“Wait!” she cried, but her voice was faint in the stillness. The narrow street dipped. The splash of the rain from the rooftops sounded like heavy footsteps striding in front of her. The clouds raced in the brooding sky. She could hear the waves breaking out to sea, the roar of the storm receding. Somewhere behind her she heard a cry, and half turned. The old woman Oliver had hired was there, trotting after her, white shawl and nightgown flapping. But there was no time for that. The harbour was before her, and she saw the boats bobbing and ducking, the riggings swaying.
The wind tangled her long hair and mocked at her tears. Somewhere a seabird cried, long and sad, into the darkness. She heard a step on the cobbles, and turned, sobbing and laughing, to be gathered into his arms.
The next morning the storm had gone. The air was calm again, but with the listless, exhausted stillness that comes after such violence. The old woman wore a frightened face, and spoke of someone pounding on the door and the sick woman running and calling into the storm. “He took her up,” she would say, and for years afterwards there was not much more they could get from her. “He took her up into the darkness.” And Oliver, home too late, had buried his face in his hands, and admitted defeat to the east wind, the wind that carries the souls of those who have drowned and cannot find peace, and Tom Harte from the Hermosa, which had gone down with all hands in a storm two years before.
This story first appeared in Summer of Love, a collection of short stories by Australian authors, published in 1994 by Pan Macmillan Australia.
Copyright Lilly Sommers
Copyright © 2013 Sara MacKenzie
STEPPING BACK Copyright © 2009 Sara MacKenzie
THE EAST WIND Copyright ©1994 Lilly Sommers
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