by Jessica Daw
“I want to be taken to the land east of the sun and west of the moon.” Ruth had suggested I use that name rather than Sikuvok. The winds were too old to know or care what us mortals referred to places as.
A wordless hiss rattled across the ground, giving me the impression of thought.
“Can you take me?”
“No.” He drew the word out, a sigh.
“No? You can’t?” I felt hysteria building in me. “Be specific,” I commanded, refusing to let my voice shake. No fear.
“I cannot take you.” The hissing words were louder, and I wondered if I’d angered him. I didn’t care if I had, as long as he took me to Kristian. Or at least found a way for me to get there. I had a week. Only a week.
“Do you know someone who can?” I did my best to keep my words even. It probably wouldn’t get me anywhere to blow fire at him. First, it probably wouldn’t convince him to help me, but more because I was sure he’d just reform with more sand. It would be pointless to waste my energy like that.
Another wordless rattle, this one making me think of a growl. That may have been because I was used to Kristian growling at me. Often. The wolf paced faster.
“Do you?” I repeated impatiently.
“Yessssss.”
“Will you take me to them?”
“It is my brother. Wesssssst.”
“Will you take me?”
A sigh rustled around me. “Yessss.”
“When?”
The constant sound of sand shifting grew louder, and the wolf grew larger. “Now.” Before I could do anything other than blink, the wolf bent its head and dove toward me, knocking me off my feet. In the few seconds of disorientation, he lifted me off the ground.
It was terrifying and exhilarating to ride the west wind. Different in every aspect from gliding on the wind over the lake at the castle while wearing wings, more so than I’d expected even after Ruth’s warning. I had to consciously hold on, keep the wind solid beneath me, while we ripped through the sky faster than I’d ever gone before.
The heat was intense, dry and crackling, whooshing through my hair until it ripped away the torn fabric that had been wrapped around my head and my hair was streaming behind me in a dust-coated tangle of a banner. I wanted to look at the world around me, seen from so high above, but the sand stung my eyes.
Eventually, though, most of the sand disappeared, leaving only dust fine as powder, and I could watch below as the last brown leaves were blown from trees, as dry grass rippled like a stone-disturbed pond, as mirror lakes turned warped and white-crested.
The sun fell from the sky even slower than its usual prodigious speed, and then stars lit the sky, but still we flew west. I leaned back into the wind and my eyes fluttered closed. My sleep was not deep or easy, but much more so than I would have expected it to be, riding the east wind.
When we landed, only faint lavender light colored the sky, a few stars still visible in the westernmost reaches of the heavens.
The poor east wind was diminished to little more than a pale specter of a wolf, and when he spoke his voice was a bare, dry wisp. “He will come if you call,” he said, and then the wolf blew away from under me and I was alone again.
Legs weaker than I’d realized, I slipped to the ground, landing with my legs curled at one side and my hands supporting me on the other.
In front of me was a stretch of stone, stormy iron ocean lying beyond it. All of it was weather-swept and nearly lifeless as the desert, though some hardy grass grew in the plentiful cracks in the stone.
I allowed myself time to dig in my pack first for more clothes—it was colder here than east—and then for traveler’s bread, shoving it into my mouth without tasting it, which really was for the best. I thought that Dagmar would be surprised to see her headstrong young charge sitting on rock and eating bread as hard as her seat. I didn’t think Kristian would be, though.
After eating, I sighed shakily and stood. “West wind!” My lips were still dry, my throat burning. “I would speak with you!”
I had hardly noticed the already-existent breeze, so accustomed had I become to riding the back of the east wind. At my words, it picked up, sounding almost like the crashing of ocean waves without the rise and fall, a steady, building sound. It slowly pushed back on my dress and hair until both were flying behind me.
When my ears felt oppressed by the unwavering noise, I saw the water dance up in inexplicable columns, half of them not falling, until they shaped a white stallion, galloping toward me at full speed, his man tossing wildly, water flying from it like diamonds, even though the sun was half-hidden by clouds.
He pulled short of running over me, prancing and snorting and tossing his head, as restless as his brother. Wind, I supposed, could not be still. Droplets of water hit me, cold as ice, but I met the west wind face on.
When he spoke, his voice was the same rushing, distant roar as he’d made running toward me, uninflected as his brother’s had been. “Who are you?” Also like his brother, the horse’s mouth did not move at the words. The horse was not the wind, I realized, only a manifestation of it. It seemed obvious as soon as it crossed my mind, but I’d been thinking about too much to be expected to put everything together.
“I am a journeyer. I seek the land east of the sun and west of the moon,” I answered, squinting against the saltwater spray of his unceasing motion.
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to take me there,” I replied, shoulders square as I could make them.
A rapid rise and fall in the rush of sound made me think of the irritated huff Kristian would make. “I cannot.”
I made my own irritated huff. “Do you know anyone who can?” My face was doubtlessly clean by now, my clothes soaked. If he had taken me straightaway to Sikuvok, I would probably have died from exposure, wet as I was.
The horse tossed his mane, sending a fresh wave of misty water my way. “My southern brother may.”
