Just as I crest one tall slope of sand, my wind abandons me. They whip off to my port side, flurrying grit in a wide, wild streak across the desert. They don’t even bother looping back to laugh at me, our deal entirely forgotten.
My sand-skiff keeps sliding downhill on momentum and its own weight, but the sail’s limp. I’m dead on the dunes—so far into the New Sands that most lone travelers would’ve been pressed to accept the buzzards’ hospitality miles ago.
Without that last scrap of breeze, desert heat seeps under my skin and smolders there. I watch my sails for any flicker of motion, mouthing sailors’ prayers that don’t amount to much beyond, “Move, please, move.”
They’re the prayers Father once taught me over long weeks on the Long Sea. Stranded in water no kinder than sand. All my memories of that time are dulled and melted, made sticky by the sun, and the stillness, and the thirst that clawed up my throat. The raw wounds cracked into my skin. I remember the crew’s prayers. I remember watching Father drink from the ocean like he’d told me never to do. I remember days filled only by waiting for wind. Any wind. Even infant winds, newborn off the sun and sea, frail as a shallow breath. Anything, so long as it would get us back to dry ground.
“Come back. Please come back. We had a deal, damn you.” That’s my own prayer, now—my own hope that I won’t have to use one of the winds bottled and bagged on the straps around my waist. I’m all out of native winds, and I’ve made promises to the ones I do have left.
I don’t want to be a deal-breaker, only slightly less than I don’t want to be a dead woman.
Then a gust rushes up from behind me—a new wind, drier and sharper than the one that left me. It lifts my sail and plays with my hair, and I recognize her as the titan wind I released here last year. A sandstorm-maker, currently no bigger than the foxes that sometimes peep out at me. I’d be worried for her if she weren’t so playful—just a child tuckered out from dancing in circles.
“Been having fun, have you?” I call to the wind, and she blows my hair into knots as we sail on.
My map says the ancient ocean storm I’m looking for will be in the lowest levels of a palace ruin, but soon I don’t need the map to find my heading. Dark clouds hang around the old estate’s towers. Lightning bristles through the sky, never quite touching down, and the rumble of thunder is constant as a cat’s purr.
I leave my sand-skiff where the fox wind leaves me: at the edge of some low-hanging fog. On foot, I trudge through sandy muck that smells of sea salt, muck that’s already swallowed many of the stone walls surrounding the palace. The greenery in this glum oasis is neglected and overgrown. No one’s walked the palace grounds in an age. No wind-tamers, anyway, or else this storm would have been taken long ago, transported to paying customers far from here.
A true boom of thunder sounds behind me as I slip into the main building, past a leaning wall that’s half come down. The rumbling echoes in my chest, along with the tense shake of my very spirit that signals old power is nearby.
Out of habit, I rub the pad of my thumb along my bottles’ corks. All properly stoppered, shut tight. Through the glass, the winds feel warm and cold, soft and terrible, each one unique. One empty loop of leather remains on the belt running just over my heart, ready for the vial tucked into my sleeve in case I’m forced to use some cunning. I won’t force any wind into a deal. But I won’t let myself die to a raging storm either. Death seems like it would get in the way of promise-keeping.
Wave motifs on the passage walls guide me to the grand hall where the titan storm would have once been displayed, during the palace’s glory days. Elaborate ocean scenery covers the tiles of the walls and ceiling. Furniture shaped like ungainly mockeries of boats rots slowly on the few islands of floor that have not yet caved into the building’s underlying levels.
I see the bottles of dried mud first, at least a dozen shoved behind the nearest column, lines of filth seeping from cracks in the glass. Wind-tamers have been here. Then I look down and realize why they eventually gave up. The vial I’ve prepared isn’t big enough by half for the storm squeezed into the cesspit of the lower palace.
And it is a cesspit. Age-old sewage seeped in deep, black seawater. Through the smell of rain and brine, the air reeks, and despite their size, the titan storm trembles against every wall of the chambers far below me. A mouse pressed into a clogged drainpipe.
I have bottles large enough to hold such a storm, but they’re back on my skiff, in the packs along with my gun. And with the spirit so mired in filth—any attempts to extricate the titan now would end in failure.
