Chapter 106
The wind’s fire flickered and guttered, its flames doused under the Bard’s constant attack. It spun protectively around the trickster and the woman clinging to his furred back. The musician was sprawled under his four legs, unmoving.
The wind didn’t know whether or not the musician was breathing. There were things a breeze could do that a fire tornado could not. Rushing into a human’s lungs was one of those things.
The woman bent over the trickster’s wet back. His hackles stood on end, and he crouched over his brother, his tail swiping furiously. He bared his teeth and snarled.
The citrus and pearl dust scented woman volleyed illusion after illusion, breaking the Bard’s attacks and then thrusting her own at him.
The horror pressed inward, attempting to swallow them whole. It had already swallowed the stone horse. Its valor and courage had been consumed in one valiant charge. It had saved the trickster and his siblings, bucking the horror back, but in doing so, it had died, crushed in the horror’s maw.
The wind swirled around the trickster, shoving the horror back. The horror winced, shying from the flamelight, but soon, all the fire would be gone.
Fire was purifying.
Fire was cleansing.
Fire protected from horrors in the night.
What would the wind do when its fire was gone?
All tornadoes eventually dissipated. The vortex weakened, cold air broke them, and their twister became thin ropes that fell in threads to the ground.
The wind knew it was weakening. Soon, it would narrow and fall apart. And then it would be of no use to the woman, the boy’s child, the trickster, the musician—none of them.
It moaned, lashing out at the horror and the Bard.
In the darkness beyond, the Smiths launched firebolts into the black swarm.
Were the cruel one and his sister still alive, or had the horror consumed them? It didn’t know. It took all the wind’s energy to keep spinning in a violent circle around the woman and her brothers.
“I’ll conjure an ocean,” the Bard said. “Is that what you want, Celia? Are you demanding an ocean to drown in? Or would you rather I chain you and turn your blood into the sea? Do you want a poetic death?”
The wind shrieked.
“And you,” the Bard snarled. “You were my best son. My chosen heir. The child to continue my legacy. And what have you become? A jackaltooth. Yet even as a beast, you’re a failure. You’ve dishonored your Bard.”
He twisted his hand, and the trickster’s front legs snapped. He collapsed, and the woman, who’d been on his back, slammed to the concrete. The musician was trapped under the trickster’s bulk.
“My wife is dead,” the father said. At his statement, the woman gasped, and the trickster whimpered. “I don’t need my children anymore. It’s time to begin again.”
He twisted his hand. The wind screamed.
There was death in this illusion. The wind could taste it. It could smell it. It could feel it.
This was the illusion that made blood explode. Only the strongest Bard could create it, and it drained them completely, but it was an effective attack.
The wind shrieked, rushing at the Bard.
It was a dying tornado. A guttering tornado. A weak, worn-out, flickering thing.
But it was a thing full of love.
A great, mighty love.
It raced at the illusion, rushing toward the deadly tingle. What could it do? What could the wind do against death?
Nothing.
It knew this.
It knew.
It had already fought death and lost.
But the boy had said, Take care of Lia. And if the boy had been alive to find out about his child, he would’ve said, Take care of my son, Wind. Please.
And so the wind did something it had never done before.
It threw itself in the path of death to save a human it had never met and may never meet. Because who was to say this baby would survive the night? Who was to say it would ever be born?
The wind may never wrap itself around its small pink hand. It may never hear its first gasping cry. It may never cradle on its chest, listen to its heart, and sing it a wind lullaby. This baby could never replace the boy—nothing could.
The boy hadn’t left a hole when he’d died; instead, he’d ripped off a part of the wind and taken it with him.
There was no hole to be filled. Instead, a part of the wind had been amputated, and the limb would never grow back.
The ghost of it would only float there, a spirit thing that ached for the boy always.
But the baby—the boy and the woman’s—it might hiccup in the woman’s womb. It might like books and tea. It might love jumping in piles of leaves and laughing as the wind swirled them around. Would he? Would his laugh sound like the boy’s?
And so, on the thought of a now that might be in the future, the wind rushed at the Bard’s illusion.
Its flames were caught and guttered. Its fire was doused. The air was suffocated. The death illusion gripped the wind in its jaws and smothered it. The tornado died. The wind collapsed. It fell, coughing and gasping, spinning weakly to the ground.
It collapsed on itself, spiraling into a tiny, breathless ball. It gasped weakly, spinning on an ash flake.
Was the woman alive?
Was the boy’s child still there?
The wind fell toward the concrete, and as the ash spun, it was reminded of a winter—long ago for humans, but not long ago for the wind—when it had danced on snowflakes and blown them over the man’s cheeks and onto the boy’s winter hat.
The boy had laughed and tugged his hat lower, and the man had grinned at the wind.
“Take care of him,” the man had said, because he always demanded things of the wind and never asked politely like its boy did.
The wind had huffed. What a stupid thing for the man to ask. The wind would always take care of the boy.
The ash hit the ground.
The memory snowflakes melted.
The wind was a dead tornado, a suffocated breeze, a breathless, tiny, hope-filled wind.
Had it saved them?
It pushed itself up.
The trickster stood in front of both the woman and the musician, blocking them with his jackaltooth bulk. If his legs were broken, he was standing in spite of the snarling pain.
The death illusion had fallen with the wind.
The Bard conjured again. Then, halfway through, his mouth opened in a silent scream.
The horror that the wind’s fire tornado had held at bay careened toward them.
The father threw out his arms. The trickster crouched over his siblings. The wind moaned and wished it could gust and blow and protect.
It couldn’t.
No matter how cunning, how courageous, how loved, the wind couldn’t save them now.
The horror snapped its jaws.
And then, with the suddenness of the sun’s rays breaking through a storm cloud, the horror was speared with a flashing, brilliant, blinding light.
The horror screamed.
The humans covered their eyes. The wind had no eyes to cover.
It watched as the light raced through the horror and lit up every shadowed hole of darkness. Then it trembled with relief and moaned with joy as the solange-eyed one wove golden chains of fire and wrapped them around the horror’s writhing bulk.
It laughed, crying cosmic tears, as the solange-eyed one, his Smiths, and even the citrus and pearl dust scented woman joined together and created a prison beneath the earth to lock the horror in.
The Bard was gone. The cruel one and his sister were gone. The innocent one, the pixie-like one, and the solemn one were gone.
Where were they? Were they dead and gone? Or merely gone?
The horror’s prison gates closed with a thunderous clang. The wind sighed and drifted into a crack in the pavement. It curled in on itself, shuddered, and then wept.
Was it happiness?
Was it grief?
Was it joy?
Was it sorrow?
What did the wind know?
Those were human things. Human emotions. It had made itself just human enough for the boy, and now what could it do?
What could it do?
It stared at the sky, believing for a moment that an airplane was a shooting star.
It sighed. Humans made wishes.
The wind made one too.
Perhaps it would come true.