Thundering Rain (Fiction)

MAURA LYDON

The boy’s black leather jacket smelled like rot and grease and rain when he shoved her. It shocked her every time, how thin the line was between stillness and violence. Kanta tried to catch herself before she fell, only to have her feet tangled by angry steel-toed boots. She rolled away from the first few kicks, back on her feet with the quickness of prey. But it was too late to run.

It had been too late to run from the moment they’d seen her. Kanta turned to stare at the gaggle of boys, feeling her heart’s heat spread, feeling the scrapes along her palms well with blood. “You’re not a girl,” one of them said, and the words hit harder than any punch.

“Just leave me alone.” Kanta backed up another few steps while the gang tried to edge around her flanks.

“Freak.” The word came with another shove, and Kanta felt something hot uncurl in her chest, just short of painful.

“Please, please leave me alone.”

They only laughed. Kanta couldn’t tell if she was more afraid of them or the fire burning behind her ribs. “You want us to cut your hair for you, fag?” one boy hissed in her direction. Kanta felt her back hit an unfriendly wall, cold and rough. She glanced away, to see where she’d ended up, and one of them darted forward.

Kanta saw his fists coming, and she let herself fall to avoid them. Instead, he hit the stone behind her, and he screamed. Fear and anger and desperation burned through her mind like fire through kindling, and as she flung herself into the midst of the pack, she felt her blood ignite.

It burned her hands, red-hot and beautiful. Her flaming fist caught the second boy in the chest, and the air left his lungs with a smell like a despoiled corn crib. His shirt––a thin, elastic thing––blazed with the stink of burning plastic. He screamed soundlessly, twisting as if he could get away from the fire suddenly licking at his chest.

Kanta felt heavy arms wrap around her and stifled the impulse to cough as a wave of purely human stink rolled over her. She set her bloody, burning hands to the ones wrapped around her, clinging against the flames that curled around the edges of her eyes, that had her jacket smoking before her captor realized what was happening and let her go.

This time, she could not avoid the punches of the boy who’d thought to hit her while she was pinned. His fists slammed into her stomach, one-two, hard enough to force her back and to her knees. Forgetting the fire, Kanta curled into herself, gagging, as his matte-black boot caught her face, smearing tarry rock into her cheeks. She fell onto her back, her mouth full of blood that burned.

Her face, full of broken skin and sticky tar, burned with a brighter, blue heat that dried her tears before they fell. Barely able to see past the flames around her eyes, Kanta spat fire and looked up. They were all still there, hanging back in a circle about ten feet away.

“Witch.” One of them spat the word out like a missile, and Kanta flinched from it.

“I’m calling Orion,” another said, and ran. The others followed quickly, even as Kanta stumbled to her feet.

“No!” She tried to yell and ended up with a whisper. “Don’t.” The Orion Organization would bring witch hunters, and if the hunters caught her there would be no option to go live in India with her grandparents. If the witch hunters caught her, there would be no living at all. For a long moment there was only the sound of the rain and the rasp of her bruised lungs. And then Kanta started to run.

She gasped to a stop outside an old apartment complex. The building had clearly seen better days––the windows, where they were not held up by sheets of plywood, stared mournfully out over the street, and the front door had left a small carpet of splinters across the welcome mat. Kanta huddled in the recessed doorway, splinters and all, staring as if she would be able to get away if she just saw the hunters coming soon enough.

The door behind her, both unchained and unlocked, creaked open several inches when Kanta pressed her shoulder up against it. Her magic flared with shock, a flash of flames around her hands and face. Kanta curled in tight around herself, eyes squeezed shut against the brightness. Even when she’d wrestled her fire back under control her clothes steamed. A new wave of thundering rain splashed into the door way, and Kanta flinched from the water. Slowly, she opened the door a little wider and let warm air come spilling out.

It was dark inside, but it was a soft, red darkness that glinted with unpredictable bursts of brightness where infrared bulbs winked from behind leaves. Somewhere in the space under the stairs, hidden behind a bush at least six feet tall, Kanta heard someone singing. She paused with one hand against a raised bed full of bristling squash leaves, feeling the wood through cauterized blood and broken skin. Whatever the song was, it matched the heavy, quick pace of the sheeting rain outside, full of dark notes that made the throat hum.

Crouched next to the door, one hand still resting on the squash bed, Kanta felt her heartbeat settle into the song’s steady rhythm. The person behind the bush appeared, carrying something in a broken basket of cane and still singing her sleepy, rainy song. Kanta should have run then, back out into the cold and the rain and the witch hunters. But she stayed frozen, wanting to be still just a little while longer. The singer didn’t stop to look in her direction, retreating to a sunshine room with a broken basket full of mushrooms.

