There was nothing else to do though, he had already hollered it at the top of his lungs, and the threat had not changed just because he was beginning to realize that he hadn’t thought this all the way through.
“Listen! Everyone listen!” he yelled.
More people looked up, and then, like a wave, more and more. They nudged their neighbors and pointed until, as one, everyone was staring at him.
His throat had gone dry, but he saw his mother and Molly a little distance away. His mother had stood up and was coming towards him. He swallowed.
“A storm is coming, going to be a bad one. We can’t be caught out here without warning. You… you know what can happen,” he said.
“A storm? But there are hardly any clouds,” a woman said.
“I know, I just… I just know that there is one coming,” he said.
How was he going to explain how he knew, and who would even believe him if he told them? No one had read in a hundred years or more. Even if they did believe him, to actually admit that he had read a book would be asking for disaster.
“You have to believe me. If it rains, with the melt already coming in… if the river floods it could fill up the gorge faster than you can run,” he said.
There was silence at this. He saw a few looks of pity on the faces of those nearest him. His mother had caught her breath and looked down. Her face was screwed up as if to hold back tears.
“Oh son…” Marieke Polestad was standing nearby. She came over and put a hand on his shoulder. “It was right around this time, wasn’t it, that we lost your da?”
He looked at his feet and nodded the affirmative.
“Well, come on,” she said, loud enough to reach those farthest away. “Maybe there is a storm coming, and maybe there is not, but it’s not like we are finding anything out here anyhow.”
His ma came up and reached out tentatively. He turned to her and let her enfold him in her arms. Sabelle was halfway down the gorge. For all appearances, she had just seen him have a complete breakdown in front of the entire village. His stomach felt like lead, but at least they were all leaving. Everyone would be safe. He should have been relieved that they had assumed such a good explanation for his outburst and he wouldn’t have to come up with anything more awkward or dangerous.
He should have been, but he wasn’t, not really. Not as she walked past between her parents and looked back over her shoulder at him in pity.
The sun moved past quarter-down and no rain came. The wind had picked up slightly, but it was a far cry from the storm he had promised. People sat around the central fires talking, shooting looks at him. He saw Jimmer and his friends muttering in a group beside Jimmer’s hut. Impiri was sitting with Elias beside the fire. They were all looking at him too.
He could imagine what they were saying. “That one’s always been funny. Lost the gift, hasn’t he? All those Olders’ things he brings in. He should be the first we throw out.”
Then it happened.
With almost no warning, the wind picked up. The clouds that had been scattered around the edge of the sky drew together, thick and low, and then boiled up into thunderheads. Then the rain came. It poured out of the sky, drenching the earth in moments. The wind howled, driving the raindrops sideways in massive gusts and tearing off tree branches. The people ran for shelter.
One of the derelict huts on the north side of the village was torn right off the ground and went tumbling away. At the sight of it, some turned away from their huts, heading instead for the stone house to take refuge.
Illya stood in the rain, staring up at it, his heart going so fast that it felt like it would fly out of his chest. The drops streamed down his face like tears. He was getting soaked, but he didn’t care. It had been right. The book had been right!
If he had not warned them, everyone would still have been down there. Already, the paths in the village had turned into muddy streams. There was no doubt that the gorge was flooded.
He shook. All of them could have drowned; his mother, his sister, Sabelle, Benja. The noise of water pounding on the earth was thunderous. The rain hammered his head and shoulders until his shirt was saturated, clinging to his body. The water ran down the backs of his legs, filling his shoes.
He stood in the rain and laughed.
CHAPTER NINE
OVER THE FOLLOWING days, Illya tried to keep out of sight as much as he could. Everywhere he went, he was followed by whispers and stares.
“How could he have known?”
“There’s something not right about it.”
“It’s not natural.”
“But he saved everyone.”
He stayed in Samuel’s hut as much as he could, helping the Healer lay out the willow bark to dry, boiling, steeping and grinding to replace the missing stores. They combed apart cattail heads for bandaging. Samuel continued a steady stream of information, stopping every once in a while to quiz Illya on what he had learned.
“Tell me the uses of stoneroot,” he said.
“Soothes cough,” Illya said, distractedly.
“And what else?”
Illya looked up, staring blankly.
There was a soft knock at the door. Samuel opened it to reveal Conna Duncan.
“The same thing?” Samuel asked him.
Conna started to speak but then looked into the hut and saw Illya. He shut his mouth and gave Samuel a terse nod.
Samuel took a jar off the shelf at the back of the room. It was one of the few that had remained intact during the raid. Illya tried to look busy, rearranging the same willow shavings he had just laid out on the table. He felt Conna’s stare as if it was a physical thing. He looked up and the look on Conna’s face took him off guard. There was a new quality, along with the usual disdain. It wasn’t the awe or fear he had seen lately on the faces of the more superstitious. It was calculating, as if Conna was trying to decide what he thought of him or maybe what to do about it. Illya looked back down, his neck pricking.
“If this doesn’t do it, I will have to see him myself,” Samuel said. Conna nodded wordlessly and left with a slam of the door.
“Your mind might as well be as far away as the sea,” Samuel said after they had worked for a while in silence.
“I’m sorry, really I am—”
“Would I be wrong if I were to guess that this all had something to do with that storm and how you knew it was coming?” Samuel asked.
Illya’s mouth gaped stupidly. The Healer had not mentioned it until now, and Illya had assumed that he had just taken the convenient explanation that mostly everyone had. It had been ravings brought on by grief, followed by coincidence. A strange coincidence to be sure but still coincidence.
“I just had a feeling,” Illya said.
If there was anyone in the village who he could have talked to about the book, it was Samuel, but still, something stopped him.
“A feeling, is that what it was?”
Illya nodded and fixed his eyes on the dirt floor of the hut.
“Well, the sun’s nearly half up. I am due at the wall to teach the littles. I’m guessing that you wouldn’t want to come along?”
Illya blanched. Sitting in full sight of the rest of the villagers, helping Samuel wrangle the littles sounded like the very last thing he wanted to do.
“Go on then, I think you won’t learn any more today anyhow.”
The next morning, before dawn, Illya tapped a quiet rhythm on the door to Benja’s hut. His cousin emerged a few minutes later, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
“Fishing?” Benja asked and yawned. He looked at Illya with an odd expression, a mix of wariness and curiosity. It was, in fact, a lot like the way everyone else had been looking at him since the storm. Illya frowned, shaken. He had not expected it from his cousin too. He beckoned for Benja to follow him and led him around the side of the hut.