I wipe the sand out of my goggles, adjust their fit. I clamber down a set of shattered stairs, just close enough to start a conversation. Wind howls, whipping back every tendril of brown hair escaping from my braid, burning my nose with the stench. But the odor holds at least a hint of the familiar, of the sea I grew up on. Immediately, I know the waters this titan was taken from.
“None of that now,” I shout into the gale, “or I’ll leave you here and burn the map that led me to you, and no one will ever find you again. Unless you’d prefer wallowing like this for another century?”
The storm buffets to a staggering halt.
“Leave.” Their voice comes slow and over-loud, but still with some vestiges of dignity. Promising. And concerning; too human for a wind. “Burn, do not burn, it makes no difference. You are not the first to come here. Just bring out your bottle, Wind-tamer, and siphon all you like. You will leave with empty, filthy hands like all the others.”
“I’ll leave with you, or not at all.” Head spinning from the smell, I carefully sit on the edge of what used to be the way down—another stone staircase, worn nearly to nothing by the fury of a captive storm’s full force. The drop is so steep now, the ridged rock may as well be a ladder. I swing my legs over the side, looking down at the titan. “How should I refer to you?”
Silence, for a long time.
The eventual answer comes low, timid, uncertain. “He?”
I nod. “Any names?”
The muck thrashes. “No.”
Names, and bottles, and anything else tamers bring to the wind. They all serve as tethers. Ways to calm a gale and grant rest to something that can never stop moving. Ways to make a wind more conscious of itself, showing more consideration toward humans in turn. Tethers between us and the winds are reminders of what we can do for each other.
But that’s not always what the winds want.
Tethers chafe—they suffocate. Winds are not born for stillness, and the line between rest and stagnation is reed-thin. What wind would want to show consideration to humans who never reciprocated?
Properly given the option, most winds I’ve found and freed don’t bother with names at all.
I smile. “No name for me either. Wind-wilder will do, if you must call me something. And she, by the way.”
“Wind-wilder,” the titan repeats, with some effort. “Not a phrase I’ve heard before. Is it supposed to be clever?” It laughs, and the unease coiling in my stomach grows.
This wind is too well-spoken—too adept at sounding human, as his tamers taught him, even after God knows how many years spent in the dark alone.
“You can still carry a conversation,” I say with a tight smile. “You can still poke fun. You sound like Viana.”
Winds are curious things. He doesn’t ask, but the air changes in a way I know well—the expectation of a coming storm, the sensation of rain overhead but not yet falling.
“Viana was a hurricane, captured around the same time as you, I’d guess. She changed hands and countries and languages so many times while whole dynasties rose and fell, until Father stole her off a royal ship when I was six. Fantastic conversationalist, Viana was. Downright sociable.”
So sociable that Father began an elaborate flirtation, a running joke through all the years Viana drove our ship. He talked as if they were sweethearts, betrothed, and Viana giggled and played along. Ruffled his hair, spoke to me as if she were my mother-to-be. All the while growing weaker and weaker from the work of pushing our ship through still water.
Father talked as if he loved her, and she talked back as if she loved the both of us.
This part, of course, is none of the titan wind’s business.
He only needs to know just enough to scare him. Enough to understand the danger he’s in if he lingers in this place, as he is now.
“She sounded so human, right before she finally died.”
It was the middle of the doldrums, the year I turned fourteen. Father drove her too hard, too impatient for the next port. And while I sobbed in the rigging, watching our limp sails for any flicker, listening for any soft, kind, last goodbyes, Father just drew another bottled wind from his belt.
That was our last voyage together. Soon as we reached land, I left his ship for good.
“I want to get you out of here before you meet a similar fate,” I say. “But you’ll need to work with me.”
“Out? As I am now?” The muck squelches, sinking lower along with his tone. “I cannot leave. What would everyone say? The other winds—”
“—would be relieved to see you at all.”
“Nonsense. Even if they remembered me, they would not recognize me.”
“Only because any winds you knew are likely gone.” I take in his confused churning. “Do you remember talk of the seas stilling?”
“Stilling?”