This was by far the very strangest building Kanta had ever set foot in, and that wasn’t counting the pentacle that was painted over 1C with something that gave off a blue glow. She should leave. It was no safer in here than it was on the street, and if Orion was coming...if Orion was coming, it wouldn’t matter how far she ran through the rain. Anxiety wrapped around her ribs tighter than her sari ever had, and without thinking, Kanta shut the door behind her. It was stupid to think that made her safer, but she did it anyway.

Instead of leaving, she crept to the edge of the stairs and peered upward to watch the grape vine give way to a kiwi plant covered with pale flowers that had turned bloody in the lamp-light. The second floor garden was full of smaller plants, things like soft-footed sage and thin-leafed cilantro. Kanta let her burnt fingers trail over their edges, jealous of every scent she brought to her fingertips. Her mother was a devout gardener, full of the secrets of plants and their roots. Despite the terms on which they had parted, Kanta missed her with all the ferocity of a trapped fox; gnawing off her own foot for freedom, yet unable to think of anything but how wonderful it was to be whole.

On the third floor, plants had entirely replaced the tile. Tiny leaves with daisy-like flowers nodded in the dark lights of the hall. Inside the patched-together beds, long bunches of young wheat whispered together, adolescents let loose without supervision. The door to 3B was open just a crack, and Kanta could hear the rain outside. The softness of the path-maker daisies made it a little less painful to walk on her bruised bones. While she crept over to the last flight of stairs, she watched the cracked door with all the attention of a hunting bird. She had just put her feet onto the third step above the tiny daises when a voice rang out from the open apartment door, louder than the rain and shocking in its brightness.

“You might not want to go up there. That’s the guest floor, and none of the rooms are empty.”

Kanta froze, her heart suddenly thundering in her ears. Magic sparked under her skin, pricking along her arms and sending renewed waves of steam spiraling up from her soaked clothes. No one emerged from the apartment, but she didn’t dare move while her insides were writhing. She stayed very still, wrestling the heat that crept up the back of her throat.

Eventually, the anxiety subsided, and Kanta took another few moments to sit on the stairs, breathing hard, staring the door like it was going to swing wide and bite her. When the silence continued, growing louder and louder as the rain pattered away into a lull, she returned to the plant-covered pathways and stood just outside the door, not brave enough to knock.

“It’s not that our ghosts are particularly rude. But they’re not a very friendly bunch when the storms are out.” As if to punctuate the words, a silent flash of lightning shocked the garden room white for half a second.

The speaker left space for the thunder to roll before they continued, “However, if you would like to come in, I promise not to bite.”

Kanta let the silence grow up again in her hesitation, not sure what she was supposed to make of the offer. Of any of this, really. Who grew wheat in the atrium of an apartment building, and invited ghosts to live in the fourth-floor apartments? What kind of people painted glowing pentacles on their doors, or let kiwi vines grow up their staircases? So she pushed the door open and entered, if only to prove to herself that there was nothing to be afraid of.

At first, the room did not exactly reassure her. Charms made from broken concrete and chips of colored plastic hung in the window, while a cone of thick incense smoldered in a beautiful, liquid-looking dish. Purple, knotted tapestries tangled arms and wings and legs of strange, elongated beasts, overlapping in some places and leav

Directly underneath the grey light was a table that might have made its home in a more ordinary room. There was nothing peculiar about its scratches or chairs, except for the person seated at it. Two mugs large enough to double as bowls had been set out at opposite ends of a large green teapot, and a man––at least she thought he was a man––was holding out a hand to indicate the empty chair.

Kanta shifted her weight from foot to foot, but after another endless hesitation she decided that she’d already come in, so she might as well sit. “What is this place?” she asked, watching a wisp of steam curl languidly from the spout of the teapot.

“This is Redwood,” the blind man said. Kanta tried not to stare at the wide white scars that ran down his face, or the scar-smooth skin across his eyes. Something about the deeply unsettling face fit with the rest of the apartment; the incense sinking claws into the back of her nose and the unforgiving snarls of the knotted creatures on the walls. “If you ask nicely, you might even hear Her say how pleased She is to meet you.”

Kanta wrapped arms around herself, not because she was cold but because the strangeness of the building, so comforting in the red dark of the hallway, had turned ominous. “I don’t know why she would be,” she said. “No one else ever is.”

