The toothless woman grinned, opening her mouth in a wide, happy, gum-filled smile. “That’s the spirit. I knew you loved a bargain! You just open it up and wave it about when it gets hot. That’s the way.”
The old woman flicked her wrist, snapping the bamboo sticks open so the pink and gold fan spread wide. The wind was shoved back by a quick gust, then the old woman snapped the fan shut again.
The citrus and pearl dust scented woman frowned and tucked the fan into her pocket.
“Would you like a lucky cat?” the old woman asked, gesturing to her table. “You might need one. You remind me of my mother. She could’ve used a lucky cat.”
The citrus and pearl dust scented woman frowned. She was a man with large caterpillar eyebrows, not a woman who looked like anyone’s mother.
“Um . . . no, thanks.” She cast a final glance at the toothless woman and hurried to her apartment building’s door. It closed after her, but the wind stayed where it was, bobbing on a plastic cat’s head.
The old woman smiled, licking her pink tongue over her protruding gums. “Well . . .” she said finally, “nobody who goes in ever comes out. Except that one.”
She laughed, and the wind shrieked. It knew that laugh. What was he doing here?
“What a cheapskate. Conjured dollar, my foot. You know,” the Merchant said, looking directly at the plastic cat the wind was perched on, “there was once a time when people appreciated a good bargain. When they bartered. When they paid real money. For instance, yesterday. Someone paid me real money yesterday. Not conjured crap.” He wadded up the dollar bill and tossed it over his shoulder. “Well, it’s done now. The joke’s on her. Or him. Will the Ward find it funny? Hmm. I’ll have to think about that. Are you coming, little spy, or are you going to tattle on me?”
The wind shrieked and sped across the street. All the same, it could still hear the Merchant’s laugh as he wheeled away in a sleek metal chair, leaving behind the table full of plastic waving cats.
72
The wind was not a tattle tale. It could keep secrets. It had kept secrets for eons. There were secrets locked so deeply in the wind’s vault that they hadn’t been aired out for centuries. If the wind unlocked the vault, opened the creaking door, and let light inside, the secrets would crumble to dust at the first spray of sun. There were secrets so old their brittle bones would disintegrate at the first breath of air.
How dare the Merchant insinuate a great, wondrous being like the wind was a tattler? The wind had kept the Merchant’s secrets, hadn’t it?
If huffed northward, following the taxi the Merchant had flagged. The yellow van darted along the river, bobbing like a fishing lure in a swiftly running stream. Every now and then, the wind caught the driver’s muffled voice, entertaining the Merchant with a human joke.
“. . . only remember twenty-five letters in the alphabet. I don’t know why. Get it? Y? No? Huh. Did you hear the one . . .”
At the tunnel that dove beneath the river, the wind thought about veering east. It could fume in the exhaust, shout louder than the shaking delivery trucks, and shoot through the damp tunnel, emerging far away from the Merchant and closer to the boy.
But no. If it went to the boy, it would whisper about the Merchant, and the wind wasn’t a tattler. If anything was a tattler, it was fire. It crackled and popped and roared and mesmerized and told anyone who would listen every story that had ever been uttered around its bright flame.
Even worse than fire was water. It was a gurgling gossip who babbled constantly. There was a reason humans said water murmured, gurgled, whispered, and roared. Where did they think the phrase “the mouth of the river” came from? Of course water had a mouth. It spilled all its secrets.
The wind slowed, swirling in the condensation plopping from a window air-conditioning unit. It hovered in the drip then dove toward the sidewalk, laughing as the water drop exploded on the concrete. It bounced on the drop and caught the taxi’s opening door.
They were at the Merchant’s tower. As his chair was lifted from the van, he glanced at the heavy gray clouds pressing against the city spires.
“Hope it’ll rain,” the driver said, the van’s metal arms hissing as they lowered the chair. “It’ll break the heat.”
“Did you hear the joke about rain in hell?” the Merchant asked.
“Nope.”
“That’s because there is no rain in hell.”
The driver stared. The Merchant stared back. Then, finally, the driver laughed.
The wind huffed and wandered to a woman selling red carnations. The flower heads stuck out of large white buckets, their tight petals already curling in the heat. There was an entire row of buckets—a whole garden’s worth of carnations. The wind had always loved their smell. It was delicate and quiet, a midnight scent, with dark spice and floral promise. It rolled in the perfume, coating itself in the heady carnation feel, then it dipped down to splash about in the warm bucket of water.
The water gurgled. Then it gossiped. It babbled and burbled and told the wind a secret.
The wind laughed and shot from the bucket. Carnation petals flew in the air like red raindrops. The flower-seller shouted in surprise as the wind rushed through the Merchant’s front door.
“What’s the hurry?” the Merchant called, his fox leaping into his lap.
The wind didn’t stop to rub itself along the fox’s plush coat or twine itself around its firelight tail. No. It sped along the dark, hidden hallway, and then?—