“You have been here alone a long time.” I tuck some strands of hair under my goggle straps. “It began even long before my Father was born. The oceans are almost all doldrums now—even most of the currents beneath the waves siphoned off by wind-tamers—and things aren’t much better inland. If it weren’t for oh-so-carefully maintained captive storms watering the crops, everywhere would be in a drought. Of the few free winds today, most have gone through similar circumstances. None will scorn you.”
I spread my coat and loosen some bottle corks, enough for the more helpful winds to whisper to the titan. Stories of where they’ve been, what they’ve seen, and—from one eager mountain gale blowing cold and sharp and frantic with even just this little bit of freedom—the same words over and over again. Home going home she’s taking me home.
The titan burbles. “I forget what home looks like.”
“I’ll escort you,” I say. “And all I need in exchange—”
“Exchange.” The titan spits the word, a fleck of mud flying up to strike my cheek. The goggles catch most of it, but not all. “Exchanges, working me like a plow horse, driving me on and on and on, whichever way you wish.”
I wipe the mud away with my sleeve. “Not like that. I swear to you. One ship. One journey. I need to get across the ocean, and you’re the only wind I’ve found who’s strong enough to get me there.”
Home? The mountain wind’s voice shakes as I stopper the bottles again. Going home? Soon?
I let my coat fall closed and stare down at the titan spirit. “I can’t bring these others back if I can’t reach the continent they came from.”
“And when you wish to return here?’ he asks bitterly. “Then you’ll ask me. Once more, across the sea. Once more, across the land. You’ll try to show me off, you’ll build up walls around me—”
“No.” I cross my arms. “I will stay in that land collecting winds until I find another who can bring me here. One like you, who’s far from home. One journey means one. I will never ask for more than you’re willing to give.”
The storm falls so silent, I think I’ve lost his attention. It’s got me thinking about the vial tucked up my sleeve, uselessly small.
Then he sighs. “You assume too much, thinking I can cross the sea even once. And just how did you mean to get me out of here? You talk more than those who’ve come before, but you seem no better equipped.”
“You’re going to get yourself out. And then I’ll show you your way home.”
“I can’t.” The spirit curls in on itself. “I can no more pull myself out of this hole than you could climb those stairs you’re sitting on. The way is much too steep. You’ll have to find someone else. I can help no one when I’m like this. Not even myself.”
“So, if I can climb these stairs,” I say, “you’ll agree to my deal?”
“That’s not what I meant,” the storm says, petulant. “And I’ll drown you if you try. It won’t be on purpose, but it’s what will happen.”
I ignore the storm’s blustering and pull a long chain from the pack I’m wearing. I loop the chain around one of the solid stone columns a ways back from my perch, securing it the way my father’s crew drilled into me practically before I could talk.
Storms can be dramatic things, appreciative of grand gestures.
I take a running leap off the top of the ledge and land hard in the midst of the sludge. The chain goes taut before I sink too far into the muck, but I’m still up to my knees in stale seawater and the spirit himself, who sputters.
Gloves protect my hands as I start up the remains of the old staircase, fitting my boots against the bare ridges of stone as I hang off the chain, picking my way upward. It’s not an easy climb, but a very doable one. My boots slip often, and the smell makes my eyes water.
But in not much time at all, I reach the top.
“No, no.” The muck below churns as the titan protests. “That’s not fair. I—I don’t have any chain.”
Good that he’s getting riled up. Good that the storm clouds are thickening, the sea brine growing stronger in the air.
I crouch dripping on the side of the ledge, staring down at him, and let my impatience show in my voice. “You have me. Hang on me as much as you need to. Now start climbing.”
Each one of the titan’s steps is a slog.
Long dirty streaks mark a path all the way back to the palace grounds, but the desert sand is scouring some of him clean. He’s taken on something like the shape of a man, and the vague figure’s head keeps turning to gape at the dunes on one side of us, then the other.
“It wasn’t like this before,” he says. “There was more green before. And more people.”
“Wind spreads seeds, and storms water them,” I reply. “Take away the winds, much of the green goes away. Bring in winds that don’t belong, and things change further. With less green, there’s fewer people, and eventually it all turns out like this.” Not even a true desert, but something much more dead and empty than that.
