The Wind That Talked Back

Elowen sat high on her market cart bench and guided her horse down the Brineglass Quay steps, one careful jolt at a time. The sunset lay warm on the chalk hills, and the harbor below looked like dark glass with pale weed ribbons drifting under it. Her cart was full of evening goods: a net bundle, a sack of pears, and two covered baskets she meant to deliver before the tide climbed the lower paths.

“Steady now,” she murmured, and the cart creaked over the stones.

Then the wind slipped around the cliff wall and whispered back.

Not a song. Not a moan. Words.

“Need to remember the sugar,” it breathed in Tobin’s bright voice from somewhere ahead, though Tobin was still twisting rope by the net-menders’ shed. “Need to remember the sugar,” the wind repeated again, louder, as if the quay itself had spoken.

Tobin looked up with a startled grin. “Well. That’s rude.”

Near his boots, Mira in her patched blue coat froze with a bundle of string in her hands. The wind caught her own tiny mutter and tossed it across the steps: “Do they even see me?”

Mira’s round face went pink. Tobin stopped smiling so quickly it was almost funny, except the whole quay had begun to hear itself. A fishwife by the cracked clock pressed a hand to her mouth. A boy with a crate of onions stared at the air as if it might answer him next.

Elowen pulled her reins in tight. She had meant to keep moving, keep her errands neat, and beat the tide down the steps. But now the wind was not just blowing. It was repeating private thoughts out loud, and the hush over Brineglass Quay had turned strange and shared, right in the middle of her path.