Whisperwind Wilma's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

Wilma followed the power line east until the grass gave way to a patch of cracked pavement. A playground stood there alone. Bright swings hung still. A green slide caught the late sun. No children climbed the ladder. A small boy sat at the foot of the slide with his back to it, knees up, waiting for nothing in particular. Wilma slowed. He was the first child she had found in miles. She gathered the berry scent against her chest and leaned in to whisper. The imp tightened its grip on her edge before the words left her. Its claws had hooked deeper since the barn. Letters peeled off its skin and stuck to hers. When her whisper passed through that knot of letters, the words came out wrong. Saskatoon turned to sour. Porch turned to alone. Fireworks turned to nobody's coming. The boy lifted his head halfway, then dropped it again. He scuffed his shoe in the dirt and turned his shoulder to the swings. Wilma pulled back fast. Behind him, on the pavement, sat a bright green candy someone had spat out. Sugar crystals glittered along its bitter edge. That was the taste her whisper had left in his ear. She circled the playground twice and looked at what she was carrying. The imp had built itself a nest in the curl of her trailing edge, a knotted lump of letters wedged tight where her wind narrowed. Every tender word she pushed forward had to squeeze past it first. She could not out-fly the thing. She had tried for two chapters of prairie. So she stopped pushing forward and pulled inward instead. She drew the berry scent close, packed it tight, and then let the bitter part out on purpose. She blew the anger straight at the imp. Every grievance about the eastern winds, the mountain drafts, the coastal gusts who never showed. She fed it all of it at once. The imp swelled. Its letters brightened. It chewed and chewed and grew too heavy for her edge. It slipped. It clawed once at her trailing wind and tumbled down into the dirt beside the spat-out candy, fat and slow and grounded. Wilma did not wait to see what it did next. She turned to the boy and whispered again, clean this time. Saskatoon. Porch. Fireworks soon. He lifted his head fully. He stood. He walked to the swing and sat down and looked east, the way children look when they are waiting. Wilma climbed and kept going. Her edge felt lighter and thinner than before. The berry scent was smaller now. She had spent something to shake the imp loose, and she could feel the difference in how much wind she had left.