The cold breeze was a welcome change. Grey clouds were slowly stretching across the sky, covering the horizon like a blanket. Maud wiped sweat from her brow with a sleeve and stretched her back. The sun had been suffocating her until the clouds’ shadows finally loomed over her with a brush of icy air.
She tipped her nose and eyed the sky. A storm was coming. It was certain, now. This was a terrible day to wash the outhouse. Inside the wooden box was a placid oven. She felt like her blouse was sopping with sweat from scrubbing.
Too much scrubbing. Draka’s going to get more than a word when he returns. Of course, she had expected it to be absolutely filthy. Men could aim a spear throw or a bow, but apparently not when they use the toilet. That was why she wore her oldest and most stained dress, and wrapped the folded linen scarf around her head to keep her hair out from falling into it. And to catch sweat from all the scrubbing. She didn’t expect it to soak through and burn her eyes with long drips.
She watched the clouds shift across the sky. An hour, maybe two, and the rain will start. ‘Put your hand out, girl,’ Pa had said when she was barely taller than his belly, ‘You can feel when the air thins. The hot falls and the cold rises. That’s how you know the storm is near.’
A rolling of thunder in the distance, like a long beat of a drum, and Maud shut the outhouse door. She grabbed the pail of soapy water and the long handled horse-hair brush. Looking toward the lake, toward the village past the tall fortress, she saw lightning strike the distant mountains with bright flashes. It made her smile.
Her arms wrapped tight around her as if Draka were cradling her to him; the memory made her smile. It wasn’t that long ago, yet it felt like a lifetime, with her eager eyes and hesitations, her confusion on what she wanted.
She set the pail on the porch and plunked the brush into it. She had finished most of the scrubbing and would do the remaining little bit after the storm blew past. She pulled her wrap off to feel the cool air curl her sweat-matted dark hair around her ears.
Thunder drummed in the distance. Maud sat in the doorway and watched the shadow of the clouds spread across the field. The wheat field between the houses sputtered in ripples, a million seeds clicking. The trees rustled and waved at its approach.
She saw the aberration of her brother, Alden, in the field, wave and smile at her. She smiled and waved back even though she knew he wasn’t there. He turned from her with a smile and disappeared..
‘You’re a runner,’ the memory of his voice filled her with warmth. ‘I’m okay, windleaf.’
Her eyes weighed with water but didn’t overflow. She laughed. Was it at herself? Was it at the thought of what Jesus had said to his friends? To his disciples? That he would see her again when her life was finally done? She felt a single tear drip down her face and wiped at it with a brimming, toothy grin.
She knew he would. He wasn’t baptized like them, but she knew he had taken Jesus into his heart, that he loved God before that fateful day that he was taken from her. In that moment, the emptiness of his loss was finally gone. As she stared at the tides mowing through the field, bowing to the storm that was nearly here, she knew.
‘I’m okay, windleaf.’
She knew it was true.
The rain began pattering in a hurried rhythm. Maud stood. She had waited too long before going home. But it wasn’t accompanied by worry or irritation. She felt…okay.
The rain filled in front of her, bouncing on the wood planks sticking out a little from under the roof, creating instant puddles on the road. She kicked off her shoes.
She went. Mud cooled her feet and squished between her toes.
The rain soaked her the very moment she walked out into it. Her heart thumped in anticipation. Her legs yearned.
Her breathing shallowed in its call. ‘Run,’ it said. So, she did. It was slippery yet her feet found traction. With a hand lifting her skirt above her ankles, she ran through the rain. Everything lit up with a flash of lightning. Her laugh wasn’t strained even with her quickened pace.
She sprinted.
Her dress clung to her legs. Her arms moved with her shoulders, excitedly rubbed raw by her wet sleeves. She let go of her dress and pushed herself even harder. A mist filled between the greater drops of rain that smashed into her face, into her eyes. Her hair whipped her shoulders and her cheeks. She laughed harder as mud splashed over her ankles and up her legs. She laughed as it covered the bottom of her dress.
Tendrils of lightning sprayed across the sky above her as she reached within a few paces of the front door to the house. She playfully slid into a leap for a puddle that splashed from the planting of both her feet in it.
She jumped to another. The rain pelting her were reliefs. It washed away the weight from her shoulders. The water was a sheet falling down her back.
She opened her arms. She twirled and danced to its rhythm, to the melody of the rustling leaves that had turned themselves over to fill the forest with brighter greens, almost emerald. She raised her eyes to the lightning dancing across the dark sky in bright flashes. Her laughter had risen to cackles.
“There you are!” She heard Ma shout.
She cried out between guffaws. Her stomach tightened from how much she was laughing. A wave of air surrounded her, filled her lungs, covered her like the pelt Draka had once carried her home in. She splashed into another puddle like she did when she was a child. She spun and kicked at the water.
That was when she saw Ma standing on the porch. A look of gaping bewilderment was aimed at her from the doorway.
Maud stopped, nearly doubled over from laughing so hard. She held out a hand for her mother, still dancing.
“Dance with me!” She called to Aurelie. Her arms extended from her sides and she twirled with fluttering eyes aimed at the sparkling sky.
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“You’ve gone mad! Get in here,” Aurelie hollered back, tucking the golden pelt tighter. “You’ll catch your death.”
Maud nearly doubled over from a barrage of giggles. She sprinted to the porch, rain pelting her all over. She threw the pelt from her mother’s shoulder and grabbed her hands. “Dance with me.”
Aurelie tried to reach for the pelt but Maud tugged her stumbling from the porch. Aurelie’s blonde hair darkened with the sudden wetness. Maud didn’t let go of her hand. She gripped it tight enough that Aurelie couldn’t break away. And she laughed as she pulled her, jumping and splashing through the deepest part of a puddle.
