Kaelen and the Garden of Petrified Wind Part 2

More about Kaelen and the Garden of Petrified Wind Part 2

Further ahead, the cliff sloped down to a hollow where the wind had apparently circled. Here, the plants stood densely, their leaves entangled in a tangled mess. Kaelen felt a pulling in her chest, as if the tightness of a crowd were drawing her closer. The voices grew louder and at the same time less distinct, until they were nothing more than currents rubbing against each other. "If we solve this, the whole garden will break," she murmured, raising a defensive hand. Varaan held his breath, as if he shared the same thought. "Not tear it," she said. "Arrange it." She sat down on a flat stone and closed her eyes. Once again, she searched for the still place within herself that helped her hear, the gap between exhalation and inhalation. When she found it, it was as if she saw the wind—not with her eyes, but with her feeling: in streams, in loops, in knots. She raised her hands and traced the paths in the air, no magic, just attention taking form. "There," she whispered, "and you here, you're too heavy for the edge." It was silly to speak to frozen wind, but the garden answered. A leaf gave a tiny "tack," another hummed deeper, and the tightness in the hollow loosened, as if several people had taken a step aside at once. Slowly, individual threads of the trapped voices loosened. Some drifted away, gentle as mist; others settled and became clearer, given beginnings and ends. Kaelen worked until her arms grew heavy with doing nothing, which was work after all. During breaks, she drank water, checked Varaan's straps, rested her forehead against his slate scales. He stood still, a sure fixed point amid the glassy sounds. As the sun sank lower, one plant stood alone on a rise, as if planted at the top of an invisible hill. Its leaf was wide, its edges sharp, a pale haze in the center, like the remnant of a cloud. Kaelen stepped closer, exhaled, paused. A voice spoke, so quiet that at first she thought she could hear her own blood rushing. Then she recognized words. It was her own voice, younger, rough, hoarse from running: her mother's name, three times, just before a rain that never came. Kaelen reached for the edge of the leaf. An old urge stirred within her to break it, to release everything at once. Instead, she placed her palm flat on the leaf and let the warmth of her skin sink into the cold material. "You may go," she said after a while. "Not because I don't care about you. Because I don't want you bound to stone anymore." The voice broke away. Not a spectacular burst, not a scream. More like a shift in the wind. The leaf remained, but it was lighter, almost inconspicuous, as if a burden no one saw had been lifted. Kaelen felt tears she didn't need and wiped them away. "This garden preserves more than wind," she said to Varaan. "It preserves decisions. What we couldn't say. What we said too soon.