Chapter 30
The boy smiled as he strolled, hands in his pockets, from the alleyway.
He smiled as he meandered past vendors shoving wilting flowers or rank fish under his nose.
He smiled as a mass of schoolkids rushed past—screaming, laughing, shoving—nearly knocking him over on their way to the playground.
He even smiled when he crossed the street and a delivery truck was only a finger’s width away from running him over.
When the driver slammed on his horn and cussed and screamed at the boy, he still smiled.
The wind decided there was something wrong with the boy. He’d never in his entire life smiled for longer than it took the wind to blow a curtain aside. His smiles were a quick flash, like a leaf tossed in the wind or a wave cresting: there then gone.
His smiles didn’t stay.
And they didn’t keep going as if every time the boy tried to tuck it away, it just kept bursting free.
It was almost as if there was so much emotion inside the boy he couldn’t keep it hidden.
Was there a windstorm inside the boy, turning his lips up and making him bounce as if he were floating a foot above the ground?
The wind nudged him, whistling a question, and the boy shot him a wide grin.
“She never took it off,” he said, and his smile grew even wider. “Did you hear? She never took it off.”
Of course the wind had heard. It heard everything.
The boy’s dimple deepened, and then he skipped down the steps of the subway station. The wind slid down the stainless-steel railing, riding the hot air currents rising from the subway’s depths.
This subway was a wide, concrete mouth, fringed by a vendor’s display of red silk scarves.
The walls were a nice, cool white, trimmed with sea-green tiles in the Greek key pattern.
The pattern looked to the wind like the endless undulating waves of the ocean.
Perhaps that was why the Bard siblings had settled in this area.
Or maybe not. Most humans had forgotten what the Greek key meant.
The wind traced the rising and falling of the key pattern as the boy jogged down the steps. His footsteps echoed in the tunnel’s throat, and a responding rumble sounded from its belly. There was a train far below, growling on the tracks.
The boy looked both left, then right, then finally up, still smiling. “Coming?”
Of course the wind was coming. The boy knew how much it loved the subway.
It tapped the pattern one last time. It liked the symbolism—the eternal flow of life, the unbroken bonds of friendship, love and devotion. Perhaps the wind would only fly in a key pattern from now on.
The boy dashed down the tunnel, hurrying into the fluorescent-lit depths. The wind abandoned the idea of slowly meandering and rushed after him.
The subway was fun. Sometimes, the boy and the wind would spend entire afternoons riding the subway just for the fun of it.
The boy would stand at the yellow line, perched along the edge of the track, then the wind would rush at him, blowing his hair and his clothes as it screamed past with the charging train.
Then, when it had mussed his hair and shouted in his ear, the wind would circle back, and the boy would give it a secret smile.
Then he’d climb onto the train and lean against the rocking wall or sit on a hard plastic seat and sway to the train’s grumbly motion.
He’d pull out a book and read for hours, while humans came and went, dozens of them sitting next to him or across from him, none of them noticing him.
But the boy, he liked it. He pretended he was a normal human, and he pretended he wasn’t alone.
He never spoke to anyone. Once, an orange had rolled out of an older human’s grocery bag.
The boy had chased it down and brought it back to her.
He always gave up his seat for anyone who needed it.
He gave money to people who walked through asking for help.
He was polite. He’d once told the wind that one of his favorite things on earth was riding the train, so the wind wasn’t surprised he’d want to ride the train when he was this happy.
The wind didn’t mind. It loved the tidal wave of the rushing trains, the screaming current and the roaring vibration.
It loved the whoosh of the doors and the clacking, creaking joints.
It loved flinging itself at the cars and then flying through the dark tunnels, knocking against the boy’s window, waving and shrieking.
Overhead, the long line of fluorescent lights illuminated the narrow platform. The wind tapped their buzzing tubes and laughed as they flickered. The boy hurried down the dirty brown walkway. He liked to stand at the end of the platform, where he could feel the rush of the approaching train.
There weren’t many people waiting. A man listening to music, leaning against one of the steel columns. A mother and a young son sharing an apple cut into neat slices. A white-haired woman leaning on a cane.
The wind sniffed. There was moisture here.
It smelled damp and musty. A long time ago, when the humans had first dug this tunnel, the wind had rushed through with the floodwaters.
