Remnant Population

The first squalls were actually a relief. Ofelia was in the center; she stood by the door to the lane and watched the wind drive the rain before it. She wished the center had a second floor, a place from which she could see farther, perhaps even to the forest. She wondered if the big trees bent and swayed like the small ones in the village. She wondered how the forest climbers survived such storms… did they stay in the trees, which must be swaying back and forth, or did they huddle on the ground? All day the squalls continued, the breaks between them shorter and the wind never completely still. Ofelia laid out the project she intended to work on, and between squalls went back to her own house for things she had forgotten: seeds she had collected, ends of yarn from old projects, her favorite yarn needle, her best thimble.

She was going to make another of the network garments… this one more festive than the last. She put on the first, to remind herself where she wanted to make changes. She wanted something that made her feel like the storms: something that evoked wind and rain and lightning and thunder. Beating the scraps of metal into bell-shapes had taken longest. She could have had the fabricator mold bell-shapes, but then she could not have listened to them, choosing the shape that fit the sound she wanted. Far back in her memory lay a field-trip to a costume museum; the guide — docent, her mind said, casting up the old word along with the memory of sound — had shaken the costumes made for carnival wear, and she had thought then how like rain some of them sounded. Now she had small thin cylinders to crimp onto fringe… it tinkled coolly Yes. Bigger, rounder shapes of copper gave a mellower sound, water trickling into deep water.

The weather monitor beeped its main storm warning while she was still playing with the sounds, still making tinkling fringe and tonkling strings to hang from her shoulders. She went in and turned off the warning signal. The storm would strike full force the next morning. She should sleep while she could. It was surprisingly hard to sleep. Although she’d napped in several houses, she had not spent the night in any but her own after the first few months alone. She had become used to the bigger bed, the wider mattress. The center had its own set of night noises, and outside the squalls rolled over, boisterous and loud. She finally slept in spite of herself, and woke late to a steady sustained roar. It was still dark outside; she checked the weather monitor and found that the storm had accelerated slightly, coming onshore several hours before the prediction.

Dawn came slowly under that blanket of cloud and flying water. Ofelia wasn’t really hungry for breakfast; she went back to her project, trying not to hear the noise outside. But the wind’s noise rose and rose; even the center shivered from time to time in the gusts. Was her house all right? It was tempting to open the door and look, but she knew better. She quit working with the metal dangles — she couldn’t hear their various tones — and went back to painting and stringing beads.

Her ears ached slightly as the pressure dropped and dropped. She felt tired, and finally lay down again in midmorning. Silence woke her. She went to open the door. There it was again — the eerie center of the storm, with bright sunlight shining from a deep blue sky. Later in the day than last time; it was afternoon. Ofelia walked over to her house. Windblown rain had pried its way around the front door seals, leaving a wet patch on her floor, but she found no other damage.

She went back outside. It was as beautiful as the other times she’d seen it. To the east, sunlight turned the entire cloudface to a snow-and-silver-and-azure sculpture, as decorative as a pile of meringue. Ofelia splashed along the lane, keeping a cautious eye on that eastern rampart. This storm had seemed slightly stronger than the other. That should mean she had a little more time to roam, but she intended to be safely under cover again before it hit.

Down the lane to the right, she saw a pile of debris, a tangle of mud-gray and brown, streaks of bleached white. What had that blown from? She picked her way to it, enjoying the squish of mud between her toes. Eyes stared back at her, great golden brown eyes whose pupils widened enormously. The pile stirred; a noise like the cooing of an entire flock of pigeons came from it. Ofelia stared; she could hardly breathe. That sodden mass of — of what she could not say — it had eyes — it was big — it -