Windblowne

by Stephen Messer

  Great. Now everyone’s depressed. Oliver crouched on the crest, thinking furiously. There had to be something he could do.

  All around him blew the whispery winds of the desert night.

  Your talents lie elsewhere, Great-uncle Gilbert had said to him, in a time that seemed long ago.

  Oliver closed his eyes, listening, paying attention to the world. The winds’ touch was featherlight and cold. It was the only thing he could hear. There were no birdcalls, no sounds of animals hunting, nothing rising up from the mountain below.

  If you do whisper, O winds, then whisper to me, of oaks which dwell across the worlds.

  They came again, the words Great-uncle Gilbert had scrawled in his precious book. A book written during a time when, perhaps, the oaks had whispered. Maybe that’s what the whispers were, Oliver thought. The sound of the night winds blowing through the oaks, across all the worlds.

  Oliver remembered how the wind had sounded in each of the worlds he had seen. He thought of the lush forest of the last world. The howling winds there had been the most powerful that he had ever heard, as they coursed through the branches of the immense, ancient oaks.

  He imagined that he could hear them now.

  He held his breath and listened.

  It wasn’t his imagination. He could hear them.

  They were there, far away, deep under the sound of the whispering desert winds, like a river running underneath the world.

  Oliver rose to his feet and reached out. They seemed to draw him onward.

  He took a step.

  Darkness enclosed him, and there was a sudden vertiginous lurch as he balanced on the edge of a void that fell away forever on all sides. He ran forward, eyes closed, clinging to the sound of the night winds from the potent world of one moon.

  And then a windburst hit, his breath exploded from him, and he opened his eyes. Above him glowed Aspin, alone. Under his feet lay thick, springy grass. He screamed and fell backward. He landed not on grass but on the rocky ground of the desert crest.

  His heart hammered. What had just happened? Had he imagined it?

  No, he thought in wonder. He held up one hand, felt the gentle breeze play across his fingers. These were the winds that blew across worlds.

  He had to tell Great-uncle Gilbert.

  FLASH

  FLASH

  FLASH

  Oliver whipped around. The light from the flashes was already dying, but he could see three black shapes flying against the backdrop of stars.

  Three more flashes came, then three more.

  Oliver began to run.

  The flashes came regularly as Oliver raced toward Great-uncle Gilbert’s new treehouse. In the distance he could see nets going up one after another. Captured hunters were plummeting toward the ground while others flew around them, slashing at the nets with their metal talons. Most of the hunters were freed before they hit the ground. The crimson kite seemed to be everywhere at once, leading hunters into the nets, always one twist ahead of the grasping claws.

  Oliver staggered and slid through the sand, shouting, trying to distract the hunters. But they seemed to have no interest in anything other than the kite and Great-uncle Gilbert, who had to be running out of nets. More hunters were flashing in every few seconds.

  Oliver reached the treehouse. Great-uncle Gilbert was struggling with a new net, his eyes wide and fierce. “Oliver!” he shouted. “Get that side!”

  Oliver grasped the other end of the net.

  But the hunters had broken through. One struck at Great-uncle Gilbert’s right arm, talons gripping. Three more landed on his left arm. The hunters shrieked, and to Oliver they had never sounded more like shrieks of pain. The old man flung aside his robe, momentarily freeing himself, but several more hunters attacked, grasping his shirt and oaken armor.

  The crimson kite dove, five hunters just behind. Its long tail whipped out and lashed around Great-uncle Gilbert’s waist. The kite heaved, trying to pull the old man free—

  FLASH

  but there was a blinding glare as all the hunters flashed away at once. Great-uncle Gilbert and the crimson kite were gone.

  Triumphant shrieks came from everywhere. A host of flashes turned night into day, and then the fleet of hunters disappeared.

  Only one hunter remained. It circled above Oliver in complete silence. It looked at him with its cold glass eyes, then turned and flew lazily skyward. With a last bright flash, it vanished.

  Oliver lowered the net. The hunter had not even bothered with him.

