That spring, the wind ceased to speak.
It was not an easy tongue. Stand in copses of young trees, sway to match their branches. Wait on sea bluffs, watch the patterns of waves and spray, let the drum of blown sand sting your skin. Idle in the town square, see the paths of dead leaves and debris entwine the passersthrough. Slow your mind, watch the clouds shift, roil, sail on the unseen sea.
Windspeakers, even then, do not hear its words. But welcome them from the cold, warm their cold cheeks, wet their chapped lips, and often they speak.
And what they speak is always true.
True not in the sense of real, though sometimes it is. True as an arrow to its mark. True as in love. True as the sun rises through the dark. True as the spring follows winter. True as the sky, the sea, the wind—
Until the spring it ceased to speak.
Windspeakers are few—though whether it is few with whom the wind shares its secrets or few who have the patience to listen—cannot be said, and the windspeakers—an unhurried, aimless lot—noticed slowly the wind’s silence. Their doubts, tentative, reassured by their bustling friends, accustomed to the wind’s fickleness, its speakers’ inconsistency. But windspeakers drift, and in doing so, cross paths. Usually the happenstance of these cooccurrences just as quickly pull them apart. But this time, they clung—met clumps of others, also caught on each other in conferring: the wind had ceased to speak.
Could the rest not also have seen it? The bend of boughs missing the dance. The sweep of leaves, but not so much the swirl. The wind’s howls and groans unresonant. Did it not seem that something did not return with the spring?
The confluence of windspeakers took the poor town of Wulff by surprise. Its square was abluster. Eccentric and windswept, flowing clothes entangled—conversations oblique and scattered—a sentence just as likely to continue from a neighboring mouth than the one that began it. Who had heard it last, the wind, in the dark of winter? One had rattled a prophecy between chattering teeth, slow to return from the well. Another foretold ill omens, but swearing as a doctor amputated a frost-bitten toe. On the solstice, the windspeakers had turned their faces to the long night—had no one heard from the shimmering of the stars?
The circus of windspeakers dispersed, some to where the wind was last heard—others to where it first disappeared. This dandelion dance set some adrift to far distances, but others found their spiraling paths converged again—not clinging, but crossing, chasing each other’s tails round where the wind had first fallen silent, this great city Eckt.
“And that is how I found myself here.”
The child sucked their tongue through the gap in their upper teeth, feeling the tip of a new canine poking through rubbery gum.
“You don’t look like a windspeaker.”
“Windspeakers don’t ‘look’ like anything. If it weren’t for the wind going quiet, I’d be dressed as a fisherman, fishing. Well, mostly untangling nets, but ostensibly, fishing.”
The child moved on to kick their toe against the cut-stone curb, mushrooming small clouds of dust from the foam of their sole.
“Well, the windspeakers don’t look like you. They don’t wear silly hats for one. Or so many scarves. And they have better shoes.”
“Alright, I’ll give you the shoes. But I just told you I've been traveling for the last eight months. You don’t like my hat?”
The child regarded the bright teal bandana, laden with feathers and cracked sea-shells.
“No.”
“Alright then. But more importantly, you told me this city didn’t have windspeakers.”
“No, you asked if we had people who heard the wind. An’ I said ‘course we did—the wind gets pretty loud so near the ocean an’ all and then you said people who listen to see what the wind says—”
“Right. And those are windspeakers.”
“No, windspeakers work in that big cave in the cliff pass. And they wear high boots and coats with long tails.”
The child stared back, with the resolution of someone who’d never lost an argument without the other side having to resort to pulling rank.
“Alright then. Do you think you could take me there?”
“Ma says I gotta stay on this street, but Gem’s older and their parents let ‘em go all the way to the beach. They have a bike.”
“And where can I find Gem?”
“They’re at the brick house on the corner. Unless they’re out on their bike.”
The windspeaker offered the child a sweet, tied in a broad leaf to protect it from the lint of their pocket.
Again the child regarded them suspiciously.
“It’s boiled starchfruit.” The windspeaker unwrapped the leaf and popped it in their own mouth. They pulled an identical package from the same pocket.
“What if I’m allergic?”
The windspeaker shrugged. “Ask your mum.”
The child gravely accepted the payment and the two parted ways.
The windspeaker found the brick house, spotting the purple bike leant on the garden fence. The house was quiet though. Through the fine gauze curtains the lights were dark. The speaker looked down the street, deserted in the midafternoon. They removed one of their scarves, with a broad purple stripe, tucked in a sweet and an unbroken mussel shell with a violet sheen, hung it on the fence, and took the bike.
The windspeaker pedaled away on the slightly too-small bike. The movement imbued the wind with a direction, and the empty town with a little life—mostly adults in formal or carefully leisurely clothes, staring at the stranger on the purple bike. Their suspicions were not unlike the child’s, but lacked the honest charm of youth. With the populace, the busier parts of the city brought broader avenues, but the space immediately choked with caged vehicles, enclosed from their own foul exhaust that the meager wind could not displace. They were stuck frozen by their own number, and expressed their displeasure with braying complaints. The windspeaker on the bicycle weaved between them, pulling in their ire, but just as swiftly outrunning it.