I can’t place the titan wind’s ensuing silence. Could be shock, contemplation, smug vindication. I’ve seen all three, and more, from the winds I’ve seen, spoken to, traveled with.
He’s still weak. Massive, but meek. I can push my sand-skiff more quickly than his wind can.
“I’m dying,” he moans, crawling on ill-formed hands and knees.
“You’re whining.” I swat the nearest part of him I can reach, the way Father and his crew used to swat me if I tried to sleep in or skip chores.
Later, with some of the scum and debris shaken off, the air moves faster, and my skiff’s sail fights true storm winds, swift and unpredictable. The titan has very little consideration for me. But that’s fair.
In time, we come across a town in the desert. A dying town, very few animals tied outside very few homes. In the center of the village, a faint and fading water spirit curls at the base of a dry fountain: all that remains of an oasis.
The idea of lingering here feels just as dangerous as the palace cesspit, and I try to move on quickly, but a man springs through one curtained doorway and jogs after me, shielding his eyes from the sun to stare at the massive storm in my wake.
“How much?” he yells. “Name your price. Wherever you’re taking it, we’ll pay more.”
A hollow, desperate offer. Doesn’t matter.
“Not for sale.” I tweak the ropes and canvas, urging my skiff onward. “He’d do you no good anyway. Saltwater storm, not for drinking, and he’s too filthy to touch at the moment.”
The titan wilts a bit, and my sail goes slack, halting my progress just enough for the man to catch up. He grabs the side of my vessel. “Then sell us something else, wind-tamer.”
I don’t correct him. The title I concocted is more embarrassing to tell humans. And dreams and grand agendas won’t mean a thing to people needing water. Dying for it.
Past the man, villagers come out of their homes to investigate the commotion—the shouting, and the low, subtle thunder. They’ve got that dried-out look of souls who’ve thirsted too long.
I brush my fingers across the corks of my bottled winds, silently asking for volunteers.
None of the winds speak up. They rarely do, when this happens, and I can’t blame them at all.
“Only seawater left,” I tell the man. “I’m sorry.”
“Liar.” He grabs for my packs, scowling. “You wouldn’t cross the desert without a freshwater wind. You couldn’t.”
I try to stop him, lunging for the bag that hides my gun, but he only wrenches the other pack open, reaching inside. His hands still on what’s stopped every other would-be bandit who’s threatened me.
A large brass compass, a ship’s flag tied through a loop in its metal casing. Both are covered in the markings of my father’s ship, the markings everyone knows. The hourglass, with the squiggle of wind inside.
The compass drops to the sand with a muted clank as the man backs away from my skiff.
I catch his eyes and use the stare I copied from Father. The one that makes hardened sailors shake, and forces the wildest storms to give up their fight.
“These winds are spoken for,” I say.
He nods, trembling.
Then he turns and walks unsteadily back toward the town, not meeting the other villagers’ eyes. He murmurs a few words, and within moments, everyone’s back inside, shutters closed. It’s like the town’s finished dying completely, just from my passing.
Only one thing moves, fragilely.
“Keep at it,” I tell the titan. “I’ll be right back.”
He rumbles, but drags himself forward at a faster clip, like he wants to get ahead of me and not lag so far behind when we move on.
I trudge to the village center, to the dried-up fountain. I expect the breeze from off a big lake, or a river, but instead the faintest hint of petrichor hangs in the air. This spirit is just a raincloud. And not a strong one.
Wind-wilder. The softest whisper.
The hair on my arms stands on end. I’m not often recognized.
I wondered if you would come. A coolness touches my face, my forearms.
“They already think me a thief,” I say, quiet, “and I have an empty vial.”
I know the villagers are probably listening through their shutters.
I know they’ll really die if I take this last water away, but I can’t not ask. I can’t pick and choose which winds I’ll help. Not if I want them all to return.
“Is there anywhere you wish to go?”
Ripples cross the pool, the surface dappling here and there as if the rain is thinking about falling.
