Letting A Wind Go
For a week Pia took her grandmother's bread up to the dunes.
She told her grandmother that she had a project. Her grandmother, who was wise and did not ask too many questions, made an extra small loaf each morning and wrapped it in a clean cloth.
Pia delivered the bread to the wind-keeper. He broke each loaf and laid the pieces out around the tent. The pieces sat there, inside the strange still ring, untouched, until evening — when, every night, they were gone. Eaten or carried, Pia never knew.
After three days, the bells around the tent gave the smallest possible sound. A tiny clink.
After five days, they tinkled gently.
On the seventh day, the wind-keeper stood at the lip of the hollow and breathed in.
"Today," he said. "Today is the day."
Pia stood beside him.
"What do I do?"
"Stand back, this time."
Pia stepped back to the next dune.
The wind-keeper undid the cord that tied the bells. He uncovered the clay pot. He stepped back, calmly, and the wind — gentle now, soft, sounding more like a long sigh than a storm — rose out of the hollow. It went out across the dunes. It went down to the harbour. It filled the sails of the still boats. It turned the mill.
Saltgate, after three weeks of silence, was the windy, useful, complicated village it had always been again.
Pia walked home in the wind. She did not say anything to anyone. The wind-keeper had told her not to.