  The crimson kite was what Lord Gilbert wanted, and now he had it. He wanted Great-uncle Gilbert, too. But he didn’t want Oliver any longer, and so he had abandoned him in what Lord Gilbert considered to be the hell-world.

  But I know something that no one else does. Oliver raced back to the peak.

  At first he could hear nothing but the desert wind and the blood pounding in his ears. Calm down, he told himself.

  He closed his eyes and listened for the night winds.

  He listened to the desert wind, blowing across endless miles to the crest.

  Then under it came a deeper sound, rich and full. Whispering through the oaks across all the worlds.

  This time he heard another sound within it, a keening cry of pain. A dying voice, a voice that he had heard again and again in one world after another, a voice that had once called to him so strongly that its cry pierced his head like a knife.

  The riven oak.

  The terrible headache returned, the pain making it almost impossible to listen. He concentrated on the winds, searching through each of them. He heard the hollow howl of winds trapped inside the Crest Wall. He heard again the shout of the winds of the world with one moon.

  Then he found what he was searching for. The voice of the winds that he had heard each night of his life. The voice of the winds outside his bedroom window.

  He turned to them, and they grew louder. He reached for them, and they blew straight to him.

  He did not open his eyes. It was easier to track the voice if he was not distracted. And so he felt rather than saw the limitless darkness around him, felt a thousand, a million, a billion different winds whipping around him, each carrying a cry of confusion and fear. Oliver let them rush past, realizing that if his attention wandered to any of them, he could lose the voice he was following through the void.

  He stepped forward, into the winds.

  20

  Home, thought Oliver as he ran, throwing himself fearlessly through the night winds, allowing them to hurl him in exhilarating leaps down the crest. He needed their speed—if he wasn’t fast, if his final plan did not work, then it was entirely possible that he was seeing his Windblowne for the very last time.

  They went on with the Festival, he thought as he raced through the night. Every oak in Windblowne had the aspect of midwinter, entirely bereft of leaves. Oliver wondered how the townspeople could go on as normal with signs of disaster looming all around them. But go on they had. Just inside the oakline, safe from the night winds, viewing stands were tarped over and strapped securely to the ground. Debris from the Festival—posters, score sheets, tournament results—whipped through the air along with a thick whirl of oak leaves.

  Oliver ran through his world, the familiar winds murmuring around him, thinking of his kite, his great-uncle, and so many other beings in so many Windblownes who were all depending on the success of his final plan.

  When he returned to the oakline he was panting and sweating and carrying a bulky bundle wrapped in a large blanket.

  Leaving Windblowne this second time was very hard. “Goodbye,” he said, just in case.

  He leapt up the crest, listening for the painful sound of the night winds blowing through the oaks on Lord Gilbert’s world. At first he feared he would not be able to find the subtle voices again.

  No, he told himself. Pay attention to the world. Listen.

  The anxious thoughts and fears slid away. Somewhere beneath the desperate urgency, Ol
iver listened.

  And then came that keening wail of pain, the heartbreaking cry of the riven oak.

  He closed his eyes as the other winds quieted.

  He found the wind that led to that voice and strode confidently toward it.

  He walked between worlds.

  And then he was standing on the crest again. Not his home crest, he knew before he opened his eyes, but Lord Gilbert’s. He could feel the difference in the ground beneath him, smell it in the air around him, and hear it in the deep raging rumble of the winds. He could feel it in the terrible pain of the headache returning, as the winds blew through the riven oak. He pushed it softly away, and the headache faded.

  He opened his eyes.

  The night was burning.

  Down the mountain, Lord Gilbert’s treehouse blazed like a torch, sending a beam of light into the night sky. The spiderweb network of wires blazed too, buzzing and crackling, draining the oaks in this world and all the others, focusing everything into Lord Gilbert’s machines. Sparks danced along the wires in circles around the oakline, surrounding the crest in a cage of lightning. The cage affected even the night winds, for as the lightning brightened, the winds diminished to a stiff gale.

  He looked to the sky, hoping. His heart leapt as he saw that the crimson kite had not been captured. Seven hunters pursued the kite as it fought and dodged valiantly.

