Wind Daughter

PART ONE:

North Story

ONE

MY NAME MEANS FAIRY TALE, WHICH is fitting for the daughter of a storyteller who was once the North Wind. I was born in the winter in the midst of a howling snowstorm, sheltered from the snow by a reindeer-skin tent and the fierce warmth of my parents’ love. My mother laughed and my father cried, and they were, in that moment, wholly happy. They called me Satu. Story.

I loved them from before I knew what love was: my father’s rumbling voice and my mother’s dark eyes, their presence alone enough to banish my infant fears. I didn’t understand my mother’s ache of sadness, my father’s guilt. They didn’t show it to me. Not then.

But my father was a storyteller, and he didn’t neglect to tell me his own story when I was old enough to understand it: how he was born the North Wind, the youngest son of the Sun and the Moon. How his brothers, East and West and South, hated him. How he was lonely. And how he fell in love with a herder’s daughter, a talented weaver who was full to the brim with the old magic.

Old magic? I would ask.

My father smiled across the room at my mother, who was always working on something by the light of the fire, embroidering or carding wool or spinning yarn on her lacquered wheel.

Love, he would reply. It’s the power that created the universe, you know.

After that came the sad part of the story: how my father realized that in order to stay with my mother, he couldn’t be the immortal North Wind anymore. So he bargained with a wicked enchantress called the Wolf Queen, who made him human in exchange for all his magic. But with that magic, the Wolf Queen sent my parents four centuries into the future, and my mother never saw her family again.

My mother would turn her head away, at this point, so I couldn’t see her tears. But I knew they were there. I hurt for her. I always cried a little, too.

Were it not for my father’s stories, I don’t think I would have ever come inside. I vastly preferred the wild mountain air to the confines of the reindeer-skin tent. It was so much easier to breathe outside, so much easier to be, even when the snows came. The cold didn’t bother me. My mother blamed my North blood, but she made me wear a coat anyway. I was human, after all. Even if it didn’t bother me, the cold could still kill me. But I always shrugged out of the coat when she wasn’t looking.

To hear my father’s stories, though, I would stay inside, sitting between my parents while yet another snowstorm shrieked outside our tent, battering the reindeer hide like it wanted to come in, like it wanted me to come out. Sometimes, I imagined I heard a voice tangled up with the wind, calling my name.

My parents said I took after both of them, even though I looked more like my mother. I had the same round face as her, the same straight dark hair and light brown skin and wide-set eyes. I saw very little of my father when I peered into my mother’s carved bone hand mirror.

But your heart is full of wind and stories, my father would tell me, kissing my head. You are the best pieces of us.

And my mother would smile at me over her embroidery and I would wonder what it meant to have stories in my heart.

When I was seven, we moved from the tent into a house on the mountain. It was a lovely house, painted the pale blue of ice in winter, and had latticework framing the windows and doors. There was a weaving room and a book room, a living room with a fireplace, and two bedrooms—one of them for me. It had a writing desk and a brightly painted wardrobe, and the bedposts were carved with images from my father’s stories. It was beautiful. But I still didn’t like to be indoors unless I had to. Houses suffocated me. The heat and close walls made my heart thump, my skin itch, my mind whir too fast.

One morning, in the dead of winter, my mother set me to work in the weaving room with a huge basket of raw wool and a pair of carding combs. I worked for a while, rocking the combs back and forth until the fibers grew smooth and straight, then setting the carded wool in the spinning basket, ready for my mother’s wheel. She was lost in the rhythm of her own work, wheel spinning, foot pumping, wool turning to yarn like magic between her fingers. She didn’t notice when I slipped from the room and out of the house. I climbed the winding path to the very top of the mountain, gulping deep breaths of frigid air, tumbling and laughing in the drifts. I thrilled at the icy touch of snow on my cheeks.

When I grew tired, I swept the snow from a wide flat rock shelf that jutted out over empty air and sat to watch the flakes drift down. After a while, lacy white pictures began to form in the snow: sailing ships and great white bears, a princess with a trailing gown of ice, a many-spired castle. My father had told me enough stories by then that I knew this must be magic, though I had never actually seen any before. I was transfixed, and more than a little disappointed when the wind stirred through the snow pictures and blew them away.

It was then I saw the winter demon.

He looked like a man, tall and thin, with long pale hair spilling past his shoulders and ice-shard eyes that pierced mine. Snow danced in his palms, and I knew he was the one who had used magic.

