Tales from the Universe
Moral Dilemma: If something powerful is rightfully yours by inheritance, does having the right to possess it also give you the right to use it?
Oren inherited a jar of rain.
His grandmother left everyone else sensible things.
His sister received the house.
His uncle received three acres of orchard.
The grandchildren divided jewelry, furniture, books, and several boxes of clothing that smelled permanently of lavender.
Oren received a blue ceramic jar with a cork in the top.
A note was tied around its neck.
DO NOT OPEN INDOORS.
Oren turned it over.
Nothing else.
His sister looked over his shoulder.
“What is it?”
“Apparently rain.”
She laughed.
Then saw his face.
“You’re serious.”
“Grandmother was.”
“That doesn’t mean you should be.”
Oren shook the jar.
Thunder rumbled inside.
His sister stopped laughing.
Their grandmother had come from somewhere east of the mountains.
That was almost everything Oren knew.
She rarely discussed her childhood.
When asked where she’d grown up, she said:
“Far.”
When asked why she’d left:
“It was time.”
When asked whether she missed it:
“Of course.”
Then she changed the subject.
As a child, Oren had assumed adults simply became grandparents at some point and whatever happened beforehand ceased to matter.
Now she was dead.
Suddenly the missing years seemed enormous.
He took the jar outside.
Set it in the field.
Removed the cork.
A cloud came out.
Not smoke.
A cloud.
It poured from the opening and expanded above him until it covered perhaps twenty feet of sky.
Rain fell.
Only beneath the cloud.
Oren stood completely dry three steps away.
He put the cork back.
The cloud collapsed instantly and rushed into the jar.
Oren stared.
Then opened it again.
Rain.
Closed it.
Sun.
Opened.
Rain.
Closed.
Sun.
Oren began laughing.
Within a week, the entire village knew.
This was partly because Oren demonstrated the jar at the tavern.
It was also because he was incapable of keeping an interesting secret.
The farmers immediately understood its value.
“Can it rain longer?”
“I don’t know.”
“How much water?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does it refill?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you move the cloud?”
“I don’t know.”
The oldest farmer stared at him.
“What do you know?”
Oren considered.
“Don’t open it indoors.”
That summer was dry.
Then very dry.
Then frightening.
The river dropped.
Wells became shallow.
Crops curled.
Oren began using the jar.
At first, carefully.
One field at a time.
Ten minutes.
Twenty.
The cloud watered wheat.
Then beans.
Then orchards.
The jar always seemed full afterward.
Nobody understood how.
Nobody cared.
Oren became extremely popular.
Villages nearby heard.
They came asking.
Oren helped them too.
Then towns.
Then estates.
People began offering money.
Oren refused.
His grandmother hadn’t sold rain.
At least he assumed she hadn’t.
He actually knew almost nothing about her.
That thought returned often.
A representative from the provincial governor arrived.
“We need the jar.”
“No.”
“The drought affects thirty thousand people.”
“I’m already helping.”
“Randomly.”
“I’m helping whoever asks.”
“Exactly.”
The representative unfolded a map.
“We can distribute the water efficiently.”
Oren looked at the colored marks.
Reservoirs.
Population centers.
Crop regions.
The plan made sense.
That worried him.
“If I give it to you, when do I get it back?”
The representative hesitated.
“After the emergency.”
“When is that?”
“When the drought ends.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
No answer.
Oren kept the jar.
Then people began dying.
Not many.
Enough.
An old man from a southern village walked two days to find Oren.
“Our well is dry.”
Oren went.
Then another village.
Then another.
He stopped sleeping properly.
Everywhere he arrived, people needed rain more than the last place.
Everywhere he left, someone asked him to stay.
One evening, Oren’s sister found him staring at the jar.
“What?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“That has been apparent from the beginning.”
He almost smiled.
“I decide who gets rain.”
“Yes.”
“Why me?”
“Because Grandmother left you the jar.”
“That isn’t a reason.”
“It is literally the reason.”
“No.”
Oren looked at her.
“Why did she leave it to me?”
His sister shrugged.
“Maybe because you’re the only person in the family foolish enough to open a jar labeled rain.”
That was possible.
Oren began searching through their grandmother’s belongings.
Letters.
Photographs.
