The Man Who Rained by Ali Shaw Page B

best.’
    ‘Like I say, I’m not normal. Even if I’d started out that way, I suppose I’d have become very strange by living alone for so long like this.’
    ‘How long have you been here?’
    ‘Eight years. I was only sixteen when I came here. Before that I lived in Thunderstown, in a beautiful old house on Candle Street, with my mother and with Daniel. But I did something bad,
and for everybody’s benefit I moved up here. Since then I’ve sort of stopped thinking in years, just in seasons. I’ve given up on birthdays and calendars.’
    ‘Wait. Daniel? Fossiter? I’ve met him.’
    ‘He was my mother’s ... friend. He helped me move up here so I could stay out of trouble. After my mother went away.’
    He said those last words as lightly as he could, but she knew how to spot a child’s pain at their parent’s exit. She wanted to offer him sympathy. My dad left home when I was
sixteen, and I can still remember him going, as if it were yesterday. Stuff like that doesn’t really get old.’
    He looked up at her gratefully. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘it’s hard to forget what happened. But I have made my peace with it. I only mention it to explain that I’ve been
up here on my own for a long while trying to come to terms with myself.’
    ‘I still don’t understand what I saw.’
    ‘Okay, put it this way ...’ He laid his hands flat on the table, beside the unfinished paper model he had left there. Up close she realized it was the start of a horse. The long head
and fluid forelegs were complete, but the back of the animal remained only half-folded.
    ‘I have a storm inside of me.’
    She blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’ But she had heard him clearly. Her instinct was to disbelieve it, but she had seen grey mist fuming out of him. She had to lock her ankles together
beneath her chair to stop her legs from jittering.
    ‘It’s always been that way. Part of me is cloud and rain and sometimes hail and snowflakes.’
    ‘But ...’ Her mind hurt, as if she had bitten on an ice cube. Her eyes were drawn again to the half-finished paper horse, and she suddenly realized that she had entirely
misinterpreted it. It was finished, it was just that its hindquarters, which she had assumed were in need of more folding, were not those of a horse. They were those of a fish. She
shuddered. ‘That’s impossible,’ she said.
    He laughed ruefully. ‘I wish it were. Then I would not have this problem. Because, in a way, it is impossible. Impossible to live like other people do. Like you. I am too ...
unpredictable. The weather can change in an instant.’
    He looked at his fingers. It took him a minute to continue. ‘I grew up trying to be normal. My mother did all she could to make my life like that of any other little boy. In the end it
didn’t work out.’
    ‘You said you did something.’
    ‘Something happened, yes. And I ended up living on my own in this bothy, trying to keep out of sight. There are people in Thunderstown who might ... react badly if they knew what was in
me. So I spend all day walking the mountaintops and all evening folding animals out of paper. It’s not much of a life. It means I stay safe, but there’s always the weather inside of me,
reminding me that things can never change. I can feel it, see, in my belly.’
    She was sitting forwards in her chair. ‘What does that feel like?’
    ‘Well, it’s different from day to day. Sometimes it’s ice-cold, which makes me apathetic, like nothing matters in the world, and I think I wouldn’t care even if I dropped
down dead. Other times it’s as hot and heavy as a monsoon and I can barely believe there’s so much rain inside of me. That’s when I’m glad that I’m up here alone,
because I get soppy and ridiculous. I bawl my eyes out over the slightest things – a smashed mug, say, or a sad memory – then afterwards I wonder what I made all the fuss about. It
makes it impossible to live life like an ordinary person. So, lately,