Chapter 94 #2
The battle-hardened brother conjured a blade of fire and slid it under the boy’s fifth rib. He angled it upward and pierced the boy’s heart.
The boy gasped. His gaze flew wide.
The wind screamed.
The battle-hardened brother shoved the boy, jerking his blade free. The boy collapsed, his legs giving out beneath him.
He was dead.
Was he dead?
He was dead.
No.
No!
No, he wasn’t dead.
The battle-hardened brother stepped over the boy, ignoring his shallow gasps. The Smith cousins stepped over him too, some of them kicking him as they passed. They moved silently, not even looking, as the boy shuddered and coughed beneath them.
No.
No, no, no, no.
No.
This was not how the boy died.
It was not.
The boy was brave. The boy was courageous. The boy laughed at all the wrong things and smiled at all the right ones. He comforted the wind and loved the wind, and if the boy was gone, who would love the wind? Who would the wind love?
He couldn’t die like this. A fool’s death. A worthless death. The sort of death a coward had in a back alley, alone and trembling.
No.
“Wind,” the boy whispered.
But no. He hadn’t whispered it. There wasn’t enough wind left in his lungs to whisper. The wind had only heard it because he could hear the boy’s heart.
It was quivering and shuddering. It struggled to beat while the arteries bled and the veins severed.
His hand trembled.
“Wind.”
No.
No!
It lay over him. It shoved air into his deflating lungs. It swirled over his cheeks and pressed warmth to his cooling lips. No! Boy!
It raced down his shuddering throat and pushed at his heart, urging it to pump. Urging it to work! That was what human bodies were supposed to do. They were supposed to work!
But the wind’s pumping only tore the thin tissue more. It only made the bleeding worse. There was a hole in the boy’s heart, and nothing could fix it.
His spirit was almost gone from him. The wind could feel the boy unraveling from himself. He could feel him floating free. But it could also feel him struggling, trying to remain with the wind.
He was trying to speak. He wanted to tell the wind something.
“Wind,” he whispered but didn’t whisper. “Wind. Stay. Don’t come with me. Stay.”
No!
The wind would go with the boy.
It would race up the golden column. It would hug itself to the boy. It would curl around the blazing spirit of him and race into eternity. It would always stay with the boy. What would it be without him? Nothing. Not wind.
“Stay,” the boy said, and the wind thought it heard him laugh. But why? Why would he laugh? Why did the boy always laugh at the worst things. The most wrong things.
You stay, the wind begged. You stay.
I love you, the wind told him, even though it had never told a being it loved it before. What did the wind know about love? Nothing, until the boy.
I love you.
The boy smiled. He was dying, and he smiled. “Of course you do. I always knew. Like you knew I’ve always loved you. You, Wind, are the most loved wind in the whole world.”
Had the boy said that, or was it the wind’s imagination?
The boy wasn’t breathing anymore. His heart was a slow, weeping thud.
The wind had known many deaths. It had lived for eons. It had seen more deaths than sand on a beach. None of them had mattered. Death was nothing to the wind.
But now, death was the thing that stole love and never gave it back. It was the specter that took its boy away.
The wind sobbed, curling on the boy’s chest.
“Wind,” the boy’s spirit whispered, “don’t cry. Just . . . tell me a story. Like you used to. Tell me a wind story.”
So the wind—a brave, courageous, intelligent, wondrous being—told its boy a story.
It told him the story of the boy.
Once, the wind said, there was a wind, and it was happy being the wind doing wind-things. It was alone, but it didn’t know it was alone. Then, one day, it rubbed along the protruding belly of the man’s wife and heard a small hiccup.
The wind was curious about the hiccup, so it traveled inside the womb and found two tiny spirits.
There was a girl, and there was a boy. And as the wind swirled around the cosmic fluid, the boy looked right at the wind, his small heart drumming soothingly, and he reached out and curled a tiny pink hand around the wind.
The boy wrapped the wind in his hands, and the wind stayed there for a long time. It couldn’t help it. The boy was holding the wind so tightly, so sweetly, that the wind couldn’t possibly leave him.
When the boy was born, the wind pushed cosmic fluid from his lungs and helped him breathe his first breath.
It spiraled on his cries and laughed at how the boy’s cheeks turned red.
It rested on his downy baby hair and spun soothing circles on his chest. It sang him lullabies and rocked him to sleep at night.
The boy loved birthdays, and so the wind helped him blow out every candle. The boy loved reading, so the wind cuddled in his lap and helped him turn the pages. The boy shattered the mirror that wanted to kill him, so the wind flung the shards away from him, as far as it could.
The boy was alone except for his books and the strangers on the subway, so the wind kept him company. It rustled leaves to make him laugh. It splashed his tea to make him smile. It sang along with the records the man played and shoved the boy into a dance.
The boy grew up. And the wind stayed with him.
It kept him safe when he protected the girl. It taught him to be polite. It spent autumns with him in the north, and summers with him riding subways. It slid down icy sidewalks with him in the winter and blew snowflakes onto the boy’s cheeks.
It was with the boy always.
The boy, who had always been afraid of being alone.
He was never, never alone.
The wind loved the boy too much to ever let him be alone.
The boy smiled. His lips curved into the happy, loving, familiar smile he only gave to the wind. Tears dripped over his cheeks and collected at the corners of his mouth.
The wind traced over the cosmic salt of them. It had always thought it couldn’t cry. That while it could love, tears were beyond it.
But as the wind traced through the boy’s spirit leaving his body, the wind bled tears. Its weeping joined the salt of the boy’s.
It had always scoffed at time.
What was time?
Nothing to the wind.
There was only now.
But if there was only now, then it wanted now to last forever.
It wanted now, this moment, to be its eternity.
Then it would never have to say goodbye.
Was that what time was?
Was time only another word for goodbye?
The boy’s spirit rested over the wind. The wind finished its story.
It loved the boy. It had always loved the boy. It had loved him before he was born, and it would love him long after he died. It would love for eternity.
It only wanted him to stay. Just a little longer.
But he couldn’t. The wind knew this. No being could stay when it was being called away.
It held tightly to the boy’s spirit, listening to his urgent words.
Take care of Lia.
Take care of my sister.
Help the Smith.
You’re the last. Love them, Wind. Help them. Wind. Please.
The boy knew the wind could never say no when he said please.
And so even though the wind wanted to follow the boy when he left, it didn’t.
It stayed curled on his still chest, stroking his cold cheeks, ruffling his soft hair. It blew over him, covering him with gentle wind kisses.
It sang a wind song for him—the one it used to sing when he was young and afraid of the dark, and afraid of being alone.
It was a song of rustling leaves, wishes on dandelion seeds, blustering fall days, and sweet summer seaside breezes.
The boy had always loved the wind’s song.
It was always said that a being must die alone. There was no one who could go on that solitary journey with them. Was that true?
The wind didn’t know.
It sang to the boy as his spirit flew away.
It sang its wind song. And then, when the boy’s body was cold, the wind crumpled over him, wishing it had never learned what time was.
Time was the stopping of the boy’s beating heart.
“Oh, Wind,” he would say, “please don’t cry.”
But for once, the wind wouldn’t listen if the boy said please. The wind could only cry. There was nothing else.
The wind—a courageous, mighty, wondrous being—curled over its boy and wept.
Its heart—did the wind have a heart?—yes, it must. Because the wind’s heart broke.