Will you teach me how to do that? I asked him, too awed to be afraid.

For a moment more he stared at me, his eyes very hard. And then he dissolved into snow.

I blinked after him, a sadness I didn’t understand tugging at my heart.

My mother called me from the path, and I turned shamefacedly to greet her.

Who was he? I asked my parents that night after dinner, curled up on the couch as far away from the suffocating heat of the fire as I could get.

My mother frowned, busy carding the basket of wool I had abandoned.

The Wolf Queen has a winter demon, at her beck and call, mused my father. He steepled his brown fingers and stared thoughtfully into the fire. I wonder if it was him.

I sat up very straight. He didn’t speak about the Wolf Queen very often in front of my mother anymore. It made her too sad.

The crease between my mother’s brows deepened.

My father turned up the lamp for her, so she wouldn’t ruin her eyes in the dim light. But she has no cause to bother us, he added, pressing a kiss on my mother’s cheek. I am sure she hasn’t thought of me in four hundred years.

The carding combs rocked aggressively back and forth, and my mother’s face grew tight in a way I knew meant she was trying hard not to cry.

I slipped from my spot on the couch, gritting my teeth at the heat from the fire but bearing it for my mother’s sake. I settled by her feet and put a hand on her knee. Her sorrow twisted inside of me, and I wished I had the magic to take it away from her forever.

Nothing to worry about, my father concluded, in an overly bright tone. Just be careful on the mountain, Satu. All right?

All right, I promised.

But my mother’s shoulders stayed tight, and I didn’t miss the tear that slid down her cheek before she wiped it hastily away.

EVERY MIDWINTER, OUR REMOTE MOUNTAIN village held a festival to help pass the time and chase away the dark. My father would put on his storyteller robes and spin tales in the inn to a captive audience for hours. I never went—I was painfully shy, and I didn’t like the thought of being shut up inside with people I didn’t know. But that year, my mother convinced me to go with her. I was old enough now, she reasoned, to enjoy the festival, to feel the pride of my father’s storytelling. I was proud of him, of the book he’d written at my urging, the one about a girl called Echo and her quest to save the man she loved from the Wolf Queen. It was a true story, as all stories are, really, but only my parents and I knew that.

So I tramped with my mother down the snowy path from our house to the inn, nervousness shivering along my spine. It would be better if my father could tell his stories outside, but no one except me wanted to sit and shiver in the snow. (North blood, said my mother with a sigh when I told her that, and buttoned me firmly into my coat.)

The moment I set foot in the great room of the inn, I knew it was a mistake. The walls were too close and the lanterns too bright. There were too many people talking at the same time, and too many conflicting smells, from the smoke of the fire to the bundles of dried lavender and other herbs hanging from the eaves. It was too much to process all at once, and it made my breaths come quick and shallow, my heart pound uncomfortably fast. I felt trapped inside my own skin.

Not sensing my heightened mood, my mother gave me a gentle nudge toward the back of the room, where my father sat on a pile of furs, children packed in around him chattering with excitement.

I squeezed through the press of people and found a seat beside the fire. I regretted it instantly—it was far, far too hot. I began desperately shrugging out of my coat, accidentally bumping the arm of the boy closest to me. He glared at me and I sucked in a sharp breath, fighting the sudden urge to cry. I kept my coat on. I tried to ignore the heat and the stifling air. I tried not to feel my skin crawling, my heart pounding, the sharp pulse of a headache. How could everyone else bear it? I didn’t understand.

My father began his first story, voice smooth and warm as honey. I had heard it before, the tale of a girl who loved a star and changed herself into a nightingale so she could always see him shining. The familiar words did nothing to calm my compounding agitation, and as they wound into me, I realized how sad the story was, how utterly, utterly hopeless. I couldn’t hold back my tears any longer. They poured down my cheeks and my father stopped speaking mid-sentence, staring at me in concern and half rising from his seat.

Satu? Are you all right?

His words caused every eye in the room to fix on me, which made it all infinitely worse. I leapt from my seat and bolted out of the inn, sobbing and shaking.

I ran up the path to the top of the mountain. I gulped frigid air, thick flakes of fresh snow melting the instant they touched my scalding cheeks. I collapsed on the edge of my rock shelf, crying and crying until it felt as if there was nothing of myself left, as if I’d been ripped to pieces by every thought and tear and intense emotion I couldn’t contain and didn’t understand.

That’s when I saw the winter demon for the second time.

