'The Wind in the Willows' or: 'kinder jewel'

The country where I grew up was a place of fading and losing and fog. Time moved much slower so that everything was the same but not really, and people and places would flicker through the molasses-like hours without ceremony. My schoolmates gave me some space to grieve but they’d forgotten to find me once again. I spent my days in the sleepy schoolhouse counting the seconds, minutes, hours and days. I’d begun to notice when something changed, like when the window shutters shot open and a new student appeared.

  It had been the wind, proud and bullish, pushing the rickety shutters ajar but I felt that it had been that new student– a smirk carved into his small face– that had really done it. Nobody noticed him sitting in the previously empty seat, legs crossed and head in his palm, scintillating eyes darting around the room.

  He looked like a foreigner for sure. He was pale with thin eyebrows and thin hair that floated out from the sides of his hat like a dandelion puff. He was wearing the same uniform as everyone else but even that looked thinner than usual, with the light from the window dyeing the cloth hanging from his arm. He had something strapped around his waist, packed in leather. He looked like he would blow away at any moment. And then suddenly, he was looking at me.

  “Have you seen it?” He said it loudly as if we weren’t in the middle of lecture. His voice was slightly high, and notably even his lips lacked color.

  I whispered, “We’re in the middle of class.”

  “Oh, it makes no difference. Nobody can see it but us; now look!”

  He pointed to the front of the classroom where the teacher was speaking. I could not say much about Mr. Buranka except for that he had spectacles too small for his face and a voice so flat your attention would slide right off it. But I noticed as he spoke, in the back of his mouth was a strange glinting… And in seeing this, I could hear a whistle behind his words. Sharply, like when you press your lips to waxy grass.

  The strange boy saw my confusion and tugged at one of my braids. “It’s too boring in here, isn’t it! Let’s go play outside!”

  “Don’t tug on me, you brute.”

  I swatted his hand away and he cackled. Nobody noticed. “Suit yourself!” Those words flew to the corners of the room with such force that Mt. Burnaka glanced upwards in surprise. The boy jumped up on his chair, stepped onto the windowsill and with a terrific shout! he tumbled through the air– first down to his doom but suddenly towards the sun and over the schoolhouse, his light little figure looking no different than a bird sailing on a current. Yet again nobody noticed, but Mr. Buranka did ask that the windows be shut.

  That was how I met Kiki the Wind Child, and how I hated him so.

—

  I was a part of no clubs or cliques because I had to rush home and make dinner. Truthfully there was no rush at all but I except for the meandering trudge home, I felt myself disappearing in the gaze of others. I was no longer asked questions in class and I’d long since given up on conversations over meals. Away from other’s voices, away from other’s lives, I could hear birdsong and the trickling of streams and in that I could piece myself together again.

  But for a time Kiki began to follow behind me, making mouth sounds that might constitute as a hum. His shoes hardly hit the dusty path– no, there was only a whiff of air as he floated on his way. He had a habit of swinging his hat around and pointing to things, waiting for my reaction. I provided him nothing. But on our usual walks he was slow around the bridge overlooking the bittercress and willow forest. For a moment, he would be still, and that’s when he would flicker the most.

  Nobody visited the spread of willows because it was spring and the bittercress would shoot at you if you traveled through it, but the biggest reason was because of the haunting. The spring storms would run through the patch and cause the trees to sing and the reflection off the paltry stream would create light dances across their leaves that sometimes looked like people. As the leaves swayed the figures would writhe, and we all tried not to look. I had searched for myself from the safety of the bridge but there was nothing that looked familiar.

 Still, Kiki stared. Not exactly searching. Just pressing it into his memory.

 “They haven’t sung in a while…”

  I let the words fall out without thinking. Perhaps it was because his humming normally took up the space.

  “They can’t sing. Their voices were stolen.”

  He swayed slightly, and his hands fiddled with the leather at his waist. I noticed at last that the pack at his side was a sheath for a dagger. Nobody of his age should have had something of the sort but he drew it slightly and I saw it was glittering emerald with a pretty alto voice. “They were gobbled up by some greedy manthing,” He seethed, rising farther off the ground. “They’ve taken my willows away from me!”

  I tugged at his pant leg so he would go flying off in a rage. He came down with some resistance, and I straightened his tie since it had been blown to the side from his tantrum. All the while he stared sharply at the silent willows. “No point in fussing over it,” I assured. “Since there’s nothing you can do.”