“What a shame.” Her host reached unerringly for the teapot, but felt the edges of the cup carefully before pouring. “My name is Dusan Cech. What’s yours?”

“I––I don’t have a name,” Kanta whispered. Her birth name did not belong to her anymore; it was one of the things she had promised herself after she ran away. But this man was certainly a witch, and it wasn’t safe to tell witches your name. “I have to go.”

“Wait.” Dusan put out one of his dark, scarred hands as she stood. Somehow, he knew where to reach to grab onto her wrist. “Why did you open our door, child?”

“I just snuck in to get out of the rain,” she protested, but quietly, her unease making the tips of her fingers glow bright with flame. “I can’t...they’ll be coming, I have to run, I have to––”

“No one’s chasing you. Not today.” Dusan clicked his tongue against his teeth and took a sip of tea. “I don’t see much anymore, but I saw that.” He spoke as quietly as Kanta had, a soft tone that matched the dim light of the window, the smoky stillness of the room. “Please, sit.”

“You’re a witch.” Somehow, saying it out loud made it more dangerous. More real. Dusan smiled a twisted smile and nodded. Kanta sank back into her chair. When she touched the cup its glazing cracked with a thin, tired sound like electric rain.

“I am a seer, ironically,” he said, waving a hand up to the blank, ruined place where his eyes should have been. Kanta’s stomach twisted in horror and sympathy. “In the old days, I used to see vast things, years and years of memories I hadn’t yet experienced. Now,” Dusan tilted one hand back and forth in front of him. “I sometimes get an hour’s warning if it’s going to rain.”

“How did you know I was out there? On the stairs?”

Dusan turned his face away, running his fingers idly across the table and the teapot. “When she lit the open fire, the hearth tried to swallow her whole. It was raining when she screamed, and she needed help controlling her flames.”

There were plenty of things in that sentence that Kanta could have questioned, but there was only one that mattered. “She?”

“You are a girl, aren’t you?”

“I––yes.” It was the other thing she’d promised herself the day she ran away.

“I also heard you on the stairs.” Dusan smiled again. “But I did see someone ask for my help in the rain. This rain. If there was anyone chasing you, I would have seen it.”

Kanta had no reason to believe him. This witch was strange, and dangerous, and she had only known him for about five minutes. But not believing him meant going back out to die in the rain, and she couldn’t bear that either. So she reached again for the teacup, and she told the witch her name. “I’m Kanta. Kanta Singh.” The words tasted strange on her tongue, and Kanta took a gulp of tea to replace them.

Dusan only nodded thoughtfully, his face turned as if to look out the window. “There are twelve of us living here right now.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Kanta wrapped her burned hands around the mug, still waiting to hear sirens from the street outside. Fear didn’t go away just because her brain told it to. She had decided to trust the witch because if he was wrong she was dead anyway, but she still didn’t know what she would do if he was right. If there was no one chasing her, then what did it matter that she listened for sirens?

“You would be the thirteenth. A number for change, new beginnings. And upheavals.”

“I don’t understand. You’re offering me a place to stay?” Kanta angled her whole body towards the door. “I’m not looking for any more change in my life, thanks.”

“Tell me you wandered in here without feeling lost, and alone, and wounded by the magic inside you. Tell me that you have a home to get to, and your parents will be worried. Tell me that, like a lost child from a fairy tale, you have only come in to get out of the rain.”

“I can’t,” she whispered, staring at the blank, scarred eyes of the seer. He smiled again, and it was not a tender expression.

“Then come with me.” Dusan stood, not slowly but with great care, and picked up a polished wooden walking stick from its place against the wall. Whatever had taken the seer’s eyes had taken his speed as well, leaving a heavy limp in Dusan’s walk towards the apartment door.

After a long moment Kanta followed, leaving her tea steaming in the hushed air of the apartment. Back down the stairs she went, through the young wheat and the oregano plants and then the strawberry leaves. Dusan moved gracefully through the living hallways, only occasionally bumping into a garden bed with his cane. On the second floor, all three apartment doors stood open. The entrance to 2A was blocked by a beaded curtain of wood and backlit by flickering candlelight. Two small glass lanterns hung just inside the door to 2B, both of them lit with some kind of candle that burned blue instead of yellow. From inside 2C Kanta could hear the restless, irritable hum of computer fans and noisy screensavers.

Dusan took them down to the first floor, back down into the bushes and the sprawling squash plants. The seer opened the door to apartment 1A without knocking. A bright, almost sunrise light poured out with a chorus of welcomes; Kanta stopped just outside to see what kind of impossible room this one would be.

