Rain at Dawn

by Quincer

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“Feeling whimsical, are we?”

“How can you tell?” her worn, sedate voice replied through the beginnings of a smile.

“Sitting grandly on the railing in one’s undergarments might call whimsy to mind. It’s not quite spring yet—aren’t you cold in those old, silk petticoats?”

“It’s wonderful,” she mused. “You should try it sometime.”

This only brought heat to her brother’s cheeks, andhis hand tugged at his collar nervously. He tried to be jovial about it, but it came out as sarcasm:

“Clever.”

In the frame of the porch railing, her smiling profile seemed as a part of the architecture. Equally worn along the edges, his sister’s plump frame seemed to cast a very faint shadow over the wide porch, which, at its prime, was given a new coat of paint every year.

His sister Katherine was luxuriously stretched out with her right foot pointed straight up. She explained that she did this in order to feel the wind between her toes. There was no wind today—instead, raindrops slid and dripped from the knarly porch frame, making it suggest the laced style that was so popular today.

Those flippant designs could never make up their minds, their grandmother had said. They would go through and out and get tangled in their own flourishes. No, their grief-worn and bold guardian had much preferred a straight path, not looking back--keeping wet eyes on the horizon. For you can’t face the sun without a few tears to soothe the strain.

Katherine’s younger, broad-shouldered brotherthrew a blanket in the air and handed it to herthen managed a chuckle. Her happiness was contagious.

He then looked warily left and right, trying to imagine neighbors out at five-thirty in the morning—probably observing, “It looks like rain.”

No one was there, of course. It wasn’t fashionable to sit out on the porch, facing a graveyard, of all things. And this was what he looked to next, knowing what to expect.

He saw the old cobblestone street, glazed over with rain, and the fence beyond it. The fence, as all fences throughout London, was painted all black by order of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. As a young grandson, he remembered the order was carried out shortly after Prince Albert died. His grandmother had wondered why the Queen had to leave a stain of death all over the city.

The young man turned pale; that stain held new meaning now. He too knew the black stain on one’s heart that is left even after he had always mourned over the death that made loss tenfold in the life of his and his sister’s lives two years ago.

Katherine turned and covered herself with the proffered blanket with a mock scold. “No need to be a gawkish, little boy about it,” she teased as she wiggled her toes out of the blanket. He watched as silver raindrops streaked her stubby toes. She laughed, as she was still practically raining herself, despite the blanket's cover.

Thunder rumbled andso did the young man.

“Kay, come to your senses, please! Your head is in the clouds—“ his voice softened, “I’ll tell you now that there is no silver lining. Only cold, hard money.”

He hovered close to her, pointing beyond the porch, across the street.

They both met eyes with a monumental gaze. It was the sculpted gaze of an angel. It was one of many statues set in places throughout London’s oldest graveyard. They demanded rememberence of its wealthy dead. He knew thatby their embellished and reverent poses. Even in the rain, they weredemanding.

He saw his sister tilting her head, signifying that she saw otherwise. He waited patiently. There was no stopping her when she had something to say.

“The angel is pointing up and forward,’ Katherine began softly, chidingly. She regarded her brother and furrowed her eyebrows.

“Do you suppose it is different to die in the spring? Like being born, maybe—that’s what spring is about, after all. The world reborn. New surroundings to remind us to move forward and make room for the new.”

“Kay . . .”

“And I don’t mean afterlife. Just nothingness . . . Nirvana—like the Indians.” She raised her hawk nose to the sky. “The smell of spring is really just that: nothing but freshness—“

“What is the matter with you?” he harshly whispered. “The anniversary of Grandmother’s death is today and you’re spouting off one of her rambles! She loved to nag us with her philosophies! Now, you are making it so that she can nag us even in death.” His tone raised above his whisper now, making Katherine breathe more steadily.

He threw his hands up. “If you’re right, and the dead get a lovely picnic under the sun, what about us? She left us with nothing but a drafty, old house that costs a fortune just to keep from collapsing. We’ve had to work so hard . . . “

Smoke stacks in the distance pumped out thick tendrils across the pink-and-red-stained sky. The young man ground his teeth, reminded of his call to duty tomorrow. How he hated his job.

Looking away from this, Katherine set her feet inside the moderate safety of their porch, her feet sticky from the dirty London rainwater.

They once thought nothing could harm them in this their fort as children.

That was long ago . . .

“I hope I die in the spring. Born on a deathly cold winter night and dying as pansies bloom! It's like living backwards.”

“Like grandmother did.” He was not sure, then, if Katherine nodded, or if he had supplied it for her. Or perhaps they both did, and Grandmother's prediction had come true; the siblings had, in fact, agreed upon a subject.

Feeling freer now with that knowledge,the young man faintly smiled. And as her brother extended a hand to assist his now-shivering sister, Katherine reluctantly drove the silver raindrops from off of her undergarments, ready to put on a newer, heavier layer.

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