Make It Rain
The first time most Hoodians saw rain with their own two eyes, they screamed in fear and ran for cover.That is to say, not all Hoodians were virgins to the entire weather deal. Many of them had visited the Brokenhood, with its moody storms and hot sunshine. But just as many had never had the courage – or need – to visit that foreign world. And so the first time the Guardians made it rain, the immediate impact was that of a catastrophe.
“Make the wind blow stronger, Usha!” Gome called at his brother. “I love the water beating against my body!”
“I don’t wanna tear the roofs off buildings!” Usha replied. Contrary to his words, the gale picked up in speed. Trees bent under its force, the wind yowled through every hole. The two Guardians were ecstatic. Among the pouring sheets of rain and overpowering gusts of air, they were in their elements.
“Hey Ruze!” Usha called. “Aren’t you gonna smite something?”
The Guardian of Invisible Forces stopped pacing, drenched to the bone as he was. “I’m still picking!” he called over his shoulder. “I don’t want to set something on fire!”
“Speaking of fire,” Gome yelled over the stormy weather, smirking evilly, “where’s Dake?”
“Somewhere deep underground, shivering with terror, I imagine!” Usha laughed.
“And Arig, our brave lad?”
“Probably with Dake!”
Ruze shook his head. The boys were being mean. But he couldn’t blame them; he loved their storm just as they did. It was wild and powerful – and controlled with precision that natural disasters couldn’t compare to. Before they had started, Ruze had carefully reminded his brothers: don’t destroy anything. Don’t get carried away, always be mindful of what’s going on. True, at first they had agreed only to a minor rainfall with moderate wind. But Gome had insisted on a couple of bolts of lightning, and, well, it went from there.
Critically Ruze inspected the mayhem. He noted that most buildings had no glass in the windows, so they were going to be wet inside. Gome would have a lot of cleaning to do. The ground was turning into a soggy mess at places, so Arig would have to see to that. Half of his mind planned for the eventual clean-up, while the other half was slipping into euforia. Where should he strike? Where should the electric blast bore into the ground, and how should the thunder sound?
It was alluring for a Guardian to get lost in his element. He had to see to it that nothing bad happened.
Slowly Ruze was coming to a decision – he would blast the Cathead Mountain – when a Hoodian ran onto the plane. It was Kamzik, the adventurer.
“Stop this please!” he cried out, protecting his head from the water. “On Hoborg’s orders! If you can stop this typhoon, please do it!”
Ruze gaped at him for a bit. He couldn’t stop thinking about electricity, its tiny trees, running along the mountain’s slick surface. “Why?” he asked finally. “We are careful. There will be no harm done.”
“No harm –“ Kamzik gasped. He flung his arm out. “This is terrible! Kolya was crying in my arms and Ali is positive that if a lightning strikes, he’ll pee himself! This – you’re doing this, right? You made this storm. Then please stop it! Think about us for a moment!”
Usha, who had walked in close to listen, shared a reluctant look with Ruze. “But…” He sighed, pinching his brow. “We weren’t… Fine. We’ll call it off… Gome? Did you hear him?”
“I did, but I didn’t wanna!” the Guardian of Water replied. “They’re gonna spoil our fun! And Ruze hasn’t even smitten anything yet.”
“I can smite something later,” Ruze grumbled. He could feel sparks dancing along his arms. His body was brimming with energy and it yearned for release. But those were the king’s orders. They had to be obeyed. “Come on. It was supposed to be a minor storm anyway.”
“Ohhh,” Gome whined, lifting both arms into the air. With broad, slow motions, he spun strands of water back into the Lake. By his side, Usha calmed the winds by pressing them into the ground and against each other. Ruze balled his hands into fists. He had been so close…
“Thank you!” Kamzik said, watching the clearing sky with relief. “Thank you! I’ll tell the others that it’s over.”
The three Guardians looked at each other. Their eyes were still blazing, even after their chests had stopped. They had been pulled from a feast and they were going to demand an explanation. No harm had been done!
Instead of explaining anything, Hoborg had them come to the Castle and then he scolded them silly. They had needlessly given his children the fright of their lives. It didn’t help to argue that the storm had been forecast. Most Hoodians had never seen a storm, so they couldn’t prepare for the coming of one. The three Guardians had misjudged their boundaries, the king declared, and they were going to be punished for it.