  In fives and sixes, more hunters were rising to help the others. A buzzing sound from the wires filled the air. The hunters shrieked in pain. With the treehouse shining and the wires blazing, it was as though night had been eliminated; the stars were washed out by the glare.

  Oliver realized that, after all his travels, he had found the hell-world at last.

  And he had only seconds before the hunters spotted him. Now that Oliver had escaped his banishment, Lord Gilbert would surely order the hunters to attack.

  He crouched and began unwrapping the bundle frantically, wishing he had not been forced to wrap it so securely, wondering what had made him think this mad plan would ever work—

  “Oliver!”

  Two was limping across the oakline underneath the lightning storm, the treehouse beam behind him casting a long shadow up the crest. Two tossed his green-and-black power kite upward into the gale and flew toward the peak. Oliver took in the other boy’s terrified face. He looked, if possible, worse than he had the last time Oliver had seen him. His hair had thinned, he’d lost more weight, and—

  Two reached him, stumbled, and fell, gasping. His voice shook with fear and fury.

  “I knew you’d be here.… He’s activated them all.… He has your great-uncle.… You have to get away.…”

  Above them, sheer numbers had overwhelmed the crimson kite. Eight hunters had grasped it in their talons, yet still it fought, dragging them all across the sky. The rest of the hunters—dozens now—had spotted Oliver and were veering toward him.

  Oliver calmly untied the final knot. “Get behind me,” he ordered Two.

  “But you have to—”

  “NOW!” shouted Oliver, rising.

  Two crawled behind Oliver. “But there’s no way to stop the hunters,” he said, quaking.

  “Yes,” said Oliver, “there is.”

  The cloud of hunters wheeled and dove, shrieking.

  Oliver threw open his bundle.

  The kite-eater burst free from the blanket and shot into the sky.

  The hunters veered, but it was too late. The kite-eater smashed into them, gnashing and twisting, exploding the cloud in a dozen different directions.

  “The kite-eater!” shouted Two, stunned. “But—”

  “Kites,” said Oliver, watching with arms folded as a pitched battle commenced in the skies overhead. One of his plans had worked, finally, exactly as he’d intended. “The hunters are just another kind of kite.”

  “Yes,” coughed Two. “But won’t it eat the crimson kite?”

  “No,” answered Oliver impatiently. The kite-eater was hurtling straight at the captive kite and the hunters holding it. Four of them broke away to face the new threat. “I told it I was going to rescue Great-uncle Gilbert, and that it better obey me if it wanted to save him.”

  With deadly twists and sharp bites, the kite-eater chased off its foes and resumed its charge. The last four hunters were flying erratically now, as the crimson kite thrashed fiercely. With the kite-eater nearly on them, the hunters released the kite with furious shrieks and hurtled away, barely escaping the kite-eater’s snapping jaws.

  The two kites circled each other warily. But the kite-eater had clearly taken Oliver’s orders seriously, and it turned to chase after a nearby hunter.

  Oliver reached up, and from high above, his crimson kite dropped and settled into his grasp.

  “Good kite,” said Oliver proudly. The kite fluttered its sails defiantly.

  The Olivers watched as the hunters scattered all around the sky, pursued by the speedy kite-eater.

  “It’s not going to hurt the hunters, is it?” asked Two anxiously.

  “No,” said Oliver. He gave a piercing whistle, and high overhead the kite-eater paused. For a moment, Oliver feared that the kite-eater would not obey, but then it broke off its pursuit of the hunters and began flying broad, protective circles around the Olivers. The hunters flew back and forth in the distance, screeching, but came no closer.

  “It listened to you!” said Two.

  “I wasn’t sure that it would,” Oliver admitted.

  Two tried to rise but fell back into a sitting position. Oliver looked at him, worried. “Are you going to be all right?”

  Two shook his head. “Don’t worry about me. You have to take the kite and get out of here right now. Lord Gilbert has all kinds of machines and secret weapons you haven’t even seen yet. He can’t be stopped.”