Old receipts.
Most meant nothing.
Then he found a book written in a language he couldn’t read.
Inside the cover was a map.
East of the mountains.
A village circled in blue ink.
Oren packed the jar.
The journey took twenty-three days.
The village still existed.
Barely.
Perhaps sixty people lived there.
When Oren showed the jar to an old woman, she slapped him.
Hard.
He nearly dropped it.
“What was that for?”
She shouted something in a language he didn’t understand.
A younger man translated.
“She wants to know where you got that.”
“My grandmother.”
He said her name.
The old woman went silent.
Then she began crying.
Her name had not been Grandmother here.
Obviously.
She had been Sava.
Keeper of the Western Rain.
Oren listened while the villagers explained.
There had once been four jars.
One for each direction.
They were used during drought.
Not to make rain whenever people wanted.
To move it.
Oren frowned.
“What does that mean?”
The old woman took him outside.
She opened his jar.
Rain fell.
Then she pointed east.
Far away, beyond the horizon, clouds thinned.
Oren felt cold.
“It doesn’t create water.”
The younger man shook his head.
“It brings water.”
“From where?”
“Somewhere else.”
Oren looked at the rain falling around him.
Every field he’d saved.
Every orchard.
Every well.
Somewhere else had lost that water.
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
The old woman answered.
The translator hesitated.
“What?”
“She says perhaps your grandmother thought you knew.”
Oren laughed bitterly.
“How could I know?”
The old woman spoke again.
This time the translator looked uncomfortable.
“She says that is a question for your grandmother.”
“She’s dead.”
The old woman nodded.
“Yes.”
There are arguments that become impossible because one participant has died.
Oren discovered they remain arguments anyway.
He wanted to leave the jar.
The old woman refused.
“Why?”
She spoke.
The translator said:
“It belongs to your family.”
“I don’t know how to use it.”
“She says then learn.”
“I’ve already hurt people with it.”
The old woman shrugged.
Oren became angry.
“That doesn’t bother her?”
The translation came back:
“She says being bothered does not return the rain.”
Oren sat down.
He disliked this woman.
He also suspected his grandmother had been very much like her.
He stayed for a year.
He learned the language.
Learned the weather.
Learned what the jars had actually been for.
The keepers watched clouds across enormous distances.
They did not ask merely:
Who needs rain?
They asked:
Where can rain be taken without creating another drought?
Sometimes the answer was nowhere.
That was the hardest lesson.
A keeper could possess the power to help and still decide not to use it.
Years later, Oren returned home.
The jar came with him.
People remembered.
A farmer arrived almost immediately.
“My barley needs rain.”
Oren looked at the sky.
“No.”
The farmer stared.
“You used to help.”
“I used to open the jar.”
“What is the difference?”
Oren smiled sadly.
“Quite a lot, apparently.”
The farmer became angry.
“You have water.”
“No.”
Oren touched the blue ceramic.
“I have a way of moving it.”
People liked him less after that.
When Oren had been ignorant, he had seemed generous.
Now that he understood the jar, he often appeared selfish.
He refused requests.
Asked irritating questions.
Studied maps.
Waited.
Sometimes crops died while the jar remained closed.
People cursed him.
Oren understood.
If his field were dying, he might have cursed himself too.
Many years later, Oren taught his daughter.
He placed the blue jar between them.
“This will belong to you.”
She touched it carefully.
“Can I make it rain?”
“No.”
She frowned.
“I’ve seen you.”
“You can make it rain here.”
“That’s what I said.”
Oren shook his head.
“No.”
He opened a map.
“That difference is the first thing you learn.”
She looked disappointed.
Good, Oren thought.
Disappointment was better than ignorance.
“Who does the rain belong to?” she asked.
Oren considered.
When he was young, he would have said whoever owned the jar.
Later he might have said everyone.
Now neither answer seemed sufficient.
“I don’t know.”
His daughter looked surprised.
“You’ve had it all these years.”
“Yes.”
“And you still don’t know?”
Oren smiled.
“That’s the second thing you learn.”
He pushed the jar toward her.
Thunder murmured inside.
She reached for the cork.
Then stopped.
“Where will the rain come from?”
Oren smiled.
There.
That was why the jar was hers.