What Is Always Moving Never Tired And Dreaded

What Is Always Moving Never Tired And Dreaded

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What is always moving never tired, and dread? The winds blow in all directions. Their fury has been the scourge of men for eons. They are everywhere—but their greatest strength is the winds that swirl from the center of the universe toward the outside edge; a wind so powerful that its very motion can alter the shape and structure of matter.

Their speed, as they move outward at the speed of light, is truly terrifying. Yet even this is only one part of the horror. A great wind comes first. It was once thought to be an isolated event, but now it is known that when a wind blows in one place, a storm rages elsewhere.

But what is worse than this, what no one has been able to imagine, is that in some places—places where no wind blows—storms rage. Such storms are unlike any others known—they travel so far and have such force that their destruction is complete; they cause not only physical death but also change the very nature of the land, turning it into the desert, ice, or grasslands.

No one knows how many times the winds have come to wipe out the human race, but it may well be that there is always one somewhere; that as long as humans live on the surface of the planet, storms will batter them.

But there may be hope: no storm appears to follow in the wake of another, and they are always followed by a calm or at least the promise of calm. The wind which brought the storms, though it was once thought to be a wind from space, is now understood as a great wind of the planet.

Perhaps the wind which sweeps from the center of the universe is the same—yet its powers are far beyond the storms. What is certain is that the winds are terrifying, and they will continue to terrify as long as humanity lives.

—The World Book, “Weather and Climate”

It was morning on the southern continent, and the wind blew cold from the mountains, whipping the sea into frothing whitecaps, making the waves surge against the cliffs and breakers spray over the rock-fringed beach. As the sun climbed up toward noon, the air grew warmer.

It did not feel warm. The sky was cloudless. Yet no wind stirred, and no wind was heard. No one saw the first leaves of the grasses tremble with the movement of the wind; they were motionless as if dead. No wind touched the black trees that seemed to lean toward the wind, nor the grasses, the rocks, or the flowers.

For the whole world was motionless; for the wind had vanished from the universe.

Even the sand dunes did not stir—they were like the smooth gray stones set out in all directions by the waves. Only the ocean seemed alive. Wind and tide created this watery landscape of grey sand, and as the waves rose and fell, new shorelines were formed.

Sand flew off the waves, swirling and swirling around, piling high. And still, the wind was not there—no sound, no feeling of wind, only a vast empty place, a silence more terrible than any wind could have made.

The wind, when it had been first discovered, was a sudden thing, a thing that appeared from nowhere, an unexpected event. It was so great, and so powerful, that men were frightened and sought to find where it came from, for surely no wind could blow with such fury from nowhere.

But the wind was not found. The winds of space, or at least the winds which shaped them, are too far away to be sensed directly by humans, though they can be measured indirectly. A wind that comes from the stars, or some other point outside the solar system, is in fact a very weak wind since its force is dissipated by the expansion of the interstellar medium.

But there must be wind from somewhere in space, for, without wind, the planet would move faster than its orbit. No wind may have existed for the last three billion years—yet something had changed recently.

Perhaps the wind had ceased, or perhaps there had been a change in the shape of the world—but whatever it was, the world was not moving. The air felt heavy—there seemed to be no wind. And then, as the day passed, people began to feel that something else was wrong.

The sea seemed too calm, like a pond which has dried up. The trees looked dead; they had been blown down but had not yet been restored. And everywhere, no wind touched the earth. The people were puzzled. Some went outside and shouted into the wind, trying to hear the faint roar of air currents. They heard nothing. So did those who spoke loudly in the evening. The wind had stopped.

As the night fell, they sent out search parties, for what had happened to the wind? One group went to the cliffs, but the waves, still angry, broke on the rocks, smashing them and making sharp sounds that were very loud. Another went to the high place where the trees stood, and they also listened at the edge of silence, expecting to hear the creaking of branches and rustling of leaves.

The silence remained, broken only by the sound of their own voices, or by the strange whispering of the wind when the wind was forced to blow, and this whisper was so faint, so barely there, that they thought themselves hearing the wind and calling the wind back, for they could not imagine a world without wind. But then, all the winds went away.

