Now only their judgment surrounds me. They’ve rejected me as much as she has.
Once a month my mother sends one gloomy crow to check my progress. He claws me with his razor-sharp talons as he delivers her message—the same message every time. My only contact with my mother, or the Windwalker world.
Has he had the Westerly breakthrough?
An update on Vane. The only thing that matters.
I ignore the birds’ mocking stares and focus on the lone, gnarled oak—a testimony to survival and endurance in the arid desert landscape. I kneeled in the shade of its leaves when I swore my oath to the Gales. My mother didn’t even bother to come outside.
I left that day and never came back. Never planned to return.
This is necessary, I remind myself as I force my feet up the steps.
The house is small, plain, and beige—the kind of place your eyes might skip entirely unless you tell them to pay attention. My mother despises it.
If she had her way, she’d return to our old estate in the east. Surround herself with the soothing tradewinds of our heritage and escape the turbulent desert storms.
But that’s not an option now.
An icy wind blasts the door open, and I’m proud of myself for not jumping. I’m prepared for her games. But I can’t stop my legs from shaking as I cross the threshold into the sparsely furnished, unlit room.
Leave it to my mother to keep our first meeting in four years in the dark.
“Well,” she says in her deep, throaty voice as she rises from a plush armchair by the only window. Moonlight streaks down the delicate lines of her perfect figure and face. Even darkness—or the scowl on her lips—can’t dull her beauty. “Given your dejected demeanor, and the shifting Northerlies I’ve been feeling all night”—she shudders, rubbing the skin on her arms like it itches—“I’m assuming you’re here to ask for help.”
“It’s nice to see you too, Mother.” I can’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. I don’t blame her for the way she’s treated me since my father died. That doesn’t make it hurt any less.
She doesn’t respond. Instead, she rubs the skin on her arms harder—like the itch has grown into pain—and waits for me to speak again.
I clear my throat. “I need you to call the Gale Force for aid.”
One perfectly arched eyebrow rises in my direction and I fight back my sigh. She’ll require every last detail before she extends even the smallest bread crumb of assistance. So I give her the full story: how I used the Northerly to stop Vane from bonding to a groundling. How I joined the wind to force Vane’s Easterly breakthrough. And how Vane gave me water while I was unconscious. I don’t explain the predicament that leaves us in. She knows as well as I do.
My mother makes dramatic pauses a work of art, but I refuse to so much as blink until she finally tosses her long, raven-black hair and turns away. As a fellow guardian, she should be wearing the regulation braid. But my mother’s like a wildwind. She follows her own flow. It’s what my father loved most about her.
She swishes down the hall, flicking on the light so I can see her silky green dress shimmer with each movement. My mother’s never worn a true guardian uniform, needing her skin exposed to the wind in order to use her gift. The slightest ripple in the air speaks to her as clearly as the words of the wind’s song. A secret language only she understands. A constant push and pull. An ebb and flow of power and drain, stillness and motion.
A rare gift and burden none of us have ever understood. But my father tried harder than anyone. He was awed that her strength caused weakness, and he did all he could to steady the turbulence so she could rise above it.
It’s what she loved most about him.
She scrapes a chair across the floor and sits at the narrow, empty table. She doesn’t invite me to join her. I wouldn’t anyway.
Against my will, my focus is drawn to the place it hurts most to look. To the wind chimes hanging over the table, where a chandelier would be.
A blackbird—carved in exquisite detail—soars with spread wings over a series of gleaming silver chimes. My father made it for her the day she chose to bond to him and it has hung from the breeziest eaves of every house we stayed in, filling the air with its tinkling song. It’s the only thing from her past that survived the Stormer’s tornado—not counting me.
Given the perfect shine on the chimes and the way they’re kept away from the elements—safe, protected—it’s obvious which means more.
My eyes burn, but the snub isn’t what upsets me. It’s seeing the chimes trapped inside. Never to sing again.
My mother clears her throat and I force myself to look at her, hating that she caught me staring.
“What was he doing with another girl in the first place?” she asks. “Vane should be so madly in love with you he’d never so much as think of wasting time on anyone else—especially a groundling.”