Child of the Storm (7 page)

Celeste
had dozed off, face down on the half finished quilt she
’
d been helping with; dozed off while
only meaning to rest her eyes for a moment since the light was dim in the room
without a lamp burning. It was a day when rain came in great torrents only to
drift off to rain on someone else for a while
;
a busy
rain. It was more than a rainy day though. It was building toward being a
stormy one.
The biggest sort.

Celeste
stood at the window watching as a deer dashed across the back yard, chased by
nothing but the pressing weather. Marie slept deeply under the Sadness and the
house was quiet except for the muffled rush of the wind. It was too dark inside
to do any more sewing, so Celeste dragged a chair up to the window to watch the
rain and see if the deer might return.

The
deer did not return and birds of all kinds followed the path it took, some
briefly pausing in the branches of the Climbing Oak to rest or get their bearings
before striking off again, driven by the wind. Time passed and the birds
stopped flying by. The rain trailed off again and the wind eased. It was very
warm in the house and she grew drowsy again. She rested her forehead against
one of the panes of glass and her chin on the
window sill
.
Puddles dotted the back yard and water dripped from the oak leaves. Neighbor
would be wet through and silk tousled.

Something
caught her eye off to the right and she tilted her head to see what it was. Her
eyes widened. A black bear came into view. A black bear in her backyard again,
and she held her breath. She had been warned by her parents and Augustin that
bears were dangerous, or could be, but this bear didn
’
t look dangerous at all. She looked
confused and frightened. The bear moved cautiously into the back yard, pausing
to look at the house and even at the window where Celeste sat, and for a moment
their eyes seemed to meet. There was something in the way the bear walked that
made Celeste think that she might be injured, but not badly. The bear turned
its head away and looked at the oak, looked into its high branches. And then
there were more bears. At some signal from their mother, two cubs came bounding
into view and were at her side in an instant, looking curious, but less
frightened. The three circled round the tree and then the two cubs went
swarming up the low branches and the trunk, one cub climbing faster than the
other. For a while, the mother roamed around the base of the tree, casting an
eye to the woods ahead, to the house and back the way she had come with her
cubs, which would have brought her across the muddy road from who-knows-where.
She looked to the window where Celeste sat, and then up to the tree to her cubs
before she set off into the woods beyond, as the deer had done.

Celeste
waited for the cubs to come down, but they did not, so she went out to the tree
and stood beneath it, looking up at the cub that had stopped among the lower
branches while the other continued to climb. It was quiet now except for the
dripping of the tree and the scratching sounds from the climbing cub. It was
dreamlike under the oak, and Celeste wouldn
’
t have been the least
surprised to see the ghost of the teacher come stalking out of the woods or
rising up out of the soggy ground. But that would have been the wrong thing to
see in this magic place that was so familiar but also very changed.

The
cub in the lower branches was watching her, inviting her to come up, she
thought. So Celeste began to climb, and was glad she was wearing her work dress
with its stains and well-worn seams. She left her shoes at the base of the tree
on a spot that was almost dry and climbed slowly, picking a path that let her
keep an eye on the cub as it kept a careful eye on her.

The
cub was waiting. Celeste had always seen things others missed and learned
things, important things, from all the things she saw. This would be like that,
she told herself. This would be like gifts at Christmas, like mysterious angels
or waking dreams. She slowly drew up level with the cub, and settled in the
joint of two branches within reach of it
—
if
she had dared reach out to touch it. Magical or not, it was still a bear, and
she knew nothing of bears except for the warnings.
 
The cub
’
s small but sharp
claws gripped the bark, and its rounded ears were tipped toward Celeste.

So
Celeste settled in as best she could against the rough wet tree, and waited for
some sign of acceptance.
“
Wild things are more
afraid of you than you are of them,
”
her father had told
her more than once.
“
Most times that
’
s true,
”
he would add.
“
Even so, that
’
s not to say they aren
’
t dangerous. Frightened things can be
the most dangerous and unpredictable.
”

Rain
began to fall again, slowly at first, small and gentle drops falling through
the air and the leaves on a light wind that came at Celeste from behind. Rain
fell in her hair and trickled down her back uncomfortably, but at least it wasn
’
t a cold rain. This was a deep summer
rain, coming in from the Gulf
—
pressing
out from the spiraling bands of a hurricane. Celeste felt the weight of the
storm and could feel it was a big one, maybe the biggest she had ever felt
before. Still, as long as there was no lightning, there was no great danger,
she told herself, and this bear cub needed her to sit with it, just like
Sandrine had sat with her that time when she was little and her mother was
sleeping under the Sadness. Poor little cub, she thought.
Probably
scared stiff, which is why it isn
’
t scampering off higher to be with its
brother.

Celeste
reached out toward the cub, slowly so as not to alarm it, putting forward the
palm of her hand like she would for a strange dog. The cub watched her hand
draw nearer but held tight to the branch. When Celeste touched the wet fur
along the cub
’
s exposed side, it uttered a low growl,
very small and very deep. But to Celeste
’
s ear it was hard to
tell in the rising wind whether it had been a growl or a purr, if bears purred.
But she withdrew her hand anyway.

The
wind rose sharply and drove the rain sideways as it went, pounding Celeste
’
s back with drops like gravel. It
smarted some, but not so much that she would cry out, since that might scare
the cub and make it climb down. Then she realized that while she was catching
the wind and rain in her back, the cub was sheltered from the worst of it. She
was protecting the cub from the storm and that seemed the right thing to do,
even if the cub was unaware of it.

