The wind huffed. Here was the depths of the ocean. Here was the worst, most watery place on earth. Here was where careless boys ended up when they chased after solemn ones instead of staying where they should.
“Right,” the boy agreed. “But I can’t get out. I’ve tried. But every time I begin to conjure, they sing louder, and I go . . . a bit mad.” His gaze turned inward. “I can’t even conjure a pair of earplugs.” He laughed. “Not anything. They sing a dirge the second I begin, and . . . if I weren’t who I am”—a Ward, he meant—“I think I would’ve gone mad by now. As it is, I’m feeling a little . . . on edge.”
He barred his teeth, and the wind huffed at the wild, dangerous light in the boy’s eyes.
“You felt the earthquake?” The boy nodded toward the rocky cliff. “That was when Dad died. I was filled with so much power not even the siren’s dirge could stop it. Too bad I didn’t think. If I’d been thinking, I would’ve broken out.”
But how could the boy think in the middle of grief? How could he expect that in the seconds after learning of the man’s death, he’d be capable of rational thought? Humans were barely capable of rational thought on the best of days. The wind pushed at the walls of the prison, testing their strength.
“So. They killed Dad,” the boy added, but since talking about the man wouldn’t help the boy escape, the wind didn’t respond. His throat muscles tightened, and then his Adam’s apple bobbed as he stared down at his hands. “And I wasn’t there.”
The wind sighed and then stroked the back of his hand. The man had chosen his own path. The boy couldn’t have stopped him from walking it.
“Wind?” the boy finally asked. “Do you think you have enough energy to blow so loudly I won’t hear their singing? If you can, I’ll get us out of here. I have enough power now. I have enough power raging inside me to tear open the sea floor and cover it with lava.”
The wind perked up and spun around the small, seawater scented prison. It was humid. It was that strange, painful temperature where a being couldn’t decide whether it was icy cold or scalding hot. It was a tiny space filled with the hypnotic, droning wail of the sirens.
Even now, they sang, trying to bind the boy and suck the joyous, mad, wild spirit from him. Sweat trailed down the boy’s forehead, dampening his wheat-colored hair and plastering his tattered, wrinkled shirt to his skinny form. When the sirens’ wailing increased, the boy flinched, and the soft green of his eyes splintered and unfocused.
The wind snarled and tugged on the boy’s shirt, but when he didn’t acknowledge the wind, it knew what it had to do.
It could see now. If it didn’t have enough energy to howl, they would be stuck in this prison until the boy died and the wind floated alone to the surface in a tiny, breathless bubble.
So the wind gathered itself. It sucked in a giant, rage-filled breath, and it screamed. It howled. It roared. It shrieked with all the desperate passion that had filled it for the past two weeks.
It wailed at the loss of the boy. It shrieked its mourning note. It gusted and bellowed at the death of the man. It bled an earsplitting wild wind call and filled the prison with all its anguish and love. It shrieked for the boy. It drowned the siren dirge with the notes of its own song.
A song for the boy.
His beloved green eyes snapped into focus.
He grinned wildly and rushed to his feet. He held out both hands. The wind tore at his clothes, snapping them like flags. His hair flew around his head, and the wind buffeted him, lifting him off his feet.
The boy laughed, but the sound was torn away and lost in the wind’s roar.
The boy held out his right hand. Placed his thumb to his second and third fingers. The sirens rushed the prison. They slammed against the wall, throwing themselves at the boy and the wind. Their mouths gaped wide. Their teeth snapped as they screamed. They couldn’t be heard above the wind. The boy twisted his hand.
The wall of the canyon exploded. A giant, rocky shelf the size of the Empire State Building slid off the canyon. It plummeted toward the seabed. The sphere-like prison spun like a gyroscope, barreling past the sirens, knocking them aside.
The boy laughed, and the wind screamed.
The canyon walls collapsed. Building-size cliffs slid through the water, crashing toward the abyss. Whales, sharks, and nameless creatures shot through the turbid waters. The prison rocketed through the violent churning.
The sirens were crushed under the sliding rock, their song silenced. The wind gasped for air, its shriek cut off. The boy laughed again, and the wind flicked his ear. They weren’t free yet.
“I know,” the boy said. “But your shriek. It was perfect!”
Well. Of course it was. It was the wind.
The boy’s eyes gleamed as he twisted his hand again. The prison burst, shattering into a million prismed pieces. In its place, the wind and the boy were surrounded by a giant, glowing whale. They were in the belly of a whale. But not a whale. It was a translucent, glass-like whale, rocketing to the surface. What was this thing? A submarine thing? A creature-machine thing? Oh, the boy liked making automatons, and giant robot things, and . . .
“We did it!” the boy shouted. “You did it!”
He spun his arms through the air, catching the wind and laughing.
“Wind! You are the best! You are the most wonderful, the most beautiful, the most . . .” He wiped his eyes. “Oh, Wind. What would I do without you?”
Well. Die, obviously. But the wind wouldn’t tell the boy that. Sometimes, you had to let a being keep its pride.