It was the warmth she noticed first. Beyond the banked glow of the hearth-fire and the sheer number of people pressed into the room, there was a blistering heat that drew up the fire in her chest. Pulled at her, magic to magic. The walls were covered in paintings made of glass––Kanta couldn’t describe them any other way. There were seamless horses, long-limbed dancers, firebirds with wings that dripped red glass like molten blood. At the back of the room was a hallway blocked by a witch with a crown of feathers nestled in her hair, speaking avidly with her nearest neighbor.

All twelve Redwood inhabitants were crowded into this living room. Four had taken seats on a couch clearly built for two, though none of them looked crowded or uncomfortable. In one corner, a witch sat in a wheelchair so close to her neighbor that their shoulders pressed together. And they were all witches: she saw one lady with seashells around her wrists, and a man with glasses so round and thick they might have come from the bottoms of old soda bottles. She saw someone with a lizard sleeping on their shoulder, and someone with improbable flowers pouring out of the pockets of their apron.

After a moment they saw her in the doorway, and the heavy, honey conversation was replaced with an electrified silence that made the hair along her arms prickle uncomfortably. She almost left then. The door pulled her away from these strange people and this inexplicable building. “Sorry to interrupt the party,” Dusan said loudly into the silence. He turned slowly from the middle of the room, like he was looking at each of the witches in turn. “But I would like you all to meet Kanta Singh. She only came in to get out of the rain.”

A murmur of laughter rippled through the room, and Kanta wrapped her arms around her ribs like that could protect her. The woman she’d first seen, the one who had been picking mushrooms to a growling rain-song, stepped forward. “Nice to meet you, Kanta,” she said, holding out one wide, callused hand. “My name is Selenium.”

Kanta stood still, while the room full of witches whispered to each other. Their words were as distant as clouds; as impossible to decipher as the language of the rain outside. “What do you want with me?” she asked at last, unable to take the witch’s hand. “Why am I here?”

“It’s quite a long story,” the lady in the wheelchair said. Her voice was old and half broken, a beautiful instrument left to crack in the rain. “Which is why Dusan didn’t tell you, I’m sure.” The dryness in her speech plucked at Kanta’s nerves; too much like the tone her father would take when he was at his most fearsome. But it drew only a laugh from the rest of the room, and Kanta’s missed heart-beat was overlooked. “In short, we are all here because no one else wanted us.”

“This is Redwood,” Selenium agreed. “A home for lost witches and broken warriors.” She turned her palm up between them, and after a moment, fire flickered between her fingers. It spun up out of thin air like cotton candy, changing one reality to another. Empty space to fire, like there had never been anything in between. “If you are here, it is because you were meant to be. We are witches darling. And so are you.”

“No.” Kanta’s rejection was automatic, instinctual. To be a witch was to be hunted, hated, shunned. She was a lot of things, but not a witch. “No, I’m not one of you.”

“Oh, poppy girl.” The lady with flowers in her apron pulled a perfect chrysanthemum from one pocket, offered it to Kanta. “We know what magic looks like when it comes in out of the rain.”

“I’m not––I’m not––” Kanta doubled over as the fire raged inside of her. Her mother’s whip-sharp words lashed into her mind. You are not a girl, you are not a witch. You are my son and it is your duty to do as your father and I say. To deny one was to deny the other, and she wanted to. She wanted to be safe, and normal, and to walk down the street without getting into fights.

“I want to offer you a place here,” Dusan spoke very quietly from the middle of the room. Kanta, shivering with the effort it took to stop her face and hands from bursting into flames, didn’t look at him. “We could keep you safe, and teach you magic, and we would remember your name. Here you can grow into the person you should have been from the beginning.” These people didn’t know her, they hadn’t seen her blood on fire. She was monstrous twice over.

But so were they. Kanta looked again at the fire in Selenium’s hand. That was what had pulled her forward; that fire rang through the glass on the walls like wind through a chime. It was dangerous, and beautiful, and impossible. She wanted that too. She couldn’t have one without the other. Magic, her real name, her real self. They were all tied up together. “I can’t stay.” She couldn’t stay in a place she had just met.

“Tell me you would rather be alone with the rain, and you’ll be free to leave,” Selenium said.

Kanta’s mouth was very dry. She could hear the rain still thundering outside, waiting to swallow her up. The coven witches watched her silently, leaving the last words for her. “I––can I... I think I’ll stay. Just for a little while. Just until the rain stops.” She took Selenium’s hand, and before skin touched skin she knew the fire wouldn’t burn.