Marina and the Wind

Marina went to war with the wind on the 7th of May in the year 2008. Her mother had first taken up a feud with the wind upon visiting the beach one day only to have sand flung into her hair by the gusts coming off the water. She went home and lit three candles. Words were spoken. A promise was made. She called Marina into the living room and had her sit in front of the candles melting quickly on the coffee table that was made out of repurposed driftwood.

“Devochka,” she said, “We are now and forever will be at war with the wind. The war will only cease if the wind ceases, and I do not see that happening. Promise me that you will fight until your last breath and that you will have a daughter that will also fight.”

Marina promised her mother. She held out her hand, and her mother pricked one of her fingers with a sewing needle. The drop of blood that formed was held over one of the candles until it fell into the wax. It didn’t hurt. Marina was used to this sort of thing, and her fingers were calloused over. Her mother was capable of bringing about great luck, but she was also constantly choosing losing battles and losers for boyfriends. The last one had cheated on her with a housewife in town and her mother turned them both into bearded dragons. Marina was allowed to keep one, but the other was given away to a third grade classroom. She could never remember if she had the housewife or the boyfriend, but the dragon mostly slept anyway until it passed away at the age of fourteen, which is a rather long life for that kind of lizard.

Marina’s mother died on May 6th, 2008 only a few days after Marina graduated from the university on the island. The next day, she went to the beach and spread her mother’s ashes over several sand castles she had spent the morning making. It was still too cool for a beach day, and the only other people walking around were either contemplating divorce or taking photos of their dogs. Once her mother was spread amongst the castles, Marina cleared her throat and swore revenge on the wind, even though the wind had nothing to do with her mother dying. She had found a lump on her left breast, and within a matter of weeks, she was no longer strong enough to spit at her enemies or blow out her candles.

“Devochka,” she murmured on her last night in hospice, “You may forget all my other fights, but you must never forget my war with the wind.”

After taking on the mantle of a feud with nature, Marina went into town to get a cold brew. Sitting at a table near the door by the coffeeshop, she noticed the door kept flying open. One of the baristas commented that it was a particularly blustery day, and Marina knew that the wind was wasting no time. Her cup knocked over and the cold brew went all over the notebook she was writing in. She had been working on a series of theorems that would potentially open up a wormhole or win her a Nobel Prize. She let out a curse word.

“Chyort.”

She thought she heard laughter. Walking outside, the wind lifted up her dress as a pedicab driver rode by transporting two tourists to a nearby hotel where they would think about divorcing before agreeing to go for a walk on the beach. Marina marched home and when she arrived, she took every candle her mother had left and put them all over the house. This would always be her mother’s house even though, legally, it was Marina’s now. Her mother had paid it off by doing tarot readings and selling Canadian diet pills to women (and a few men) from all over the island. Marina began lighting the candles and, as she did, there was a banging on the window. The wind wanted to be let in. It knew what she was doing, and it knew that she was (potentially) taking things too far. It had only been having a little fun with her earlier. Lighting all these candles could open up its own kind of wormhole. Marina didn’t care. She was an orphan now. Her mother was dead and her father was a famous writer back in the old country who pretended to only have sons. She would not spend years and years fighting the untouchable, and she would not give birth to another daughter just so that child could do the same. Truthfully, Marina was under the impression that she was either a lesbian or a radish her mother had turned into a person, but either way, the thought of procreating did not excite her.

Once every candle was lit, the banging was so loud, Marina’s neighbor called to ask if she was doing some renovating on the house.

“Yes,” she said, “I’m destroying everything but the toilet.”

She hung up, and began to chant.

By the third or fourth word, the wind began to die down. By the tenth word, the banging had become a mere tapping. By the fiftieth word, there was no wind in town. By the one hundredth word, there was no wind anywhere.

Marina had won the war.

She walked outside to see if anyone would notice. The children two houses down were in their front yard playing King Henry and the Bishop. The neighbor who had called about the noise was hanging up bathrobes in her backyard on a low-hanging line. A man went by on a bicycle humming a song Frank Sinatra would have hated. Nobody seemed to notice that the wind was gone.

It turns out that if you get rid of the sun, people notice. Same with rain. Eventually, people start to ask why it hasn’t rained, and then there’s drought, and famine, etc, etc. People will notice an absence of snow if they’re used to it in the winter or even the lack of a tornado if they live in Tornado Alley, because then people stop buying souvenir t-shirts that say “My Bum of a Husband Took Me to Tornado Alley on Our Honeymoon.”

It’s only the wind that can disappear without anyone batting an eye. Marina went on with her life as though she wasn’t the reason there was no more wind. Scientists brought it up, but nobody listened to them, because wind is the kind of thing you swear you can feel even when it isn’t there.

Marina wasn’t sure whether or not to feel proud of her accomplishment. There were consequences to what she had done, but it was also quite the feat. Her mother was the strongest person she had ever known, and yet, she couldn’t beat the wind. Marina had, but it had come at a cost. You can’t light every candle and expect to be the same person once you’ve blown them all out.

Nearly twenty years after defeating the wind, Marina was taking photos of her dog on the beach when she went to inhale and found there was nothing there. Nothing to take in. She looked out at the ocean and saw that it was still.

Not even a ripple across the surface.