A House for the Wind
The rain stopped, and the whole cloud kingdom turned gold at the edges. Juno shook the last drops off her sleeves and climbed two more stairs of vapour. Mo came behind her, slow as always, his olive-tan shell shining wet. Far below them the wind made a low sound in the hollow steps, like someone blowing across the neck of a bottle. Hoooo. Juno stopped still to listen. "Listen — it's starting to hum again," she said. Mo lifted his blue-grey head. The sound came once more, then thinned away into nothing. Juno wanted to keep it. She looked around at the soft white country and began to think how.
They decided to build the wind a house. Juno rolled clouds into fat white bricks and stacked them in a ring. Mo pushed the crooked ones straight with his nose. For a roof they laid a slab of mist across the top, and for a window Juno poked a hole with her finger. Then they waited. The wind came up the stairs. It went around the house, and over the house, and politely away. Nothing hummed at all. "It has to go through," Juno said, and punched another hole in the wall. The house leaned, sighed, and folded into a puddle of fog at their feet.
Mo did not mind. He carried a rain-bead on the back of his shell, clear as a marble, caught in a storm long ago and polished by every wind since. He set it down in front of her. When Juno breathed across its tiny opening, the bead sang: hoooo, small and round and warm. That was the sound. That was exactly it. So they built again, taller this time, with a little chimney for the bead to sit in. Juno climbed up to set it in place. Her foot slid on the damp vapour, her hand came down hard, and the bead cracked into two pieces.
The halves rolled apart on the step. Juno caught them both and held them behind her, one in each hand. Mo was below her, nudging a brick straight, humming to himself in his slow way. For a moment Juno thought about the fog, and how easy it would be to say the wind had done it. Her chest went tight and small. Then she climbed down and opened both hands. "I broke it," she said. "I stepped wrong, and I broke your bead." Mo looked at the two halves for a long, quiet moment. Then he leaned his head against her arm, the way he always did.
"We can fix it," Juno said, and she meant it, so she started straight away. She packed wet mist into the crack and pressed the halves together. The mist dried, went powdery, and let go. She tried again with a strand of cloud-wool, winding it round and round. The bead went silent under the wrapping; no sound came out of it at all. Juno sat back on the step. Beside her, Mo breathed across one loose half, slowly, the way he did everything. Hoooo — lower than before, deeper, like a big door swinging open. Juno picked up the other half and blew. Hers came out high.
Two notes. Juno looked at Mo and Mo looked at Juno, and then they were both moving. They pulled the leaning house down on purpose and began again. This time they built it low and wide, with the walls curved so the wind would be guided instead of stopped. They made two chimneys, a tall one and a short one, and settled a half-bead inside each. Mo pressed every brick smooth with his flippers. Juno walked round the whole thing twice, tapping it, listening hard. "Listen — it's starting to hum again," she said. Then the two of them sat down to wait for the wind.
The wind came up the stairs. It slipped into the low curved walls, found both chimneys, and went out through them at once. Hoooo. High and low together, braided, holding steady. It was better than the bead had ever been on its own. Below them the lamps of the cloud kingdom glowed in their long soft rows, and the mist turned silver, and the hum rolled out across all of it. Juno lay back on the warm vapour with her head near Mo's shell. Her eyes grew heavy. The wind went on playing the house without needing anybody to help it.
One lamp drifted near them, low and yellow, the way the small ones do at the end of a night. Mo tucked his flippers in. Juno laid one hand flat on the step and felt the whole house humming up through the cloud, slow and steady, like something breathing in its sleep. "Listen — it's starting to hum again," she said, though it had never stopped. Mo closed his heavy eyes. The lamp dimmed, flickered once at its edge, and went out, and the dark was soft and full of that one round sound. Juno slept with the two notes braided above her.
