The Little Storm in the Attic

At the top of a windy hill there was a tall, thin house. At the top of the tall, thin house there was an attic. And in the attic there was a window that never quite shut, no matter how hard anyone pushed it.

Nia lived one floor down. She was eight, and she was very good at bedtimes. Other people’s, I mean. Her own was just ordinary. But nobody in the whole house could put her baby brother Gus to sleep the way Nia could, and she was very proud of it. She had a card. On the card, in her best writing, were all the steps, and next to every step that worked she had stuck gold stars. The card lived under her pillow, in case of emergencies.

One night, there was an emergency.

Nia woke up because the ceiling hiccuped. It went hic, low and grumbly, and out in the hall the first lamp blinked off and on. Then hic again, and the second lamp blinked. Then the third.

Nia took her card and went up to the attic to see.

Now, I will tell you what to expect from a storm. You should expect it to be big and black and bad-tempered. You should expect it to throw things.

This storm was the size of a sheepdog. It was grey and fluffy and a little lopsided, and it was bumping along the rafters and drizzling on the boxes. When it saw Nia, it drizzled harder.

“Oh,” said Nia. “You’re only a baby.”

So I was wrong about that.

The wind had blown the cloud in through the window that never quite shut, and then the wind had gone off without it, which is just like the wind. The cloud had tried to get back out. It had bumped into the window, and into a hatstand, and into a box of winter coats. Now it was too tired to go home and too upset to sleep. Nia knew that look. It was the look Gus had at the end of a birthday party.

She knew two more things, too. If the cloud hiccuped much louder, it would wake Gus, and Gus would wake Mom. And if it drizzled much more, there would be a puddle on the landing, and Mom had very firm feelings about puddles on the landing.

“Right,” said Nia. She held up her card. “Bedtime.”

She went down the attic stairs. You would think a cloud couldn’t manage stairs. I would have thought so too. But it came down after her, bump, bump, bump, one step at a time, like a puppy who has not learned stairs yet, and it rained a little on every step.

The first thing on the card was Warm milk, with three gold stars.

Nia crept down to the kitchen and warmed a cup of milk. The cloud crept after her, and they both crept back up. She held out the cup.

“This one always works,” she said.

The cloud leaned over the cup to have a look. Then it remembered it was lost, and it rained into the milk. The milk went pale, and then paler, and then over the top, down Nia’s arm, and onto the landing.

The cloud did not agree.

Nia mopped up the puddle with a towel and looked at her card again.

The second thing on the card was The quiet song, and that had three gold stars as well. Nia sat on the top stair. The cloud settled down beside her, damply.

“This one always works,” she whispered, and she sang:

Hush now, the wind is gone, hush now, the moon is round, hush now, the night is long, and nobody makes a sound.

The cloud liked the song very much. It liked it so much that it sang along. It did not know the words, and it was a long way behind, and it sang in thunder. HUSH now, BOOM, BOOM, BA-BOOM, about three hills too loud.

In the next room, Gus woke up and started to cry too.

The cloud did not agree, and now neither did Gus.

Nia tiptoed in and sang the quiet song to Gus, the proper way, and he was asleep before the second hush. It always worked on Gus.

When she came out, the cloud was sulking by the rocking chair. Every time it hiccuped, a lamp blinked.

The third thing on the card was Rocking, nice and slow. The cloud was far too big for Nia’s lap, so she helped it into the rocking chair and stood behind it and pushed.

“This one always works,” she said.

Back and forth. Back and forth. The cloud went a pale sort of green. Then it sneezed, and a little hail came out and pattered over the rug like spilled sugar. Then it got cross about the hail, and it crackled, the small cross crackle a sweater makes when you pull it off in winter, and every hair on Nia’s head stood straight up.

The cloud did not agree.

Nia sat down on the rug among the hail and looked at her card. There were no more steps.

She thought about Gus. That was no help. Gus was not a cloud. So she thought about herself instead. When did Nia sleep best? That was easy. She slept best on nights when rain was tapping on the roof. Tap, tap, tap, all night long, and she never woke once.

Then Nia had a sad thought, and it was this. A cloud is always the one doing the raining. Nobody ever rains on a cloud.

“Come on,” she said, and she took the cloud to the bathroom.

She put the plug in the bath. She turned the cold tap until it was only just on, and it went plink. And then, after a while, plink. And then plink again.

The cloud climbed into the bath. It turned around three times, like a dog does, and it curled up at the tap end, and it listened.

Plink.

The cloud hiccuped, but only a small one. Only the nearest lamp blinked.

Plink.

The drizzle stopped.

Plink.

And the cloud began to snore, in soft grey puffs that floated up to the ceiling and went quietly away.

Nia put her card down on the edge of the bath while she watched. She was so sleepy by then that she forgot it there, and went back to bed.

In the morning, the first thing Nia did was run up to the attic. The window that never quite shut was wide open, and the cloud was gone.

On the landing she met Mom, yawning. Mom walked right over the spot where the puddle had been and never knew a thing.

“I had the nicest dream,” said Mom. “It rained all night long. I haven’t slept like that in ages.”

Then Nia went into the bathroom. The bath was full to the very top with clean, cold rainwater. Over the soap dish stood a small rainbow, and it was exactly as long as the soap dish, not a bit longer.

And there on the edge of the bath was her card. Under Rocking, nice and slow, in wobbly, damp letters that were not Nia’s, someone had written a new step:

Tap, dripping.

And next to it, three stars.

“This one always works,” said Nia.

And this time, the cloud agreed.