Where The Winds Are Sold

By Animisha Saxena

Alas, the mage of wine, love, and entice settles to wait for yet another dawn. Of late, in her country, the days have brimmed with boredom and evenings with star-studded ideation, young and bright. Minds have been subjugated to the concentrated pivot of work to come to rest by a whirlwind at night. Breathe, sedate, and comply, wilden winds fly, make their wayward way to them. Those wilden winds carve through tough skin at night. She’s caught them in her fists tonight and she plans to sell them to the drug dealers and hysterical women. They often need that; the feel of the wind in their hair.

The marigold dusk, she heads out into gives a familiar recognition, a welcome, a beautiful woman’s inviting charm. The air is overworn with chatter, the day’s work woven in talk, conversation with lovers, friends, and family. She’s got plenty to sell, wine and more, and she’s got the eyes for the neighborhood whore. She’s adrift, Melody, the whore, she got ink blots for eyes; the one through with poems pour. There has been a tragedy tonight, her weepy eyes stare back at you, ones you cannot ignore. She knows nothing about the mage’s wine and is dissatisfied with her approach. Black ink spills from her eyes. “Hush, love,” the mage sighs, “Settle your tears out to dry, wilden winds come by.

Her words hook Melody’s hope; she grabs them like twigs curling towards the sun. Her eyes loom over the mage’s entire self, pondering, seeming to convey they patiently wait for the reach of the Sun. She grasps the mage’s hand, “You wandering the marigolds have also seemed other land but somehow you might understand, might help me catch the promise, deliver my smelting tears from the devil’s hand. “The promise to all girls, beautiful and peculiar, is war my dear one”. Melody’s eyes follow the mage’s hand that cast a dim spell. “Thomas but tells the whole town my form is ugly, and Steven laughs with his friends, calls me thundering teeth and dull for the daze. The mage sighs again as if unsettled by her trust, perhaps nerved by her belief that if she is beautiful enough, pleasant and acceptable enough, the sun would move even an inch closer, closer to her reach.

 The mage turns to leave, and like a dog hooked onto a scent, a defeated mind, grappled by a trance, worked by the mage’s spell, Melody follows closely behind. They come to a nook just as the dusk turns blue, entering a hooded house, reigned by gold dust and dew. She allows Melody to be seated and unveils a mirror that takes the centre of the room. “You would have loved him even if you didn’t read about love in the books.” The words stun Melody. “I know not much about love,” she lets out. “

Time takes you backwards, all the things you didn’t take with you make you who you are. That’s a way, love finds you, carries forward”. Melody gazed into the mirror to find, standing in front, a reflection of her forsaken lover: the rookie, enrapturing Channing. “The mirror is the third eye; it shows oneself, the eye one sees oneself with,” the mage elaborates. “When all’s gone and spirit’s set like the sun, you make love out of what’s left of what he gave you, you want to be the person he wants to make you. Far gone. Out of reach from the day’s eye, one through which the sun spies.”

 Emotions break in Melody. She spies the reflection, turned over, overwhelmed. “All my luck is lost in his eyes”, echoes her broken voice. The mage vocalizes her contempt, tells her, “But it’s your sight, so unkept.” Her words enrapture her woe. Melody moves forward and, like a gush of storm wind, breaks her glaring mirror apart. Blood gushes through her fingers, gripping her hand like a gun. “You’re responsible for the blood you carry, hush now, carry it home.”

Amongst the wilden winds that blazed through the next evening, during golden rain, the neighbours found Melody gleaming; it was valiantly diverting to see a prim girl so seeming. Her steps were big, heavy steps; familiar men take notice, approach her. “Rains darn divine on you, doll”, spurs Thomas over the rain. “In today’s darling glow, she comes home with me, bugger,” intercedes Damian. “Grapple the sun down for me and I’ll come home, you bores”, emanates Melody in her response, her back to them, traversing forward to the end of the lane, steps away.

Days ahead, Melody swings on a trusting tire wrapped around the slanted pine. The evening is still mellowed by golden rain. Landon’s right around. Landon seems to lay down her loneliness, the scene cuts through the pine’s stillness. Landon’s tall, Landon’s sweet, rigid, Landon’s love, she hopes. All the sorrow for stone, he’ll hold. 

She’s a canon when she springs into his arms, “Here, catch a dove,”. He envelops her whole, “There, breathe, soar, come back for more,”. She’s sparkling in the rain, she scales him, “I can see myself rising with you like the sun,”. He boldens, “For we’re good, I want to taste those teeth that astound like thunder, I’ve heard of their faint grip.” She stiffens. He continues, “My place is a good spot, show and open up, your red sultry meat, those teeth.” “I’ve got my poems to write,” she says, “Ink to dry”. He leaves a bit disappointed, she stays, in the grips of the pine.

The commencing rain washes the ink from her eyes like just so many useless tears. The mage finds her in the rain. “Loves a caress from the waves to the shore. Loves all the energy in the world falling still, till you reach your resting shore. One day, the waves will come, touch your withering gore, and take you quiet with them, as if you’d bled into them before,” she says. She wraps her in gold and carries her through to her seeping shore.

By Animisha Saxena