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When wind vanishes from Hillbridge, ten-year-old Mira sets out with Pip, a clockwork robin, to trace the silence to a gleaming cliff tower. She faces tests, meets a misguided inventor, and learns to “reweave” the air. The winds return, stories are saved, and the town builds a garden to share their breeze.
Every morning the wind reached Hillbridge before the sun did. It sniffed its way up the river, skipped over the old stone bridge, and lifted the bakery awning with a soft flutter. Mira was ten, and she woke to the rustle against the window and the warm drift of cinnamon from downstairs. She slid from bed, toes carefully searching the cool wooden floor, then tiptoed down to the shop where her father, Jonah, was already dusted in flour like a snow cloud.
“Morning, whisker,” he said, tapping her nose with a finger. “Hear that? The first batch is singing.”
The bread sang when the crust cracked. It was a sound their bakery loved: tiny clicks, soft sighs, a chorus of gentle music as the loaves settled. Jonah pulled a tray from the oven and the room filled with steam and the smell of toasted wheat and sugar. Mira wrapped her hands around a warm bun and let her face rest in the fog.
Across the square stood the library that did not keep books. Tall poles and silver chimes lined its roof. Ribbons hung from wires like colorful fish, and when the wind tugged them, bells inside recorded the whispers. Ms. Kestrel, small and quick, tended the chimes and sorted the recorded breezes in glass jars that sat in rows like bottled sunlight. When you put a jar to your ear, the coast wind spoke of gulls and salt; the mountain wind rattled like pebbles.
Mira had loved the place since she could walk. She carried a little notebook to sketch the way a ribbon twisted. She collected smooth sea glass and tied it to string to see what songs it would catch. Some days, Ms. Kestrel let her climb the stairs and help polish bells, though she always warned, “Hands gentle. Wind remembers how you treat it.”
On the bakery roof, a copper weather vane shaped like a robin watched everything. Its wings were fixed, but sometimes, if the sun hit right, Mira swore it winked. It had a name carved at the base: PIP. She liked to greet it. “Good morning, Pip,” she said now through a mouthful of bun.
Pip pointed his beak east, where clouds were stacked like folded blankets. The mills on the far ridge spun lazily. Carts rattled on the cobbles, and the river gurgled under the bridge. Hillbridge was awake, and the wind was telling its usual thousand tiny stories.