Chapter 8: The Woman Who Carried Wind in Her Voice
The day Dara arrived, the wind changed.
It swept through the Listening House with more urgency than usual, as though it were clearing a path. The wind chimes clattered against each other—soft, nervous, like fingers tapping a table before a truth is told. Oriana stood on the porch, hands dusted with clay, her apron tied loosely around her waist. She didn't see the woman arrive so much as feel her, as though the air itself had thickened with memory.
She was tall for her age—perhaps in her seventies—with silver hair tied back in a low braid and a scarf knotted around her shoulders. Her suitcase was modest, cloth-wrapped, worn at the corners. Her sandals were leather, cracked from long travel. And her eyes—deep, grey-green, and unreadable—held not sorrow, but intent.
"You're one of the keepers?" she asked Oriana, voice low but clear.
Oriana nodded. "Of the house?"
"Of the silence," the woman replied.
Oriana didn't flinch. She stepped forward and held out her hand.
"Welcome."
Her name was Dara.
She didn't sit when offered tea, only stood by the window, fingers tracing the wooden frame, gaze fixed on the almond tree where dozens of letters had already been buried.
"I came for someone who used to speak to wind," she said.
Anya entered then, wiping her hands on a linen cloth, her hair damp from the garden.
"Who was she?" Anya asked gently.
Dara's eyes didn't move.
"Sopa."
The name filled the room like incense.
Anya's throat tightened. "You knew her?"
Dara turned finally, her expression unreadable. "I knew who she almost became."
They sat together in the central room, candles lit even though it was still afternoon. Dara held her teacup without drinking. She looked around the room with the reverence of someone who'd dreamed of it for a long time but never believed she'd find it still standing.
"I knew Sopa when she was nineteen," Dara said at last. "We worked together in a dressmaker's shop near Phitsanulok. She was sharp with scissors, softer with words. She once made me a handkerchief with my name stitched upside down."
Oriana smiled. "Accident?"
"Deliberate," Dara said. "She said she wanted me to hold my name like a secret."
Anya leaned forward. "Were you…"
"No," Dara said quickly. "Not lovers. Not quite. But there was something between us that… curled. Like smoke from a wick. A maybe that never burned, but never went out."
She set her cup down, finally.
"But she loved someone else."
Anya knew.
"My grandmother," she whispered.
Dara nodded. "Sopa wrote letters she never sent. She burned one in front of me once. Said it was the only way she could keep her alive without hurting her."
Oriana whispered, "We found her letters. They weren't all burned."
Dara looked up sharply. "Then you've read what she couldn't say."
Anya touched her hand. "Yes."
There was a long silence then.
Not awkward. Just full.
Then Dara said, "There's something I never told her. And something I've never told anyone since."
"You can tell us," Anya said. "The house listens."
Dara hesitated. "It's not mine to tell."
Anya's voice softened. "Then maybe it's hers, and you're just carrying it."
Dara stood slowly, walked toward the back window, and stared out toward the tree.
"She told me once that she wasn't the only one in love."
Anya looked up. "What do you mean?"
"She said the other woman loved her too. But she chose her family instead. That it wasn't shame that stopped her—it was fear. That if she loved Sopa in the open, everything she'd built would fall."
Oriana whispered, "And did it?"
Dara turned. "No. It stayed standing. But it was hollow. I saw her once, years later. The woman. She was walking through a market, alone. Not with her husband. Not with anyone. Just holding a small basket of mangosteens and crying."
Anya pressed her hand to her mouth.
"She died not long after that," Dara said. "And Sopa never knew. She never found out that the woman came to the shop that same week… asked for her."
Oriana's breath caught. "You saw her?"
"I told her Sopa had moved. Which was true. But I didn't tell her where. Or how to find her. I don't know why."
Anya whispered, "Maybe you were protecting her."
"Maybe I was protecting myself." Dara sat back down. "But I've carried that silence for decades. I didn't come to mourn. I came to give it back. To someone who would understand."
Anya reached for the letters beneath the table—those from Sopa, from Anya's grandmother, from others who never named themselves.
She placed them in Dara's lap.
Dara didn't cry.
She breathed.
And the wind moved through the room again, gently lifting one corner of a letter.
That night, Dara asked to sleep beside the wall.
They set a futon outside under the stars, lit lanterns around the edge, and wrapped her in warm blankets.
"I don't want to sleep beside bones," she said. "I want to sleep beside names."
Anya placed a bowl of water beside her, with three marigold petals floating in it.
"For remembrance," she said.
Oriana handed her a brush and paper.
"In case you want to give something back."
When they woke the next morning, Dara was gone.
But beneath the almond tree, where the soil was soft from last night's mist, there lay a new letter—sealed with a pressed fern and tied with black thread.
It read only:
"For the silence I kept too long."
They buried it gently.
And added a new tile to the wall.
No name.
Just three words:
"She almost did."
Later that day, as Oriana cleaned the porch and Anya prepared the clay, the wind picked up again—soft but insistent.
And far in the sky, the clouds curled like script across the blue.
Anya whispered, "I think the past is watching."
Oriana touched her hand. "Let it. We're not hiding anymore."