Whisperwind Wilma's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

Wilma raced east with the berry scent packed tight against her chest. The imp clung to her edge, still spitting letters. She didn't look back at the barn. She watched the grass ahead for the bend of her own dust trail, the thin glowing line of straw she'd been laying since the spire. That line was her map. As long as she could see it curl forward, she knew which way the next town sat waiting. Then the line stopped curling forward. It pulled sideways, lifted, and knotted itself into a coiling shape above the grass. The dust thickened into a drifting body with a slow burning eye. It turned in the air and stared at her. Wilma slowed. The shape uncoiled one way, then the other. She tried to read it as a direction and could not. East was gone. Her own trail had become a creature, and the creature was not pointing anywhere. She drifted off the line trying to get around it. The prairie below looked the same in every direction. Grass, grass, a fence post, more grass. She skimmed low and found a brick wall standing alone where some building used to be. White chalk covered it from corner to corner, looping letters crashing into each other. Children had written over children. She tried to pick out a town name. The marks tangled the same way her dust had tangled. She pulled back. Two twisted maps now, and neither one would hold still. She pushed further and found a metal post bolted into cracked dirt. Four signs hung off its arms, paint streaked, letters half gone. One arm pointed at empty sky. One had no sign at all, just a bent bracket. Wilma circled the post twice. She could not tell which arm meant the next town. The imp kicked the pole and laughed. Then a small voice cut through from the shoulder of the road. An older woman in an orange vest stood there holding a stop sign like a walking stick. Wilma had blown past her crosswalk once, seasons ago. The woman tipped the sign east-southeast. "Town's that way. Two miles. Follow the power line, not the road." Wilma started to ask about the dust shape behind her. The woman shook her head. "Not my corner. Go." Wilma went. She left the chalked wall, the broken post, and the drifting dust creature behind her and tracked the power line low across the grass. The berry scent held. The porch-waiting feeling held. But her trail behind her was no longer a trail she could read, and the imp was already chewing on that. She had her direction back. She had lost her own map to get it.