The Boy Who Followed the Wind

About this story

In a village of steep red roofs, a boy named Yarek wonders about everything. One gray morning the wind comes down from the mountains, pulls at his coat, and asks him to come and see where it goes. His mother has told him to stay where the chimney smoke can find him. He buttons his coat and follows anyway. At the edge of the dark pine forest a gray wolf is waiting, her eyes the color of river ice, and she walks beside him into trees that grow older and quieter the deeper they go. There are mushrooms red as apples and a spring that sings his name. There is also something colder, waiting among the black trunks, that offers him a shorter way home.

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In a village of wooden houses and steep red roofs, where the chimneys breathed grey smoke into a cold sky, there lived a boy named Yarek. He was not the biggest boy, or the bravest. But he wondered about everything.

High above the rooftops, a glossy black raven turned a slow circle, and watched him the way you watch someone you have been waiting for.

One grey morning the wind came down from the mountains. It rattled the shutters. It lifted the hens. It pulled at Yarek's coat like a warm hand. "Come," said the wind. "Come and see where I go."

His mother had told him to stay where the smoke could find him. But the wind smelled of far away, and Yarek's heart beat fast. So he buttoned his coat, and he went.

The wind ran ahead through the barley, and the barley bowed. It crossed the river, and the water shivered. At the edge of the dark pine forest, a grey wolf was waiting. Her eyes were the colour of river ice.

"Boys do not walk with wolves," Yarek whispered, for that is what he had been told. "Wise boys do," said the wolf, "if their hearts are not too afraid." Yarek's heart was a little afraid. He took her side anyway.

The forest was full of wonders. Mushrooms red as apples. A spring that sang his name. A deer that watched and ran. Yarek laughed out loud. He had never been so far from home, or so happy.

But the deeper they walked, the older the trees grew, and the quieter the birds became. The light turned thin and blue. And Yarek felt, for the first time, that the forest was watching him back.

Then the cold came. Not the cold of winter, but the cold of something that does not love. Among the black trunks stood a shape made of shadow, with a voice like dry leaves. "Poor lost boy," it said. "Come. I know a shorter way home."

The shadow's path glittered. It looked easy. It looked warm. Yarek wanted, so badly, to believe it. But the wolf stepped in front of him, and the fur rose along her back, and she said one low word. "No."

The shadow thinned, and frayed, and was gone. "That one only takes," the wolf said softly. "It promises the easy way, and leaves you alone in the dark. Some things that smile are not your friends."

Night came down, black and without stars. Yarek was cold and hungry and so far from the lamp in his mother's window. He thought of her face, and his eyes filled, and he wept. "I want to go home," he said. "And I do not know the way."

The wolf lay down and curled around him, warm as a hearth. The raven dropped from the dark and settled close. "You are not alone," said the wolf. "And that is not the same as being lost." And, held between them, Yarek slept.

He woke to a thin gold line at the edge of the world. The sun, coming back, the way it always comes back. The forest did not look so dark in the morning. It looked like a place he had walked through, and lived.

"Now look," said the wolf. So Yarek looked back the way they had come. The stony hills. The singing spring. The field of bowing barley, small and gold and far below. He had walked all of it. It was inside him now, every step.

The story goes on in the video.