A single wind, though it tried to make the world move, had no power. As the sun sank toward the horizon, and the stars began to shine, the wind, if there was a wind, ceased. There was no more wind.

The clouds that had hung over the sky for a thousand years drifted away, and the stars shone out, twinkling in a sky too clear and empty for the wind to have touched them. In the light of the moons, the people felt exposed to the stars, and they became afraid—as frightened as those who saw the stars for the first time.

***

“The wind is gone,” said one of the people. “We shall be left here.”

“What can we do?” asked another. “There’s nothing to do. We don’t even have any weapons.” They looked around them, down at the dead grasses and the black trees; and they thought about the sea, which was still, and the birds that were not flying.

Some of the people wanted to stay put—they would wait for the wind to return, or they would die of hunger, or whatever else might happen. Some, perhaps most, said it was all nonsense, that they must go on living, that there was no reason why they should fear.

But most of them agreed to go home. The wind had been taken from them, and with the wind had gone their safety, their comfort; without it, they felt naked and exposed, as if the world was filled with sharp things which might pierce them.

So they took down the nets and set off into the air again. The wind had blown from a great height, and though it did not blow now, some of its force remained and so they flew fast over the land, sometimes quite high above the sea.

They used the nets because they were familiar with them and they thought they could fly faster and better without them, but soon they dropped them again, for they found the nets too awkward to handle. And when they tried to throw stones, they failed, for the rocks did not travel far enough, and were snatched away by the wind before they reached the ground.

They walked the earth more than they flew; in the night, when the wind died out, they walked on the surface, which was now soft and warm, like clay. At the first dawn, they saw what the wind had blown up against the cliff. All the dead grasses had come back to life.

It was as if a vast field of dead blades had been burned down, and at the last moment they had all tried to grow again; the stems lifted up like the branches of trees, and they seemed as alive, perhaps, as if they had grown since yesterday.

There was a sound in the air, like the sighing of the wind in the leaves; the people stood on the cliffs, listening to the faint whisper and thinking that this was the sound of the wind, that they could feel it passing. And then suddenly it came—the wind, the same wind as before if there had been any wind.

The waves surged past the cliff, breaking on the rocks, and making a noise, but the air moved faster, and so they felt it. “What has happened?” the people asked themselves. It was like a great bellowing as if they were standing close to a fire, though no one had lit a fire.

The wind made the mountains tremble, and the trees shivered and shook, as if the winds were the voices of wild beasts, roaring through the world.

And so the people set out again, flying over the fields, high above the land. As they flew, the wind grew stronger, and as they reached the cliffs, the people landed on the bare rock and stood and watched.

The wind struck out from the sea, pushing water, and the waves spread, breaking on the rocks below, and at the end of each wave, there was a white spray that rose up to meet the next one. But where the waves met the shore there was a change: the spray did not rise so high; the spray seemed to be caught in a whirl, and the spray became the mist and the fog.

For the waves were broken and bent by the wind. They looked like the tails of fish leaping up to seize a bait as if they had no will of their own as if they were only things to be taken by the wind.

The people stood on the cliff looking at the sea. One said, “We shall have to fly higher.”

“Why?” said another. “Are we going to be blown off?” And they laughed. They were very young then.

A few of them had left behind the nets for the others. It was much easier to fly without them. They flung the nets, and when the wind caught them, they would spin in the air like long knives, trailing down the slopes of the mountain.

The wind picked up a piece of wood and sent it spinning through the sky; a stone flew past, and another followed, and still, the wind went on throwing the nets and catching the wind, and all the stones flew out after the wind and landed back at the foot of the mountains.

The wind tossed a bit of rag around and about in the air, making it look like an enormous spider’s web, but the spider was invisible. For the people had learned that the wind, though it could be stopped for a moment or two, had no power to hold it back.

Its power, its force, came from the land, and when the land was strong it pushed the wind out to sea, and when the land was weak, as it was now, it dragged it back. “What has happened to us?” the people wondered.

They looked at one another, and suddenly they were afraid, for they felt that their life had changed; they knew now, and without knowing how that they were not at home. They tried to say it, but no words came.

