The man looked over his shoulder and then crossed the dark street, splashing through a strip of light and then plunging back into darkness. The wind kept close, creeping slowly behind him. When the man looked back again, narrowing his eyes, the wind hid in the dirt around a sidewalk tree, knocking red begonia heads together. A rat who’d been happily nibbling on a pizza crust scuttled across the concrete and dove under a parked car.
The solange-eyed man stared at the car, holding his hand out. The pins-and-needles sting of illusion crackled around the wind. It rattled the begonias.
The man cocked his head, listening to the sound of the wind through the flowers, and then his mouth lifted in a half-smile. He dropped his hand and continued down the night-dark street. He walked with a light, rolling gait—the one he used when weaving between swords and maces in a gauntlet. Except the solange-eyed man didn’t sway and tilt anymore; he held himself tall and sure, like a strong oak that had grown perfectly straight under a blessed noonday sun.
So the crown wasn’t too heavy? It didn’t make him bend or bow?
The wind hummed, skipping after him, bouncing on trash can lids and sliding down iron railings. Every now and then, it would ruffle a roosting pigeon’s feathers and laugh when it cooed in surprised irritation.
At the startled coos, the solange-eyed man would flash a lightning-quick smile.
Was it him?
Who?
The wind called.
The man looked over his shoulder. “Does she know me?” he asked, his voice a deep thunder that rolled through the wind. “You said she did. Is there any of her left? Is there?”
The wind held still. It kept quiet. This was the girl’s secret. It wouldn’t tell the solange-eyed one, even if he asked politely. The girl hadn’t told the wind to keep this secret, but it would.
It told the solange-eyed one what the girl had asked it to, and that was all it would tell him. He was a Smith. And while the girl loved him, the wind did not. Instead, the wind was wary of him, just like a human would be wary of a rip current or quicksand. Or perhaps a forest fire or a hurricane.
The solange-eyed one was a dangerous being. A powerful being.
He was an elemental force who had once loved the girl.
If he loved her still, then he would want her to remember, and he would want her good.
But the girl could be harmed if the solange-eyed one pulled her good out before it was safe.
Didn’t he know that?
Didn’t he know unlocking her good too soon would destroy it?
The wind blew a warning breath, knocking against the man.
He drew in a long breath. “No? None of her left?” He smiled, his eyes focusing on a streetlight flickering at the end of the block. “Then I suppose I’ll have to love this version of her.”
The solange-eyed man turned and ducked into the entry of a five-story white-brick building. The windows were opaque. The wind tapped on them. They bounced with that thick, muffled give that meant they were impervious to bullets and other human weapons. It scraped at the lip of the door, but it was sealed with rubber. The wind huffed and went in search of a crack.
It took too long. Much too long. The building was sealed as tight as a coffin. The wind finally resorted to poking around in the dirt, hunting cockroaches. It found one: a fat, brown-shelled, scuttling thing aiming toward the building. Cockroaches always knew the way into buildings. Even airtight, impenetrable buildings.
The wind slipped through a crack on the cockroach’s back, rode its scrambling legs up a pipe, and climbed out a rusty drain into a kitchen sink full of dirty dishes.
“—you give your word?”
The wind drifted over a dirty pot crusted with hardened macaroni and flaking ketchup. It moved quietly, careful not to slip on the dish soap dripping from an overturned bottle. Even so, at its passing, a bubble grew and popped.
“What is my word worth? Nothing. No, I don’t give you my word. You will have to trust I want this enough not to betray you.”
The wind skirted past a dining-room table covered in Styrofoam take-out containers and empty bags of chips. The being who spoke had a voice like the groan of a rusted door pried open after years closed.
The wind shivered. It knew that voice. It was the mine. The rocklike one’s first mine. It was a being as old as the rocklike one. So old its spirit had calcified. The wind avoided this mine whenever it strolled the halls of Hell Gate. It was a thing that may have once been human, or humanlike, but it wasn’t any longer.
Eons ago, the wind had blown through a long, tube-like cave, laughing at the music it had played. In the limestone depths, it had stopped and peered into a dark pool, wondering at the ripples in the surface. A giant spider was squatting at the pool’s edge. Suddenly, a milky-gray, bulbous, eyeless creature had leaped out of the water and swallowed the spider. It had disappeared beneath the water, leaving the wind to shiver at the smear of its cold, glossy flesh and its cavernous, wind-eating mouth. What would’ve happened to the wind if that creature had swallowed it? Would it have been lost in that deep, dark place forever?
The wind had raced from the cave. It hadn’t thought of the creature again until it met this mine. They were the same, with their milky-gray skin, their cavernous mouths, and their calcified souls.
