The boy reached out, and the wind hovered in the gap between them. “Wait.”
The woman paused but didn’t turn back.
“I’m very, very glad you’re alive,” the boy said quietly. He waited for her response, that small smile on his face.
After a long moment, the woman tilted her head and said quietly, “Yes. I still have the necklace. I never took it off.”
She walked from the alley, her footsteps echoing on the concrete. The boy’s small smile blossomed into a grin.
30
The boy smiled as he strolled, hands in his pockets, from the alleyway. He smiled as he meandered past vendors shoving wilting flowers or rank fish under his nose. He smiled as a mass of schoolkids rushed past—screaming, laughing, shoving—nearly knocking him over on their way to the playground. He even smiled when he crossed the street and a delivery truck was only a finger’s width away from running him over. When the driver slammed on his horn and cussed and screamed at the boy, he still smiled.
The wind decided there was something wrong with the boy. He’d never in his entire life smiled for longer than it took the wind to blow a curtain aside. His smiles were a quick flash, like a leaf tossed in the wind or a wave cresting: there then gone.
His smiles didn’t stay.
And they didn’t keep going as if every time the boy tried to tuck it away, it just kept bursting free. It was almost as if there was so much emotion inside the boy he couldn’t keep it hidden. Was there a windstorm inside the boy, turning his lips up and making him bounce as if he were floating a foot above the ground?
The wind nudged him, whistling a question, and the boy shot him a wide grin.
“She never took it off,” he said, and his smile grew even wider. “Did you hear? She never took it off.”
Of course the wind had heard. It heard everything.
The boy’s dimple deepened, and then he skipped down the steps of the subway station. The wind slid down the stainless-steel railing, riding the hot air currents rising from the subway’s depths.
This subway was a wide, concrete mouth, fringed by a vendor’s display of red silk scarves. The walls were a nice, cool white, trimmed with sea-green tiles in the Greek key pattern. The pattern looked to the wind like the endless undulating waves of the ocean. Perhaps that was why the Bard siblings had settled in this area. Or maybe not. Most humans had forgotten what the Greek key meant.
The wind traced the rising and falling of the key pattern as the boy jogged down the steps. His footsteps echoed in the tunnel’s throat, and a responding rumble sounded from its belly. There was a train far below, growling on the tracks.
The boy looked both left, then right, then finally up, still smiling. “Coming?”
Of course the wind was coming. The boy knew how much it loved the subway.
It tapped the pattern one last time. It liked the symbolism—the eternal flow of life, the unbroken bonds of friendship, love and devotion. Perhaps the wind would only fly in a key pattern from now on.
The boy dashed down the tunnel, hurrying into the fluorescent-lit depths. The wind abandoned the idea of slowly meandering and rushed after him.
The subway was fun. Sometimes, the boy and the wind would spend entire afternoons riding the subway just for the fun of it. The boy would stand at the yellow line, perched along the edge of the track, then the wind would rush at him, blowing his hair and his clothes as it screamed past with the charging train. Then, when it had mussed his hair and shouted in his ear, the wind would circle back, and the boy would give it a secret smile.
Then he’d climb onto the train and lean against the rocking wall or sit on a hard plastic seat and sway to the train’s grumbly motion. He’d pull out a book and read for hours, while humans came and went, dozens of them sitting next to him or across from him, none of them noticing him. But the boy, he liked it. He pretended he was a normal human, and he pretended he wasn’t alone.
He never spoke to anyone. Once, an orange had rolled out of an older human’s grocery bag. The boy had chased it down and brought it back to her. He always gave up his seat for anyone who needed it. He gave money to people who walked through asking for help. He was polite. He’d once told the wind that one of his favorite things on earth was riding the train, so the wind wasn’t surprised he’d want to ride the train when he was this happy.
The wind didn’t mind. It loved the tidal wave of the rushing trains, the screaming current and the roaring vibration. It loved the whoosh of the doors and the clacking, creaking joints. It loved flinging itself at the cars and then flying through the dark tunnels, knocking against the boy’s window, waving and shrieking.
Overhead, the long line of fluorescent lights illuminated the narrow platform. The wind tapped their buzzing tubes and laughed as they flickered. The boy hurried down the dirty brown walkway. He liked to stand at the end of the platform, where he could feel the rush of the approaching train.
There weren’t many people waiting. A man listening to music, leaning against one of the steel columns. A mother and a young son sharing an apple cut into neat slices. A white-haired woman leaning on a cane.
The wind sniffed. There was moisture here. It smelled damp and musty. A long time ago, when the humans had first dug this tunnel, the wind had rushed through with the floodwaters. The tunnel had tasted like quicksand and gravel, and there were interesting things to be found—buried trinkets, keys, silverware, bones, teeth, and tools. There was more to find even deeper, but the humans didn’t look that far down.
The boy settled against the tile wall, shoving his hands into his pockets and crossing his ankles. The wind swept over the dirt-crusted brown tiles, bumped over the yellow line, and peered onto the tracks. Rat. Make that two rats. Cockroach. Nothing interesting.
Then the wind smelled something new. Something cruel. Something twisted. Like blood and pain and . . . The wind flung itself around and rushed to the boy’s side.
“I see him,” the boy whispered.