But suddenly the wind was gone as if a great door had been slammed down; they stood silent, listening to the wind on the sea, and then all at once they saw what it was that had frightened them: a shadow, a dark thing against the water, just beyond the rocks, like a dragon about to break on the shore; it was the ship, the black ship that had sailed so far away, coming closer by the minute; they heard its keening whistle as if someone were calling to them, and when they looked back towards the cliffs, there it was—the great boat, coming up at last into view.

It was not a boat but a whale, made of the seaweed that grows on the cliffs; the men had turned it into a boat; the sails were the boughs of trees, the mast was the head of the whale, and the sail was the eye and the mouth. The people screamed, “Look! Look!” But the ship did not see the people, nor did the people see the ship. The wind snatched the sails out of the air, and the ship went on.

They watched, and they shouted. They had never known fear, not the kind they felt now; they had only been young, and this was different. “We should have killed the thing,” said one, and another agreed: “If we had known what it meant to us, then…” But it was too late, and now they were alone.

A few of them climbed down the rocks to look at the sea. Some of the old people who had been fishermen said they could feel the fish rising from the depths; other men tried to catch the fish in their nets, but the fish were no longer there, they were gone.

As if the land were sick, the fish had left. There was no more food. The people grew hungry. They tried hunting on the mountain slopes. At first, the game was plentiful: deer, rabbits, squirrels. Then there was none left, and the hunters had to go further up the slopes; and then, when even the deer were scarce, the men hunted each other.

They had done this before. If a man had nothing else to do, he would shoot at his neighbor until he was dead, or wounded, and the others would take him home and cook him, and eat him.

This is how men lived, though they had forgotten why, and all they knew was that their lives were changing, and this change, they did not know what to make of it; they were afraid of the night, of the wind, of the cold.

They knew something was wrong with their minds, but they couldn’t say it. They felt as if a great storm was going through them, like a wave coming to break upon a shore, and they must stand and face it.

And when it had passed, and they were safe again on the shore, they would ask themselves what it meant, and be lost in doubt once more. “When you come back, where are we?” they would cry at the darkness. When they came to the cave, they called out, “Where is the cave?”

For they had forgotten its name, and only knew that it had been there. They called out until the sound became a kind of rhythm, like the pounding of a drum; and then suddenly it stopped, for it seemed to them that the drum, the voice of the cave, had fallen silent.

So the people set about building their new caves—there were now so many of them, side by side, that it looked like a forest of them, with one tree after another. They piled up their dead; they burned the corpses and threw the smoke away.

But the smoke rolled back and caught them at their caves, and there were more deaths. The women who had given birth died in childbirth, the mothers who had lost children in childbirth, and the young girls whose fathers had been killed.

Soon they were few, and there was no food; the people turned on each other again, and some tried to kill themselves, others ran away, and none of them lived long enough to see the new thing that was happening: the sky darkened, the stars went out, and they knew the end was near.

“It has come,” said one of the men to his wife, “the time of the stars.” She looked at him as if he had gone mad. There is nothing, she thought, but our misery, and the fear of death. “They will be here soon,” he whispered. And they were.

The great stars wheeled overhead like ships on a stormy sea, and the night grew thick with their light, and their sound filled their heads; they felt like people in a dark room, hearing voices, but not knowing who the voices belonged to; their thoughts flew off like birds escaping from under the window, and their hearts pounded, and they fell down on the ground, and could not get up.

But they were not alone, for they felt the wind, a strong wind, blowing through the darkness and through the mountains; the wind and the stars were the same. Something was stirring in the darkness. They had seen this before.

All the dead things would rise up, and it would take the light of the stars to drive them away. Then, when all the light was gone, the people would find their way back to their caves, and the sun would return, and they would live again.

But the stars kept on coming, and now they came closer, and they were not bright, and they seemed to draw near to their people, and the wind blew harder than ever, and the smell of the sea was stronger and stronger.

The people were frightened; they had forgotten what it meant to feel afraid. And then, suddenly, the stars were among them, close enough to touch; they were burning bodies, and the wind was cold as ice. “We will die,” the people cried out. For their hands were closed on the bones of the dead ones.