Above
them the high branches of the Climbing Oak thrashed madly in the air, sending
dense clusters of leaves spinning off into the woods beyond. Leaves were
flashing past Celeste and the cub, ripped from trees in the front yard or from
trees farther off. They swept away from her like the birds fleeing before the
storm. When one bit of spinning leafy debris slapped against her neck and clung
there, she reached back and swatted it away and the cub shifted nervously.

“
As long as there
’
s no lightning we
’
ll be fine,
”
she said to the bear.
“
You
’
re a wild thing and
use to the rain and wind, and I don
’
t mind being out in
it now and then myself. Long as I don
’
t get too muddy, I
don
’
t get in too much trouble.
”
She was drenched through and there
would be words said if she couldn
’
t get back inside and
dried off before her mother woke, which might be a while the way her mother
slept when under the Sadness.

The
cub
’
s fur was heavy with rain even though
the worst of the wind driven stuff was falling against Celeste. And now the cub
began to tremble and Celeste knew it was afraid. Another bunch of leaves
slapped against Celeste and her neck burned. To stay in the tree was dangerous
now, lightning or no lightning. But the thought of climbing down in the high
wind was more frightening to her, and she thought it would be wrong. She might
well make it to the ground without falling, but the cub might not do the same
and would lose what little protection she was offering it by staying put. She
had seen plenty of hard rainy days and they always moved on, leaving the world
fresher and its colors brighter than when they started. A little rain never hurt
anyone; she
’
d heard her brother say when told he
shouldn
’
t be walking in the rain without a hat
or coat.

They
blinked at each other, cub and girl. They blinked away the rain from their
eyes, then went on watching each other intently as if their eyes could hold
them together through anything the storm could throw at them.

So
the storm threw harder.

Even
as the rain slackened the wind rose and rose again, mounting in scales of anger
worse than the wrath of churchyard ghosts raging at the living. The cub dug
deeper into the bark, improving its hold and Celeste could see the little
trickles of water oozing out around each claw. With the roar of the wind and
the blur of shredded plants and driven dirt, she focused all she had on her
little cub. Their eyes were locked together now and Celeste somehow knew that
the cub would let her hold her if only they dared loosen their hold on the
tree. Whatever differences there were between them and their worlds, there was
only this single desperate holding on between them now. This was no ordinary rainstorm.
This was one of the great storms like the one that brought her. She could sense
that now, though maybe too late.

A
curious notion came to her in the midst of the roar and lashings. This storm
has brought this little bear to me, she thought. I
’
ve never seen one so close in all my
life and then this storm comes along, not to take me away, but to bring this
cub to me, and I came out to be with it. And we
’
ll ride out this
storm together. She couldn
’
t know what it all
meant or where it would lead, but she knew she wasn
’
t afraid anymore, and she would shelter
this little cub from the storm, no matter how great it might be and how hard it
might blow it could not dislodge her.

There
are storms like the great hurricanes, and like war, they move over the land and
through lives, breaking and spoiling indiscriminately. And then there are the
smaller but more vicious storms that are born out of their rumbling mothers,
spinning and dancing deadly paths of total waste and ruin, carving through home
and heart as spitefully as the dark hearted people who hate for the sake of
hate alone. As she heard the deeper howling of that rare wind coming from the
south behind her, she turned to look, abandoning her little cub for only long
enough to see that they had no hope of holding on. She had been disrespectful
of the storm, thinking she was special, and it was sending her a messenger to
say otherwise. She had heard about tornados even if she had never seen one
before, nor heard one, but it was all she could hear now. Her ears felt like
they would burst from its voice. It was carving through the trees straight for
her, kicking and sucking up a dense and swirling cloud of debris as it came.
She turned back to the cub, preferring those deep, dark and innocent eyes to
the faceless thing coming to claim her.

The
cub was trembling with fear, so faint a trembling that only she could have seen
it because they were almost the same. They were almost one. So much the same
that for a moment, she could see herself through its eyes; see herself gripping
the branch and trembling with uncontrolled fear as the monster bore down on
them, with its flying host of ripped and mutilated trees spinning all round it,
like souls being carried away to some dark and final place.

The
tornado sucked up the fields beyond the road and made for her home. Splinters
flew like daggers and stabbed into the thick branch beside her. She felt a
stinging in her arm and on the side of her face and saw a thin trickle of blood
streak across her hand, then spray out into the quick air. The wind had her
pinned tight to the branch but she clung to it tighter still and could feel the
tree vibrating madly as it fought to hold itself together, gripping the earth
with every root it had. She felt the struggle of the tree and saw the eyes of
the cub even though she could hear nothing but the howling horn of the tornado.
She turned away again and braced once more. The oak shuddered, and every branch
and root shrieked and wrenched, but somehow Celeste knew it would lose against
the storm and be swept up.
  

But
it was not entirely swept up. Even as the killer wind gained the road, it lost
its footing or was called away again by its parent storm, or sent off by
Celeste
’
s silent cry of
NO!
 
It made one last grab for Celeste and
the cub, but came away holding only the top half of the tree, and this it flung
away into the forest beyond, along with every other victim it still held in its
swirling skirt. The oak became still, horribly and maybe mortally wounded but
still standing.