wind

The wind had a secret.

All across the Seventh World it blew, whispering, shouting, singing its wild way in the far northern mountains and fjords; it danced the new-growing leaves and flowered boughs in Galce and the vineyards of Italya. It whistled through hollows and secret places in the Eastern Lands and skipped across the tops of white waves to the Isles of Bryllan. There it soared over the craggy Highlands, swirled in the meadows of Midland and the valleys of Cryneth, played with the chimney smoke in old Londren.

The earth listened and rose to meet the wind’s blowing. Every blade of grass, every wildflower, every soaring eagle filled with the secret and trembled with it.

High above the wind’s place of singing, the stars over the Seventh World heard the blowing of a far-off hunting horn and shone the brighter at the sound.

The earth quivered as the wind’s words filled it and begged for release.

They may not yet know . . .

. . . it is a secret still . . .

keep it.

(From Chapter 1 of Coming Day, Book 3 of the Seventh World Trilogy)