They would not let go. “Let us go back,” they said to the stars, but the stars were all too close.

Then the people knew that something else had entered the cave with them. The wind was bitter cold, and the smoke from the dead bodies was choking them, and they coughed and gasped for air. And they saw a great face, set above them, looking down.

Its hair was black and soft, its lips pale, and its eyes were wide open, and it smiled at them. “It’s you!” cried the people. “It was you who came when we lost the way home, and you took us here.” But there was no one standing there. It was all darkness, and the stars, and the cold wind, and the stench of the dead things. The people were very sad.

“This is where we are going to stay,” whispered the people. And they gathered around the great face in their dark cave and shut their eyes, and felt a terrible fear, like the fear of the sea. Their hands gripped the bones; their hearts hammered, and they tried to sit up straight, and they wanted to throw themselves down. They did not know how to look, and they could not make the face disappear.

“Look out,” said a voice. A figure was rising from the floor, tall and strong, and his eyes were bright and wild. His long black hair flew about him. “Let me go!” the man said. “I’m coming with you, I’ll take you back.” But he was too late. The people had gone away, into the blackness.

“They will come back, and die in the dark,” the man thought, and he wondered whether he might not do something to stop them, but he remembered the danger and the smell, and he went out of the cave, and there was nothing. Only the wind blew on the mountaintops, and the stars were still in the sky.

***

The next day was different. The man who had been waiting for them woke up very early and watched the sun rise up through the blue darkness. He could see the light shining over the sea. “There it is,” he said, “the first day of the world.”

But he could not get up from the ground. It was so soft and comfortable. He lay there with the sun beating on him. When the sky grew pale, the people came out to meet him, and they were very angry. “What are you doing?” they shouted.

“Are we not to go anywhere today?” The man got up slowly, and his knees were weak. “Oh, it’s you,” he said, and they pushed him aside and ran off down the slope, where the sea was so close that he could smell the water, and the waves were splashing among rocks below the cliff. They waded out to the reef and flung their nets into the sea, and the fish swam in them like snakes.

“Come!” cried one of the people. “It will be better when the sun is high; the air will become cooler.” And the people were right. The sea grew calm, and the wind rose again and brought the smell of salt, and the great white clouds looked as if they would crush all the world.

“What is the name of the day, when the cloud comes over the sea?” asked one of the fishermen. “Krasnegar,” answered the old man, “where the gods have gone.” The sun had come over the edge of the world. Krasnegar shone brightly.

The people could see it from a distance. It was so cold, and yet the wind blew hot over their faces. “We are going there,” said the people. They climbed up the cliff to the cave and stood inside, looking around. “Where do we go?” they asked the man.

“Are there any caves down there? We cannot stay here forever.” The man pointed. “You can go that way,” he said. “But watch out for the waves.” And suddenly the sea broke into the cave.

“Don’t look!” the people shouted at the man, and they fled. But he watched with a strange kind of joy as the water came up to their knees. It splashed on the walls and filled the mouth, and the creatures that lived under the floor began to stir. The rocks creaked. Water flowed out into the open air. A voice echoed from the darkness.

“Now!” called the man. And the people were hurled up and over the cliffs, tumbling down into the sea, one after another. He watched them until they were lost among the waves, and then he turned to look back.

Krasnegar was burning, and the sea was black, and it threw up flames to the sky, where the sun was red. He remembered the warning of the woman in his dreams. He could not go back; there was nowhere else for him to go. For a moment he stood, still holding the knife, staring across the sea. Then he picked up the bundle of bones and ran down to the shore.

The people who had died before now lived in the cave on the cliff top. They were not as happy as they might have been, because the sea had destroyed all their things, and left the cave damp and cold. Still, they went about their work.

When they saw the man, they wondered if he would take them back with him again. He seemed so kind, and there was something of the sea in his face. He took some of their dead away, and they made him a bed of stones and the carcasses of fish, and he slept there, and woke in the morning and looked out over the sea. But he could not leave the cave.

“What happened?” asked the people. “Where are you going?” And the man answered, “I must go.” He explained that it was too late for them, because of the sea. He did not tell them that the gods had gone.