No. The spirit’s voice is frail, hard to hear. But so very human. Warm as Viana’s. I’ll slake these people’s thirst as long as I can. They haven’t got anyone else. But do something for me?
What I can be careful of is the exact promises I make. I listen, but don’t agree.
Remember this place. Bring another wind someday, home to this pool.
The edge of the pool stretches past its borders toward my mud-crusted boot—like someone trying to squeeze my hand—but I step back.
“I’m dirty.” I smile wryly. “I won’t spread that to you. May you live as long as you wish.”
I jog up the dune and push my skiff until I catch the wind off the titan once more.
He glances back at me, or maybe at the wind lying in the pool.
Then he shakes himself like a wet dog, cakes of mud and filth dropping to the sand.
He picks up speed, not fully upright but not crawling anymore either, and I wonder as I fight with my sand-skiff if the surge comes from awe at the freshwater spirit’s sacrifice, or an urge to be elsewhere like my own, or…something else.
When I ask him, he just shifts his head—the whole shape of it wobbling.
“Can’t…put it…” he says. Into words.
I smile, looking up at the speechless storm wind, even as the raincloud hangs in the back of my mind. As strongly as I want to leave, I want to go back, too. There are many dry and dying places. But even if I don’t remember that town…I will remember the rain spirit.
There is no inconspicuous way to get a wind titan to the ocean.
Not when he’s cast off all the dirt that hampered him, and not when thunder and lightning grow louder and brighter the closer we get to the cliffs of the coast.
We’ve kept to the main road since leaving the most arid desert land, to avoid inadvertently salting any fields, and so inevitably we’ve drawn a crowd, people flocking to perhaps the first large storm they’ve seen in years. Certainly the first wild storm.
And he is wild now, striding tall and straight-backed, and at the same time shaped less and less like a person the longer we walk.
Once we left the sands, I traded my sand-skiff for a horse apparently as stubborn as I am, and it’s hard to keep up with the titan amid throngs of people walking around in wet clothes, spreading their arms and laughing, sticking out their tongues and yelping in surprise when they unexpectedly taste the ocean. Some of them have traveled with us for days.
“Move,” I shout, as the titan walks too far ahead of me. “Out of my way.”
I’ve no time for politeness. No leeway to relax and watch people enjoy the rough weather.
The least of my worries is the titan forgetting our deal if he gets too far ahead. With this many thrilled and desperate people, it’s only a matter of time before some wind-tamer shows up and tries to siphon this storm back into a bottle.
Not that he’d go quietly, now.
Once he was cleaned up, I offered to bottle him, carry him the rest of the way, and lightning crashed down so close that it crackled in the air around me, standing all my hair on end. If someone else tries taming him now, with so many people close by, it’s sure to end badly for either the wind and me, or the tamer, or the crowd, or everyone. Which means I need to make my ownership—or at least my guardianship—obvious.
My father’s flag is draped over my horse’s flanks. I have another tied to my fist, to raise high over my head whenever the crowd gets too thick. People flinch away and clear a path when they see, but making them notice my flags in the first place is the hard part.
It only gets worse as we near the cliffs. The sea’s been all doldrums for years, but it’s also one of the most common places for newborn winds to stray above land, so the ports stayed busy even as trade fizzled to almost nothing.
And of course, in the ports, people know my father’s flag as more than just a warning that keeps inland children close to home. In the ports, people know all the stories of plundered ships, stolen winds, senseless waste and countless victims left for dead by the wind-tamer who calls himself Captain. They know all these stories are true.
And in the ports, more people hold grudges over it.
We’re nearly to the harbor, and I can see my ship—one of the best-kept vessels, shining brighter alongside crafts that haven’t sailed in years—when a hand in the crowd grabs my horse’s bridle. More hands clamp down on my reins, my packs, my own feet in the stirrups.
They drag me and my supplies from my horse and into an alley sheltered from the rain, and therefore ignored by the crowd. Someone slams me against the wall and on reflex I whip my coat open.
The rough treatment stops when my assailants see all the glass and wind I’m wearing. The bottles and vials, the bags here and there. A man paws through my packs and I tense as he holds up my gun, peering into the glass vial bound along its barrel.