“I had been against it all along,” Dake the Fire Guardian nodded his head in satisfaction as Neverhoodians debated what punishment they should issue. “See, you should have listened to me.”
“Shut up Dake,” Ruze snapped at him. He was in a sour mood. “At least we didn’t destroy anything. Can you say the same for that Semtex explosion?”
Dake stuck his tongue out and went to join the punishment debate. Usha frowned at his back.
“He admitted that it was an accident,” he complained. “He lost control of the burn and half of the Explosive Shack was never found again. We were in control the entire time! He’s got nothing to be smug about.”
“I agree,” Ruze growled. “I’ll let the king hear it. We won’t be treated like incompetent bums. We were in control.”
Several minutes later, Hoborg climbed up to his throne and sat in it. Hoodians gathered in a circle around the guilty three, pushing them against the foot of the stairs. Before the towering king, they seemed small and insignificant.
“Kneel,” someone hissed.
“Hear hear,” Hoborg announced. “For endangering all Neverhoodians, the Guardian of Invisible Forces, Ruze, the Guardian of Air, Usha, and the Guardian of Water, Gome, are sentenced to prison for five days. In addition, no one will talk to them or party with them for thirty days. They will clean up the mess they have caused without any outside help, and each Neverhoodian is invited to make a request of them, so that each individual Guardian may make it up to him. Does anyone have anything to say?”
Ruze raised his head. “May I speak?”
Hoborg nodded. “You may.”
Ruze rose to his feet and with a sharp gesture he dusted his knees off. Gome and Usha gulped.
“Hoborg, Neverhoodians, everyone,” Ruze spoke up angrily. “We protest against this punishment! It is unfair and ill-conceived. Consider that there was no harm done! Nothing was destroyed, no one was hurt, and everyone knew what would happen ahead of time. What are we even being punished for?”
Kamzik raised his arm, asking permission to speak. As soon as it was granted, he stepped forward.
“How dare you say that there was no harm done?” he demanded. He sounded, frankly, just as angry. “You didn’t see Kolya hug his knees and cry.”
“Hey…” a weak protest sounded in the background.
“You didn’t know what you were doing – fine! But that doesn’t excuse you! It doesn’t make us feel any better, either.”
“We. Knew. Exactly. What were were doing,” Ruze growled through gritted teeth. “You ALL –“ his voice boomed involuntarily for a second, before he forced it down, “keep saying that we didn’t know what we were doing. That is a disgrace to us! An insult! A Guardian is one with his element. I knew exactly what I was doing, and so did Usha, and so did Gome. It isn’t our problem that you are a bunch of scaredy cats! Hah!” he barked. “If I had known that the storm would get us on a trial, I would have stricken the ground so hard that the thunder would rattle your bones! Then at least you’d have something real to be scared of!”
“Ruze, stop!” Gome cried out, taking his brother by the shoulder. “You’re going too far. We were tasked to protect these guys, not to scare them. I’ll be the first to say it, yeah, I went overboard! I love the rain, I love getting soaked, I love it so much I’d die for it. What we did was more than the small storm we forecast. But guys,” he turned toward the circle of Hoodians, “Ruze is right about one thing – we would never put you in danger! You had no reason to be scared, except that it was new to you. No harm would come to you. If it did, we’d never forgive ourselves.”
“I just can’t bear,” Ruze’s voice came out strained, “that we’re made out to be incompetent! How can we protect them, huh, Gome, how can we conduct an evacuation if nobody believes in us? I will bear the responsibility over this incident, fine, I can understand that you’ve never seen a real storm. But Hoborg, don’t sentence us for endangering all Neverhoodians! We didn’t do that, we’d never do that, and it’s unfair to punish us so much for wanting to have a little fun!”
His heavy breathing was the only thing heard in the Throne Room. Ruze rubbed at his eyes and mumbled something obscene. Kamzik watched him sympathetically.
“I…” he gulped. “I don’t understand that! How is a storm like that fun to you? Can you explain it so that we can understand? Maybe water pouring from the sky really is fun, but you have to tell us why.”
Ruze looked at him like he was totally dumb. “Why?” he repeated. “I’m supposed to tell you why running around in a storm is fun?”
“Then…” Usha spoke softly, “it’s true that you haven’t ever had weather? No wind blowing, no clouds, no sunshine…”
“I have created this world,” Hoborg cut in, “in such fashion, yes. There is day and night so that we know when to sleep, but I thought seasons and weather unnecessary.”
