Move Over a Little
"Do you feel that?" Zaid asked, his palm flat against the wide stone at the river bend. River set a paw down beside his hand. The stone held the whole afternoon in it, warm the way a loaf is warm, rough under his fingers like the back of a cat's tongue. But under the warmth something had changed. The grit felt cooler at the edges. A breath of air came up the valley and turned the ferns over, pale side up, all the way to the far trees. Zaid sat back on his heels. Far off, the hadrosaurs lifted their heads together, as if someone had said their names. River's whiskers twitched. "Rain," Zaid said. He had been expecting it since noon, without knowing he was expecting it.
All afternoon he had been laying things out on the stone to touch. It had started with one pebble and become a row. A strip of bark with ridges like a washboard. A cushion of moss, damp underneath, springy as a thumb pressed into dough. A fern frond so soft it was hardly there. A sliver of eggshell, thin and chalky. A pebble worn so smooth it felt almost wet. A scrap of shed skin from the ridge path, pebbled and dry, the size of his hand. River had contributed a flat wet leaf and three river stones, and kept nosing them back into line whenever Zaid moved them. Zaid ran his finger down the row, end to end, the way you run a stick along a fence.
The sound arrived before the rain did. It began at the far end of the valley, a hiss in the treetops, and came toward them the way a hand comes down the fur of a sleeping animal. Zaid watched the ferns go pale, row after row, as the rain pressed them over. He could see exactly where it was. He could have counted it closer. River stood up on his back legs, whiskers forward, and made a small chirping sound in his throat. "I know," Zaid said. "Move over a little, the rain is coming." He said it to the stone, and to his row of things, and to himself. Nothing in the valley seemed surprised. Nothing hurried, either. Then he began to move.
The bank behind the stone was undercut, a shelf of root and earth with ferns leaning out over it like an eave. Zaid moved his collection there one piece at a time. The moss first, because moss minded least. Then the eggshell, which he carried in two hands. The shed skin he rolled loosely, and it crackled like paper left in a pocket. River carried the river stones himself, one in his mouth and one under his chin, and dropped them in a heap that was not a row at all. Zaid straightened them. He set the bark at the outside edge, where a little wet would not hurt it, and tucked the fern frond deepest of all. The earth under the shelf was cool and crumbed between his fingers.
Then the rain came over the river. It was warm. It always was, here. It fell straight down, heavy and soft at once, and the whole valley changed its sound. Zaid sat with his back against the root shelf and watched the hadrosaurs swing slowly broadside to the weather, the way boats turn. Their backs ran with water. The small striped ones went in under them, close to the legs, and stood there like people under an awning. Across the mud, every footprint in the valley began to fill. Zaid pushed his hand out past the ferns and let the rain hit his palm until it stung pleasantly, then pulled it back in and wiped it on his shirt. River did not come in at all.
Something came along the bank, low and careful. It was one of the small striped ones, no taller than Zaid's shoulder when he sat, with a head like a hen's and eyes set wide. It had got separated from the legs it had been sheltering under. It stopped at the edge of the ferns, rain running off the ridge of its spine, and looked at the dry ground under the shelf, and then at Zaid. Zaid did not reach for it. He moved his knees in and slid himself and his row of things along the shelf, until there was a gap of dry earth the right size. Then he looked at the river instead of at the animal, which seemed the polite thing.
It took a while. The rain filled the waiting easily. Then the ferns swung, and the small dinosaur folded its legs under it and settled in the gap with a sound like a sack of grain set down. Its side touched Zaid's arm. The skin was cool and pebbled, each bump no bigger than a seed, and it moved slightly with the animal's breathing. Zaid held still. "Move over a little, the rain is coming," he said, very quietly, though the rain had been and was still coming and nobody needed telling. The dinosaur's throat fluttered. River came up out of the rain at last, shook himself twice, and lay down across Zaid's feet, wet as a mop. Nobody argued about the space.
Zaid shut his eyes and sorted the rain by what it was falling on. On the ferns it was a tapping, quick and uneven. On the river it was a hiss, like fat in a pan. On the broad backs of the hadrosaurs it was a drumming, low and hollow, the biggest sound in the valley. On mud it hardly made a sound at all; it only thickened it. River's wet fur against his leg was flat and slick on top and warm underneath, nothing like it looked. The small dinosaur breathed beside him, in and out, pebbled skin against his sleeve. Zaid thought he had never been inside weather with so much company. He did not want it to stop. He did not mind that it would.
The rain thinned the way it had thickened, from the far end. The drumming went first, then the hissing, and last of all the tapping on the ferns, which went on dripping long after. Light came back under the clouds, low and yellow, and the valley steamed. The small dinosaur stood up, shook itself from nose to tail, and went out into the wet with its head high. It did not look back, which Zaid decided he liked. He crawled out after it. Everything had new skin. The stone was dark and slippery. The bark he had left on the edge had gone soft and darker. Moss he had thought was damp before turned out to have been almost dry. He pressed it, and water came up around his thumb.
Every footprint in the valley had become a pool. The big round ones held a hand's depth of brown water with the sky lying flat on top of it. River went into the nearest one without pausing and swam two circles, which was all it would take. Then he turned over and floated, paws folded, whiskers beaded, looking extremely pleased with himself. Zaid knelt and put his hand in. Warm at the top, cool underneath, and at the bottom a silt so fine it felt like flour. He let it run through his fingers and watched the cloud of it bloom and settle. Above them the hadrosaurs had swung round again, broadside to the last of the sun, steaming gently at the shoulders.
Zaid went back under the shelf for his collection. The eggshell was dry. The fern frond was dry. The shed skin had kept its crackle. He left them all where they were, because the shelf was a better place for them than anywhere he could think of, and because tomorrow he would want something to come back to. Then he lay on his back on the warm wet stone with River beside him and watched the clouds go off over the ridge, making room for the first stars. "Move over a little, the rain is coming," he said, sleepily, to nothing much. It wasn't coming. It had come and gone. It would come again, probably tomorrow, and the valley would shift round to let it.
The frogs started, or whatever it was here that sounded like frogs. Somewhere down the valley a hadrosaur made one long low note and then was quiet. Zaid's shirt was damp and his hair was damp and none of it was cold. He turned his head. River had already closed his eyes. His paw lay open on the stone, palm up, the pads worn smooth as old leather, the whiskers above it still beaded with rain. Zaid put his hand into it and closed his fingers. River's paw closed back, slow, without his eyes opening. The stone kept the day's heat a while longer. The steam rose off the valley and went where the clouds had gone. Zaid fell asleep holding on.
