Page 74 of To Ride the Wind

“Thank you,” Charlotte said obediently, still shocked.

A moment later the woman’s words registered, and she frowned. She spoke as if she wasn’t a resident of this hamlet after all. And neither did she look as if she’d just been caught in a gale.

“No more nonsense from you, youngster,” the woman said with a knowing look. “I’ll look after these people, so you can focus on what you must do.”

“And what is that?” Charlotte asked, watching the woman closely.

But despite her attention, she couldn’t help blinking, and in the half-second her eyes were closed, the woman disappeared.

Charlotte gasped. In the second before she had gone, she could have sworn she saw something shimmering behind the woman’s shoulders.

“Were those wings?” she whispered, although there was no one near enough to hear the question.

The woman couldn’t possibly have been a godmother. It wasn’t as if Charlotte was a princess.

Except…she was. The thought hit her for the first time. If Henry was a prince—one in the direct line to a throne—and also her husband, that made her a princess. The thought was enormous. Too enormous to be grappled with in the moment. But it was enough to make her believe in the identity of the woman who had disappeared before her eyes.

Her fingers closed around the ball. It had been a strange enough gift already, but it had just become infinitely precious. Even after her marriage and residence at Henry’s castle, she had never imagined she would someday receive a godmother object directly from the hands of an actual godmother.

Reverently, she placed it in her deepest pocket. Turning toward Gwen, she was about to call out to her friend in excitement, but something snatched at her dress before she could speak.

The sharp wind pulled at her again, making her stomach tighten. The wind that had died when they landed was returning.

She ran toward Gwen and the others, shouting for everyone to take shelter. She didn’t know how she knew it was necessary, but the certainty filled her.

Gwen looked up, frowning, and Charlotte called only two words. “The wind!”

Gwen’s eyes snapped upward, although there was nothing to see in the sky. Her hair whipped around her face, though, and her skirts flapped. It wasn’t just Charlotte’s imagination. The wind had returned and was growing stronger by the second.

“It’s back,” she panted as she finally reached Gwen. “And it’s going to destroy what’s left of these houses if we don’t do something.”

“But what can we do?” Gwen wailed.

The grandmother’s earlier words—increased in significance in Charlotte’s memory now she knew they were the words of a godmother—came back to her.

“You have to be in the fight if you want a chance of winning it!” She grabbed Gwen’s arm. “Your mother has sent the wind against us again, but we can’t fight it from down here. We have to be riding it if we want a chance at controlling it.”

Gwen wanted to argue. Most of all, she didn’t want to return to the sky to be buffeted and thrown about at her mother’s whim. But she couldn’t deny the logic of Charlotte’s words.

A particularly strong gust made a child cry out in fright, and Gwen’s fingers plunged into her pocket.

“Hold onto me,” she said grimly as she pulled out the halter. She didn’t think they were going to need to fall from a height to be caught in the wind this time.

Sure enough, Charlotte barely had a hold on Gwen when the halter grew and the reins appeared. The next second, both girls had been swept into the sky.

“Go higher!” Charlotte shouted in her ear, ignoring the cries of shock and fear from below them.

Gwen pulled on the reins, relieved when the wind responded and leaped skyward, taking them high enough not to touch the houses or even the trees.

“What now?” she cried, but Charlotte didn’t know how to answer. When she had directed them to resume their journey, she’d been thinking of the villagers below and following the directions of the godmother. She didn’t know how to control the antagonistic wind.

“Forget about the mountains,” she cried as loudly as she could. “Just try to keep it away from people and anything it could damage.”

Gwen nodded, her attention focused on the reins as the wind lurched first one way and then another, trying to throw them off.

Charlotte held onto Gwen, but she kept herself poised ready to grab the reins as she had done before. If the wind grew strong enough, it would take both of them just to keep hold of it.

The land raced beneath them, so distant Charlotte hardly noticed it. But eventually a bright light ahead of them caught her eye. It took her a long moment to realize what she was seeing, and when she finally caught on, she gasped.

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