Meteorology For Beginners
by Simon Kewin

"What makes the wind blow, daddy?"

I sit with Jade in a clearing, eating the crisps and red apples I’ve packed for the walk. Tree-trunks pillar around us, dark green and grey. Higher up, where the slanting sunlight catches them, their leaves glow bright orange. The forest roars in the breeze that blows up there. Jade looks up at me, crunching her apple.

"Well, see, it’s caused by all the trees flapping their branches together at the same time."

"Really?"

"Oh yes. Watch them and see. Sometimes just one shakes its branches and you get a little breeze. But sometimes it sets the rest off. When they all start lashing their branches together, you get the really strong winds."

"Oh."

She peers upwards at the canopy with six-year old’s eyes, smiling in delight at the sight, at the way every single leaf has its own shade of green or the way they make shapes like eyes. She looks thoughtful as she returns her attention to her apple.

"Is it just the trees that do that?"

"Oh no, it’s every plant. It’s just we only notice the trees because they’re so big. But sometimes a whole field of grass starts to ripple and you can just about feel it."

I finish my apple and hurl the core into a nearby bramble thicket. Jade looks shocked, knowing the rules about litter.

"It’s OK. It will just become a new tree."

She grins and overarms her own core away. It lands a few feet distant.

"But when we went to London last year it was very windy," she says. "And there are hardly any trees there."

I stand and offer her a hand to pull her to her feet.

"Well, you see, in the big cities they’ve had to build these giant wind machines because they’ve cut down all the trees."

"Machines?"

"Huge big fans like windmills. And somewhere there’s a button they can press to start them all blowing at the same time. Depending on which machines they switch on they can have wind from any direction. There are dials too for the strength. Breath, Zephyr, Breeze right round to Storm, Gale, Hurricane."

"I think I prefer the trees."

"Me too. Those machines are forever breaking down."

We set off back through the woods, retracing our steps. The sun is starting to slip out of the sky now, down behind the swaying trees, golden light flickering through the branches. Away from the woods the wind settles down, of course, and we walk home in silence, hand in hand.


That night, when I come to tuck her into bed, I find she’s been busy. All around her room are leafy twigs scavenged from the garden and set in pots, bottles, jars. Fronds of fir and fern wedged into cracks between the stones of the walls. Flowers sprouting from the pages of books.

"It’s beautiful, Jade," I say.

"Watch."

I sit beside her on the bed. Hanging over her is the mobile we’ve assembled over the years : scraps of tin, seashells, triangles of blue plastic, glass buttons, bottle-tops, discarded computer chips, twists of wire and egg-shell shards, all hanging from a mesh of fine twines. A pine-cone from today’s expedition is the latest addition.

We sit as the gloom gathers in the room, my arm around her. She is tense with expectancy, almost holding her breath. Nothing happens. She glances up at me, doubting herself now, afraid it won’t work, it isn’t true. This is often how she is since her mother left, her spirits easily sapped.

Then a beech twig in the corner of the room quivers and begins to wave. We don’t move, afraid we’ll alarm it, break the spell. One by one, the other plants respond, twitching, lurching backwards and forwards in time to the movements of the twig. I feel the breath of moving air on my face.

"Look," Jade whispers. The mobile starts to twirl and twist. The scraps of metal and glass tinkle together in the breeze, catching the moonlight shining through her window.

"It’s wonderful," I say.

Smiling, she lies under her blankets and closes her eyes, the delicate jingling going with her as she drifts away to sleep.


NEXT STORY: Protected Contact

BACK TO Issue 27