The Singing Wind

Regular customers knew the fluttery feeling they had upon placing an order with, accepting coffee from, or even looking at Margie. Only a few of them had noticed that the waitress with the blonde braid made everyone feel strange.

The other staff noticed. They dealt with the phenomenon as best they could.

“Hey, do you just feel like, I don't know, running around on a mountain singing ‘The Sound of Music’ when Margie's here?” or “I always want to go kitesurfing when she’s around. Like, it’s all I can think about.” They couldn't sanely say these things aloud. Instead, they exchanged knowing looks and forgave each other for making paper planes out of napkins rather than restocking the cutlery.

The owner had noticed a steep upswing in regular customers since hiring the woman, so she said nothing.

It was on her third visit that Frankie realised the fluttery weightlessness in her veins was not from coffee, but somehow related to the blonde woman with long fingers who smiled like sunlight through clouds. She knew it wasn’t love when she witnessed an elderly man turn from the waitress with a bag of pastries and a giddy grin, and a woman stumble into a table after ordering. She came back most days.

Now as usual she sat and read and glanced often toward the till. The street was grey with storm, wind rattled the glass doors of the café, and Frankie was concerned for the waitress. She had noticed that, on any day, the cheerful woman sometimes had a tremble in her hands. Today they also gripped the counter top as though holding on. Margie seemed to move with forced slowness.

Somehow, Frankie blamed the weather.

Margie stood behind the till, gazing past the barista to the rain lashing the street. Frankie could see her in profile from her usual seat near the pastry display, through which she sometimes heard the waitress singing.

“You have a lovely voice,” she’d told her one day. Margie had smiled at Frankie over that till and said,

“You know, try closing your eyes and listening to the wind. There’s always a song in that.”

Now her faraway gaze out the glass windows made Frankie wonder what she heard in the wild weather outside. She also wondered when Margie would notice the customer who had been waiting at the till for a good 10 seconds.

“Hello?” The customer’s voice was taut with outrage. Frankie wanted to throw her marshmallow at her. Margie turned, her face morphing into a bland smile.

“Hello.”

The woman trembled under a puff of grey hair. “Watch yourself. I can get you fired, you know.”

Frankie watched Margie smile and prepare the woman’s croissants.

Revenge came swift as a gust of wind. Several customers watched through rain-spattered glass as the woman struggled with her umbrella before it soared, inside out, twenty metres in the air and away down the road. She stood there clutching her bag of croissants. The sound of singing drifted from behind the pastry counter.

The umbrella returned.

It was conspicuous on the sunny day, clutched in the gloved hands of a strange woman in black. The tall figure drew eyes as she stalked past tables, broken umbrella over her jacketed shoulder, sunglasses fixed on the blonde waitress behind the till… She queued behind a young man with a French bulldog. The umbrella hung by her side like a crumpled, yellow bat.

Margie didn’t see the French Bulldog walk into a table leg, because she had just noticed her next customer. She stared up at the lady, then down at the umbrella now resting on the counter with a spindle of frame jutting out like bone. The lady bent her head and her lips moved. Straightening again, she slipped a hand into her jacket pocket and removed a brown paper package the size of a mouse. She left the waitress staring at the package set beside the umbrella.

***

Frankie never knew what was in the package, and in the days and weeks that followed it plagued her almost as much as Margie’s disappearance.

“She resigned,” said the other staff. “Just suddenly, no reason. Yeah, no idea where she’s gone! What can I get you?”

On a whim Frankie changed her thesis to Wind Spirits in Folklore and Fairy Tales. One morning a fragile wind danced in from the sunrise. The woman breathed in the liquid light spilling over the horizon. She closed her eyes… and heard it…

A familiar voice, singing on the wind.