He was there on the far end of the rock shelf, his eyes gleaming, his pale hair and long coat whipping about in the wind. A parade of snow figures unfolded suddenly in the air between us: a peacock, a leopard, a wolf, a shimmering dancer spinning on one pointed foot, an icy rose unfolding its white petals. I got the sense he was trying to cheer me up.

I stood, slowly, my heart a riot in my chest, and took a step toward him. My foot slipped on the icy rock.

I tumbled out into empty air.

All was a sickening rush, a tangle of confusion and terror, the breath ripped so violently from my lungs I couldn’t even scream. Snow danced in my vision. It was the last thing I would ever see.

But then something solid and warm slowed my fall. Invisible hands held me tight against a heartbeat that wasn’t my own. I was borne swiftly upward, settled back onto the rock, where snow fell gently, on and on.

I scrambled hastily away from the edge, heart raging, breaths coming in quick, frantic gasps. I blinked and saw the winter demon staring at me, stricken.

Take care, wind daughter, he whispered, words like ice rattling against stone.

Then he was gone, icy fractals curling over the rock in his wake.

I was shaking when my parents found me, moments later, their feet crunching through the snow. My father wore his worry in place of his coat, which he must have left behind in the inn, and my mother clung to his arm, trembling just as much as me. What happened, Satu? Her voice was tight and high with panic. What’s wrong?

A crease pressed deep in my father’s forehead, and he scooped me into his arms. Did I tell the nightingale story so terribly, then? He carried me down the path to our house, my mother coming just beside him, slipping one of her hands into mine.

The overwhelming sensations of the inn came flooding back.

"It is just so sad," I whispered, biting back fresh tears.

It isn’t real, my darling, said my mother.

But it’s still sad.

She squeezed my hand. How big your heart must be, that you would feel so deeply for a mere nightingale.

Exhaustion weighed impossibly heavy; I felt wrung out, like I could sink into the snow and sleep for a thousand years. I fell from the mountain, I murmured into my father’s neck.

My mother sucked in a sharp breath, but my father didn’t pause, his arms steady around me as he brought me inside and laid me down on my narrow bed.

What happened? he said then, kneeling beside me, stroking my hair. My mother hovered in the doorway and I sensed her horror, her fear, sharp as the vinegar we used to scrub the floors.

The winter demon caught me.

My father nodded, but there was fear in his eyes. He kissed my forehead, lips warm against my ice-touched skin. Rest now.

Sleep tugged me under against my will. I dreamed I was flying over a frozen world, snow dancing in my eyes, stars grazing past my cheeks. A nightingale wept as she sang and I fell and fell and fell, but in my dream, there was no one there to catch me.

TWO

I REALIZED, AFTER THAT DAY I FELL from the mountain, that there was something wrong with me. I couldn’t handle the simplest things, like running errands in the village with my mother, or being around anyone other than my parents, or squeaking out more than a single breathy, terrified word when the apothecary, Madam Zima, asked me a simple question. I went into the butcher’s with my mother, once, and the sight of half a pig lying vacant and dead on the table sent me into such a state of overwhelming horror I couldn’t speak a word without crying for the rest of the day.

In the autumn, my mother made me go to the brand-new school over the hill, the first one ever to exist in our remote village. The very thought of going tied my stomach in knots and made my heart pound like mad, but my mother wouldn’t be dissuaded. She bought me new clothes: a crisp linen blouse and a coat lined with rabbit fur, bright ribbons to tie off the ends of my dark braids, soft-felted boots, a red and gold kerchief. She made my skirt herself, out of beautiful blue woven cloth, and embroidered flowers about the hem. When I was dressed and ready, she gave me a kind but firm kiss on my cheek and shoved me right out the door.

I spent the entire walk to school trying to keep my panic at bay, but my stomach tied itself into tighter and tighter knots, and I darted off the path and was sick in the grass.

Then there was nothing for it but to square my shoulders, send up a desperate prayer for strength, and force myself to step through the red lacquered door.

Inside the school’s large single room, a dozen children were already waiting, ranging from age six to perhaps ten. They sat on evenly spaced benches that faced the teacher’s desk and the stone hearth—complete with a roaring fire—on the far wall.

There was only one seat left, on a bench nearest the fire, and I slid my timid way onto it, keeping as far away as possible from the girl already sitting there.

