The Sky Cow

In case anyone's wondering why it's been so rainy lately

“Don’t feed the sky cows,” my da always said. I heard them tramping above my school, their hooves squelching clouds into rain, their calls like sleepy bells. When the teacher was writing on the blackboard, I looked out the window at the puddles. And I saw their reflections: fur like moth-bitten rugs, whiskery faces with eyes of liquid night like mournful seals.

“What do they eat?” I asked my da as we paused under a spreading oak to shelter from the rain, but he only scratched his wiry eyebrows. There were raindrops on his glasses. I shuffled deeper into my hood and put my hands in my coat pockets, and I found acorns dried brown and half sucked humbugs in scrunched wrappers.

When we were home, our trousers dripping on the rugs, I hid the acorns and humbugs in the green teapot we never used. And as we ate our dinner of potatoes creamed with nutmeg and Da told Ivor, my little brother, of how he’d once walked the bridge to the moon, I kept my eyes on the teapot. I hardly tasted my food. I listened, instead. And somewhere, between the darkening horizon lying beyond the town and the chimneys puffing evening warmth, the sky cows called. At bedtime, I climbed the seven stories to my square room, my acorns and sweets sticky in my hands, and I opened my window. The night air was vinegar sharp. I put my acorns and humbugs on the ledge.

I shut the window but didn’t close my curtains. I watched the night, the clouds mingling with the stars, the bats flitting between the oaks. When I felt myself becoming floaty, I jolted myself awake. I even pinched my arm. Moonlight puddled on my bedroom rug, blurred in my drooping eyes, silhouetted the sky cow at my window. I bolted awake. A wisp of cloud coated the beast, swaying in the breezes. It nudged the acorns with its whiskery snout. It was small enough to hide under my bed, small enough to hide from Ivor and my da. It licked the humbugs. And then it was gone. A wisp of cloud caught on the window ledge.

I collected more sweets: lemon sherbets, aniseed balls, and rhubarb and custards. I slipped them into my satchel when Mrs Cleary, the shopkeeper, was stacking soup tins. I put two aniseed balls on my window ledge and the other sweets on my rug. I left the window open. The winds were as sharp as unripe apples; they rioted round my room, tugging my comics off my shelves and flapping the end of my blanket. The moonlight was muddled by low clouds. And then the sky cow was sitting on my rug, munching lemon sherbets. When it had gobbled all the sweets, it looked at me with its mournful eyes and let out a low call like a bell ringing underwater. I reached out and patted its head - its fur felt like sodden moss. Then it licked my nose and lumbered out the window, leaving a trail of cloud wisp across my floor.

“Why can’t we feed the sky cows?” I asked. I tipped the tin of golden syrup and poured a gloop onto my porridge.

“Not so much, Jamie,” Da said, his forehead furrows deep. “If we fed them, they wouldn’t trek across the sky, wringing rain out of the clouds, and that would mean droughts and nothing growing. It would be quite the predicament.” The syrup melted into my porridge, and I thought about my bedroom rug damp with cloud and the sky cow with his whiskery snout and how he was small enough to fit under my bed.

I stole more sweets. My pockets bulged with cola cubes. I kept two for myself and sucked them on the way home. And I stood on the town’s edge where it smells of horseshoes, and I watched the rain falling in the valley and I listened to the calls of the sky cows and looked for the tread of their hooves in the darkening sky.

My sky cow ate cola cubes from my hand, his whiskers tickling my palm.

“You’re just a baby, int yer,” I said as he nudged me with his damp nose and blinked his sad eyes. I scratched his head and cloud wisp caught under my fingernails. He stayed longer every night, long enough for the night to pale, long enough to hear the clip clop of the horse pulling the milk float through the town. We sat on the rug and crunched sweets in a silence and gloom that was ours alone. And he pressed against my arm and my sleeve went wet from the cloud wisps, but I didn’t mind.

One night, he stayed until the sky turned the colour of porridge, and when we heard the kettle whistling in the kitchen for Da’s first cup of tea of the day, he still didn’t lumber out my window. I lifted my blanket and he crawled under my bed. I stroked his whiskery snout so that he knew I’d come back and then I pulled the blanket low to hide him. I crept down seven stories to the kitchen, into the smell of doorsteps of bread frying in yellow butter, and I tiptoed through the open door, past Da’s back – the pan was sizzling so loudly he didn’t hear me sneak a saucer, or so I thought.