At the old city walls, the city took on a new tambour. Its high buildings persisted but its activity dropped precipitously. The squeaking of the bike’s gears suddenly raucous loud. The windspeaker slowed their pedalling, listening. The high buildings and narrow streets screamed for wind, but there was only the crash of the ocean waves, a sound without sensation.
The city gave way. A lone road wound along the beach to black cliffs in the distance, a crack of sky splitting the strip of dark stone.
Shift end and the workers filed out from the cave, awaiting the vehicles that would take them to their own vehicles, and from there to their homes.
But it was not a shuttle that crested the small rise. Instead a bedraggled individual on a too-small bike. A nest of scarves and hoods obscured any notion of gender or sex, but their labor at the bike made their exhaustion and sweat an inevitability.
They squeaked the last painful yards up the hill, then dismounted the bike onto wobbling legs. They leant the bike carefully against the rough cave wall.
The workers watched impassively.
The person on the bike staggered up to them, gulping down breath. The workers said nothing.
They said something in a heavily accented tongue, but to no response. They tried again, simpler.
“Windpseaker?”
This, the dialects had drifted less, or the requested response less debasing. They shook their heads.
The stranger studied their shoes—practical boots—and dress—thick coveralls, untucked and warped around their waists. The stranger nodded and moved on.
The doors to the cave were thick bottle-green glass. They were unlocked, and no one made any move to stop the stranger as they approached. Only stopped and stared, flat faced.
The interior reacted to their arrival with a little more alarm. Their scarves tailed along the high-polish tiles, the slow stagger affronting the smooth crowds of polished professionals leaving their stations for the day.
But the cave was still a cave. Cold humid drips fell from the rough ceiling, throwing splashes onto the tiles below.
The stranger made it a few paces before being politely accosted.
“Can I help you, ma’am?”
The stranger’s gaze lingered from their coat—tailed, to their shoes—practical loafers.
“I am looking for the windspeakers.”
“Windspeakers? You don’t have an appointment?”
“Windspeaking is hardly an appointment. At most, a calling—”
“No, no. A schedule, or an agreed time—”
“I’ve never gotten along with schedules, and rarely agree on time, nevermind with other windspeakers. The only true time is now.”
“We are closed for the day, especially for the public—”
“But not for windspeakers?”
“Windspeakers are busy people. You must have an appointment—”
“Windspeaking is hardly an appointment. At most—”
The argument amassed attention. Not enough to delay the routines of the return home, but enough to start a whisper as the workers passed. More of the accoster’s fellows in loafers gathered round, but their presence did little to influence the stranger’s advancement across the lobby floor. The accosters exchanged glances, preparing perhaps to move from social to other types of force—
“Ma’am if you do not remove yourself from the premises—”
“Is this not a premise for windspeakers? Then why would I remove myself?”
“Windspeakers are only available by appointment—”
“Windspeaking is hardly—”
“This man calls himself a windspeaker?”
The speaker had entered the lobby some time ago, and had been watching the interaction for a short while. The circle of accosters opened to admit him. The stranger in their hat and scarves, studied the man’s shoes and coat.
“I’m given to understand you are too.”
The man laughed. “No, I merely supervise them. Security, thank you for your efforts, but I will see to our windspeaker here.”
The accosters dispersed. The crowd, having stopped to listen, continued with their end of day routines.
The man lowered his voice, joining the quiet rabble of the departing workforce.
“You must forgive our security workforce. Most in the city are unfamiliar with windspeakers, in the traditional sense. You must’ve come from a long way off.”
“This marks my eight month of travel, though I admit, my path wandered enough so I would struggle to name my way back.”
“Eight months of travel? And our facility here is your final destination?”
The windspeaker shut their eyes, turned their palms slightly upward, as if weighing the cold, damp air.
“I think so.”
“Then it would be remiss to send you away without a tour. Though security was not incorrect, most of our ‘windspeakers’ have gone home for the day, and those that remain are especially busy.”
“Should I return tomorrow?”
“No, I think the tour should be more than adequate.”
The man led the windspeaker through the halls of the cave, tailed coat billowing behind. The walls here were tiled in smooth white, brightly lit, partitioned into small units, each containing a desk, a chair, several cabinets.
“Our city, like many on the continents, once participated in the traditional practice of windspeaking. But as we urbanized, traditional windspeaking began to die out.”
The windspeaker frowned. “Many cities still have windspeakers, some larger than yours.”
“Really? Which cities?”
“Port Lagoas. Gurnea. I met many windspeakers there.”
“You traveled from the south then, I imagine. Fascinating. They are larger, yes, but certainly not more prosperous,” he said, laughing. “Well, whatever the conditions, windspeaking began to ill suit us.”
“Ill suit? How?”
“Well as you know, windspeaking is a difficult task—”
“Not really.”
“Unpleasant.”
“Not for me.”
“Laborious.”
“More the opposite, to be honest.”
“Unpredictable.”
