Whisperwind Wilma's Arc

Chapter 5 of 7

Wilma climbed east with less weight in her than she had carried at dawn. The boy on the swing fell behind her, but her relief did not last. She tried to glance back at her own path the way a wind does, by reading the trail of dust and bent grass she had laid down. The line was gone. Where her trail should have been, the ground showed only a washed-out smear, soft at the edges, half-swallowed by the dirt. She could not tell if her whispers had landed in the towns behind her or blown past empty porches. Every child waiting east of her depended on the ones west of her hearing it first. She needed to know. She doubled back low and fast. A mile west she crossed a flat field with a hockey goal standing alone at one end. The netting inside the frame was twisted and stiff, caught mid-billow as if a gust had hit it once and quit. No footprints in the grass. No scuff marks at the posts. Her saskatoon scent should have settled here. A child should have lifted a head from a back step nearby. The goal stood the way she had left it, untouched. One whisper, gone. She marked the gap in her mind and pushed on. She found the next gap at a viewing deck above a long slope of prairie. Two wooden benches faced east. The railings were rusted at the joints. She had whispered toward this deck two days ago, aiming the berry scent at whoever might sit and watch the sky for sparks. The benches were empty. No coat left behind. No cup. No bootprint in the dust on the planks. Wilma hovered above the boards and felt the silence sit there like a held breath. Two gaps now, side by side in her route. She could keep flying back and counting losses until she had nothing left to carry forward, or she could choose. She chose forward. She dropped down to the faded smear of her old trail one last time and pressed her remaining berry scent into it, hard, the way a thumb presses ink into paper. The trail brightened for a moment under her, then dimmed. It was the most she could give the west. She turned east and climbed. She would not see behind her again. She would carry what she had left to the next porch, and the next, and trust the children she had already reached to tell the ones she had missed. Her wind was thinner now, and her direction was only one way.