Her Voice on the Wind

The wind was already rising when Eloise turned the key in the door for the first time in years.

It stuck halfway, swollen from salt and neglect, but with a hard twist she forced it open. The house gave a small groan as if surprised by her return. Inside, the air smelled of lavender, old cedar, and something sharper—salt maybe, or time. She stepped over the threshold, her boots echoing on bare wood, and paused in the entry. Nothing had moved. And yet, everything had changed.

She wasn’t here to linger. The house needed to be cleared and sold. But tonight, after the long drive from Portland, all she wanted was sleep.

Easier said than done.

She dumped her duffel on the old sofa and wandered into the kitchen. The light above the sink still worked. So did the faucet, though the water came out cold and a little brown at first. She let it run until it cleared, then drank two glasses. The silence was vast and brittle.

Somewhere beneath it, the ocean breathed.

She found a quilt folded in the hallway cupboard—one of Grandma Miriam’s—and curled on the couch, fully clothed. She didn’t expect to fall asleep. She just didn’t expect the wind to speak.

Not in words. Not at first. Just a tug, like the back of her neck noticed something her mind hadn’t yet caught.

Then the back door creaked open.

The screen banged once, then again. Eloise sat up fast, heart stuttering. She reached for her phone. No signal. She stood barefoot and crept toward the kitchen.

The door was wide open. The wind pushed hard enough to rattle the glass jars on the shelves. She crossed the floor and reached to shut it, but something on the porch stopped her.

A shawl.

Blue-gray wool, woven with thick, irregular threads. She recognized it. Miriam had worn it most evenings, always heavy with scent—sage, smoke, and something harder to name.

Eloise picked it up. It was warm, impossibly so, and as she brought it close, she heard it.

Just three words.

“Speak it, child.”

She spun, looking for a speaker, a device, a trick. But the room was empty. The night surged at her heels.

She shut the door.

She lit candles—three in the kitchen, two in the front room, one in the hall—and pulled the shawl around her shoulders. It felt oddly comforting, like her grandmother’s hug when she was small. The power flickered. Outside, the trees swayed like dancers just off balance.

Eloise tried to sit still. Tried to breathe.

But her feet moved.

They carried her to the front door, down the porch stairs, along the narrow path carved through sea grass and black pine. The moon glowed faint behind high clouds. Fog clung low to the dunes.

The wind thickened.

It didn’t howl. It spoke. Not in sentences, but syllables: names and fragments, too fractured to catch—until one came clear.

“Miriam.”

Then another.

“Eloise.”

Her own name came like a breath exhaled from the earth itself. It stopped her mid-stride. She stood frozen at the edge of the dunes. Below, the sea churned in dim light. The tide had begun to rise.

The wind turned colder. And with it, memory.

She remembered the last time she’d been here.

It was after her mother’s funeral. Miriam had been silent most of that week, and on the last night, Eloise had woken to find the old woman gone. She’d followed the flicker of candlelight to the dunes and saw her grandmother kneeling in the sand, whispering something to the wind.

When Eloise stepped too close, Miriam had turned fast, eyes shining in the dark.

“You mustn’t interrupt when I’m listening.”

Eloise hadn’t understood then.

She did now.

She wandered down the path, each step slower than the last, until her feet sank into cold sand. The wind wrapped around her. And within it, voices.

Not one. Many. Some sharp, others low. All women. All murmuring together like a tide within the tide.

She dropped to her knees.

“Why are you calling me?” she whispered.

The wind paused. Just for a breath. Then—

“Because you’re ready.”

It wasn’t spoken aloud, but she heard it. Felt it, really. In her chest. Like a locked door clicking open.

Back at the house, she found herself drawn to the basement door.

She hadn’t gone down there in years. Not since she’d snuck into it as a child and cut her palm on a broken jar. She didn’t know what she was looking for. But her hand reached the knob before she’d even made the choice.

The stairs were steep and narrow. The flashlight on her phone barely lit the space, but she caught the glint of something tucked in the back corner: an old apothecary cabinet. Most drawers were empty or full of dust.

One was sealed with wax.

She pressed her fingers to it. The wax cracked. The drawer slid open.

Inside was a small, cloth-bound journal. Worn soft. She brought it upstairs.

The handwriting was her grandmother’s.

The entries were fragmented, dated only by season and moon phase. Names appeared and reappeared—Claire, June, Maria, Iris, and then Eloise.

She flipped to the end.

Spring moon. The tide brought her name tonight. It’s nearly time. This line must speak, or it will silence her too.

I carried the weight. So did Claire. So did her mother. I did not break it. But I held it until someone could.

Eloise, if you find this, know this: the wind will carry what we do not. But you, child… you can carry light.

Eloise let the book rest in her lap. She wasn’t crying—but something in her was unspooling. Loosening like rope from a post, drifting out into the night.

She sat for a long time.

Then she stood.

She didn’t take a flashlight. Didn’t bring shoes. Just the shawl and her voice.

She walked out again, into the wind.

Back to the dunes.

There, where the sand met grass and the tide had begun to pull higher, she stood still and spoke aloud.

“My mother was afraid,” she said. “She hid things. She blamed herself for everything that broke. I thought it was my job to be the opposite. To hold it together. Be good. Be strong. Be silent.”

The wind pulled hard at her words, as if eating them, hungry for what had never been said.

“I lost a baby,” she whispered. “I didn’t tell anyone. Not even the father. It felt like a punishment. A warning. A curse passed down.”

The wind screamed briefly, then stilled. The sea was rising.

“I don’t want to carry this anymore,” she said. “I want to carry something else. Something alive.”

She dropped to her knees and pressed her palms into the sand.

“I’m ready.”

She didn’t remember falling asleep.

But when she opened her eyes, the sun had just touched the horizon. The sky was pale rose, the sea soft and swollen with morning tide. She was wrapped in the shawl, head resting on a driftwood log.

The wind had calmed.

On the porch rail back at the house, a single feather rested—dark blue, nearly black, rimmed with silver.

Eloise picked it up.

She turned to the ocean and smiled.

She stayed long enough to see the sun reach the tide. Long enough to know it was safe to speak now.