Tales of Wonder (22 page)

I call myself the wind.

I slap at ships and sparrows.

I sough through broken windows.

I shepherd snow and sandstorms.

I am not always kind.

“How peculiar,” said Danina. “Here you merely rustle the trees and play with the leaves and calm the birds in their nests.”

“
I am not always kind
,” said the wind again.

“Everyone here is always kind. Everyone here is always happy.”

“
Nothing is always,”
said the wind.

“My life is always,” said Danina. “Always happy.”

“
But life is not always happy
,” said the wind.

“Mine is,” said Danina.

“
How sad
,” whispered the wind from a corner.

“What do you mean?” asked Danina. But the wind only whirled through the window carrying one of her silken scarves, and before she could speak again, he had blown out to sea.

Days went by, happy days. Yet sometimes in her room, Danina would try to sing the wind's song. She could not quite remember the words or recall the tune, but its strangeness haunted her.

Finally, one morning, she asked her father: ‘Why isn't life always happy?”

“Life
is
always happy,” replied her father.

“That's what I told him,” said Danina.

“Told who?” asked her father. He was suddenly frightened, frightened that someone would take his daughter away.

“The wind,” said Danina.

“The wind does not talk,” said her father.

“He called himself the wind,” she replied.

But her father did not understand. And so when a passing fisherman found Danina's scarf far out at sea and returned it to the merchant's house, he was rewarded with a beating, for the merchant suspected that the fisherman was the one who called himself the wind.

Then one summer day, weeks later, when the sun was reflected in the petals of the flowers, Danina strolled in her garden. Suddenly the wind leaped over the high wall and pushed and pulled at the tops of the trees. He sang his strange song, and Danina clasped her hands and sighed.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

“
Who am
I
?” said the wind, and he sang:

Who am I?

I call myself the wind.

I've worked the sails of windmills.

I've whirled the sand in deserts.

I've wrecked ten thousand galleons.

I am not always kind.

“I knew it was you,” said Danina. “But no one believed me.”

And the wind danced around the garden and made the flowers bow.

He caressed the birds in the trees and played gently with the feathers on their wings.

“You say you are not always kind,” said Danina. “You say you have done many unkind things. But all I see is that you are gentle and good.”

“
But not always
,” reminded the wind. “
Nothing is always.”

“Is it sad, then, beyond the wall?”

“
Sometimes sad and sometimes happy
,” said the wind.

“But different each day?” asked Danina.

“
Very different.”

“How strange,” Danina said. “Here things are always the same. Always beautiful. Happy. Good.”

“
How sad
,” said the wind. “
How dull.”
And he leaped over the wall and blew out into the world.

“Come back,” shouted Danina, rushing to the wall. But her voice was lost against the stones.

Just then her father came into the garden. He saw his daughter standing by the wall and crying to the top. He ran over to her.

“Who are you calling? Who has been here?” he demanded.

“The wind,” said Danina, her eyes bright with memory. “He sang me his song.”

“The wind does not sing,” said her father. “Only men and birds sing.”

“This was no bird,” said his daughter.

“Then,” thought her father, “it must have been a man.” And he resolved to keep Danina from the garden.

Locked out of her garden, Danina began to wander up and down the long corridors of the house, and what once had seemed like a palace to her began to feel like a prison. Everything seemed false. The happy smiles of the servants she saw as smiles of pity for her ignorance. The gay dancing seemed to hide broken hearts. The paintings disguised sad thoughts. And soon Danina found herself thinking of the wind at every moment, humming his song to the walls, his song about the world—sometimes happy, sometimes sad, but always full of change and challenge.

Her father, who was not cruel but merely foolish, could not keep her locked up completely. Once a day, for an hour, he allowed Danina to walk along the beach. But three maidservants walked before her. Three manservants walked behind. And the merchant himself watched from a covered chair.

