Children's stories, American; Fairy tales -- United States; Fantasy literature; Short stories
There was a blue wind of day time, starting sometimes six o'clock on a
summer morning or eight o'clock on a winter morning. And there was a
night wind with blue of summer stars in summer and blue of winter
stars in winter. And there was yet another, a blue wind of the times
between night and day, a blue dawn and evening wind. All three of
these winds he liked so well he could not say which he liked best.
"The early morning wind is strong as the prairie and whatever I tell
it I know it believes and remembers," he said, "and the night wind
with the big dark curves of the night sky in it, the night wind gets
inside of me and understands all my secrets. And the blue wind of the
times between, in the dusk when it is neither night nor day, this is
the wind that asks me questions and tells me to wait and it will bring
me whatever I want."
Of course, it happened as it had to happen, the White Horse Girl and
the Blue Wind Boy met. She, straddling one of her white horses, and
he, wearing his strong hiking shoes in the dirt and the grass, it had
to happen they should meet among the hills and along the rivers of the
west Rootabaga Country where they lived neighbors.
And of course, she told him all about the snow white horse and the
horse white as new washed sheep wool and the horse white as a silver
ribbon of the new moon. And he told her all about the blue winds he
liked listening to, the early morning wind, the night sky wind, and
the wind of the dusk between, the wind that asked him questions and
told him to wait.
One day the two of them were gone. On the same day of the week the
White Horse Girl and the Blue Wind Boy went away. And their fathers
and mothers and sisters and brothers and uncles and aunts wondered
about them and talked about them, because they didn't tell anybody
beforehand they were going. Nobody at all knew beforehand or afterward
why they were going away, the real honest why of it.
They left a short letter. It read:
_To All Our Sweethearts, Old Folks and Young Folks:_
_We have started to go where the white horses come from and where
the blue winds begin. Keep a corner in your hearts for us while
we are gone._
_The White Horse Girl._
_The Blue Wind Boy._
That was all they had to guess by in the west Rootabaga Country, to
guess and guess where two darlings had gone.
Many years passed. One day there came riding across the Rootabaga
Country a Gray Man on Horseback. He looked like he had come a long
ways. So they asked him the question they always asked of any rider
who looked like he had come a long ways, "Did you ever see the White
Horse Girl and the Blue Wind Boy?"
"Yes," he answered, "I saw them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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