Where the Wind Goes

Chapter 8 (Part 2) - The Missing

Iri sat perched on the edge of a wooden stool in Delly's workshop. The room was a circle around her, leading up to the sky like a turret that ended in a glass ceiling. There were two doors fixed into the curvature of the walls. One led to Delly's office, where her friend had disappeared some thirty minutes earlier, called away on a surprise business engagement. Through the other door, the one to her back, the sounds of the emporium trickled in. The occasional laughter and chattering comforted her. Iri liked knowing that other people were nearby.

The stool creaked as she leaned back and glanced up at the rose-tinted ceiling to watch the dust motes float in the in the pale pink light.

You can do this, she told herself. The answer is right in front of you.

A leather-bound portfolio sat on the wooden workbench in front of her. She flipped through it idly, knowing what the pages had in store. Missing person, last seen tending crops. Missing person, last seen foraging in the forest. Missing person, last seen heading home from the sandstone quarries.

Veralians were, at heart, a nomadic people. Iri didn't know all the realms, but she knew there were a thousand places to be from. And when a person was from somewhere far away, even if they didn't know where that place was, she believed it must call to them. She heard it all the time, the whisper of other worlds.

So it was not odd that people had gone missing, leaving their wash on the line and dinners half-cooked. What was weird was that people were worried. They told Iri how they'd watched their friends get swallowed up right before their eyes. When she pressed for details, they couldn't quite describe it- just that their loved one was there one moment, and then the world seemed to bend around them, and they were gone.

That morning, she'd finally had the nerve to bring it up over breakfast. She felt bolder, more steady now that they were back in the Council's castle. Artemis, she'd said, between bites of baked peaches, people are disappearing. He didn't have much thought on the matter. That is the way of our people, he'd said. He wasn't critical or confrontational, simply matter-of-fact. We come and go on the flight of fancy.

But these disappearances were nothing like the wistful tales of Veralians spirited away on the winds of change. It was like she'd unearthed a mother lode of unsolved mysteries tracing all the way back to Iris' time. And as far as she could tell, in the decades since this had begun, none of these people, not one, had ever returned.

That was especially odd. Some Veralians might walk off into the sunset and wash up on foreign shores and never look back. But her people did not age like humans, and given enough time, some, particularly children, would find their way home. They were never the same, always riding in on the tales of dashing adventures with a mysterious glint in their eyes. But safe, nonetheless.

Iri flipped to the front of the portfolio and began sketching out a timeline on a fresh page. The act was so familiar that she did it automatically. Draw a line, write the dates, begin at the beginning. She had drawn dozens, if not hundreds, of timelines over and over, trying to make sense of the tangled threads. Each time adding in new information and taking out the old.

But nothing ever changed. All she was left with were pages and pages of pasted together timelines and hands smudged with graphite. She held the paper upside down, as if that would give her a new perspective. But try as she might to puzzle out this mystery there were too many missing pieces.

Iri envied humans and their neat, orderly world. If other Veralians were drawn to far-off realms, she had felt, from the moment she heard her first word, the lure of the human world. It was like the very land itself knew her name and reached across the realms to call to her.