Cosay Srays
Copyright© 2026 by Komiko Yakamura
Chapter 11
Tom Fairchild had read the weather right.
The storm came in Thursday night, earlier than expected and meaner than anything the territory had seen since spring. Coulter saw it building in the west at suppertime — a wall of black cloud moving fast and low, lightning walking across the plains on long legs, the kind of sky that didn’t negotiate.
“Girls, help me get the animals in,” he said, already pushing back from the table.
They moved without argument, all four of them, Cosay out the door before him and already crossing the yard at a pace that was almost a run. The wind had picked up considerably in the twenty minutes since he’d last looked at the sky, pulling at their clothes and driving dust into their eyes. The horses were already restless in the corral, moving in tight circles and tossing their heads.
“I’ll get the horses,” Cosay said. “You get the cattle.”
“Girls, get the chickens into the coop and then get inside,” Coulter called. “Don’t come back out.”
“But we can help—” Emmie started.
“Inside. Now.”
They went. He could tell by Emmie’s posture that she objected but she was smart enough to read the sky and pick her battles. Marie was already moving toward the chicken coop at a run, her skirt whipping around her legs.
Coulter got the cattle moving into the barn with more noise than finesse, the wind working against him, the first drops of rain starting to fall — fat and cold and deliberate, the kind that meant business. He counted heads as they went through, lost one, found her sheltering stupidly against the outside of the barn wall, got her in. By the time he dropped the bar across the barn door the sky had opened up completely.
He ran for the house.
Cosay was already inside, soaked through, her hair loose from its tie and plastered dark against her face. She was pulling the shutters closed on the north window, the wind fighting her for every inch.
“Horses?” he said.
“In. Nah-lin took some convincing.”
“She always does in a storm.”
“I know. We have discussed it.” She got the shutter latched and moved to the next one. “The south shutter on the barn was already working loose when I went past. If the wind gets under it—”
“I’ll check it when this lets up.”
“It will be too late when this lets up.”
She was right and he knew it. He grabbed his coat from the hook and went back out before she could say anything else, bent double against the wind and rain, crossed the yard with his eyes nearly shut, found the shutter by feel more than sight and got the latch secured with hands that were already cold and clumsy. Lightning cracked close enough that he felt it in his back teeth. Thunder followed immediately, so loud it seemed to compress the air.
He got back to the house.
The girls were on the floor near the fire, Emmie with her arm around Marie, both of them watching the windows with wide eyes as the storm threw itself against the glass. The lamp was guttering in the drafts that found their way through the walls and Cosay was moving around the room securing every gap she could find with whatever came to hand — a folded cloth here, a wedge of wood there, the systematic efficiency of someone who had weathered worse than this in considerably less shelter.
Coulter stood in the doorway dripping on the floor and watched her work and felt something move through him that was not quite pride and not quite wonder but lived somewhere between the two.
“Take those off before you catch your death,” Cosay said without looking at him.
He hung up his coat and sat by the fire and let the warmth start working on his hands. Marie immediately relocated to his side and pressed herself against him. Emmie stayed where she was, her eyes still on the windows.
“Is the barn going to hold?” Emmie asked.
“Built it myself,” Coulter said. “It’ll hold.”
“And the house?”
“Your grandfather built this house. It has held through worse.”
Emmie nodded, not entirely reassured but working on it.
The storm settled in for a long assault, rain hammering the roof in waves, wind finding every weakness in the walls and making itself known there. Lightning came in long sequences that turned the windows white. The thunder was continuous, rolling into itself before it finished, the whole sky one long percussion.
Cosay sat on the floor with the girls, her back against the base of Coulter’s chair, close enough that her shoulder rested against his knee. He was aware of the contact and did not move away from it.
Marie was watching the windows with the focused expression of someone gathering courage for something.
“Cosay,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Tell us something. About when you were little.”
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