Voiceless it cries,

Wingless flutters,

Toothless bites,

Mouthless mutters.

Gollum's Riddle from The Hobbit

. . .the wind was trying to

whisper something to me and

I couldn't make out what it

was, and so it made the cold

shivers run all over me.

Huckleberry from Huck Finn

A wild gust of motion suddenly shook an old tree directly behind Timothy Roberts, sending a pile of October leaves scuttling down the long suburban road. Turning, he watched as the brightly colored patches of orange and red ticker­tacked over the pavement to settle themselves quietly in the lawn of a neighbor. "It's just the wind," he said to himself. "Only the wind."

This assurance did little to quiet his heart. In school, he'd been strangely jumpy all day, and this sudden rush had brought him up short. Unable to actually see the gust, Tim watched the leaves with which it played. He noted with satisfaction the change of direction they took­­moving away from him. Without warning, the leaves again flew up, scattered into an alley between the Gleason and Stern houses, and were gone. A voice within his head said, "Not yet."

"Not yet?, What did that mean?" For a moment Tim strained to watch where the leaves had gone; then, shrugging his shoulders, he hoisted his book­bag securely on his back and turned again to the dirt road which lay crossed with long shadows cast by a rapidly setting sun. The forest was just ahead. Not far away he could hear the wind rushing about in the tops of nearby trees as he trudged homeward from his school bus stop.

He'd noticed the wind the night before, wandering and whispering around his house and through the woods which bordered his family's back property. It had made its usual moans and groans. But that had never bothered Tim much; actually he sort of liked it. When friends came and slept over, he told them it was the woods' spirit, maybe the ghost of some lost traveler, or one of Kingston's first settlers--no one knew for sure­­keeping an eye on some forgotten grave, property, of treasure. There was something almost homey about having a wind which actually moaned against the window panes in the way described by books. It made his friends shiver, but he liked it.

Last night, however, had felt different. There were overly sustained groans­­low and uneven, then long periods of silence, followed abruptly by intense whistling wails right at his own room's window. Then, the wind fell back to its low groaning again. The whole pattern had carried a sense of urgency, of need, which Tim had never felt before. He hadn't slept well that night. And when he had, it was filled with dreams of winding dark forest paths and a sense of something great and unseen sweeping leaves and debris out of its path as it shadowed and pursued him.

The next morning, although the sky was clear, the wind had still been there, waking him before his alarm with a sharp howl. While the television blared news over breakfast of new labor strikes in the Soviet Union, a possible tax hike from the Federal government, and the midnight escape of a violent psychotic called Mad Willie from a local institution, Tim had tried to convince his mother that his going to school was a bad idea. She hadn't heard him. She also hadn't noticed the wind rattling the kitchen window, but Tim had.

That morning, while walking through the woods which led to a nearby bus stop, Tim found himself pressed along by little puffs of air. They pushed about his clothing so that his jacket billowed out like a sail, and just as he had gotten that all pressed down, a gust of wind had snapped off his cap, making him jog ahead to catch and pick it up. This had all annoyed Tim since he was early and hated to hurry. Then, he heard a major movement of atmosphere starting from where he had just been standing. Not some playful breeze, but a great wind. It moved through the woods, coming toward him. He could hear the trees whispering, the leaves hissing, and see the flickering of light as the air passed through some branches in the distance. There was no doubt, he was in its path.

Something in him said "Run!" and he did, all the way to the end of the path which emptied into the street where the bus was to meet him. Still, the vast hissing and thrashing drew nearer. He cleared the path and sprinted to the post by the paved street curb which marked his stop. Then, it was also out of the woods, in the open, leaves scuttling before it, dust billowing around it, a mass of invisible chaos all rolling toward him. Miraculously, the old yellow school bus pulled up beside him just as the first leaf touched Tim's jacket; he jumped on board.

"Ha! Missed me!" he laughed as the doors snapped shut. Strange looks met him while he found an empty seat. Trying not to think how weird he looked, Tim sat down. The leaves clattered around the moving wheels, and a strange thought passed into his head: "Safe, for now."

School itself wasn't bad, as non­bad as the sixth grade can be, but Tim was constantly distracted. Late in the day when glancing out the window, he caught sight of a particular tree, among the many in the school yard, swaying back and forth, loosing leaves which danced all around it. The swaying became more and more violent until, abruptly, the tree stood stone still and the one next to it began the same violent dance. Tim watched this happen several times, each tree which moved being closer to his classroom than the one before, until the teacher's voice brought him back to the math lesson .

"What's the problem Timothy? It's only the wind."

Later, during reading­time, Tim almost forgot the wind as he became absorbed in a book about ghosts. The librarian had suggested it because Halloween was only days away, and he had just gotten to the part when the man had stepped into the forbidden room when from the window came a load crack. Everyone jumped, but Tim got the worst of it, his chair being closest to the window which they all soon figured out had been struck by the wind­blown stick. He stared, trembling, at the metal laced pane.

"Relax everyone, relax," laughed his teacher, "Old Mr. Wind doesn't like being ignored today. I guess he wants children to play with." Tim shuddered.

