WindChild

The child arrived on the nor’west wind. A trick of the light, a glimmer; nothing more. Husband said I was probably coming down with a migraine. There was a smile in his voice as he said it (the nor’wester makes people crazy you know).

The next time that blasted overheated wind blew its pollen and dust through our open windows, the child lingered a little longer. I could see then, she was a girl. Long golden tresses blowing around her face, her eyes big and round and lonely. She was gone before I could reach out my hand to her.

Husband will tell you I’ve always had a soft spot for the underdog, always feeding the local stray cats and backing the no-hopers. I tell him he’s a heartless bastard, but he just laughs and calls me a bleeding heart. Perhaps that’s why she chose me. Maybe I looked like an easy bet, maybe she could see my eyes were lonely too.

Each time the child floated in on the wind she was a little more. She stopped flickering in the spaces between the dust motes, ethereal and made of light, and planted her feet firmly in the earth. Eventually, even Husband had to acknowledge her, this strange halfchild on our doorstep.

She didn’t have a name so we gifted her one, something we had been saving for a baby that never came. I filled her silence with the language of mothers, and Husband built her a swing in the oak tree. Our windchild smiled and blew us kisses on the air.

Now, it is like we have always been three.

Every night, we tuck our daughter into bed, tell her a story, and leave her window open so she can feel the wind on her face.