“It’s not what you think,” I say. “I’m not with that crew.”
The leader of the group, a man a bit older than me with a face too kind for this sort of thing, grabs my wrist and forces it up so my father’s flag hangs on full display.
“Only know one crew sailing under a wind-filled hourglass,” he says. “Only know one crew still sailing, these days.” He taps a vial resting near my collarbone, and I force myself not to flinch. “You’re telling us this wind isn’t for him? You’re heading for the docks with a titan suited for crossing oceans, and you’re just waving his flag around for fun?”
“My own flag is in the bottom of that pack.” I nod to it. “You won’t recognize it. Nobody would. That’s why I was using his. To clear a path. I’m impatient, not a pirate.” I watch the man holding my gun as he fishes through my belongings, and I hear the barest whisper of a voice from the wind in the firearm’s vial. Bullet sounds like she always does, like screams and shattering glass, and I know I only hear her because I’m listening for her, but I still tense whenever the gun thief moves.
“Here,” he says finally, unfurling the flag so much like my father’s. “Wind beside an hourglass. Like you’re beside him—”
“You’re holding it sideways,” I murmur.
They all stare at me.
The titan’s thunder sounds farther and farther away.
“The hourglass is on its side—” I start, but the gang’s leader cuts me off, leaning closer to me.
“Look, I recognize you,” he says. “I saw your ship come in, years ago, the day my father’s ship never came back.” His voice gets quieter and quieter the angrier he sounds, the tighter he grips my shoulder. “My family’s wind was bound to your sails, heaving. He died right there in port. Our partner for generations. Father took him out for one try at good fishing, out where the other ships couldn’t reach anymore, and your father good-as-killed him and spent our wind in an afternoon.” He taps my collarbone again, my skin this time, not the glass, and his nail digs in. “You were riding on his shoulders. Beaming. Probably don’t even remember.”
I meet his eyes. “You’re right. I don’t. My father’s killed too many winds and too many people to remember them all. But I swear to you, I’m not with him. I can’t undo everything he did. There are far too many things I can’t undo. But I can set these winds free. Keep them alive, keep them away, keep them wild so he can’t have them.”
The man’s face twists. His friends avert their eyes—and they are his friends, I see that now. Not a gang, just a group of everyone who answered when this man called. One’s wearing a butcher’s apron freshly bloodied. Another’s got mismatched shoes and a stain from the eggs he had for breakfast on his collar. The one by my packs holds my gun like it’s the first he’s ever touched.
Before the one with a grudge can stop me, I loosen the corks of as many bottles as I can. Winds spin through the alley, dust-devils and updrafts and scraps of weather all mixing and whispering in a chaotic churn that’s scented of a continent across the sea—but right as the man with his hands on me shouts, all the winds sink back into their bottles. A few cheeky ones switch places, I notice. They like making me lose track.
“These winds are not bound to me,” I say. “They are with me by choice, and I’ve promised to take them home. I am sorry about your family, but I can’t stand here mourning when he—” I point at the thickening downpour outside the alley. “—is about to leave me behind. Give me my things. Let me go on my way. And you’ll never have to see me again.”
Uncertainty flickers in the grudge-holder’s eyes.
But that’s when the one holding my gun staggers toward me, arm outstretched. The whole group stirs in alarm—the leader even raises a hand as if to grab the gun away—but the weapon-wielder turns the barrel skyward just as he reaches me.
He blinks water from his eyes as he closes my fingers around the gun handle.
“I know that smell,” he says weakly. “Smells. All of them. That’s home.” He turns to the leader of the group, clutching his shirt collar. “I told you, didn’t I, Bas? That I was born on the Far Continent? I don’t remember much, but I remember those smells. I remember…” The man chews on his lower lip. “I’ve still got family there. Maybe. I never thought I’d have the chance to see, but…” When he raises his head, his eyes are full of resolve. He turns to me. “You’re really going?”
I nod, tucking my gun away in the hip holster I usually save for more bottles. “I’m going.”
“Then I am, too.”
Bas glares at me a moment longer, accusing, like this sudden parting from a friend has been my malicious intent all along.
