I’d been able to think of one.
When Ma offered to let me hold him, I shook my head. I’d never seen her so happy, so calm, so content, and I didn’t want to ruin it; I wanted to make it last as long as I possibly could. Only when she pressed, I relented. She placed him so carefully, so gently, into my arms.
“Watch his head,” my ma and stepfather said, in unison.
“Yes,” I said. “I know.” Though I didn’t.
I peered down at him. He didn’t look up or open his eyes. He had a puff of dandelion hair so light I thought it might blow away if I sneezed. I held my breath.
“He’s sleeping,” Ma said. “He sleeps a lot.”
“How long will they keep you in?” my stepfather asked, already with an edge to his voice.
“Five days at least,” she said.
My heart sank.
“Shit,” my stepfather said.
“Shush,” Ma said, since she never liked him swearing around me.
They started to bicker, and I tuned them out, nudging the baby in the hopes that he’d cry and provide a distraction. And then he opened his eyes. He didn’t look at me; he stared unblinking into the space between us, at something I couldn’t see. His eyes were tiny and round and bright, bright blue. And I discovered that I’d been wrong. I didn’t love my juniper tree more than anything else in the world. I loved my brother.
Liyana
Liyana was eight years old when she discovered she was a pluviophile. She learned the word during art class, while drawing a picture of her favourite sort of day: tucked into the sofa under a woollen blanket while the rain poured down outside, soaking the windows.
“That’s your favourite day?” Mr. Nash asked.
Liyana gave a half shrug, half nod.
“You don’t prefer the sunshine?” He cast a hand towards her classmates, all of whom had drawn pictures featuring a bright yellow sun, regardless of subject.
“No,” Liyana mumbled, anxious at incurring his disapproval but reluctant to lie. “I prefer the rain.”
She wanted to tell him that her name, in Zulu, meant “it’s raining” but didn’t want to bring attention to the fact that she wasn’t called Stella or Susie or Sarah, that she—her name, her colour, her origins—was different from the majority of her classmates.
Liyana was surprised when Mr. Nash smiled and winked. “Then you’re a pluviophile,” he said. “We’ve got to stick together, there aren’t too many of us about.”
Leaning over her, he wrote in his tiny, neat teacher-script at the top of her page: pluviophile (n.): a lover of rain, someone who finds joy and peace of mind during rainy days.
Liyana read the words, then returned to her drawing, feigning to have lost interest. She didn’t tell him that she also liked to take long walks in the rain without a coat, until her clothes were soaked and her skin slick. This, she imagined, was not something normal people did. She didn’t tell him that on returning home she didn’t dry herself off, didn’t take a hot bath. Instead, she sat in the kitchen and dripped onto the tile floor, enjoying the evaporation of every drop. She also didn’t mention that she’d taught herself to hold her breath underwater for twenty-four minutes and thirty-one seconds, beating the current world record holder by two minutes and nine seconds.
Liyana had found that such things prompted people to ask questions, to start probing into emotions that ought to remain untouched. Liyana liked Mr. Nash well enough and, upon discovering that they were both pluviophiles, wanted to tell him her secrets, since it was possible that he might share these traits and feats too—making them more similar than different. However, he was an adult and, worse still, a teacher. And adults, Liyana knew, were not to be trusted with secrets.
She’d learned that from Bea, the importance of concealing certain information from parents and other authorities. Sometimes, it seemed, it was worse to tell the truth than to lie. Especially when it came to Everwhere.
“They won’t understand,” Bea said. “And they won’t believe you, then you’ll just get into trouble. If they’ve never been, if they can’t get here, if they’ve got no Grimm blood at all, then they’ll think you’re mad and send you to a shrink.”
Liyana, who didn’t have Mr. Nash to explain this last word, shuddered at the thought of being shrunk like Alice upon drinking the “drink me” bottle. She’d never be able to soak up the rain after that, since she might drown in a single drop.
“They