Where The Wind Blows

I was thirteen when I realised that my life had absolutely no meaning at all.  That in itself was rather astonishing, since most people don’t realise that until life’s halfway over, and I was young.  But what happened next was even more amazing.  I fell in love.

I fell in love with a dream.  I’d like to say that I dreamed my dream on a violent stormy night, with lightning crashing and thunder booming, or on a balmy summer’s evening surrounded by fireflies and loving whispers.  But it was just an ordinary night, like any other.  In my dream, I was running through a freshly mown field.  No, I wasn’t running, I was running away.  I was running away from my best friend Lettie.  I ran across the pooh-sticks bridge, through the hay field, through the gap in the hedgerow, to the lagoon.  All the time I was running, Lettie was following me.  In my dream, I was panicking. 
Then suddenly, I was miles and miles away, clinging on to the top of a fir tree.  I looked down, but all I could see was snow, swirling all around me.  I know I should have been scared, but I wasn’t.  I felt oddly calm, if that’s possible when you’re dreaming.  Then I heard a voice.  It sang to me, a song without words, but in my head I could hear whispers.  The whispers were telling me to let go of the tree.  I didn’t want to, but something made me.  I was falling, upwards.  I wasn’t flying.  It’s hard to explain.  It felt like I was falling, but I was rising upwards.  After what seemed like an hour, or maybe a day, or maybe ten minutes, I was back by the lagoon.  This time, I wasn’t panicking.  Somehow I knew Lettie was somewhere else.  It was like that fir tree and those voices had taken away all my fear, leaving only the shimmering water and the wind whistling through the reeds.
A coracle floated round the bend where the stream leaves the lagoon.  There was a boy sitting in it.  He paddled under the bridge to the shore where I was standing and held out his hand.  I stepped in.  The coracle wobbled a bit as I sat down.
“Where are we going?”
He didn’t answer me; he just pushed away from the bank and let the current carry us out of the lagoon and downstream.  I had never been this way before.
“Where are we going?”
Again, silence. 
We floated on for some time, without talking.  I looked into the water and saw whole civilisations submerged there.  Pale, shining fish with dark tails swirled through soaring arches, around alabaster spires and over untamed gardens.  The wind sighed in the willows, pulling us onwards.
I looked up from the water.  It took me a couple of moments to figure out what I was seeing.  My memories were there, on the bank, re-enacting themselves.
I saw a woman crying in the front seat of an old car.  The windscreen wipers flick back and forth, skidding over the icy shield.  My breath comes out in puffs as I stare at my mother and idly pick at a loose thread on my skirt.
I saw the House through my five-year-old eyes, heavy and imposing.  In that one instant, I understood why I was sent there.  I am a Problem, along with all the other children, hidden away in the hope that if no one can see us, we’ll go away.
I saw my first foster parents, trying to make me smile with toys bought second-hand from a car boot sale.  The table is set with chipped wooden-handled cutlery, and an ant scuttles over the breadboard.  Brown bread.
I saw myself, back in the House, lying on my bed, listening to a tape I got for Christmas.  Don MacLean.  It is my first real taste of beauty, and I cry into my pillow.
I saw the lagoon, on that day in early spring when I first found it.  A swan glides idly where the water is still, and I hear the first cuckoo unseen in an unidentifiable tree.
As I watched my life playing out before my eyes, the boy leaned over to me and spoke.
“We’re following the wind.”

I woke up slowly, opening my eyes to sunlight filtering through the slat blinds.  I sat up, and looked around my room.  Somehow, it seemed impossible that I should be back in reality, surrounded by my mundane belongings and rigid guidelines.  My alarm clock told me it was 7:14 am.  I got out of bed and dazedly pulled on my uniform.  I was almost out of the door before I realised that my uniform did not comprise a large stripy sweater.
From that night on, life changed for me.  My dream stayed with me, and I thought about it constantly.  I didn’t tell anyone, even Lettie.  Especially Lettie.  I couldn’t forgive her for making me so frightened.  That’s how real my dream seemed. 
Every day after school I went down to the lagoon.  I fought my way through the undergrowth to follow the stream, hoping in vain that I would find something, anything, a snowflake, breadcrumbs.  One day, Lettie insisted on following me, but she only spoiled it.  Her shoes were muddy, she hated bugs, what was that noise?, Friends was starting, Mrs Caldecott would be angry that our skirts were wrinkled.  From then on I went alone.  After all, I had my dream, and that’s what mattered, right?

Two weeks later, I dreamed again.  The boy was there, we were in the coracle, on an open sea.  Nothing but water, all the way to the horizon.  This time, he spoke. 
“You’re back.”
“Yes.”
“I missed you.”
Silence.  Then, “I’m Tristram.”
“I’m Fio.”  I paused.  “Why am I here?”
“It called you.”
I knew he meant the wind.  “Why?”
“You’ll have to find that out for yourself.  I’m sorry.”
Then he pushed me out of the coracle.  I sank like a stone, plummeting to the sea floor.  When I woke up, it was raining.

Life became a blur of sleeping and waking.  My dream had given me a window to a solitary, natural, breathtaking home.  I had never called anywhere home before, and it was the most wonderful feeling. 
And that’s when I realised why the wind was calling me.  I wasn’t meant to be here.  I belonged in my dream, in my home, with Tristram and the coracle.  That night, I had a feeling that I would dream again.  I wrote a note to whoever would care.

Castle walls just lead me to despair.  My dream has come true- I’ll live there until I die.

I slept.  Tristram was waiting by the shore where we first met.
“I see you figured it out.”
I only smiled and took his hand.  A new wind was calling. 

We followed.