Then the fury drains out of him and he slumps against the opposite alley wall. “Go, then. If you are with your father, he’ll have these winds eventually, no matter what I do. Just go, then.”
With a few solemn, murmured goodbyes, the group melts away, all except for the man now staring at me with eyes that thirst for something far different than water.
“You need to do any packing?” I ask.
He shakes his head, swiping away another tear.
“Good.” I kneel to tie up my abandoned packs and throw one over my shoulders, then nudge the other toward him. “Because my horse seems to have disappeared.”
My first mate throws up her hands as I cross the gangplank, scowling at me as rain spills off the brim of her hat.
“What is this, Admesti?” she demands, and I flinch at the sound of my old name. “You said you’d get wind, and you bring back our deaths? You want us to fight this storm all the way to the Far Continent?”
“I brought another passenger.” I ease my pack down by a pile of cargo. The man follows shrinkingly behind me, and seems scared to set my other pack down.
“Did this new passenger bring payment?” Namade asks, hands on her hips. She gestures at the assortment of people standing about on the deck, in the way, enjoying the rain just like everyone else. “Plenty of passengers, you’ve brought, and only half of them paying. Plenty of cargo, plenty of junk we can’t sell on the Far Continent.” She throws up her hands again. “Plenty of wind! Plenty of goddamn wind, and it’ll sink us all in an hour.”
I can’t help but grin up at the titan storm, who is shaped almost nothing like a man anymore. He strains forward in the harbor like a horse over their stable door, aside from the occasional glance down at me. Wild and getting wilder, but he still remembers our bargain.
Off-hand, to Namade as we enter my quarters, I ask, “Are we still waiting for anyone?”
“Waiting for them, no. You said you were going for a storm, we told everyone to show up when the rain started. The rain started a day ago, Admesti. If anyone’s not here by now, I’ll assume they saw the weather and decided this stinking, barren, too-small, too-poor continent wasn’t so bad after all.”
Namade collapses into a chair, wringing water from her braids.
“Done convincing yourself not to abandon me?” I tease, and she groans.
“I was so ready to mutiny, and then I remembered how much I hate this godforsaken land.” She eyes me sullenly. I can feel her counting the vials and bottles I’m wearing. “Look, Admesti. Are you eating enough?”
I pull my coat closed reflexively. “I’m not Admesti anymore.”
Many complications arose after I lured away half my father’s crew—the half that came from the Far Continent, and wanted to go back, and were sore at Father for not getting them there as he’d promised.
The continued use of the name I gave up is one of the most minor complications, yet somehow, one of the most frustrating.
Namade sighs. “I’ve got to call you something, kid. And you’re no kid anymore, and you won’t pick a real name, so where’s that leave me?”
Wind-wilder. When I’ve suggested it before, they all laugh, and call me kid twice as often.
“You could call me Captain,” I say, and at least we can both laugh at that, however bitterly.
There is an understanding on this ship. I understand I am not my crew’s captain. They understand that I’m better at keeping promises than my father is, but not so forgiving of cruelty.
When Namade finishes chuckling, she leans back in her chair. “You need to bind that wind. Bind it fast. Even if it doesn’t shred our sails and sink us tomorrow, it’ll certainly blow away from us. Leave us limp-sailed and starving. If we don’t wind up eating each other, the sharks will thank you for the nice meal.”
But this is part of our understanding, too. The crew knows I won’t bind the titan wind, won’t so much as ask it to slow down.
“We won’t be fighting this wind,” I say. “He’s an escort, not an enemy.”
I hope.
“Yeah, yeah. Now eat something.” Namade starts bustling around the cabin, bringing out rations and tossing them at my head. “You bring the wind, we’ll sail it, somehow. Or die trying.”
Much as the crew complains, they’re ready and very willing to depart by the next morning. While most of the passengers hole up below deck, the sailors revel in the rain, in their tasks, in the thrill of setting off once more. The same thrill that keeps Father going out, again and again, despite the lack of weather to take him where he wants to go.
The same thrill that causes him to take, make, or break whatever weather he needs.