The people watched him curiously, and they talked among themselves. “There was nothing,” he said. “Nothing. Only the sea. You’ll have to make yourselves happy here without me, because I cannot go.”

He spent the days looking out over the sea and wondering whether he could change it somehow. Sometimes the wind blew down the side of the mountain, and when it came in a puff from the west, he thought he heard voices calling.

But the wind was always strong in Krasnegar; they called it the breath of the gods, and it drove the sea from its hills, and in storms, the sea roared to the very cliffs of Krasnegar. “Where do we go?” said one of the people. “Why don’t you stay with us?”

The old man shook his head. “The world is coming to an end, and so must I,” he said. “There is no need for you to die.” And one of the men climbed up the cliff and peered over the edge. There was still no land behind the white line of water, but there was a sound that had troubled the people for some time. It came again.

“The waves are getting stronger,” said the man. He told the others, and they listened. The wind rose, and the air grew cold. They had seen the sea in a storm, and they knew how powerful it could be. They ran away into the cave, to take shelter, but the wind was too high, and it shook the stones and tore them from their beds, and sent the bones flying through the dark.

“There will be a wave!” shouted the people. The man was at the door of the cave. He put down the bundle of bones and opened the door and ran outside. All the people gathered around him. “What do you hear?” they cried.

He picked up a stone and threw it out across the sea. It tumbled among the waves, then was gone. “Listen,” said the man. “I can hear it.” “It’s the sea,” the people cried. And they waited. They could see nothing, only the endless swell of the water. Then suddenly the rocks on the cliff top were swept up to smash the cave roof. The sea was coming!

“The gods have come to punish us!” someone screamed, and all the people stood very still, and watched the sea grow larger and blacker. But the man held his arms up and spoke a word. He said, “Peace!” and the waves stopped their rising and began to fall again.

The wind died. A bright red sun shone between the clouds. The sea was calm; it lay in gentle blue waters far below the cliffs of Krasnegar. They could see the gray gulls wheeling overhead. It was the morning after the night before. The people stood and looked at each other and tried to remember what had happened.

“The man called the wind,” said a woman. “And the wind obeyed him, and we’re saved. I saw it myself.” She looked at her child, and then she was afraid because the wind could have blown her away.

“Who did that?” asked another man. “Nobody ever heard of it.” And there was a great silence.

“He’s not one of us,” said a girl. “Where is he from? Who can he be?” And the men nodded in agreement, and they went down the mountain to the village. There was no food left, so they made soup with fish and seaweed, and drank beer.

When the sun had set they built a fire. The old man came up the path. They stopped him, but he passed them without speaking. He took the bundle of bones out of his pack and spread it out on the rocks beside him.

His face was blackened from the long walk; there were dark rings around his eyes, and he was thin and old. The people watched him quietly. Finally, they put some more wood on the fire, and when the flames leaped up they stood round and waited.

Then the man began to speak, and it seemed as if all the years of his life were coming out. He told them about his youth in the desert. They listened to the names of cities that had disappeared forever, and they heard the sounds of the people in the streets: the clatter of their hooves, the murmur of their voices, and the singing and dancing, and the trumpets calling for feasting days.

He told how he had come into the great city of Krasnegar with his wife and son, and how the gods had brought him here. He talked about the sea that drove the people out of their homes; he described the waves that broke on the rocks, and the people who were swept away.

“When did you first see the sea?” someone asked suddenly.

“The day after we arrived,” said the man, “when I was alone in the cave. It frightened me and woke me up at night, and I couldn’t sleep.” He was silent for a time, and then he sat up abruptly. “There are others like me! There is another. When will you go back to your village, to your own land? Are the priests there waiting for you, or have they forgotten the words of your god?”

They were silent, thinking about what to say. But finally, one man said, “We must go home, and find our friends, and tell them. No, they would not believe us if we told them. We’ll return to the city of Krasnegar, and ask them. It’s near enough to visit.

We could take it for ourselves; we have the strength now. Yes, we’d be better off there than we are here!” And the men looked at one another, nodded, and agreed. They spoke about this, and the next day they set out down the road toward the old city.