  After that he hovered a distance behind me until I had returned home. All the while he hummed weakly, and I realized: the disjointed notes were but a pale imitation of the songs his beloved willows had sung before.

—

  Mr. Buranka had stopped showing up to class so we all wandered our separate ways. I sat just outside the building, under a tree, while Kiki prattled on from the window. Everyone was beginning to forget that Mr. Buranka had lectured here at all, although the glinting from his throat still followed me into my dreams.

“Wind and Trees have always been friends,” Kiki announced matter-of-factly. “Our friendship runs far deeper than any human friendship. They let me fly through their branches, and I carry their songs all over the countryside. For long before there were human words, there have been Wind and Trees.”

  He hung halfway out the window going on and on about the way of the woods, smiling as if he had won something. I wasn’t sure what we were competing at. I’d come to know him as a haughty, prickly little thing and I desperately wanted to prick him back.

  “Is it really so important?” I said flatly, returning to my book.

  “What!”

  “Oh, it sounds nice enough. But you don’t have anything else to say, do you?”

  To my delight, he flipped himself out of the window– light as a feather and as fast as a snake, of course– and rolled through the grass with a wonderful frown. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his limbs, although I wondered if he would start thrashing if I pushed a little farther. The lightness from a moment ago disappeared and he suddenly looked as if he would sink into the earth.

  “You couldn’t know how nice it is. You’re human, you don’t really love anything. Not like me.”

  I didn’t say a word. He was by himself now.

  “You couldn’t know, not in a million years, and not in a million more… To know something as deeply as I know The Willows… To feel as awfully as I feel when they’re away… You’ve never flown through their branches, you’ve never left the ground. Everyone here speaks without meaning it. Human words are too dull and heavy to carry with me… Speaking with them now, why I…!”

  His hands flew over his mouth. He suddenly knew that if he spoke too much he might stop being himself, that he might forget how to fly. To him, the human method of speaking was primitive and unwieldy, with the voice destroying the heart within. I felt pity and bitterness. What did he know that I didn’t? I was young and I still saw magic in the world but I knew I would lose it as I grew older. I would become dull and heavy as he said. So I put down my book and leaned over him with the intent of finding his tears.

  There was no tears– just stiff fingers, pressed into his skin– holding together that borrowed body–

  I wanted to find his secret. “What is it like to fly through the branches?”

  He whispered, in an effort to save himself: “It’s the greatest feeling in the world, and you’ll never get to have it.”

  The image of myself dull and older flashed in my mind, different but as if nothing had changed at all. I was startled by the sound of my thick footsteps. I saw how my boots dug into the dirt. Dull, dark boots without a bit of shine.

 Leaning even further so that our faces were nearly touching, I told him this:

“When I was little, my mother used to wash my hair for me. She was kind and gentle, and kept the suds out of my eyes.”

  I placed my hand on his head and ran my fingers through silk. The angle was awkward. But he seized up, my nails reaching his scalp and for a moment I wondered if his magic was gone and I had taken it. He did not stop me and the world became very still and quiet and small. My mother had been gone for several years by then and I missed her, and I wanted him to miss her too, I wanted the inhuman thing to feel as deeply as I felt. To feel what it was like to run your hands through another. His eyes were wide. Not a breath escaped him. 

   Perhaps that is what it’s like to be the wind through the trees. For a moment he was almost human, and I was almost something else. But I couldn’t steal him completely. 

  A fierce gust pierced my chest and I flew back as the boy– no, the Wind– jolted upwards with a gasp. He looked electrified, his hair standing on end and his limbs shaking, his fingers twitching around the hilt of his sparkling dagger. He drew it and, with the eyes of an animal, he swept it fast beside me before throwing himself to the sky.

 When I looked into the mirror that night, I saw but a thin, pink line across my cheek. No blood, and surely no scar. It was no worse than the marks on your calves when you rush through a meadow of grass.

–

  Kiki stopped coming to school after that. We got a new teacher who I can’t be bothered to remember the name of and the shutters never shot open anymore. It was all dull, pallid drivel. The willows never sang. And nothing sputtered besides me in half-melodies on the way home.

  But on the last day he was waiting for me on the bridge, face turned down and silent like a pouting child.

 “Kiki!” I couldn’t help myself and reached forward, absentmindedly going to fix his tie which was twisted to the side again. “I thought you’d flown away for good. What have you been doing all this time?”