Our progress is slow, and grueling, and sickening even to those of us who spend as much time on water as possible. A few ships that tried to tag along on our wind drop back quickly, lost in our wake.
But we make progress.
We get so far from land, there’s not a trace of it in any direction, which is the only sight that’s ever felt like home to me.
It’s then, when I am finally home, that we first see Father’s ship dead in the water off our starboard side. I know it straight off. That limp flag of his, looking so like a sign of distress until some kind passing ship sends their wind over, and the flag unfurls for the first time.
“Keep clear!” I shout to the titan wind, who rumbles acknowledgement. “Can we go faster?”
The titan laughs, and surges ahead.
Across the water, a tall figure leans against the rail of his ship, gazing lazily up at the raging clouds just drawing near.
His head turns toward me. He lifts one hand in a wave. Then his gaze returns to the sky.
Through the storm, I see the glint of glass leaving his pocket.
And I raise the gun I hardly ever use.
I’m not a particularly good shot, but Bullet was bottled by a sharpshooter, and she still loves the destruction, the shatterings, the sing of struck metal and the splurting of blood from a wound. She won’t tell me where she wants to go, and I can’t think of anyplace safe enough. So, for now she calls me partner, and I call her Bullet like she asked, and across an impossible distance and a tossing sea, she flies my shot straight to the bottle in Father’s hand and smashes it. Then flies right back to me.
I stand ready to fire again. The figure—smaller now, falling behind us—raises a curled, hurt hand into the air, and calls for cannons.
But they can’t keep up.
Soon enough, we’re far away, nothing but ocean and home again.
“Must really be out of winds,” Namade murmurs. I never heard her come up behind me. She glances at me. “If you really do it. If more winds come back. He’ll be back, too, you know. More fearsome than ever.”
“Would you go back to his crew?” I ask.
She’s serious for a minute. Then a cruel smile splits her face. “Nah. I’m not that forgiving.”
“Neither am I. Neither is the wind.” I look up into our sails, at our flag whipping, an open, empty hourglass on its side, with a squiggle of wind rippling above it, free. “We’ll handle him, if it comes to that.”
“We? Didn’t say I was joining your crew, either.” Namade sniffs. “Maybe I’ll start farming. Imagine. Me, with a hoe in my hand. Just like my parents wanted all along.” She shakes her head.
“I wasn’t including you in that we.”
The largest clap of thunder I’ve ever heard—and I’ve heard many—sounds above our heads, and I grin up into the sails again.
Namade doesn’t stop shaking her head. “Wild as your father, you are.”
“Nah.” I start climbing the rigging, grinning wide as I ever have.
Namade calls after. “Yeah, you are! And eat something, you bullheaded, obsessed thing. You’re still made of flesh and bone, you know!”
I ignore her shouting, ignore the sailors murmuring off in corners and the passengers sneaking peeks from below deck.
A bottle’s been shaking within my coat for an hour now, the wind’s voice slipping past the tight seal. HOME. HOME. REALLY HOME.
Now that we’re well away from Father and his crew, I have a deal to make good on.
When I release the wind from its bottle, he flies upward immediately to mingle with the titan storm. They build and play off each other like singers in harmony. The wind I’ve just released grows, and many little winds rise in their wake, spiraling off on either side of our ship, all of them rushing with the murmur of home, home, home. And then there’s that rush beyond human words that happens when winds are uncontained, when they’ve long been unbottled or they’ve simply forgotten all of a sudden. When they’re flying so wild they can’t be bound by any tamer, and they aren’t bothering to think of humans at all.
The crew scrambles as the storm intensifies, and somewhere far below me I hear Namade cursing the name I left behind.
Our ship can hardly keep up with the wind.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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Physically, Allison Mulder resides in the Midwest, writing fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Figuratively, she exists somewhere in the Venn diagram of silly, scary, and sappy. She also has a frankly untenable number of hobbies. Her stories have appeared in Flash Fiction Online, Escape Pod, Cast of Wonders, and more. You can find them all squirreled away at allisonmulder.wordpress.com, though Allison herself is more easily found on Bluesky as @amulderwrites.bsky.social, or through her newsletter at silent-pages.ghost.io. | |