One chilly day in the fall, when the tops of the waves rolled in white to the shore, Danina strolled on the beach. She pulled her cape around her for warmth. And the three maidservants before her and the three manservants behind shivered in the cold. Her father in his covered chair pulled his blanket to his chin and stared out to sea. He was cold and unhappy, but he was more afraid to leave Danina alone.

Suddenly the wind blew across the caps of the waves, tossing foam into the air.

Danina turned to welcome him, stretching out her arms. The cape billowed behind her like the wings of a giant bird.

“Who are you?” thundered Danina's father, jumping out of his chair.

The wind spun around Danina and sang:

Who am I?

I call myself the wind.

I am not always happy.

I am not always kind.

“Nonsense,” roared Danina's father. “Everyone here is always happy and kind. I shall arrest you for trespassing.” And he shouted, “
Guards!
”

But before the guards could come, Danina had spread her cape on the water. Then she stepped onto it, raised one corner, and waved goodbye to her father. The blowing wind filled the cape's corner like the sail of a ship.

And before Danina's father had time to call out, before he had time for one word of repentance, she was gone. And the last thing he saw was the billowing cape as Danina and the wind sailed far to the west into the ever-changing world.

Brothers of the Wind

The Foal

In the far reaches of the desert, where men and horses are said to dwell as brothers, a foal was born with wings. The foal was unremarkable in color, a muted brown with no markings. However, the wings—small and crumpled, with fragile ribs and a membrane of gray skin—made it the center of all eyes.

But the sheik who owned the foal was not pleased. He stood over the newborn, pulling on his graying beard. He shook his head and furrowed his brow. Then he turned quickly, his white robes spinning about him, casting dervish shadows on the ground.

“This must be Allah's jest,” he said contemptuously to the slave who tended his horses. “But I do not find it amusing. If horses were meant to be birds, they would be born with beaks and an appetite for flies.”

“It is so,” said the slave.

“Take the foal out into the desert,” said the sheik. “Perhaps the sands will welcome this jest with better humor than I.”

“At once, master,” said the slave. He spoke to the sheik's back, for his master had already left the tent.

The slave clapped his hands twice. At the sound, so sharp in the desert's silence, a boy appeared. His name was Lateef, the tender one, the one full of pity and tears. He was an orphan's orphan and small for his age, with dark hair and skin the color of an old coin. His eyes burned fiercely, black suns in a bronze sky, but they were always quick to cloud over. And though Lateef was handsome and hardworking, the sheik's chief slave knew that the boy's tenderness was a great fault and that he was often the butt of jokes. Indeed, without a living mother or father to teach him other ways or to protect him from his tormentors, he was at the mercy of all. Lateef was always given the hardest and most unpleasant chores to do. He was the lowest slave in the sheik's household.

“I am here,” Lateef said in his gentle voice.

“Ah, the tender one,” said the keeper of horses. “Do you see this foal? This new one? It is not pleasing to our master. It is Allah's jest. For if a horse were meant to be a bird, it would make a nest of sticks and straw.”

Lateef looked down at the foal as it sucked contentedly at its mother's teat. He loved being with the horses, for only with them did Lateef feel brave and strong. The little foal's sides moved in and out, and at each movement the fragile, membranous wings seemed to flutter. Lateef's hand moved to touch one wing, and his heart filled with wonder.

But the keeper of horses spoke cruelly, cutting across Lateef's thoughts. “You are to take this jest far out beyond the sight of the oasis and leave it in the sand.” He turned in imitation of the sheik, his robes spinning around him.

Lateef spoke as the turn began. “Perhaps …” he said daringly. “Perhaps it is not Allah's jest at all. Perhaps … perhaps …” and he spoke so softly, he almost did not say it aloud. “Perhaps it is Allah's
test
.”

The keeper of horses stopped in midturn, his exit ruined, his robes collapsing in confused folds and entangling his ankles. “You piece of carrion,” he said in a loud, tight voice. “Do you dare to question the sheik?”