  But he did not answer me. He was afraid that speaking heavy human words would turn him into a man, so he kept his mouth a taut little line and shook his head. I realized that maybe I’d hurt him. But I also remembered how uppity he’d been, so in my childish mind it was all muff. I turned to go about my way and he once again went for my braid – no, he stopped – he pinched my shirtsleeve and pointed towards the quiet willow wood. From it, there were no songs but I could hear a gentle clinking as if glass was carried in a burlap sack. Huffing and puffing. And when I cleared my mind, I did hear a little song– but it was extinguished as soon as it was born.

  Kiki’s eyes were large and pleading. He wished to show me something, and I knew it would be the last time for the two of us. The spring had worn on long enough for the bittercress to shrivel and pop hardly at all as I crossed into the wood.

  Into the curtains – over the stream – through the beams of sunlight that painted my face with the sky – 

  The willow wood was quiet, quiet, quiet, like everyone had gone away for good.

  But.

  Hunched over and clawing at the earth was Mr. Buranka, his spectacles splotched so badly he couldn’t possibly see out of them. He stabbed at the dirt and huffed, hands moving up and down, up and down, the willow leaves uselessly flailing at his back until at last he found his prize: A sparkling ruby singing a shy mourning song. The trees shook as it was unearthed but Mr. Buranka was transfixed by its beauty until he opened his mouth wide and–

  “What!”

  My shout hardly left my lips before Kiki’s hand flew over me to capture it. I was shocked but Kiki was positively enraged, colorless face turning a burning red as the ruby fell into Mr. Buranka’s stomach with an awful clink! The weak little song was eaten up and he continued to dig in the roots of the trees.

  I wondered if this is what the Wind Child wanted to tell me, that humans were ugly and greedy and cruel, that I should be ashamed to be one of them. But I feel that it was more likely that he wanted to share with me his pain. That the voices of his loved ones were being swallowed into nothingness. That the oblivion that took them cared nothing for his hurt. I did not understand it then, but I understand it now. He just could no longer speak in a way that made sense to me.

  Again, Mr. Buranka rose from the earth with a precious jewel, the voice of the trees, and he poised it above him so the light could fall deliciously through. This time, it was topaz. This time, Kiki would not allow it.

  Go!

  Shooting forward with incredible speed, the boy became a blur as he flew to the man and drew his weapon with hatred. I screamed as the emerald sang out, and as Mr. Buranko threw his head back in pain.

  The tip of the emerald dagger sunk into the spot above his belt buckle and sailed up, up, up to his throat and caught under his jaw, the bloated body splitting open without a drop of blood. There was no sound. The trees watched quietly and Kiki held position as the two halves widened to reveal a darkness with little sparks of rainbow. Sparkling in the stray sunbeams and pouring to the ground, the jewels of the Willows made ripples in the grass as if they were hitting the surface of water. Softly, sinking, sighing back into the earth. Rubies and sapphires and diamonds and light.

  It was like a symphony had started, the string beginning in a hushed manner before the horns and bells climbed overtop, the sound growing to an electrifying height as my body was carried forward and my open palm caught the last jewel. It reverberated through my being so strongly I nearly forgot myself. My bones – strings, of a harp – my skin – stretched over like a drum – my teeth, crooked, shaking into each other – a crisp sound – a bright sound – I rattled out of time – I saw it – I felt it, hands through my hair – water coming over my head – a voice that I’d forgotten, through the impenetrable years it rang – closer, closer– my lips trembled slightly-–

  The memory was snatched away from me the moment it revived and I returned to the painful present, where Kiki stood over me, panting with the last jewel between his pointer finger and thumb. He did not speak. There was nothing more to say to me, and the trees were re-learning their voices so our words wouldn’t carry anyhow, so we looked to each other as two wild animals do when discerning whether to pounce or flee. He tossed the jewel besides my head and I made no movement to catch it this time. It sank into the earth. And with a lion’s roar, the boy disappeared in the curtains of willow leaves with the light making figures all around. He was gone and so was the silence, and even the body of Mr. Buranka was nowhere to be seen. There was just a shape in the grass of his bloated form and a cruel laughter from the happy trees.

–

  I was crossing a bridge just yesterday– another town, another country, another lifetime under my belt – and something brushed my cheek. It vanished just as fast as it appeared. I can feel the sting here, without blood or scarring, just a harmless pink line that comes from tumbling through the grass. It will surely fade by tomorrow.