  Oliver stroked his kite, which fluttered firmly in response. “I have secret weapons now, too.”

  He heard the winds blowing from the riven oak, a painful cry, but he knew he could not go to the oak, not yet. He had to stay on the crest, where he and the winds were strongest. He knew Lord Gilbert would come for them.

  Lord Gilbert did not disappoint.

  Down the mountain, the pillar of light brightened. The buzzing in the air—and the cry of pain in Oliver’s head—grew louder. Oliver could see sparks jumping along the wires.

  “What’s he doing?” Oliver asked, beginning to worry. Despite what he had told Two, he had not counted on any secret weapons.

  “It’s the disc,” said Two miserably, sinking again to his knees. “It …”

  A dark blotch appeared in the pillar of light, rising from the oaktops. Oliver could see a silhouette growing larger—a man, perched on the mirror-like disc. The disc was rising smoothly along the metal shaft, and Lord Gilbert was riding it to the top.

  The disc reached the very top of the shaft, and with hardly a pause, it detached and rose into the air.

  Oliver gasped. The disc could fly.

  Bolts of lightning flashed from the bottom of the disc as it drifted toward the crest, carrying Lord Gilbert majestically.

  Oliver took a step back. He had not expected anything like this.

  Two moaned with fear. “It’s too late,” he cried.

  Oliver murmured to his kite, keeping his voice low in case Lord Gilbert had some means of listening. He whispered his final plan, and the kite twisted urgently, quivering but resolute. Oliver felt a surge of love for the kite. He hoped they both survived the next few seconds.

  The disc approached. Bursts of lightning from beneath the disc stabbed through the darkness, leaping from the platform to the wires. Lord Gilbert, on the platform, continued wobbling toward the crest, his fingers dancing on the HM IV. The tower of light from the treehouse threw everything into weird, broken shadows, and the winds screamed as they blasted against the crackling cage of lightning. The sounds should have stifled anything Lord Gilbert had to say, but his voice was amplified like thunder:

  “OLIVER! RETURN T
O YOUR MASTER!”

  “Oliver One or Oliver Two?” shouted Oliver.

  The voice made a sound of strangled rage. “BOTH OF YOU! OBEY ME AT ONCE, OR—”

  Two broke from behind Oliver, running toward Lord Gilbert. The disc was hovering just above the ground now, thirty feet away from them.

  “No!” shouted Oliver. “Don’t!”

  Two made a hideous sound, unleashing years of misery and pain and humiliation into a single cry. He brandished a thick spar, whittled to a point. Oliver had not seen him take it from beneath his jacket.

  Lord Gilbert laughed, and his hand twitched on the HM IV. Two froze, then fell, his arm still raised in defiance.

  Oliver could only watch helplessly. If he got too close to Lord Gilbert, the HM IV would paralyze him, too.

  “You ruined my plumbing!” screeched Lord Gilbert, pointing at Oliver.

  “Why don’t you come and get me, then?” Oliver could see that the disc was having trouble with the gale. It bucked and swayed, requiring Lord Gilbert to continually adjust course with the HM IV.

  “Having trouble?” Oliver taunted.

  Lord Gilbert spat and made more motions on the HM IV. The disc made a strained hum as it fought its way uphill. Oliver felt a numbness creeping up his legs.

  Oliver wobbled on the grass as he watched Lord Gilbert draw near. The winds coiled around him. The crimson kite held its sails wide open, gathering wind, ready.

  Oliver could no longer feel his feet. He sagged to his knees.

  “Go!” he shouted, and released the crimson kite.

  The kite streaked toward Lord Gilbert, fast as the winds. As Oliver tipped over, now completely paralyzed, he saw Lord Gilbert raise an arm to protect himself—the arm that wore the HM IV. The kite smashed into the device at blinding speed. Lord Gilbert screamed, and the HM IV went tumbling down the mountain, sparking and bouncing. A crimson blur—the kite—went hurtling in another direction.

  And the numbness was gone.

  The cloud of hunters dispersed instantly, their cries fading into the distance.