I sprinted toward Hell Gate.
9
Now that the wind had peeled back the thick-scabbed crust of mourning, it found only the rough, pink-skinned ache of its bleeding grief.
Grief, it decided, wasn’t strictly a human thing. It was a thing of spirit. The wind saw that when it gave birth to love, it also gave birth to the possibility of grief. It was the same as when the world had been spoken into existence. The world was only good, but the birth of good had allowed the possibility of evil. In this world where the wind existed, one thing couldn’t be born without the possibility of another.
And so the wind had left the girl in the solemn one’s arms, recognizing both love and grief in the way she rested her head on his shoulder, and in the way he gently held her in his arms. The girl’s eyes were closed, her hands clutching the man’s shirt. But the man’s solemn eyes were open, and he stared wretchedly at the knife stuck in the loamy riverbank soil. The wind had never been good at naming human emotions, but perhaps it was learning.
The solemn one was still holding tightly onto that painful shard of love in his heart. It had almost shattered and disintegrated many times, but it still pierced him. The day he let it dissolve would be the day he stopped feeling both love and grief and became only rocklike hate. He would be a soul so barren the possibility of good would never sprout.
It would be better for them both if the girl killed him before that happened.
The wind tapped the girl’s cheek goodbye and ruffled the solemn one’s hair. Then it caught the sun-glossed black wing of a cormorant in flight.
The water bird dove toward the East River, catching the last froth of mist and splashing through its cool breath. The wind laughed as the cormorant torpedoed toward the waves. It was an iron-black arrow, shooting through the sunrise’s orange flame. It burst through the water, cut the sun’s reflection of cold orange fire, and dove into the depths.
The cormorant tucked its wings against its body, and the wind clung to its slick feathers. Air bubbles raced free, and the wind shrieked as they rocketed down. Then, climbing with powerful kicks, the bird burst from the water, breaking the sky. Air crashed around the wind, and it laughed wildly as the bird thrust its black wings wide. The diamond-bright scales of a white perch glistened for a flash then disappeared down the cormorant’s throat. The bird flapped its wings and threw the wind into the air.
The wind spun wildly like a swirling eddy and was caught in the diesel pull of a speeding boat. It sneezed at the heavy fumes and bounced over the coughing rumble of the boat’s engine. Then it skipped over a tour boat, and the guide’s hurried words dropped like stones flung into the water. It hopscotched across the waves toward the sound of morning traffic, the boom of construction, and the hungry coo of pigeons hunting for breadcrumbs. It caught the sunrise’s bright luster slanting off glass and stainless steel, and it felt?—
Oh!
It felt this. This! The wind had forgotten the dizzying joy of the world. It had forgotten the feel of life. It had forgotten what the world was when it wasn’t shrouded in mist and grief.
It had even forgotten there were other beings it cared about.
The wind gusted south and spread itself thin, searching. It slipped through alleys. Skipped across intersections. It twined through the city, searching, until the sun had topped the skyscrapers and hung on top of their spires like an orange balloon about to be pierced by a needle.
But finally, the wind found him.
He was in the catacombs. It was bone and parchment scented. Cold and lung-dry. The yellow-green lights tinged the man’s skin a sickly, unearthly color.
Outside the mansion, in the fresh air above, the church bells rang a bright, harmonic noonday song. And although it loved to slide down the notes and tug on the bellpulls, the wind resisted the tug of music and instead puffed over the dirt floor to the man.
It made a happy, humming noise. Even though the man wasn’t the boy, he was still beloved.
It rubbed along his legs, twining between them.
The man ran his hand through the air, telling the wind he knew it was there.
A group of conjurers crowded into the tight catacomb room. This was where the girl had died. Where the boy had killed the old woman who’d raised him and loved him.
The room was different now. The door had been replaced with thick, cold metal. The bone and mortar walls had crumbled and were reinforced with illusion. The long, flat stones that glued beings in place were cracked and charred. Their sticky, wrong feel was gone. They were only rubble now.
The wind hummed happily as it nudged at the cracked gray stones. It was good they were broken. The cruel one had tortured too many beings on those stones.
The cruel one stared at the stones now, his eyes thin and poisonously dark. He’d always smelled of parchment and cruelty, but a new scent was there. It was a dark, hungry thing the wind couldn’t name. When the wind drew close, the hungry, dark thing turned as if it could sense the wind.
The wind screeched and flew back, throwing dirt and bone dust into the air.
The Bard coughed and waved his gold-ringed hand. “Why must we meet in this musty, miserable wreck? I have a perfectly good mansion?—”
“Why?” the cruel one’s father interrupted. The Clark who smelled of parchment and molting snake skin. The wind wouldn’t climb over his smooth skin; it wouldn’t feel his cold pulse. “Have you forgotten the null is killing conjurers? He’s hunting us?—”
“Yes. And here you are, cowering from a null.” The Bard’s lip curled. He wore a deep indigo suit and a black fabric band around his left arm. Ah. He was in mourning too.
The wind slid over the black fabric and wondered at the cold, emotionless scent of it.