“Yes. No. But I thought …” Lateef began.

“You have no thoughts,” said the keeper of horses. “You are a slave. A slave of slaves. You will do only as you are ordered.”

“So let it be,” murmured Lateef, his eyes filling. He looked meekly at the ground until the keeper of horses had left the tent. But though his eyes were on the ground, his mind was not. Questions spun inside his head. This wonder, this foal with wings—might it not truly be Allah's test? And what if he failed this test as he seemed to fail everything else? He
had
to think about it. And, even though a slave must
not
think, he could not stop himself.

“
And do it at once!
” came the command through the tent flap as the keeper of horses poked his head in for one last word. “You are not only too tender but also too slow.”

Lateef took a wineskin that hung from a leather thong on the side of the tent to fill it with milk from the foal's mother. He shouldered the foal aside and softly squeezed the milk in steady streams into an earthen bowl, then carefully poured it from the bowl into the skin flask. While Lateef worked, the foal nuzzled his ear and even tried to suck on it.

When the skin flask was full, Lateef knelt and put his head under the foal's belly, settling the small creature around his shoulders. Then he stood slowly, holding on to the foal's thin legs. The foal made only one tiny sound, between a sigh and a whicker, and then lay still. Lateef kept up a continual flow of words, almost a song.

“Little brother, new and weak,” he crooned, “we must go out into the sun. Do not fear the eye of God, for all that has happened, all that will happen, is already written. And if it is written that we brothers will survive, it will surely be so.”

Then Lateef walked out of the tent.

The Desert

Lateef and the foal both blinked as the bright sun fell upon them. From the inside of the tent, the mare cried out, an anguished farewell. The foal gave a little shudder and was still.

But Lateef was not still. He looked around once at the village of tents that rimmed the oasis. He watched as some slave girls, younger even than he, bent over the well and drew up water. He had known them all his life, but they were still strangers to him. His mother had died at his birth; her mother had died the same way. He was indeed an orphan's orphan, a no-man's child, a slave of slaves. He would leave this home of familiar strangers with no regrets and take his burden—jest or test—out into the burning sands. He had thought about it, though thinking was not for slaves. He had thought about it and decided that he would stay with the foal. His orders were to take it out into the sands. And perhaps the keeper of horses expected them both to die there. But what if their deaths were not written? Could that be part of Allah's test? He would go out into the sands as ordered, and then turn north to Akbir. Akbir, the city of dreams. If it were written anywhere that the foal was to live, in Akbir that writing could be understood.

It was noon when Lateef set out, and the fierce eye of the sun was at its hottest. It was a time when no son of the desert would ordinarily dare the sands. But Lateef had no choice. If he did not leave at once, he would be beaten for disobedience. If he did not leave at once, his courage—what little there was—would fail him. And if he did not leave at once, some other slave would take the foal and leave it out on the desert, and then the foal with wings would surely die.

North to Akbir. Lateef felt the sand give way beneath his feet. It poured away from his sandals like water. Walking in the desert was hard, and made harder still by the heavy burden he was carrying on his back.

He turned once to look at the oasis. It was now only a shimmering line on the horizon. He could see no movement there. He continued until even that line disappeared, until his legs were weak and his head burned beneath his
dulband
. Only then did he stop, kneel down, and place the foal gently onto the sand. He shaded it with his own shadow.

The foal looked up at the boy, its eyes brown and pleading.

“Only one small drink now,” cautioned Lateef. He held the wineskin out and pressed its side. Milk streamed into the foal's mouth and down the sides of its cheeks.

“
Aiee
,” Lateef said to himself, “too quickly!” He gave one more small squeeze on the wineskin, then capped it. All the while he watched the foal. It licked feebly at the remaining milk on its muzzle. Its brown flanks heaved in and out. At each outward breath, the membranous wings were pushed up, but they seemed to have no life of their own.