The Rabbit Who Read the Weather

How it begins

Pippa Meadow read the first cloud before breakfast.

It said, in pictures, that the day would contain a little rain and a great deal of laundry.

She was right about the rain. The laundry was Cecil Trail's mistake. He had hung his map cloths on the village line without checking the forecast.

By noon, the sky had printed something Pippa could not read.

A blue curl. A silver square. Three small dots beside a shape like a turned-around spoon.

The adult rabbit stood in the meadow with her ears tilted thoughtfully. She had read clouds for years. Usually they were considerate enough to resemble what they meant.

Cecil arrived carrying one damp map on his shell.

'What does it say?'

'I haven't decided.'

'Perhaps it hasn't either.'

Pippa almost objected. Cloud readers were expected to know. Villagers asked whether to carry umbrellas, plant beans or move a picnic. A reader who said she did not understand might become a rabbit standing outside for no particular reason.

Cecil placed the map on a stone.

'When a path looks strange, I follow it a little before naming it.'

They followed the blue curl toward the pond. There they found a small raincloud hiding beneath a willow branch. It trembled whenever the larger clouds moved overhead.

Pippa looked up at the silver square. It matched the pond exactly.

'The sky is showing us where it is.'

'Perhaps,' Cecil said. 'Or where it wants to go.'

The small cloud let out one drop. It landed on his nose.

Pippa laughed, and the cloud stopped trembling for a moment.

She had wanted to read the sky correctly before doing anything. Now somebody small and damp was waiting for her to ask a better question.

'Are you lost?' she said.

The cloud made three tiny dots of rain, then drifted toward Cecil's map as if a picture might finally be the beginning of an answer.