France – Carolyn Rudinsky

The boys grew up in Germany in a small donut-shaped village on the windiest peninsular in the world. The wind got up each morning before the roosters and blew its violent breath under eaves and into every crack in the shabby cottages. It blew all day, each day windier than the last. Every outing the boys took needed five layers of clothing plus two coats. When they made it down to the pub the wind sometimes blew them all the way home. Other times it wouldn’t let them out their front door to go anywhere, its firm push sealing their front door shut. The brothers lived with the wind, knowing little else, but as they grew more aware of the world around them they began to long for a little calm.

After the middle brother had his appendix out, he had a whole new appreciation of the outside world. He’d stayed in a hospital just off the peninsular, and it was here he began to contemplate a change. Upon his recuperation, he announced to his Mutti that he would leave the windy peninsular at his earliest chance. Mutti was appalled, knowing that the family wind-chime business wouldn’t prosper without her middle son, who had the brains of the family inside his head, and the brawn to build the chimes. His leaving would spell doom, as she was old and frail and her two other sons had not much going on upstairs.

Stupid son, she screamed. Where will you go? You will perish without our 500 year old business traditions. Your brothers and I will have all the luck and all the money. You are nothing without us.

I am going to France, said the boy. I am to be wed to the fine woman who nursed me, and I am taking my brothers, for they loathe the wind, it is making them crazy.

It’s making us all crazy, shouted Mutti over the wind but the middle brother didn’t hear her. She ran after him along the peninsular when a gust of wind blew up her heavy black skirts and parachuted her off the rocky peninsular.

The brothers pushed their way against the wind back inside their shabby cottage, where they packed their meagre belongings and left for France.