The tunnel had tasted like quicksand and gravel, and there were interesting things to be found—buried trinkets, keys, silverware, bones, teeth, and tools.
There was more to find even deeper, but the humans didn’t look that far down.
The boy settled against the tile wall, shoving his hands into his pockets and crossing his ankles. The wind swept over the dirt-crusted brown tiles, bumped over the yellow line, and peered onto the tracks. Rat. Make that two rats. Cockroach. Nothing interesting.
Then the wind smelled something new. Something cruel. Something twisted. Like blood and pain and . . . The wind flung itself around and rushed to the boy’s side.
“I see him,” the boy whispered.
Who?
Oh.
The wind moaned in alarm. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t the right place or the right time. It nudged the boy, pushing him toward a metal column.
It was the solange-eyed one. He stalked into the tunnel like a man entering a gauntlet. He wasn’t wrong. The narrow platform lined by steel columns did have a similar feel.
The wind shivered. There was something wrong with the solange-eyed one. He looked the same: rough-hewn face, battle-ready, muscled like his father, with the graceful agility of his mother, one hazel-green eye and one cosmic-storm eye. The same.
Perhaps it was the expression that was different. Before, the wind could see the kindness of the fawn-like one in him. Now, it only saw a hunter.
In nature, there were animals who killed for survival.
There were others who killed because they liked it.
The solange-eyed one had the look of a leopard who longed to slaughter an entire fold of fenced-in sheep and then leave them to rot.
There wasn’t any of his wolflike father or his gentle mother left in him.
The boy tensed and slowly pulled his hands from his pockets, shifting so he could watch the solange-eyed one’s slow, stalking gait.
The solange-eyed one was looking for something—or someone.
The wind held still and quiet. In the tunnel beneath them, a train rumbled through, vibrating the tiles.
“Maybe he won’t notice me,” the boy whispered.
Shh!
Didn’t the boy know better? Don’t speak when a predator is hunting!
The solange-eyed one tilted his head, listening. He’d been walking toward the mother and her son, but then he stopped. His muscled back tensed, and then his hands curled, his fingers drawing to his thumbs.
The wind curled around the boy’s chest, pressing against his quickly beating heart.
The boy held his fingers to his thumb. He couldn’t—shouldn’t—conjure.
While the solange-eyed one couldn’t see illusion like the girl, he could feel it when another conjurer created an illusion.
That trickling, cold-water feel was what alerted conjurers that someone like them was nearby.
Hide, the wind whispered.
Now wasn’t the time to fight the solange-eyed one. This wasn’t the place.
The wind didn’t know what would happen if the solange-eyed man and the boy fought in this narrow, dirt-smudged tunnel.
The boy held still. He was quiet. He was a Ward. He blended in with the tile, unnoticeable and unnoticed.
The solange-eyed one’s shoulders loosened, and he started walking again, staring at the tiles, peering at the mother and the son.
The boy let out a quiet sigh. Then, at that soft exhale, the solange-eyed one spun around.
The wind shrieked just as the rushing wind of a train sped through the tunnel. The train’s headlight speared them, lighting the boy as if he were standing in a spotlight. He held still, a deer in headlights.
The solange-eyed one’s lips curled into a cruel smile.
“Well, he’s noticed me,” the boy said, his smile gone.
The wind rushed around him, pulling the train’s air to itself, building a whirlwind. The train’s doors slid open, and a flock of people hurried out, shoving into each other and congealing in a giant mass of humans scurrying toward the exit.
For a moment, they blocked the solange-eyed man from the boy. The train cars had dumped so many people onto the platform that the narrow space was swimming with them.
Run! The wind shoved the boy. Run!
“Good idea.”
The boy was about to disappear into the crowd when the river of people parted. The solange-eyed one was still staring at where the boy stood, and when he saw him, his smile widened.
“I thought I saw you,” he said, and although the boy may not have heard him, the wind did. It shuddered at the deep scrape of his voice.
But no—the boy had heard him. His eyes widened, and he said, horrified, “What happened to you? What did you do to your—?”
The boy’s question was cut off as the train rushed from the station, firing hot air over them. Then, almost simultaneously, the solange-eyed man twisted his hand and shot a bolt of fire at the boy.