Why the wind howls

Spur-of-the-mo'-in-a-frenzy-writing. Dedicated to all those lost cries of, "Come home." Sorry it's long, but feel free to rip it apart. ~P

~*~

The trees were garbed in chandeliers of gold, the red dripping as though it was blood from split-open veins―but gently, gently, like artsy cobwebs unravelling, until the ground was covered with fallen leaves. Willows and old oaks swayed, overlooking the small houses and the rubbish heap, their whispering barely audible over the sound of tinkling, childish laughter. Clouds like thick fog hung over their heads, the setting sun a red splash against a bluish-purple sky.

The streetlamps had not been turned on that night, and a green van had been parked beneath the trees. If you were to peer closer, you would see that the clusters of nearly naked branches were in fact hiding a house, and the van at its doorstep. A man and a young girl stood on the front steps, saying goodbye. This is a typical war-time scene, no doubt one of the commonest, of a father bidding his daughter goodbye and telling her to be brave, to look after her mother ... and a promise that the father would come home.

Her father did not make any of these promises, none that I heard, at least; and it was the girl’s laughter that drew me towards her as I passed my hands through the leaves, causing some more of them to drift onto her head. They settled like a crown on her curls and her father brushed them away. He leaned down until he was at eye-level with the girl and whispered into her ear, causing her to laugh again, half-heartedly. At a close range, the sadness in her laughter was more obvious; it was dark and heavy, like honey, and the girl sobbed in-between each giggle.

‘Don’t go,’ she said, clutching at her father’s beard with her tiny hands. ‘You don’t have to go―can’t they wait until next year? Or the year after?’ She was crying, as is to be expected, but they were the kind of tears that build up behind your eyes and you hold onto them tightly, because you don’t want to let the sorrow go. It’s easy to envy people who can cry with ease―I always have. Tears you can lose easily and forget that they ever existed, when they flow in rivulets down your face: they tinkle like tiny hourglasses when they meet the ground. But sorrow drills a hole right in the middle of your heart, where it settles down like a clump of fungus-fire, festering and frothing and burning up until you want to scream.

The wind howls for a reason, you know.

And so it was that I felt so selfishly as I traipsed around the girl with the soulful eyes; she stood, motionless, waiting for her father’s reply. The man sighed, a heavy musky sigh that I stole from his lips. It carried regret, sorrow, and another feeling I could not identify; but later on, the battlefields taught me that it was fear.

‘I wish I could stay, love,’ he said gently. ‘But this is my job and my duty. Everyone has one, and if I don’t go, I’ll feel like I’m a bad person.’

‘But you’re not a bad person,’ the girl said indignantly.

‘I’m not,’ her father agreed. ‘Or I try not to be, at least. But do you want me to feel like a bad person?’

The girl was quiet for a second and she stared down at the ground, refusing to meet her father’s gaze. ‘No,’ she whispered, so quietly that no one heard her, except me. She sniffled and a tear slipped down her cheek. I reached out to touch it but stopped myself just in time. Sighing, I walked past the girl and spoke to her.

Say it again, I said.

To her credit, the girl did not jump ten feet into the air―if she had there is no doubt that she would've gotten her head stuck in the branches―but she did look slightly surprised.

‘No,’ she repeated, louder this time. ‘I don’t want you to feel bad, baba, but―’ she hesitated. ‘I’ll feel bad, too, if you go away.’

Her father laughed. ‘There’s no need to feel bad, not if you do your part of the job as well. Be a good person, take care of your mother, and pray for me. Can you do that?’

The girl nodded fervently. There were more tears. I stood by, watching. That is all I ever do.

The father kissed the girl on her forehead and hugged her close. They sat there for a minute, shaking with suppressed sobs. The worst kind of crying is when you cry in silence. Then the father let go.

‘She isn't coming?’ he asked softly. 'Your mother.'

‘She’s been in the basement all day,’ the girl said. ‘She cries when she thinks I’m not looking and pretends to be cleaning out the rubbish.’ The girl glanced around, before whispering in her father’s ear: ‘She’s swept the floor at least five times already.’

The ghost of a smile flickered across the man’s face, but it was gone sooner than it came. He stood up, abruptly, kissed the girl again, and climbed into the van. Another man clapped the girl’s father on his shoulder. He managed a strained smile, and the van started to roll down the street, tyres crunching on leaves as it left.

‘Goodb―’ the girl tried to say, but she couldn't manage to form the words. She coughed over her own sobs, and ran out into the street. ‘Come home!’ she yelled, waving to her father. ‘Come home!’

Her father waved back, and shouted back: ‘God willing! God willing!’

I trailed through the leaves before I left, casting a quick glance over the tears that were now slipping freely down the girl’s face. I touched them gently, before I flew away.

~*~

Some time passed, and I nearly forgot about the girl in my travels. Beauty and ugliness were two things I saw on a daily basis and I used to hear so many conversations I found it hard to keep track of most of them. It wasn't until an evening in January, a couple of years later, that I happened to come across that same neighbourhood where The Girl lived. I did not yet know her name, but I do not forget voices so easily.

In fact, I think it wise to say that I do not forget voices at all.

The trees were bare, covered in flimsy sheets of frost, like skeletons if they could but stand. Snow slipped off their branches, sliding gently towards the ground in cloudy tufts, burying all the decay. Winter is the world’s graveyard. Willows and oaks swayed, overlooking the small houses and the rubbish heaps, their silence warring against other silences, as if trying to decide which one was louder. Clouds like thick fog hung overhead, the pale moon a dab of grey against the sky's strident pallor.

