Mary, The Magician and the Upwards Rain - Short Story (kids)

When little Mary awoke on that eventful morning, she realized that her Daddy had been wrong: it hadn’t stopped raining. The sun was in the sky, it was true, and there were no clouds, but water poured from the sky just the same. 

Most of the people in the village remained indoors as they had for weeks, making the marketplace just outside Mary’s window as lonely as a bone yard. A few hardy souls made their way hurriedly along the cobblestone streets, shoulders hunched against the constant deluge, hat brims puddling and then running down their backs.

Mary put her small arms on the window sill in her room and sighed.

“Why is it still raining?” she asked aloud, with no small amount of consternation.

She looked towards the big hill, with the mysterious house that sat upon it’s apex like a crooked wizards cap. It was said that a powerful magician lived there and that he ate small children and gave their bones to his monstrous dog. She had never spoken to anyone who even claimed to have gone there. It was patently forbidden, woven into the town’s genetics as sure as the desire to eat, breathe and seek shelter are part of an individual’s. She had the best view of it of anyplace in the small town, her humble home being on its outskirts. She gazed in the direction of the house for a long time as the rain came down in torrents.

Something looked wrong. She couldn’t put her finger on it at first, but as surely as the dew appears on the grass in the small hours of the morning, a realization came to her.

Through the wet pane she could see, or thought she could, the rain that fell on the big house on the hill. But odd... it was rising, not falling. The rain seemed to be rising from the house up into the sky where it was taken by the wind and released over her small town.

Little Mary had been forbidden to go outside during the rainstorm, but she couldn’t help herself. She bundled up in her only sweater and her overcoat; put on her tallest shoes and two hats.

When this was done, she went to stand before the window again to see if she really saw what she thought she saw. The result was the same. She was now certain that the rain rose from there and fell on the town.

Mary walked over to her bed, upon which sat her doll and her stuffed puppy.

“Sally and Mr. Snuggles, you wait here for me. And be good and don’t eat any more cookies. I have to go see if the rain is really going up. When I come back, we’ll play.”

And then she added with a worried frown, “I do hope I come back. That house scares me so.”

Mary crept down the creaky stairs, snuck past her mother in the kitchen, opened the door and sprang outside.

She felt no moisture at all at first, as she ran towards the great hill. But she shortly did, as it splashed out of the puddles, over her stockings and boots on to her legs.

The water on her skin was warm. Too warm. Oddly warm.

She stopped and looked down. It was water, all right. She put her finger into a small puddle between two cobblestones to test the temperature of the water on her finger. Mary put her hands on her hips and frowned up at the house on the hill and resumed running.

As she drew near the hill, she began to wonder what her mother would do when she found that she was not in her room. Would she get scared? How mad would she be? Mary stopped and looked back at her house, which was father away that the scary house now, and after a moment, continued walking in the direction she had been.

As she approached the top of the hill, she heard a moaning sound. She stopped and, mouth agape, listened intently. Her small knees began to quiver ever so slightly. Was it the magician? It didn’t sound like a dog. Maybe it was some other monster. She started to turn to run back down the long hill when she caught a glimpse of a new gush of rain, which clearly came from just behind the great house. Her curiosity overcame her fear, her shoes turned back and she crept up towards the front porch.

The noise got louder. There were three stairs that led to the door. She knew that the legend was that no one had ever come back alive after walking those steps. Mary gritted her teeth and frowned.

“I have to know what that sound is, and why the rain goes UP here!” she said, her voice a mix of regret and resolution.

She lifted her foot to take the first step as another new barrage of wailing assaulted her ears. She put her hands over her ears and her foot back down and looked in the direction of the sound. Since the sound was clearly coming from behind the house, it didn’t make sense to try to go in. Quietly she tiptoed on a stone walkway around the left side of the house (although the noise was so loud she wouldn’t have been heard no matter how heavy her steps). As she turned the first corner, she felt a strong wind in her face – the same wind that carried the rain to her town. She continued along. In a few more steps she would be able to look behind the house towards the noise, which raised and fell. It now sounded more like human misery than it had before.

As she was at the apex of the hill, she could see the rain had not touched its leeward side.  It was as dry as could be. This caused her to frown again. Why did this person and those people in the neighboring valley get a dry place when everyone in her valley had to live in rain?

She was now at the final corner of the house. Its paint flecked off onto her right shoulder as she leaned against it to peek around the edge, her chin quivering, eyes wide.

Mary couldn’t believe what she saw.

There was no monster. There was no large dog. What there was was a very old man, sitting in an ancient oversized chair in front of a well-weathered metal table, overlooking the valley. The old man had on what appeared to be a white robe, with stars and moon and sun embroidered on it. His beard was the whitest white she could imagine and it blew behind him back towards the house in the wind. He wore a pointed hat and in his arms he held the oldest dog Mary had ever seen. It appeared to be a Dachshund. As she was taking all this in, the old man took another breath and bawled again in utter agony. The dog quivered in his arms as he did so.

Mary stared, almost relieved, but not quite; for as the man wailed, tears the size of nickels came from his eyes, sprang upwards into the sky where the wind took them over the great house towards her town.

Mary was instantly infuriated.

“Hey!” she exclaimed at the old man, who jumped, startled and apparently terrified. The dog merely looked at her and gave a half-hearted bark.

“What do you mean, crying like that?” she said as she stood, hands on hips, dripping on the stone walkway. “Do you know I haven’t been able to go out of the house for two weeks because of your crying? What’s wrong with you?”

Mary noticed that the rain stopped springing from his eyes.

The old man just looked at Mary for a minute, gape jawed. And then, ever so slightly he broke into a nearly toothless smile.

“A little girl – I haven’t seen a little girl for a hundred years!” he laughed incredulously.

“Well,” Mary replied matter-of-factly, her angry tone gone for the moment, “you have a scary house. And you eat children.”

“Oh!” the old man exclaimed, “those stories are still in circulation are they? That makes me so…” and his lip began to quiver again.

“No!” Mary yelled. “No more crying! I have moss growing between my toes!”

At this they both laughed.

Mary and the old magician talked for hours, there on the hill. She pet the old dog and ate sandwiches with the old magician, who had once been a knight that had saved the village, but no one remembered that. Over the years he had been forgotten, and then suspected of mischief for no actions of his.

As the hours wore on, Mary began to worry anew that her mother would be very upset at her absence. After several attempts to leave (the old man wanted her to stay longer), she finally stood up from the old table. 

“Oh,” she said as she began to walk away, “I never found out why you were crying so much in the first place. What was wrong? You are so nice!”

“Well,” the old man started, “it’s just this. I just don’t get to see my beautiful little daughter Sammi as much as I’d like to. And when I do see her, she doesn’t always give me hugs and kisses.”

His eyes began to fill with tears again.

The little girl walked over to him and hugged him.

“I’ll find this little goofball. And if she doesn’t give you a big hug every time she sees you, I’ll kick her butt, too.”

The magician smiled at Mary. “Just tell her to remember to give me a hug whenever she sees me, okay?”

“OK, she said after some thought. “See you tomorrow?”

“See you tomorrow, little Mary,” the old man said kindly, smiling as she walked back towards town on the drying cobblestones.