Remnant Population

She opened the inner door. It had been soaked by rain driven through the outer, louvered door. It dripped onto the floor, leaving a track of water. Now she could see that it was lighter outside. She slid the latch aside, and pushed the outer door. Rain-swollen, it did not budge until she hit it with her right hip. Even then, she had to shove hard to get it open; the little tree by the front door had blown down onto it. Outside, a pale clear light filled the street, showing ditches abrim with moving water, and mud streaks down the lane. Ofelia looked up. Far overhead, a circle of clear blue… and all around, the wall of cloud, its tops brushed gold by the rising sun. Just as she’d been told, just like the pictures. But different, when she herself was out in it, her feet in the slick mud, and no one to tell it to. She could go over to the center for the second half of the storm; she would be as safe there, or safer. But she wanted to see it come, wanted to see how fast it would come. Dangerous. The old voice said that, in the warning tones of her childhood. It could kill her, this storm, as easily as she swatted slidebugs or snapped slimerods. She should go back inside, hide in the closet again. She stepped away from the house, eyeing the cloud to the east. It seemed no closer. Another few steps, and she stood in the lane, where she could look eastward down the length of it, and see that all the houses were standing. Her garden fence was down, and had taken with it all the tomatoes. Cornstalks lay flat, all pointing toward the forest. In the distance, she heard the animals.

The cloud wall looked closer, but it was hard to tell. She would like to wait until it reached the shuttle field, even the last houses at the end of the lane. Surely she could run back to the house in time. The wind would come from behind the house this time; the house itself would shield her. She went eastward a few steps, feeling almost as naughty as when she first went naked. Then she backed up. It would be stupid to meet a sea-storm like this, in the open. Lightning flickered, in the wall cloud; when she looked, she could see that the far side of the open space was definitely farther away, and the east side nearer.

It was so beautiful. She had always liked the pictures of such storms from space, the graceful spirals of white cloud on blue water, but she had not imagined how beautiful it could be from within. Every shade of blue and gray and purple in those walls of cloud, the gold tops now white as day brightened, the clear deep blue above. She had no words for what she felt, as the beauty contended with fear, and she took a few steps forward and then back again, in the cool mud that soothed her feet. Then the wall of cloud loomed over her; the end of the lane vanished in a howl of water and wind, and she fled into her house, fighting through the writhing limbs of the fallen tree, as the first gust slammed against the other side of the house. That vision of silent gold and white and blue shifted in an instant to gray rain, wind, and intolerable noise.

She stood by the door, holding it open a crack, to watch. She could feel the house shudder with the winds blows, but she had no desire now to retreat to her safe closet. Hour after hour she watched the rain stream by, watched it thrash the houses opposite. When her feet ached too much, she brought a chair near the door and sat. All day the wind and rain… but gradually it eased, the wind blowing less and less, the gusts more sharply separated from each other. By nightfall, squall succeeded squall again, with a steady, slower, wind between them.

The rain continued, a steady downpour. Ofelia slept that night on the bed, leaving a light on in the kitchen for no reason she could name, except it made her feel better. The room seemed breathless again, too full of the smells of the harvest, already musty from damp. She could not open the shutters in that rain, but she left the front door propped open. Her sleep was broken by dreams of water: waterfalls, rivers, tears streaming from stone faces, leaks in the roof, burst pipes. Each time she woke, certain that the dream was real, only to find herself safe in bed, and no damper than the air itself would make her. In the morning, rain fell from high gray clouds, steadily as misery but without violence. Occasional squalls hustled past, a roil of lower, darker clouds and gusty winds, but in the east she could see a few patches of blue sky. Heat wrapped her, and moisture. She pushed her way past the fallen tree to the lane, and let the rain wash the sweat off her body. It felt warm, hardly cooler than her blood, and she put back her head and drank it in.