“Is he the strongest?” I asked, annoyed that the east wind hadn’t just taken me south rather than wasting my time going west.
“No. North is strongest.” I thought I heard a sigh in his words.
“Then take me to him!”
The constant background rush escalated, slow but unmistakable, as he spoke. “My northern brother is more likely to kill a human than to help. South may be strong enough to take you. He is kinder than North.” The horse grew wilder, as if he would trample me in the next second, the next, the next.
“Then take me south.” I didn’t add please, not from pride but from a feeling that it would turn the west wind away from my cause rather than toward it.
The horse slowed, walking deliberately toward me. “I will. Get on.”
Without hesitation, I moved to his side and got on. It was like climbing a cloud, insubstantial, but somehow he held me up. Probably had something to do with how hard I was making myself stay. My insides were sore like overworked muscles from the magic I’d expended to not fall through the east wind—and my muscles’ work was far from finished, poor things. As soon as I was seated, he started galloping across the stone the east wind had deposited me on, gaining speed as the sea and land blurred around us, and then we left the ground, soaring into the air over the iron gray ocean.
I was instantly chilled, the wind no less wet than it had been on the ground, only now I sat in it, and it was immediately in front of me, behind me, surrounding me. I was wrapped in a wet, cold cocoon that snatched away any and all warmth before I could feel it.
After an immeasurable amount of time riding over the water, the west wind’s course took us over land. Then, as the east wind had ran out of sand, the west wind’s water stopped being replenished, and the ride became drier. By the time the sun began setting, I was only damp.
The air was getting warmer. The warmth was different from the scorch of the east wind’s desert. This was warmth that embraced and caressed, seeping straight into my core and eradicating the last hints of cold.
When the west wind landed and stopped, it was much too dark to see where we were, other than a thick latticework of inky black plant life against the star-strewn sky overhead. I stumbled off the horse’s back, collapsing from exhaustion and stiff limbs, the ground, fortunately, soft enough to cushion my fall. I lay still for a moment, staring up at the mostly obscured sky.
I could only feel the west wind now as a hint of cool on my cheek. “I wish you luck, journeyer.” The words were the faintest rush, stirring the fine hairs surrounding my face.
“Thank you,” I whispered back, but the air was still.
In the morning, I thanked heaven and anything else for the presence of mind I’d had to cast my protective wards the night before, and for the charms Kristian had given me, and even the residual wards from when I’d been Princess Helena Nordskov of Vansland. Everything around me was crawling with bugs, infinitely more hideous than anything I’d ever seen before, clicking and whirring and flying with glittering black eyes and jewel-colored bodies. Who knew how many of them were poisonous?
I stood, feeling itchy, though I knew nothing as powerless as a bug could break through my wards. That didn’t make them less disgusting.
They’d been so distracting that I’d hardly noticed my surroundings. Now, standing, I did.
I’d never seen anywhere so lush. I was surrounded by every shade of green, from the pale yellow-green of the first leaves in spring to the almost-black green of evergreens in the depth of winter. Every color in the green was as jewel-bright as the insects that crawled over it, nothing pale or soft, all brilliant and so very alive.
Heat hung in the air, heavy as the clouds of steam that accompanied the death of a fire by water. I longed to strip down to my desert attire, but stopped myself. If all went well, I would be flying to Sikuvok very soon. So, resigned, I began wrapping myself in layer after layer, placing all sorts of spells to keep myself warm, eating in between. The whole process took over an hour.
The place I was in was full of noise. Shrieks and whooshes and croaks, whistling and cracking and rustling, forming a constant tapestry of sound. I found myself longing for the silent stillness of the far north, the only sound the sighing of wind over the gray, frozen world.
Wind.
How many days had it been since I talked to Magdalena? Had it only been two? That made today . . . it had been the twenty-first, and I’d been with the east wind on the twenty-second, the west on the twenty-third, so it was the twenty-fourth. My heart started racing. Five days until Kristian’s wedding.
“South wind!” I shouted, my voice strong with the moist air. “Manifest yourself!” Ruth had told me that as the winds got stronger, their humanity lessened. Therefore, I figured extra courage was required to convert the south wind to my cause.
Leaves began whipping around, hurling themselves from trees and skipping across the ground, insects were dislodged and fell haphazardly—which, making me immensely proud of myself, I did not wince at—and the noise increased a hundredfold, becoming a roar.
A huge cat came bounding into view, made of a whirlwind of leaves, whipping about so fast that the cat was hard to look at. He paced even faster than his brothers had. I couldn’t help but notice that a few insects were picked up and whirled through his lean body, which forced me to suppress a shudder. I knew Kristian would probably mock me when I told him how revolting I’d found the insects, but when there’s something crawling around that’s the size of my fist, I can’t be expected to feel completely at ease.
“Are you the south wind?!” I had to shout to be heard over the uproar.
“I am,” was the rustling, sourceless reply. The cat continued pacing.
“Take me to the land east of the sun and west of the moon!”
By now, I was becoming expert in the winds’ ways of expressing themselves. He most definitely growled. “I cannot.”
“Then take me to your northern brother!” I had been prepared for his answer, though the ever-faster ticking of a clock inside me still sped at his words. Running out of time.
