped back to Apple again.

  It wasn’t me! Danny wanted to say again. He couldn’t quite believe that Tom thought he’d put the axe in his own bed. Tom had seen Aunt Kathleen come out of Danny’s room, hadn’t he? And Danny had been about to show him Abel Korsakof’s story. Maybe all that stuff about Sammael picking mushrooms and Korsakof talking to storms would make him see sense. But there was something hard about Tom when he stamped like that.

  “D’you want to come with us,” he asked Mitz, instead. “Tom says we’ve got to go.”

  Mitz looked up at him and considered. “I will sit on the back of that animal,” she said eventually. “Providing it doesn’t try to frolic.”

  “She’s not really the frolicky sort,” said Danny.

  * * *

  Tom made them stop again outside the village shop in Hopfield, to get breakfast. He came out with a couple of sandwiches and a pocketful of chocolate bars.

  “The woman in there said the police reckon it was arson,” he said, climbing back onto Apple and handing Danny a sandwich. “Kids, they reckon. Said the place must have been drenched in gasoline—it went up like a light and burned itself out really fast. An old woman died in the house—that must have been your Mrs. Korsakof, I guess.”

  Danny remembered the lemon cake that he hadn’t managed to eat, and tried to shake the thought away. At least his parents would be sure to believe him, once he found them. They’d be glad to see the scrappy little book written by the old man. They’d know that Danny must have been telling the truth when he said that Mitz could speak, because how else would he have known about the book down the burrow? They’d know that even when all your rational sense told you something was impossible, it might still happen. Like talking cats. And talking storms.

  Danny put an arm around Mitz to keep her steady and hurried the pony on through the morning sunshine, to catch up with Tom.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE DOGS OF WAR

  “Would you believe me if I showed you I can talk to the horses?” Danny tried. “Like if I asked them to do something and they did it?”

  “Go on, then,” said Tom. “Ask Apple why she’s such a prat about phone boxes. I’d love to know that. Ask her to stop imitating a crab.”

  Apple was bending her body into a banana shape, trying to keep as far away from the red booth as possible as they walked up the high street of a waking village.

  “Okay,” said Danny, taking hi
s reins into one hand, tucking Mitz safely against his stomach, and putting the other hand into his pocket. “Apple, why are you doing that? Tom wants you to go in a straight line.”

  “Absurd! Ridiculous!” said Apple. “Evil, evil, evil thing!”

  Danny thought she was probably referring to the phone box, not Tom. “It’s just a phone box,” he said.

  “Of course it isn’t!” said Apple. “That’s what it wants you to think, naturally. You humans are so foolish.”

  “I see no sign of mutual understanding yet,” said Tom, keeping his legs tight against Apple’s sides so she wouldn’t go skittering across the road. “Don’t think horse whispering’s the career for you, Danny.”

  “She thinks the phone box is evil,” said Danny.

  “Yeah,” said Tom. “I could’ve told you that.”

  “She’s an idiot,” said the piebald pony.

  It was such a quiet remark that, at first, Danny wasn’t sure he’d heard it. “Was that you?” he asked the pony.

  “Don’t see anyone else around here,” said Tom. “Unless you’re still talking to the trees, of course.”

  “Not the trees,” said Danny. “It was the piebald. She said Apple was an idiot.”

  “Again,” said Tom, “I’m not sure that’s something you’d need a magic stick to find out.”

  “Oh, shut up!” said Danny. “Don’t believe me, then.”

  But he wanted to carry on talking to the piebald. She was such a silent, plodding animal, her head always down, none of the sidling and shying and prancing that Apple seemed to find necessary. How to do it without Tom making fun of him?

  Danny tried to drop back a bit, but Tom stayed with him, pulling Apple into a slower walk. After a few minutes, when they’d dawdled nearly to a standstill, Tom said, “Come on, leg her on, Danny, we haven’t got all day. I’m supposed to be studying, remember?” and Danny had to stop holding the piebald’s reins quite so tightly. As they went faster, Mitz clung grimly on to him with her sharp claws, but he was getting used to that.