The rain came on fast, drops thick as tobacco spit. They barely had the horses unhooked before the wind hit them full on. The herd cantered off to take shelter under the trees along the creek bed, and Judyht and Runéa crouched under the wagon, huddled together, and yanked a blanket around them just in time.
Storms were cozy when they cuddled under several quilts and whispered ghost stories between thunderclaps, but out on the open prairie the storm plundered the plain. The grassy, flat Norcrofts were famous for turbulent summers, boiled under unbridled sunlight or drenched in downpours that lasted for days. Usually, they had fair warning, but not always.
Judyht held her sister as she shivered. She coiled the blanket around them both as many times as she could. The rain crashing against the wagon was too loud to mutter any comfort, so she just held on. The daylight grew dark as dusk, and everything around them disappeared behind the grey, shuddering gale.
The bottles and jars in the wagon above clattered like chattering teeth. She kept her gaze fixed on Runéa. The woman was prone to panic if caught out in such a storm. In the past, she’d often been gathering in the woods when one suddenly struck. Judyht would ride out from the city, blinded, howling into the wind for her sister until she found the woman clinging to a tree to keep the storm from sweeping her off. She’d bring her home, if she could, or else stay with her until it was over. They’d look for the rainbow together, afterwards.
Judyht loved the storms, though, and it humbled her to see her brave sister so shaken by something she herself found so wonderful. She cherished the thud of thunder in her chest, the booming charge of rainfall, the shiver of lightning across flush, moody clouds. They reminded her how little anything mattered, how the petty day-to-day of peasant life was as insignificant as the hollow propriety of lordship. What were people’s gossip and squabbles worth when the rain and thunder came? Whose cares could be heard over such a storm?
As a child, she would climb the cliff behind their shop in Cliving, bare feet gripping like a goat up the rock face. The worst place to be in a storm, but the best place to watch. On a clear day she could see south all the way past the river that fed Elthengels. On a day a storm approached, she could see it in the darkening sky beyond and in the texture only rain made when you watched it miles away, like silk and spider-web, like a downward cloud, like spirits leaking out of the earth.
She would miss the storms, she knew, but she would not miss much else. The sisters had left Cliving, Judyht hoped, for good. Their father was no longer with them. He could no longer put his foot down whenever one of them mentioned leaving the city that had beaten and spurned their lot. “And tear up these roots?!” he’d shout, spittle flying, his arm shaking as it pointed to one of the few faded heirlooms they had left. “Roots our ancestors bled for?! Roots we are duty-bound to keep?!”
Roots that he’d poisoned, she’d only remind him when she’d had enough herself of liquid courage. Roots they’d torn up, him and Mother, before her death. The roots were dead, Father. There was nothing left to grow.
He would know that, if he worked the land like they did. Runéa tilled the dusty crop they had been allotted when their estate was stripped from them: a near-barren sand pit just inside the city’s south gate, and their cottage the size of a shed. What she couldn’t grow, she’d forage. The wild vegetables, mushrooms, and herbs in the forests that hugged the cliff side did as much to supplement their diet as it did to fill their stores. Judyht cooked and made the potions, sachets, and salves to tend the sick of the city, and, when the local leechers and midwives needed another pair of hands, the neighboring towns and homesteads. Their father drank the wine meant to soak the bandages.
Only when he was gone, at last, were they able to prune the rot. The inheritance wasn’t more than they’d lived with, but now, at least, it was in their name. They sold the shop, the cottage, and whatever they couldn’t carry with them, even some of the heirlooms. Runéa sold the stallion they’d been hoping to stud, the last of their family’s breed. They’d both cried, perhaps more than they had over their father, but the coin he fetched was enough to see them south.
They watched the storm pass quickly. The air was thick and sodden, and the light came back, slanted and strange. The birds found their voices again, and the horses sauntered back from their refuge.
They sat as the last droplets were shaken from the sky, Judyht running her hand up and down Runéa’s back. The other had snaked through the blanket folds to clutch her sister’s. The road under had withstood the bombardment, but barely. The downpour had gouged puddles in the dirt and made rivers out of wheel-tracks. The blanket had spared them the worst of the splatter, but their shoes and hems were soaked.
If this was the worst challenge they’d face on their flight to Kingstead from Cliving, they would make it there alive. They had prepared as much as they could, planned their route, even found a wagon train to meet up with in Entwade that was ready to escort travelers to Fenmarch for the solstice. Once they reached the Kingstead, well...that would depend on what was to come.
They sat for a while, Runéa recovering, Judyht glaring at a wheel that dared to have sunk into the muck. It wasn’t far to Faldham, really, and they were in no hurry to be beyond it, yet. She confessed, looking back across the plain to where the sun threw a metallic shade of light across the cliff and Cliving built into it, she was not in a rush to leave. The petrichor percolated through the fertile grass. The warblers and flycatchers chirruped and screeched. The brook, freshly fed, rumbled back.
Maybe there was some of home she was going to miss.
