It's Only the Rain

The day Mama died, there was nothing. Nothing in the world mattered, to the point where there was nothing left in the world at all. My universe had collapsed into a singularity of pain.

I had prayed that the radiation sickness wasn’t contagious, hoping and later wishing that Mama’s death wasn’t due to me. Taylor was the leader then, as the strongest and the only provider of foodstuffs, despite his age. I’ve read in books the expression, ‘tender years’. Taylor might only have had nineteen years, but they were none of them tender.

Thus, I also held him partially to blame for Mama dying, because he was the only one who knew how to stop it. Why hadn’t he had Daphne give her the potion, as he had for me? Or had he? Why hadn’t it worked? I couldn’t help but suspect Alastair and Daphne in this as well, as they always refused to answer my questions about what the ethereal, silver substance had been. Where had they come from, and why did my brother talk with them more often than with me?

In the evening, I would lie awake, staring out the windows after Taylor and the two newcomer s when they disappeared. On the nights when they went out, I always saw the hulking shapes, blocking the stars and staring back at me with black eyes in black silhouettes. Once or twice, they were so close to the windows that I screamed. Once or twice, I thought I heard a snippet of conversation while I lay in the manger, under the loft where the newcomers lived.

‘Almost,’ said a voice. ‘It’s passed, so any day now. Almost.’

When I asked Taylor to explain this mysterious line, I got a predictable response. ‘Go back to bed. You heard nothing. It’s only the rain.’