It was a long way, and the weather changed every day. Clouds hid the sun and rain lashed the ground. The wind blew cold, and the sea was rough. But the men were strong. One by one they climbed onto the shoulders of those who followed them, and they walked and the land rolled out behind them, and the sea came with them as they moved across the plain.

They made their camp on a high cliff above the sea, and there they cooked fish and seaweed in their pots over the fire. The woman nursed the child while they talked together; he was too young to remember that before the storm he had been an only child. She took him and went to sleep beside the fire.

But the men did not talk that night. They stood up the next morning and they climbed again to the top of the cliffs. They stood looking down into the sea, and the sea was angry: the waves crashed down the cliff, and they filled the valleys with white foam.

They stood there all that day. And they left that evening to walk through the hills. They found the trail, and the narrow road led down to the beach. A ship was coming; its sails were fluttering as it approached the land. There was a crowd on the sand.

They saw the people standing in the bow, and the boatswain calling down from the rail. And then suddenly the wind lifted the sail and drove them off the land, and the people disappeared into the sea. “Are you going home?” a voice called out.

“Yes,” said one man. He was wearing an iron mask. He put down his pack and raised the mask. The wind caught it and blew it away from his face. They waited for him to speak again, but there was nothing more.

And they went back down the path through the hills. It seemed to them that the wind was colder than ever, and they were glad when they reached the plain and came down to the shore of the bay again.

They went past the old city. Some houses had fallen down. They climbed the hill. In the distance, they could see the waves breaking on the rocks, and the dark waves lapping at the shore. When they reached the top of the hill the woman took the child off the man’s shoulders, and she watched him carefully, and then looked around her, and said: “No, there is nothing here.”

She sat down on the rocks. They made a fire, and they cooked their meal. They ate it as if it were the last thing they would do. There was no conversation among them. One by one they set off into the sea. They could feel the pull of the current and the tide pulling them toward the coast where the fishermen lived.

They didn’t know what to think about that. But each man alone entered the sea, and then came back up with a new face, and they stood together staring down at the water. And the wind was blowing harder, and the waves were bigger than ever.

They had been in the sea all night; they knew that much. They could not tell the sun’s time. The wind was bitter cold, and the water was black as tar. But still, they followed the road. Sometimes they saw small boats coming from the city, and they could hear the men calling out, but they didn’t go near them.

It had been long since they’d been hungry, and the food was plentiful, and they did not fear being caught. But there was no talk among them except the wind and the sea.

It was as if they were dead: they walked without purpose or hope. And all day they climbed the hills, and they could see the clouds gathering ahead, and the sky turning dark. Then suddenly it was raining again, and the wind came down in a rush and blew them hard against the cliff.

Their hair and their clothes were wet, and their teeth rattled, but they didn’t know what else to do. “There!” someone called, and they turned and looked back over the land. For a moment they saw the old city in the distance, and then it was gone, and they saw the wall of rain rolling toward them.

The wind picked up the waves, and they battered down on the cliffs. They were all in shock: they were swept into the sea with one scream. Then they were caught between two walls, and they couldn’t get free. And the waves went over them and drove them up and down through the waves.

The storm had been raging for three days. There was no end to it. They felt themselves sinking into the darkness. There was no point in holding on any longer. Some of the men were screaming. Some tried to swim, but it was impossible. And they sank down into the sea.

And after a while, when the seas had calmed, they swam ashore in small groups and walked toward the old city. When the other ships had reached the shore the fishermen began to pull them in, and soon there were boats all around them.

“Did we make it?” shouted someone, and the others were silent.

They stood on the beach watching the city’s walls rising up before them. “It happened,” one of them said. “The thing that happened.”

“No!” shouted another. “Not like this! Not after we’d seen it happen.” He shook his head. “We should never have come here, and the ship could not sail without us. We’ve been deceived by the sea.” The others laughed.

They were so wet their teeth were chattering; they couldn’t feel the cold at all. But they kept shaking the water from their clothes. And as they looked up at the wall they were surprised to see the gates open, and people walking out of the city.

The End