The streetlamps had been turned on that night, flickering like indecisive fireflies, and a green van pulled up beneath the trees, at the doorstep of the house where the girl lived. I stepped closer, breathing lightly against the snow, and that was when I caught the silence as it stole through the still air, swallowing it down. A single scream, shrill and sharp, ripped against the air’s fabric. The sound tore through me, too, so I did not dare move any closer towards the house. From my vantage point behind the van, I could see a girl and a woman―The Girl and her mother, apparently―standing on the front porch. It was The Girl’s screams that I had heard and it was these tormented, raw cries that caused me to avert my eyes from hers. They were hollow pools of blankness, caves caving in on themselves. They made me shudder, so I slipped off into the night. The air hung dark and dreary and fragile, like the wings of a moth crushed between human fists.

And yet, I found myself unable to keep away.

I came across the girl again, my feet trailing that same path to her house. Whether it was out of curiosity or some other indiscernible emotion, I don't really know. I found her sitting on the porch, hugging tightly onto a beat-up jacket that had the sounds of cannons caught in its lining. Her head was covered; she was wearing a coat. I did not fail to notice the coffin that lay at her feet: a plain, black box with the words: ‘In the name of God’ etched along its side. Neither did I fail to recognise the sounds that wafted around it: lamentations, gunfire, cries of pain and last oaths, all mingled with the sound of clear laughter. I had to strain my ears to hear the last sound, as though it had been eclipsed by misery. I sat down next to the girl.

I was surprised to see that she wasn't crying.

I was even more surprised when she greeted me with a quiet, ‘I remember you.’

To my credit, I did not scream. I only jumped ten feet into the air, startling the birds as I did.

The girl almost laughed. Almost, but not quite. The laugh seemed to catch in her throat and it came out like a shaky sigh. Her eyes were a swirling mass of nothingness; I could feel myself drowning in them. She cleared her throat.

'I'm sorry for frightening you,' she said, hiding her face in her jacket so her voice came out muffled-sounding.

It’s all right, I said, tracing my fingers around her dark head. I wasn't that frightened.

The Girl just sniffled in response. 'I wonder if he was frightened, when he d—d―when he left.' The sobs were wracking at her slight body and she shuddered as she cried, but there were no tears. I touched her face, hesitantly, and she hiccupped, wiping at her face with her knuckles.

'Why?' she asked, furiously. 'Why do people go to war? Why do they hurl stupid cannons and bombs and bullets at each other?' She slammed her hand down against the wooden stairs, and didn't even seem to be bothered when her skin split apart. I wanted to comfort the girl, but I didn't know how, so I just sat there and traced patterns in her skin.

I think humans go to war, I began to say, forming the words slowly, and with caution, because they don't know how to deal with their problems. Just like it rains because the clouds don't know what to do with all that water. It's like ... dropping a rock into someone's garden. It starts with little things: anger, the desire for revenge. I paused. I heard someone say that, I added. A really long time ago.

The Girl had been listening closely as I spoke, and now she raised her fingers to her eyes, watching the blood as it trickled down her wrist. 'So you're saying,' she said, 'that if I dropped a rock in someone's garden, then the person would retaliate and they'd drop a rock in my garden, too?'

Yes, I agreed. And in the process, they might crush a flower.

'I'd get angry if someone crushed my flower. I'd crush their whole flowerbed.' I smiled slightly. The Girl understood what I was trying to say.

One thing leads to another, doesn't it?

'My father was a flower,' The Girl said, ignoring my last statement. 'He didn't deserve to be crushed.'

There was silence for a while, or as silent as it could be. I played with the pebbles at the girl's feet, trying to fill it in.

Can I ask a question? I said to her, finally. She nodded. Can humans run out of tears?

The Girl rested her chin upon her palm. 'I think they can,' she said. 'I cried all day yesterday, and even after I went to bed. But today... ' She sighed. 'Today I tried so hard, but I just ... can't. It hurts really bad and it won't go away, but it's this...' She gestured towards her chest. ‘...ball of fire inside me and it reminds me why I'm sad.'

I can't cry, I told her. I envy humans because of that.

She laughed―bitterly, I thought. 'Is that why the wind howls?' she asked me.

I smiled at her. Yes.

I bid her goodbye and drifted away from her. I could see her waving to me as I left.

I waved back.

~*~

I came back a few days later, but by then The Girl was gone.

The trees were ground to ash; the ones that still stood, like black lines of charcoal, sketched across paper. The ground was red and black and a million other muddy colours, colours that have not been given names. Wood and soot and blocks of cement were piled on the ground, all meshed up as if the street was an unsolved jigsaw. I could still hear the sounds that lingered by: the bombs, pelting down like raindrops; the explosions; the screams...

And the silence. Always silence.

It hung thick in the air like a blanket, covering up all the other sounds, and I had to struggle against it to reach out and grab the other vibrations. Humans seem to think that sounds travel in waves, but it differs for each kind. Silence is a tsunami, while voices are ripples.

I was searching for a ripple, I knew. I strained my ears, struggling against the clouds of dankness and decay, and I heard a million voices. Laments, laughter, faded complaints ... and a voice. A yell ringing through the silence; a call, shrill and sharp, and the words: 'Come home.'

I caught them, reaching out with my long, slim, invisible fingers, and I breathed the words in. I felt sorry for The Girl and I held her voice to my ears, listening—listening.

'Come home! Come home! Come home!'

And I suppose it is futile for me to say, for The Girl is no longer here to listen to me, but if she were, I would whisper to her:

You are.

~Fin because I has flair for dramatics is why.