Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 759
She would probably never know whether she had stayed
hidden because of shame, or because she didn’t want to have to
explain herself to him.
She rolled over in the soft snow. The maelstrom she had
fallen into had spared her, as she’d known it would. The
Winds were efficient, they would not let her die needlessly.
Now, though, they had no use for her, and she was her own
creature at last.
It was perhaps the first time in her life, either as
Calandria May or as the White Wind, that she really felt free.
In the final analysis, it was this that she hadn’t wanted to tell
Axel. How could he understand that she had never been happy
as a human in the first place? 3340 had been a seductive
enemy; in fighting him she had fought that part of herself,
successfully for a while. Here on Ventus, she had lost to it-and
she was happy that she had.
She spotted a wildflower. It poked up bravely through
the snow, and in the wan daylight it was like a little blue jewel,
begemmed with beads of water and surrounded by crystals of
ice. The White Wind crept up and lost herself in the
contemplation of it. In her mind was a song, and the song was
endless: all of Ventus sang a hymn of beauty and truth, and
she was a part of that now. High above the sky she knew the
Diadem swans were dancing, and they would dance forever.
She stared at the little flower until the tears in her own
eyes made her shake her head and walk away.
A cold winter rain descended on the valley below the
Titans’ Gates. The flood had long since subsided, and
remnants of the army now worked to make a new road across
the blasted landscape. Of the forest that had once stood there,
not a single twig remained; in their zeal to destroy 3340, the