Last scoffed. “I’d like to see you try.”
The Merchant turned toward her and cocked his head in an eerie, alien way. Last squirmed, and the wasps fell dead into her palm. Luvic dropped the knife to the table.
The Merchant smiled and let go of my throat. “Where were we?”
I smiled back. “You were about to give me a wonderful deal on your Silencer.”
“Oh,” the Merchant said, his face lighting with surprise. “Oh. Now that’s funny.”
“And why is that?”
“Because,” the Merchant laughed, “I really did sell it right before you arrived.”
What?
Who?
Luvic swore.
And that pretty much summed it up.
29
The boy was busy. This wasn’t surprising, because the boy was almost always busy. Sometimes, humans forgot there was virtue in taking your time, moving slowly, or even sitting quietly, doing nothing at all.
For instance, the wind had once flown west and spent long seasons perched on a needle at the top of a saguaro cactus. It hadn’t moved once. Instead, it had cataloged the sundial movement of the cactus’s shadow shifting across the sand. It had laughed at bark scorpions and collared lizards scrambling beneath the ticking shade clock. At night, when spring rushed through the desert, the wind had delighted in the slow unfurling of the cactus’s white flowers and the velvety-soft wings of bats as they swooped in to sip the yellow nectar. When summer rained down, the wind had smiled at the ruby fruit splitting open and the cactus wren feasting on the sweet, pulpy flesh. Through the summer monsoon season to the mild winter spent in the company of a woodpecker, the wind had kept still and quiet. Humans had complained, “Why is it so hot? Where’s the cooling breeze? Why hasn’t the wind brought any rain?” But didn’t they see? Sometimes, a being had to be still. Sometimes, a being had to be quiet.
But humans didn’t see this. They liked to be busy. They liked to go fast. They liked to be loud.
Even the boy—who was moderately wise, very polite, and (when he listened to the wind) cunning and intelligent—had not learned the lesson of going slow.
Mistakes happened when you swirled around in a tornado rush. Especially when you should be perching quietly, watching and waiting, rather than running all over the sweltering city stalking phantoms and ghosts.
But the boy, of course, hadn’t listened to the wind. Not after the wind had told him where the citrus and pearl dust scented woman and the musician were hiding.
As soon as the wind had whispered the news, the boy’s cheeks had flushed sunset-pink, he’d gotten a strange smile, and then he’d said in a laughing voice, “It was Lia in the boat? Really? She conjured that water beast?”
Mosasaur, the wind had whispered, irritated for the forgotten being, since the wind had raced mosasaurs across the ocean eons ago.
“She’s alive.” The boy laughed. “She’s incredible.”
The wind flicked his ear. It wasn’t as if the woman had come to help him. The opposite, actually. Besides, the Bards thought he was unhinged.
The boy had shrugged. “You didn’t ask what she thought of me—you asked what I thought of her.”
Actually, the wind hadn’t asked anything at all, but the boy wasn’t listening. He hadn’t listened for the rest of the sweltering, humid, heavy-aired day. He’d just scrambled around the city, dashing from one borough to the next, running up and down subway tunnels, pushing through the pea-soup-thick air, chasing the woman.
The wind felt like a wet rag that had soaked up a pot full of boiling water—almost too heavy to move and definitely too weighed down to breathe. It dripped and struggled, wishing the boy would find a patch of shade to be still in.
But no.
Instead the boy galloped across town trailing the woman and the musician, first to the Merchant’s shop (the wind did not enjoy the Merchant or his jokes), then to the charred skeleton of the Bard mansion and the horrid tunnels below, then to a noodle shop for lunch (the lemongrass scent was nice; the steam was not), then the boy lost them for a short time when they changed forms again, then he found them outside the Clarks’ stalking away from the ruins, and now, finally, the boy was trailing the woman, back in the boisterous neighborhood near her tiny, cave-like, one-room apartment.
The musician was gone. In Bowling Green, he and the woman had split paths like a stalk of grass torn in two. The boy had chosen to stay with the woman, and the wind had chosen to stay with the boy.
A trail of sweat dripped down his face, pooling on the tip of his nose and then sliding off. The wind huffed and blew at the lines of sweat. Even the boy’s hair was damp, the light gold color turning a darker shade, like wheat in the last days of autumn.
He hadn’t changed his appearance with illusion. He was himself. Slight, unassuming, an unnoteworthy human in jeans and a T-shirt, just wandering the city on a too-hot day when he should be inside. No one noticed him—not even the woman. This was a Ward trick, this unnoticing thing.