“What has gotten into you? Maud, stop!”
“Why weepest thou, woman?” Maud stopped and gripped her mother’s hands in both of hers as if she were praying.
“What are you…?”
Lightning crackled and hammered the ground near Draka’s house up the hill. Maud put her hands on Aurelie’s cheeks and she leaned her forehead onto hers. “Listen to it. Listen to Him with me. He’s calling to us.”
Thunder boomed around them.
“Listen, you can hear it. He loves us. He loves you,” Maud opened her eyes and looked deep into her mother’s while keeping their foreheads linked. “I love you. Dance with me.”
Aurelie might have been trying to resist, but a smile brimmed across her face, making her ghost blue eyes twinkle and glisten. She chuckled a little. Maud laughed madly and rocked her head back with her mouth open to catch the rain.
A moment of hesitation, of the water soaking both of them, dripping in waves as they huddled together again. Then, both of them laughed as Aurelie stepped back from her and lifted her own skirt to reveal her bare mud-spattered feet. Maud kicked puddle water at her to egg her on.
Aurelie curled back from it with a smile that reached her eyes and ears as if she weren’t already wet. Maud danced on with skips and leaps from one puddle to another.
She swished her sopped skirt. Aurelie matched her swishes. The rain washed over them as they circled each other with spins that sprayed water against the rain drops.
They whipped their hair. They held hands and spun. They laughed. They kicked puddles at each other. They stretched out their hands and aimed open mouths to the strobing sky. The thunder spurred them into strides encircling the wide road. They matched the sways of the bowing wheat stalks and the tall trees.
Aurelie lifted Maud’s hand over her head so that she could twirl beneath it. Maud lifted Aurelie’s hand over her head and she did the same. They clasped both hands and danced together beneath the dances of the lightning through the heavy clouds.
Thunder boomed.
Maud kept dancing from puddle to puddle, but Aurelie stopped with a heartfelt look to the sky. Her arms had fallen at her sides with streams of water spilling from off her fingertips.
“It’s beautiful,” Aurelie said as if she merely meant for it to be carried by the wind casting the raindrops to fall at a slant. Her turning to Maud made her stop in her tracks. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that I left you.”
Maud rushed to her and hugged her tightly. The patter of the rain felt like it was drowning out her voice, so she said loudly into her Ma’s ear, “Stop apologizing. There’s nothing to be sorry about. I know. I know.”
When she leaned back from their huddle and rubbed her dark hair from sticking to her mother’s pale skin, she hoped that her face showed the love she felt.
Tears of happiness blended with the rivers of cool water falling down her face. There was no smile on Aurelie’s face anymore. She looked ready to collapse to her knees from crying invisible tears.
“I feel so lost,” Aurelie said just loud enough for her to hear. “The house feels so empty. I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t think I can live without them. I want to be there for you the way you need me to, but I can’t. I just want them back and they’re never coming back. They’re gone and I’m so angry that he saved me instead of them. I’m so angry that they were taken from us. I want them back more than breathing. I can’t live without your father. Without Balor...without Alden...I'm...” Their names sounded forced and painful.
Lightning tendrils shirked across the clouds above them. Maud wanted to say something. She searched for the words. She searched for a way to say what she had seen, to reassure her, to calm her.
Aurelie slumped so that her long hair flopped over her wet expressions. “I want to die, and I hate that that’s how I feel because I know you need me and I can’t be there for you. Not like this,” she took a breath, her face squishing from tears Maud couldn’t see but knew were there. “I don’t know how to…stop feeling…lost. What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to get through this, Maud?”
Maud tilted her head so the rain pattered over her cheek and fell across her mouth and nose. The rain became softer. The dark of the clouds began to brighten. She couldn’t explain why, as if some unspoken command were pulling her, but she turned toward the wheat field where she had seen Alden waving at her. Through ripples caused by the misty rain, she saw an arch of colors. She could see all of its colors, all the many colors that not so long ago she would have been blind to. And she pointed so Aurelie would see it, too.
“See that? A rainbow,” Maud said as Aurelie pursed her brows at it. “I used to not see them, remember?”
“I keep forgetting Draka did that for you,” Aurelie took in a breath that made her chest thicken and rise. “I wish I had been there when you saw your first one.”
Maud grabbed Aurelie’s hand and laced their fingers, “You are.”
Aurelie crinkled her brow with a thinly veiled smile. “This is your first?”
Maud looked back at it and exaggeratingly nodded. “Yep.” Then, warmly, with a heaviness in her tones, “I miss them, too. But I know now that we’ll see them again. When Jesus comes back, we’ll see them again.”
“The things Pierre is putting into that head of yours,” Aurelie scoffed humorously. “Never thought a child of mine would become a Cathol.”
Maud eyed her, “Never thought I’d see my Ma dancing in a thunderstorm, but here we are.”
Aurelie turned toward the clouds that were slowly moving from above them, fleeing the sunlight that was shining through. She chuckled, “Touché.”
The rain slowed nearly to a drop here and there. Scattered beams of sunlight pierced the thinning clouds. They watched as the clouds rolled apart to let the sun finally shine down on them, hand in hand.
“I don’t know how to live without them either,” Maud said before leaning her cheek on Aurelie’s shoulder. She cradled her mother’s hand to her heart, “But maybe it’ll be easier to figure it out together.”
Aurelie leaned her head against Maud’s, saying softly, “Let’s start by going inside.”
Maud brimmed with excitement, “With some hot tea.”