This, the windspeaker conceded.
“Windspeaking, traditionally, is sporadic, unpredictable. At times even untrustworthy—as the wind is only as trustworthy as the individual who speaks for it. As the city of Eckt grew we needed certainty. Especially with regards to specific material realities—crops, rain, the start of spring. The clearing of the mountain pass. The bounty and the tithies, which allies we might trust, and which might betray us. Certainty was necessary to allow us to act in accordance. But windspeaking, irregular in its output, and capricious in its topic, was just as likely to give answers of our winter stores as the romantic troubles of the neighborhood florist.”
“It’s too bad.”
“Indeed.”
“I hope the florist finds some luck. These are lovely designs.”
The windspeaker had stopped to admire the contents of one of the many desks—a careful drawing of concentric curves, each ending in an elegant ear-like horn. The lines were drawn precisely, marked in light blue ink. The paper was segmented with long straight lines, scattered with numbers and symbols in an impossibly tidy hand.
“I’m pleased you like it, but not surprised. These are, of course, our windspeakers’ designs.”
“Ah, of course. But surely they don’t make them here?”
The drawing was still taped to the board, with blue pencils of varying levels of sharpness and stubbiness scattered on the sill beneath. A variety of mechanical arms, curved rulers, reached out over it like feeding birds.
“These are our windspeakers’ main workplaces. As you can see, they are supremely equipped.”
The windspeaker looked around dubiously.
“But where is the w—”
“Perhaps you should allow me to finish my story.”
They continued onward from the rows of brightly lit desks and their drawing utensils, deeper into the cave. Here, its natural forms reasserted themselves—the light cutting weakly against the black stone, making little headway against the quiet and wet. The tiled floor gave way to metal gratings, a staircase. The drips echoed down with a strange music.
“They say the wind speaks the truth. But we needed more than truth. We needed prediction. We needed guarantees. We needed answers.”
Their tread down the stairs shook cascades of dew, falling to the stairs, cascading more drops in return. They descended into darkness, interspersed with bulbs of brightness, but not lit by it.
“The solution was apparent, but far from simple. The wind holds the future—we must extract it. Distill it. Then we could replicate what a thousand windspeakers could not.”
The plinks of drops on metal crescendoed. The echoes from below burst in volume, regularly until it became clear they were not echoes at all, but the sound of machinery, crashing at some great distance. Against the dark cave walls, shapes began to emerge—unnatural textures: smooth columns of pipes, corded bundles of wire.
“We were very fortunate with our site—the ocean here batters against the Old Range—our windspeakers estimate 17 trillion tonnes of air strike the mountains here—once scattered by the cliffs but now brought to productive use.”
“And its truth—”
The supervisor grinned. “Come and see.”
At the depths, the cave brightened, flooded with an excess of light. A skeleton crew of workers attended to the machines, hacking and chewing into the dark. With a wave, the supervisor brought their clamors to a halt. They petered away, chased by wet echoes.
There was only the quiet drum of drops, falling through still air. At the bottom of the stairs was a plinth of white tile.
The supervisor brought them into the brightness, and with a sweeping gesture, announced,
“The Windspeaker.”
Rows of pipes encircled the plinth, studded by an array of levers, elevated on small pedestals to give the appearance of neatness. The pipes stretched upwards, disappearing into a darkness shaped by glints of reflected light.
“A machine.”
“A machine that produces truth. Reliably. Predictably. At demand. The question is input by means of these levers—which in turn changes the shape of the pipes, drums, reservoirs of air—which feed upward into the final output, into the answer.”
The windspeaker gazed up into the darkness.
“I want to ask it a question.”
“Ask, Windspeaker.”
The windspeaker looked to the supervisor, their eyes seized by a sudden, unexpected sharpness.
“Where has the wind’s truth gone?”
The supervisor collected himself, then summoned the technicians. They conferred among themselves, then broke to scurry among the levers in sequence, calling out to coordinate as each was pushed.
Messy, noisy, the supervisor thought. Maybe, instead, a single seat—a control box—a console for a this mighty organ—
With each pull of the lever, the behemoth groaned. Dregs of air pushed its segmented vocal chords tightened and released. Strange sighs uncoiled from stale compartments. In the dark, the behemoth of pipes began to descend.
The supervisor grinned. Here, windspeaking has been transformed—revolutionized, reborn. And now, the old, this here to bless the new. To hand the torch away to the march of progress—
The technicians’ settled amongst the levers. One called, and they heaved at once.
A great cacophony of wind rushed through the tunnels, scouring the brass with hollow resonances, buzzing and dampened, transferred through winding paths.
The machine’s maw opened, its sheet metal teeth, gleaming in the spotlights. Its segmented tongue and torqued steel vocal chords groaned into place.
It spoke. Then the wind petered, wisps of straw stuck in a giant’s teeth. Its beaten metal lips closed.
The windspeaker knelt to its blue brass lips, where a rivet in the rounded metal had split. The thinnest breath of the dying wind hissed from within.
The windspeaker closed their ear to the metal, and began to listen.