Whisk, the Wind Who Brought Things Back
High above a village of red roofs, there was a big white cloud with a front door. That was where the winds lived.
Mother Wind was the great North Wind. Before every gust she said “Whoosh!” and then she blew. Whoosh! Off went the washing. Whoosh! Off went the hats. Whoosh! Up went the kites, higher and higher, and away.
Whisk’s big brothers and sisters blew too, all day long.
Whisk was the smallest wind in the family. She could not do a whoosh. She puffed out her cheeks until she went pink, and all that came out was a puff. A puff could not blow off a hat. A puff could only just ruffle a duck.
But Whisk was very good at aiming. She could puff a soap bubble right through the keyhole of the front door and never touch the sides.
And Whisk noticed things. When the big winds blew, she watched who looked up. She saw the baker in the street with floury hands and no hat. She saw a boy holding a string with no kite on the end. She saw the postman hopping after a letter that would not keep still.
“They want their things back,” said Whisk.
“Whoosh!” said Mother Wind, and off went somebody’s scarf.
One cold morning, a small blue mitten came flying up and caught on the edge of the cloud. It had a white stripe round the wrist. Whisk looked inside it for a name. There was no name at all.
“Oh dear,” said Whisk. She looked down at all the red roofs. Somewhere down there, somebody had one cold hand.
So Whisk made a shelf on the edge of the cloud, a shelf for lost things. She put the blue mitten at the very front. Soon the shelf was full: a sock, a scarf, a glove, a teapot lid.
“Every day,” said Whisk, “I will bring one thing back. And one day I will bring you home.”
It was slow work. A hat is very heavy if you are only a puff. Whisk puffed the baker’s hat across the sky a little bit at a time. Puff. Puff. Puff. At last she let it go, and it landed, plop, right on the baker’s head.
The baker laughed and tied a yellow ribbon to the weathervane, to say thank you.
“Whoosh!” said the big winds, and away went a hat. “Puff,” said Whisk, and back came the hat.
The next day she brought back the boy’s kite. It came home with a gull’s feather tied neatly to its tail. Whisk did not know how that had happened. The boy did not mind one bit. He tied a yellow ribbon to the weathervane.
The day after that, she dropped a letter straight into the postman’s bag. Another yellow ribbon went up.
Her big brothers laughed. “One a day!” they said. “We blow away a hundred a day! You will never catch up.”
“Puff,” said Whisk, and went to fetch a sock.
Every day Whisk brought one thing home. Every day a yellow ribbon went up. Soon the weathervane had so many ribbons that it looked like a birthday, and the tin cockerel on top could hardly see out.
One morning the biggest brother blew a sheet off a washing line. “Whoosh!” he said. Then he stopped. He looked at the ribbons. He looked at Whisk. And he blew the sheet back.
It landed on the wrong line, at the wrong house. But the neighbours swapped sheets over the fence, and laughed, and tied up a ribbon anyway.
The next day a sister brought back a hat. Even Mother Wind brought back a whole line of washing, pegs and all, and did not drop a single sock.
Down in the village, nobody minded the wind any more. When a hat blew off, people waved it goodbye and put the kettle on. By teatime it would be back. The children threw their hats up on purpose, just to see whose came home first.
“Whoosh!” said the big winds, and away it went. “Puff,” said Whisk, and back it came.
Every winter Whisk looked for one cold hand. But whoever had lost the blue mitten never looked up.
Years went by. The boy with the kite grew tall. The baker grew a beard. Whisk’s shelf grew emptier and emptier, until only one thing was left. A small blue mitten with a white stripe.
Then, one snowy winter, Whisk saw a woman come out of a red-roofed house. She was holding a little girl by the hand. In her other hand she held up one small blue mitten with a white stripe.
The woman looked up at the sky.
“I lost the other one when I was your size,” she said to the little girl. “Let’s see if the wind kept it.”
Whisk took the mitten off her shelf. She aimed very, very carefully. Puff. Down it went, past the chimney, past the weathervane, and into the woman’s open hand.
“There you are,” said the woman to the mitten. “I missed you.”
She put both mittens on the little girl. Two blue mittens. Two warm hands. Then she tied a yellow ribbon to the weathervane, the biggest one of all.
That night, Mother Wind came to see the empty shelf. She gave Whisk a hug as big as a gust.
“Anyone can blow a thing away,” said Mother Wind. “It takes a kind wind to bring it home.”
Down in the village, the lamps came on in the red-roofed houses. One little girl went to bed with her mittens on, because she would not take them off.
Up on the cloud, Whisk curled into the softest corner. Mother Wind tucked a bit of cloud round her, snug as a blanket.
“Whoosh,” said Mother Wind, very softly, and the front door swung shut.
“Puff,” said Whisk, very sleepily. And she blew herself to sleep.
The end.