I couldn’t breathe and I could scarcely think. It was far too hot. Sweat crawled down my neck. I took off my coat and draped it over my knees, shooting furtive, terrified glances at the other children. They were talking and giggling with each other, all of them fast friends. I was the odd one out, hiding on my mountain and rarely coming into the village.

Their voices thrummed inside me like too many heartbeats, and the light from the windows and the fire hurt my eyes. I clenched my jaw against a burgeoning headache. I couldn’t breathe. How could everyone else stand it in here?

I was distantly aware of the teacher, Mrs. Pasternak, calling the class to order, and I forced myself to sit still, to fold my hands in my lap, to focus on what she was saying. But I couldn’t think past the pounding in my head and the absolute, overwhelming awareness of my own body: my flaming ears and mad pulse. The itch of my collar and the hardness of the bench. The oppressive heat from the fire.

Belatedly, I realized Mrs. Pasternak was speaking to me. I stared at her in a wash of blank horror.

She raised her eyebrows. Tell us about yourself, Satu. What is it like to be the daughter of a storyteller?

As if from far away, I watched myself open my mouth, listened as words I did not mean to say tumbled out. He isn’t just a storyteller. He used to be the North Wind.

For a moment, every soul in the school blinked at me, confused.

And then they all laughed. Even Mrs. Pasternak.

I wanted to claw a hole through the floor. I wanted to perish in the silence and the dark. But I was frozen there as they laughed, as Mrs. Pasternak reprimanded them for laughing, even as her own lips continued to twitch.

I was so, so hot, tears pouring down my face, my head buzzing like a swarm of wasps. Everything inside of me was screaming.

I don’t even remember running out of the school.

The mountain welcomed me, crisp autumn air drying my tears and cooling the awful, awful heat of my body. I sat on my rock shelf and stared down at the tundra below, wishing and wishing I could teach my heart and my mind how to be still.

That was the day the wind sent me the bees.

They came a few at a time, glimmering in the sun, buzzing at my shoulders or snagging in my hair. I didn’t brush them away—they didn’t frighten me. I felt their kindness.

That’s how my father found me, much later, when the sun was nearly down: in a cloud of bees, sitting on the very edge of the jutting rock, my feet dangling out over nothing because somewhere along the way I had lost my fear of falling.

If he was startled, he didn’t show it. He simply sat down beside me and said: I expect we should build them a hive.

I swallowed past the lump in my throat, peering out at the dying sun. I’m sorry I am so strange, Papa. Voicing my shame made fresh tears bite at my eyes; it was a desperate struggle to keep them in. There’s something wrong with me, isn’t there?

No, dear one. Your heart and your mind are too big to be contained by the four walls of the school, or the inn, or the village. That isn’t strange, and it isn’t wrong. Your sensitivity, your empathy—they are gifts, Satu. A special magic all your own.

I scrubbed angrily at my eyes. The bees in my hair buzzed in concern. It doesn’t feel like magic.

His smile was a little distant, a little sad. That doesn’t make it untrue.

I still didn’t believe him, but I knew he meant to comfort me, and his steadying presence quieted my heart. We watched the sky until the last of the light faded to black, until the stars came out and the bees flitted away, one by one.

TRUE TO HIS WORD, MY father helped me build the first of my hives the next day, followed by five more over the next few weeks—the winds kept sending me swarms. I knew they were my uncles, the West and East and South Winds, or at least part of their magic. I never saw them in their true forms, but they visited me on the mountain, sometimes. I finally had to ask them to stop sending bees.

Thank you, I explained, standing as usual on the edge of my rock shelf while warm breezes coiled around my ankles and the yellow insects hummed merry in my ears, but the whole mountain can’t be bees. The villagers would complain.

I got the feeling that the winds were laughing at me, but they listened, and didn’t send any more.

I didn’t return to school. To my great shame, my parents never even mentioned it again. Instead, I learned mathematics and science and stories—of course, stories—from my father’s books. And I told myself that was enough.

For my tenth birthday, my father gave me the most startling present I ever received: a journey with him into the wild north, to try and find the ending to my favorite story. He’d written a whole book about it, the tale of Echo and her enchanted white wolf. I was a baby—far too small to remember—when Echo came to our mountain village, searching for someone to lead her to the Wolf Queen, who held the white wolf captive.

My father volunteered to be Echo’s guide, and although he couldn’t return to the Queen’s court without nullifying his bargain, he led Echo all the long, treacherous way to the foot of the Queen’s mountain. Echo went up alone, and that was the last my father ever saw of her. He made up an ending for his book—he didn’t know the real