“I expect I’ll be okay,” he said, looking both ways and waiting for a taxi to pass. He started across the wide, shadowed street, weaving between slow-moving cars. The wind skipped after him, dodging bumpers and spinning past wheels. “I’ve survived enough traps to know how to handle myself. Besides, they’re puppies compared to Wolf, and I’m the Ward. What can they do?”
The wind huffed. He hadn’t seen the battle-hardened brother shove the boy off the cliff. He hadn’t seen the twisted cruelty of the solange-eyed one.
The wind knew what they could do. It understood that the brighter a man’s light, the darker his shadow. If his branches reached to heaven, then his roots reached to hell.
But the man, unlike the boy, never listened to the wind. Instead, the man had been ordering the wind about ever since he was a child. The wind did not take orders. If it happened to do what the man wanted, it was merely a coincidence.
The only thing the wind did on request was keep a secret. The wind kept all the man’s secrets.
Don’t go inside.
The man stood at the foreboding entry and craned his neck to look up the flat stone front. “It will be fine. But if not . . .” He turned and stared at the jagged-toothed leaves of the silver linden. The wind rustled the leaves, making them shake and tremble. “If not . . . Wolf’s waiting for me. He’ll be there to greet me. Wolf always keeps his promises, so I know he’ll find me. So . . .”—the man cleared his throat—“if, for some reason, I don’t come out, please remind Uliea to eat. She often gets lost in her head and forgets. Tell her, if she’s looking for the shortbread, she mistakenly put it in the dishwasher, and her blue dress is at the dry cleaners. And . . .”—he turned from the leaves, and the wind inched closer—“tell Jacob . . . if something happens, tell Jacob to take care of his mother and his sister. Tell him he knows what to do.”
The wind stilled.
It lost all its air and fell like a giant rock to the ground. It lay on the sidewalk, stunned. Then it swirled and spun in a wild circle.
The boy?
The boy?
It picked up litter and dirt and flung them about.
The man smiled. “What? You thought my son was dead? No, I haven’t seen him. How do I know he’s alive? Do you really think a secondborn Smith could kill my son? You have no faith. He’s out there somewhere. You just have to find him.”
But . . .
The wind shrieked as the man knocked on the Smiths’ door. It gusted, asking a hundred questions, all ending in, Where? But the man didn’t answer. He only smiled at the wind’s gusting.
The door was flung wide, and the battle-hardened brother loomed over the man. “Hello,” he said, his scent steel-hard. “Come in.”
The man stepped inside, and the battle-hardened one slammed the door. The wind ran into it and shuddered at the vibration. Rude. Rude, battle-hardened, cliff-tossing, steel-like Smith.
It slipped inside through the crack under the door and raced after the man and the steel-hardened one.
“. . . on the roof,” the battle-hardened brother said. “He’s eager to discuss a truce.”
“As am I,” the man said, his eyes moving quickly.
They climbed the stairs, moving at a rapid pace. They were already many winding flights up and nearing the door to the rooftop. The wind was dizzy, chasing them spiraling flight after spiraling flight.
The man and the battle-hardened one were speaking in low voices, but it was hard to concentrate with the repetition of the boy, the boy drumming through its spirit.
Oh, the boy!
Was the man right? Was the boy still alive?
This Smith hadn’t killed him?
The wind sang happily as the battle-hardened one opened the door to the rooftop. The wind rushed out before the man and slid over an iron railing, splashing into a golden bath of sunshine. It wrapped itself in the glittering cobwebs of sunlight and bounded free to land on the quick kiss of a butterfly’s wing. The world was a joyful, wondrous place.
A hawk’s shadow passed overhead, its keer a wildly free, inviting sound. The wind could grasp its outstretched wings and glide through the city. It could find the boy!
The wind spun toward the man, eager to tell him its plan.
Only, the man wasn’t where the wind thought he would be.
It shrieked and swirled about.
