The Rain’s Small Orchestra

Tumbi had chosen the widest patch of forest floor for their afternoon game. He would walk around the banyan roots, and Kiki would tell him which root looked most like a sleeping snake. They had barely begun when a large drop landed between his eyes.

Another struck Kiki’s blue wing. Then rain filled the clearing. The elephant calf hurried beneath the tree, careful not to tread on his small friend. Kiki flew to a dry root beside him. Their fine afternoon had turned into an afternoon of waiting, and Tumbi did not like waiting.

Tumbi folded his legs beneath the sheltering roots. An old metal bucket stood nearby, catching water that fell through a gap in the leaves. He let out a long sigh through his trunk.

‘We could have played for ages,’ he said.

Kiki tilted her head. ‘Did you hear that?’

‘My sigh?’

‘After your sigh.’

Tumbi listened. A drop gathered at the pointed tip of a leaf, hung there for a moment, then fell. Drip. Another followed. Drip. He watched the tip fill again. The leaf was doing something while they waited, even if he was not.

A drop fell into the bucket. Plink! Tumbi looked from the leaf to the metal rim. ‘That one has a brighter voice.’

Kiki listened to the next two drops. One landed on a broad leaf; the other struck the bucket. Pat. Plink. The rain was the same rain, but the things it touched answered differently.

Tumbi closed his eyes to see whether he could tell them apart without looking. He pointed his trunk towards the bucket at exactly the right moment. Kiki bobbed her head. Then a drop hit his nose, which was a sound neither of them had expected.

Water had collected along the fold of Tumbi’s ear. Without thinking, he gave it a cheerful shake. Splatter! A spray flew towards Kiki. She hopped sharply to the far end of the root.

Tumbi opened one eye, then both. ‘Sorry. I didn’t look first.’

Kiki shook one wet feather. ‘That instrument needs a bigger space.’

He glanced at the empty ground on his other side. A second ear-shake could go there, far from her perch. Before trying it, he asked, ‘Are you comfortable where you are?’ Kiki moved one small step and nodded. Now he knew where not to splash.

Kiki found a dry twig still attached to a low branch. She tapped it lightly with her beak. Tik. Tumbi was pleased enough to trumpet, but stopped with his trunk halfway up. A trumpet would swallow Kiki’s tiny sound completely.

Instead, he touched the root with the tip of his trunk. Thup. Kiki answered, tik. He waited, then answered her. The sounds were not equally loud, so he tried an even softer tap. This time he could hear her reply clearly. Rain pattered above them while they worked out how to fit together.

Near the bucket stood an old clay bowl. Tumbi remembered seeing it there on sunny days, when birds drank from it. Today a stream of drops was missing it by a little.

He nudged the bowl carefully beneath the drip and withdrew his trunk. Tok. They waited for the next drop. Tok.

‘We have another player,’ whispered Kiki.

The bowl’s voice was rounder than the bucket’s plink. Tumbi wanted to move everything closer, but Kiki liked the space between them. From her branch she could tell exactly which sound came from which place. They left each instrument where it could answer clearly.

At first Tumbi tapped whenever a new sound pleased him. Kiki tapped too. Their little tik and thup tumbled over the plink and tok until neither could follow anything.

They stopped together. The rain continued, perfectly happy without their help.

Kiki waited for a plink, then added one tik. Tumbi waited for the bowl’s tok before answering with thup. Between their turns they listened. Sometimes a leaf joined in unexpectedly. They left that space open too. Tumbi was making fewer sounds now, but he was hearing much more. His trunk rested on his knee until it was needed.

The rain grew lighter. Drops that had crowded together now arrived with long gaps between them. Tumbi almost filled a gap with three quick taps, then noticed Kiki waiting. He waited too.

A breeze moved through the wet leaves. One branch released a brief shower; another stayed still. Their tune would not be the same twice, however carefully they remembered it.

‘Shall we make it go faster?’ Tumbi asked.

Kiki looked up at the clearing sky. ‘I think this is the slow part.’ So they played the slow part, one small answer at a time.

Sunlight touched the clearing. Water shone on the roots where their game had begun. Tumbi unfolded one leg, ready to stand, but Kiki pointed her beak towards a leaf above the bucket.

One round drop hung at its tip. They watched it grow heavy. It trembled, caught the sunlight, and let go. Plink.

Neither friend added a sound. For a moment there was only the forest breathing around them. Then Tumbi rose slowly, leaving the bowl and bucket in place. Kiki flew to his shoulder. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘which root was the sleeping snake?’

The crooked root still looked like a snake, but now Tumbi noticed other things beside it: the broad leaf that said pat, the hollow that caught water, the twig that answered Kiki. They had been there before the rain. He simply had not listened to them.

He stepped around a puddle and began their old game. Kiki called out a new shape from his shoulder. Behind them, the bucket held a small patch of sky. If rain interrupted another afternoon, they knew where their orchestra would be waiting. For now, there was a sunny clearing to explore. The end.