Throughout the day gusts of air pressed against the glass, making it creak and snap under pressure. It filled Tim with a mild anxiety all afternoon, but just before the end of the school day a thought struck him that made his innards twist. Today, Tuesday, was the one day of the week when he had to stay late for the audio club. They were working on a radio play to be presented on the speaker on Halloween.

"We need some special effects," Jeff Clondin said. "Some whistling wind would be perfect."

"Why don't we just blow over the mike?" Tim asked.

"Are you kidding? That always sounds so fake, and besides, why do that when we've got the perfect sounds right outside in the handball court?"

The wind always made particularly loud moans in between the cement walls of the court and the brick school building.

"I don't know guys," Tim said, "even though the wind's been heavy today, its also been spotty."

"Well, we'll just have to wait and catch some." But they didn't. The boys stood in the court for a half an hour without one breeze. Tim kept his eyes and ears perked, but nothing happened, and the more he thought about it the more he thought he'd been acting like a real nerd all day. In the end they were stuck with blowing on the microphone after all. By the time they finished making the tape it was already 4:45. Tim usually got a lift with Mrs. Clondin who dropped him off at the bus stop just outside the woods. He thought about giving his mother a call to come and pick him up. But he knew she'd be making dinner by now, and it really wasn't that late. She'd come if it were 5:00 or 5:30, but it was still light, and what was he worried about anyway­­the wind?

Walking along now though away from the bus stop where he had been deposited, Tim was forced to admit that he was worried, worried and scared. As foolish as he felt by the scare he'd just received from those whirling leaves now vanished behind the Stern house, it did not slow the pounding of his heart nor make the forest more inviting as he entered it. Walking down the path, Tim tried to keep from looking around much; he wanted desperately not to appear afraid, although he had no solid idea to who might be watching. The woods were quiet, but as the sun dipped down its final few inches, the cool began to rise, and there came a breeze tickling his cheek.

Wisps of air began to pluck at Tim's clothing. Something close to the ground rattled up behind him, struck his leg and clung fast. It was a newspaper's front page, probably from some stack the wind had torn up earlier that day. More about strikes, taxes and lunatics, it somehow seemed to have little to do with things that were important. Nothing to do with the "now" of Tim's life. A gust whipped it from his hand and carried it off into the darkness of the forest. Tim felt a tingle dance up his spine. It was dark; he'd forgotten that woods are always two hours ahead in the day than the rest of the world. Just sunset at home; night here. He could just barely see beyond the second row of dark columns of trees that surrounded him. And then he heard it.

Far down the path behind him he could hear a massive stirring, growing in intensity. Leaves began to stir at his feet and glancing behind him Tim caught a glimpse of a huge darkness rushing upon him through the trees. Fear took complete control, and the boy was sprinting down the path crying for his mother and father. Closer and closer, he could feel the vast momentum behind him, moving nearer and nearer. In his peripheral vision, Tim saw trees bending wildly about and leaves flying past his face. Ahead was the light of home. Panic made his feet a wild whirl of speed.

Suddenly a huge shambling figure leaped from the bushes and blocked his way. A horse cry came from misshapen lips and a great stone was lifted high over its head. Tim screamed and tried to turn, but his ankle got caught in a root and he tumbled. He scrambled to the trunk of old maple tree and looked up with fear glazed eyes. The figure stood over him, still holding the stone it obviously planned to smash him with; around its flapping pant legs leaves flew by in mass like panic stricken animals before a roaring forest blaze. Meanwhile, the great movement Tim had been fleeing from was still coming, rising to a crescendo of noise, flying debris, and power. Coming and coming, darker and darker, the Wind was there! All force; all bluster; all black. Tim frantically felt his breath being pulled from his lungs and closed his eyes against the pressure. A thunder crack seemed to sound over his head, then a thud, a sigh, and suddenly silence.

Amidst the quiet which followed, Tim heard voices calling his name. "Tim! Timmy Darling! Where are you?"

Mom? Dad! Opening his eyes Tim found the mysterious figure had vanished. He tried to get up, and cried out in pain. His ankle was sprained, but the cry had attracted his parents' attention and he could hear them coming. As the moon rose above the crest of the trees, the surrounding darkness began to wane. Tim began to make out shapes around him. Before him a lay a figure stretched out on the ground with a great branch, sturdy as a club, by its head, The long dead bough apparently had snapped off at the joint from the old maple he'd fallen against. In a moment Mom and Dad arrived. Lifting him up, Tim's father looked down on the fallen figure who now looked strangely pitiful in the moon light. It groaned.

"Call the police Marge and you'd better take Tim. I'll watch this one." As Tim hobbled beside his mother, leaning his weight against the warmth of her side, something murmured in his mind:

"Safe, safe for sure now."

"Did you say something Mom?"

"No dear, it's probably just the wind."

Later, while Tim drank hot cocoa and iced his ankle, he listened to the Police talking to his parents. The figure in the woods had been the fugitive lunatic. Apparently he'd been hiding in the woods ever since his escape the night before. Tim was an incredibly lucky young man for William's delusion often made him dangerous to have around children.

"To think your boy walked through that forest twice, and then to have a branch come crashing down just in the nick of time!" The officer shook his head, "talk about winds of fortune."

Not far away Tim heard a rustling like laughter amongst trees which sparkled with October leaves.