Azalais Foretells Rain

On a clear day the mountains were visible from the hill next to the village of Gondrin-la-chapelle. Everybody knew that if you couldn’t see the mountains then it would rain that day. Over several centuries the villagers of Gondrin had grown used to this handy oracle of the weather that was never wrong. The rhythm of their lives turned day by day, revolving around the surety of what was coming. If rain was on the way, they knew about it so long in advance they didn’t even have to hurry back in from the fields. They could saunter along at just the pace they liked, and close the door behind them and have meat and cheese on the table, before anything like a spot of rain began to splotch on the earth outside and begin to darken the ground. But once it did begin to rain, the slightly red earthed hills that the village nestled among would drink, and drink from the falling rain with a thirst, until quite suddenly the red earth darkened into brown, and then darker still to almost black. Then, with renewed excitement, the springs around the village would rise up from out of the hillsides and between the trees, and turn from trickles into torrents, feeding the streams and swelling the channels until they reached the river which would flow more purposefully because now it was carrying the water from the mountains downstream towards the broad plains that ran for a hundred leagues at least before they began to sniff the sea. And so it was that a little girl of no more than ten years old set out from the village that morning, to climb to the top of the hill to see if she could see the Pyrenees, and so find out if it was going to rain later that day.
From the doorway of her mother’s home she counted the dozen paces up the path that wound around the side of the chicken coup until it reached a big white flat stone. She skipped when she reached it like she always did, and went off to her right for a score more paces that took her past old mother Genoux’s home and to monsieur Varond’s pig house. The old lady Genoux was out laying her washing over some rocks to bake dry in the sun.
“What comes after a score, Azalais?” teased the old lady, her head cocked to one side, and her toothy mouth like an old bone comb with mostly broken long teeth. “Don’t know mother Genoux, I’m sure,” rushed Azalais in between breaths as she counted each skip. On reaching twenty she was at the piggery and began counting the seven steps along the length of it while the pigs squealed at her rushing by. Soon she was halfway up the hill, counting each part as she went, getting smaller against the big wide rolling hillside.
“Who was it grandmother?” A gangly boy, with a ruddy face and greasy dark curls of hair stood in the doorway to old woman Genoux’s home, shielding his eyes from the sun with one hand and steadying himself in the doorway with the other. “Was it Azalais?”
“You’re too late, she’s gone,” said the old woman, rearranging a skirt on the rocks. “You’re always chasing after that girl.” She stopped and smoothed down her smock, and turned to look at the downcast boy. “Well Gaston, why don’t you chase after her then? If you’re quick you’ll catch her. Go on now!” She watched him hesitate and then start to trot up the path to the foot of the hill. “Run boy,” she shouted after him, “A slow fox starves because he catches no birds.”
Towards the top of the hill, Azalais was panting hard like a dog out hunting the scent of a fox, as she reached the tree stump. “Nine,” she panted aloud. If she stopped running, or didn’t reach one of her landmarks in the correct number of steps, she usually made herself go back and run that part again until she got it right. It was like the hopping game that she played with the other girls in the village, but instead of squares in the dirt, she played this game on her own whilst running like a hare across country. As she reached the ridge before the hilltop, she saw the head of the headman of the village, and then his shoulders, stomach, waist and legs, and then as she ran on further and nearer to him his feet came into view. He turned to look at her as she ran towards him, and smiled.
“Well well,” he said, “you run so well I should put you before my cart to take us all to market.”
Alazais ran up to him without a word until her feet struck the stony outcrop at the hilltop. “Eighteen,” she said with satisfaction. She looked up at the Headman, her eyes squinting at him with the early morning sun behind. “Are you to go to market today then?” she said, which made him smile even more.
“Not today little filly,” he winked at her, “but in a few days.” He turned his head to look out across the valleys and into the foothills that ran across the horizon, and then back to Alazais. “So, impatient pony, what do you say the weather will be for us today, eh?”
Alazais stood up on tiptoe and screwed up her eyes. She looked across the valley, down the hillsides where sheep grazed and a shepherd was whistling at the gate down by the stream for his dog to stop splashing in the shallows. Out, out across the far hillsides where the fields ended and the woods began and stretched for many leagues unbroken until the foothills rose up from among the trees which then became patchy and sparse. Her gaze rose up the foothills, seeing a thin wisp of smoke hanging like a rope from a house that must be hidden away in a hollow behind the hills, and her gaze followed the rope of smoke up into the mist and clouds that hung low around the base of the mountains, and clung to them all the way up so she could not see them beyond their vast early ridges that splayed out right at the bottom. The mountains were hidden behind cloud and mist that shone white from the sunlight.
She turned to the Headman. “It will be rain today, but not yet. Late after noon, with but a short while before dusk begins. That is when the rain shall reach us.” The Headman nodded, his lips tightly together, and he let out a breath in a puff. “You are good, little fortune teller,” he said, “for that is indeed what the view says to me.” He looked at her again, questioningly, and then smiled. “Come now,” he said, holding out his hand, “would you like to ride down the hillside on my shoulders?”