“What are you up to, Jamie?” but he didn’t turn around, he just asked me to pass him five blue eggs from the pantry. I kept the saucer tight under my arm and bolted back upstairs. I leaned out my bedroom window to collect raindrops in the saucer, and then I pushed it under my bed. As I scrambled into my school uniform, I heard my sky cow lapping the rain.

I fidgeted in my classes. I smelled of clouds. At break, instead of running wind-blown and kicking footballs, I picked bits of fluff off the mint imperials in my coat pockets. At lunchtime, because I was thinking of my sky cow under my bed, I ate my cottage pie so slowly, they took it away when the bell rang. In Mrs Cleary’s shop, while she was tallying up the newspapers nobody had bought, the ones in a wrinkling pile by the door, I crammed my satchel with so many pear drops and sherbet pips, I couldn’t do it up. And I ran all the way home. And I heard sweets flinging from my bag onto the cobblestones. In my room, I lifted up the end of my blanket, and my sky cow licked my face with his rough tongue. He called like a bell ringing from the bottom of a well. And I poured the pear drops and sherbet pips into a pile on my rug.

Nobody knew about my sky cow under my bed. Not even Ivor. I pinched him if he knocked on my door, and I shoved my comics into his grubby hands to get him to go away. Nobody noticed that I smelled of clouds and boiled sweets. But they did notice the herd of sky cows circling the town, their bell-cries so loud my teacher shouted until she went beetroot-faced, so loud Da scratched his wiry eyebrows and shook his fist at the dripping clouds. The sky cows didn’t trundle over the valleys or the fields where the wheat had grown tall and had looked like shaking gold – and when I stood on the edge of the town, rain pouring down my face, everything beyond was brown as the burnt bits at the bottom of the porridge pan.

“They’re looking for yer, int they,” I said as I scratched my sky cow’s head. And he blinked at me with his sorrowful eyes as the rain fell in lumps on my house. My trousers were wet from the route home that had turned to shallow and swift rivers, from helping Da haul sandbags to the front door, from mopping up the dribbles of water seeping over the kitchen flagstones. But I didn’t mind. I sat on my rug and my sky cow nuzzled against my arm. And we sucked humbugs so loudly we could hardly hear the rising waters.

“This can’t go on,” Da said as the water flowed over his wellies, over the kitchen, rising dank and smelly like rotten puddles. “We’ll simply have to leave - let those blasted sky cows keep the town.” And his rubbed his wiry eyebrows so hard, I thought they’d fall off and plonk into the waters. “There’s a meeting at the town hall this morning – talk of an evacuation, not that that’ll help the rest of the country. Everywhere else is drying up. It’s no good. No good at all.” He shook his head.

“You have to go, don’t yer,” I said as my sky cow licked my face with his rough tongue. I put my arms round him and hugged him and hugged him until my jumper was drenched with cloud. And he pushed his wet nose against mine and blinked his mournful eyes. I didn’t say anything else. My throat was a sore lump. I just opened my window wide. He lumbered to the ledge, licked my hand twice, and tramped out into the rain, and up towards the dripping clouds. And then he was burrowing into them and all I could see was the tread of his hooves growing smaller as he went away.

The rains stopped over my town.

“Let’s hope those blasted sky cows don’t come back for some time,” Da said as he piled fried bread on my pate. “Mrs Cleary tells me you’ve been stealing boiled sweets, Jamie.” I didn’t look up. I just sawed at my too-fried bread with my knife and fork. “That’s all got to stop, you hear me.” I didn’t look up, but I could tell he was rubbing his wiry eyebrows.

“I won’t do it again, Da,” I said. And I plopped a corner of fried bread in my gob and I listened past the sounds of folk outside sweeping mud off the cobblestones, of winds drying the sodden oaks, of horses clip clopping at the edge of town. And I thought I could hear far-off rain and a faint call like a small bell ringing under a bed.

Art by my fella