Talking to the Wind

The wind said nothing.  She stood listening – quietly – hoping to hear a word, a sound, something to tell her what she should do, but it said nothing.

She heaved the rock she was holding tightly in her hand – reached back and chucked it as far as she could.  She watched it fall, down the cliff, not reaching the water below as she’d hoped.  Her eyes welled with tears.  Even in throwing stones, she was a failure.

Her mother had promised if she’d come to the cliff at dusk and posed her question, the wind would answer her.  Her mother had described the feeling, had her believing it, that the wind would surround her, stir her up, and she would know what to do, but she didn’t.  She still had no ideas.

The tears began to find their way down her cheeks.  She could taste the salt at the corners of her mouth.  She licked her lips and sniffed.  The dampness made her face feel cool suddenly, as the wind – taunting her with its presence – whipped across her tear tracks. 

The stone continued to tumble, slowly letting gravity make its presence known, falling slowly to the shoreline.  The cliff had been in their family for years.  Her great grandparents had gotten engaged here and donated the property to the state after the house – the original homestead -  had been destroyed by a fire which spread too quickly to save their three youngest children.

And her mother swore, if you listened closely, you could still hear the children crying in the wind.  Her mother – with her crazy stories about wind and families and rituals - had no time to help her daughter, now in trouble of her own.

She leaned against the fence the state had erected to keep people from climbing down the steep embankment – to keep people like her off of the cliffs.  But why?  She, of all people, belonged on the cliffs – belonged to the cliffs, belonged to this wind.  Wasn’t that what her mother had always told her?  She belonged here. She climbed up on the fence, throwing her legs over the edge one at a time and found her footing. 

And she heard the wind say: “Fly!”