“Why go there? It is dark and cold.”
He was the first wind to ask, which I found odd. Wasn’t he supposed to be less human? Perhaps he was less intrigued by adventure as a result of his decreasing humanity. “The man I love is there. I must save him.” I did not shout as loudly that time, but he seemed to hear me.
Without consideration, he said, “I will take you north, then.” Then again, perhaps he was simply wind, ready to swerve in a different direction if there was a reason. I didn’t know or particularly care.
Similar to the east wind, rather than waiting for me to mount, he swept forward and lifted me unceremoniously off the ground.
I was engulfed in even more heat than I’d already been swallowed in, the weight of it oppressive, especially with my excessive layers of clothing. I was soaked in my own sweat within a few minutes of flight. It was becoming almost habit to hold the wind solid beneath me, but it was wearing. I thought I could feel the outline of the mythical spring of magic within me, and it ached.
We flew over the top of the trees I’d landed in, their distant boughs stirring with the south wind’s powerful footfalls. He tore through the air like his animal counterpart would have dug into the dirt of the land, spraying it behind him with each step.
Thankfully, the jungle could not go on forever. Eventually, we left the unabating noise behind, and the only sound I heard was the rustling roar of the south wind.
By the time we finished crossing plains and farms and villages and began climbing mountains, I was nearly dry again. I needed to be, to face Sikuvok. My heart stuttered at the thought of finally reaching it, reaching Kristian. What if the north wind couldn’t take me? My time was gone.
No. He’ll take me. He has to.
I repented of the brief folly I’d committed in wanting the silence of the far north as we flew into it, awash in the deep blue of the last moments of twilight. The south wind was little more than a silhouette of himself beneath me, a pale suggestion of a snowy beast, his leaves long since fallen away. He made almost no sound now, and my ears stung as much at the lack of sound as they had from the racket of the south wind’s jungle.
I guessed it to be just past midnight when we collapsed to the ground, crashing into the snow.
“I am . . . very tired,” the south wind whispered.
“Thank you.”
And he was gone.
I was tired too. Fatigue weighed on me like a physical thing, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stand.
I stood. “North wind.” My voice was nothing, lost in the starless night. “NORTH WIND!” The words shattered the still air, surprising even me with their crackling volume.
Shouting again would do no good. It was impossible that the north wind hadn’t heard me. I waited, icy cold seeping into my toes and through my feet.
It felt like hours had passed when I felt the first tendril of wind. Even with my face numb, it was shockingly cold, a finger of ice on my skin.
Suddenly, the wind was upon me, tearing, ripping, clawing, ferocious and vicious and murderous. A beast bore down upon me, made of ink-black thunderclouds torn by lightning. A dragon. There was no hint of softness to it, and absolutely nothing to indicate so much as a trace of humanity.
“You called.” His voice was a distant rumble of thunder, ominous, something I felt in my bones almost more than I heard it.
“Take me to the land east of the sun and west of the moon,” I commanded in my steeliest voice.
The dragon, like his brothers, paced, but his was a slow, creeping motion, like a lion stalking its prey I’d seen in an illusion show once. Only a thousand times larger, and filled with deadly lightning. He did not frighten me because of what he might do, but because of what he might not do. He might not take me.
The north wind paced and paced and paced, no sound but distant rumbling thunder and eternally lamenting wind. Ice blue lightning eyes studied me, studied me, studied me. I held my gro
und, never lowering my gaze, never unclenching my fists.
“Why do you wish to go?” The words were rolling thunder, dry and cold.
There were so many reasons now. There always had been, really, though I had never noticed. What reason would prove most convincing? What reason would sway the north wind to my side?
I had no idea.
Behind all the other reasons was the truth of it all, and that is what I told him. “Love. I have to rescue the man I love from a fate I resigned him to.”
“None of my brothers could help.”
I wasn’t sure what response he was hoping for. Did winds have hopes? Surely they did, if they spoke and took pity on bone-thin girls who only stood by sheer force of will. “Can you?”
“I can.”
The next moment did its best to swallow me, but I held my head high. “And will you?”
Thunder rumbled and the dragon stopped, standing in front of me, ice blue lightning eyes boring through me, not looking away as the disembodied voice of the north wind spoke. “I have only blown an aspen leaf there before. Though you seem little heavier than that leaf, it will take a great effort to carry you there.”
“Will you take me or not?” I snapped. “My time is running out. He is to be married on the first day of the new year, four days from today! If you do not take me, I must find another way there.”
“There is no other way.”
“Then will you take me?! Prove you can take me!” I shouted desperately.
“Impertinent.” Hearing the thunder roll such a word would have made me laugh if tension hadn’t been thrumming fast and hard through my veins, like the lightning that shot through the north wind’s dragon embodiment. “I will take you. Now.” Apparently the challenge was what he needed.
I had expected it, so it was not as terrible as it could have been when the electrified storm-cloud dragon swooped down on me, lightning pouring from its maw. The only thought that crossed my mind was to wonder if I would be electrified after all this trouble. Then we were soaring into the air.