“Why?” Usha asked, genuinely at a loss. “Seasons are beautiful. Don’t you like the wind rustling in the leaves? The smell of air after a rain? Haven’t you ever seen a rainbow? Not even a sunset?”
“What’s a sunset?” someone asked in not-so-hushed voice. He was shushed.
“I have a question in turn. Why do you think there should be such things? Where did you get the notion of such things?”
Usha fidgeted nervously. Hoborg had played a hard card. If they kept talking of things that were foreign to the Neverhood, they would be viewed as foreigners themselves. And, truthfully, Usha had no idea how he knew of rainbows and sunsets. Perhaps it was his past lives whispering to him, or maybe it was air itself. He didn’t know. Neither of the Guardians knew.
When the silence grew long, Hoborg shrugged and said: “Then I suppose…”
“Wait.”
All eyes turned to Ruze. The Guardian was staring at Hoborg. “One more chance. Before you decide that weather is rubbish, that anything we have to bring to this world is rubbish – let me make a sunset. It’s just about time for the light to turn golden. It won’t be scary,” he addressed the gathered Neverhoodians, “it will be beautiful. Even if it’s just this once, I really want you to see it. After that, Hoborg, you can issue any sentence you want.”
The king leaned back in contemplation. “Everyone,” he spoke to his children, “a sunset is when the sky turns all kinds of colours in the evening before it gets dark. I have seen it during my travels, and it is indeed beautiful. Would you like to see it, just this once?”
“Will it make the sky cloudy and terrible? Will it blow us off our feet?” Kamzik asked.
“No, it will be just that: the sky will turn a different colour.”
“I… guess I can live with that,” Kamzik shrugged. “What do you think, Kolya?”
“I like colours,” Kolya replied with a hopeful smile. “What kind? I like red the most.”
“There’s gonna be plenty of red, you’ll see,” Ruze smirked.
And there was.
It was strange to look at the sky. Normally there wasn’t anything to look at. In fact, when you looked into the darkness for too long, it seemed to grow on you, to look back at you. Hoodians didn’t watch the sky unless they were feeling down and broody. They even said “he’s watching the sky” to say that someone was sad. But on that day, watching the sky was a wonder. At first, only the light changed, and all the colours with it: they seemed brighter, warmer. Next, the sky started to change.
From the horizon upward, pale purple crept up and swallowed the black. Warm pink followed it, and all shades of red. Orange appeared in the far distance, together with golden yellow. The colours blended together, danced with each other. To you, who have seen a sunset hundreds of times, it would be nothing new. But Neverhoodians watched in silent awe.
As time grew late, the light dimmed until only dark blue remained. Then that disappeared as well, leaving only the usual blank black.
On the roof of Willie’s house, Ruze stirred for the first time in hours. He groaned as he exercised his stiff joints. He had stood completely still the entire time, eyes wide open. He hadn’t blinked.
“That’s not how I remember it,” Gome piped up, stretching on the seat of the green put-put car. “You were taking some artistic liberties there!”
“It was pretty, that’s what matters,” Ruze snapped back, but it lacked its usual edge.
“You think they liked it?” Dake leaned out of the car, peering down. He couldn’t see a thing down there, but he had counted almost all Hoodians before it had gotten dark.
Usha chuckled. “Check this out,” he announced. Then he stood up and clapped, once, twice, three times.
Applause rose from the dark Neverhood like a river. It lasted for a good minute before it morphed into yawning and voices saying “good night”.
“Oh aren’t you proud of yourself,” Dake quipped.
“Hah!” Gome laughed. “You’re sour because after this, they’ll let us make weather! And you hate when it’s rainy.”
“Guys,” Ruze interrupted them. “Take it somewhere else. I’m not in the mood.”
“Sleep time!” Willie agreed from inside his house.
Gome was right. On the following morning, Neverhoodians unanimously agreed that the sunset had been beautiful and they totally wouldn’t mind seeing it again. Some day. Which would come after the Guardians cleaned up the soggy Neverhood and served their shortened sentence, ten days of solitude. After that, who knew, maybe they could try a light drizzle and see what it did?
The first time most Hoodians saw rain with their own two eyes, they screamed in fear and ran for cover. The second time, they danced through the rain laughing. And the Guardians were allowed to make it rain ever since.
