Page 1 of Caution to the Wind

MEI

The day everythingchanged for me started with a carnival game.

The Country Fair was an annual summer attraction that appeared suddenly at the end of spring in a wide, wild field outside of the city and disappeared just as jarringly as soon as the cool autumn winds blew in from the east. The air was thick with prairie heat, hot with the scent of grease from all the fried foods and a hint of almost acrid sugar from the cotton candy motes floating on the heavy currents. A constant cacophony of fairground sounds rang across the field: the mechanical heave and whoosh of the large rides, the whoops and cries of excited children, and the errant screams of heat-induced, sugar-exasperated tantrums, the tinny jingle of canned carnival music and the spit and rattle of balls in slots, pellets hitting empty bottles, and horseshoes swinging around metal pegs. Calgary was a cosmopolitan oil and gas town, but even the wealthy wore cowboy hats and tooled leather boots. There was a sea of them that day, from white to black and every shade in between, making everyone look the same under the shadows cast by the wide brims. When I tried to remember the faces of the men in the dark, I always remembered those hats, obscuring everything from gender to race. A question mark in a cap.

My memories of that day were bright and jarring, collected pieces of a shattered funhouse mirror that didn’t make much sense, no matter how hard I tried to fit them back together.

But I remembered him.

I always remembered him.

He seemed like some kind of heathen god, big enough to kill a man with his bare hands, so broad through the shoulders it seemed like he could carry the weight of the world. The flashing lights of the carnival carved his strong features out of blue, red, and gold. His eyes shone in the shadows beneath his heavy brow, a blue-green as bright as oxidized copper. I watched as his massive hands, threaded through with prominent veins and tight cords of muscle, flexed on the rough wooden handle of the axe. He was one of the only men not wearing a cowboy hat, his burnished gold hair bright even in the deepening gloom of twilight, slightly over long and curling like ribbon ends over his ears and around his square jaw.

“Come on,” my best friend, Cleo, encouraged as she tugged at his bulky arm. “I’ve got to have the stuffed bear.”

Henning Axelsen turned his head slowly to look down at her, his stern-featured face cracking slightly around the mouth to give her that small smile he reserved only for her.

“Don’t you think you’ve got enough, Glory?”

Cleo and I looked at the prizes she struggled to carry in both arms. The head of a plushy giraffe tangled with her long brown hair, and a stuffed snake wrapped around her neck. In her arms, she carried a gorilla, a bumble bee, and a giant rabbit with pink fur.

Cleo blinked at her new friends and bit her lip as she considered his question. Even though they weren’t related, Henning and Cleo shared that same kind of thoughtfulness. They weren’t loud people or very chatty, either. They meant what they said when they spoke, so sometimes it took them a little longer to respond.

Cleo cast me a sidelong glance, noting that I only had a small doll I’d won at the bottle toss earlier. We were almost too old to go to the carnival with our parents, and we’d sworn to each other this was our last year going to the fair as kids, so I understood her desire to milk it for all it was worth.

Henning caught her gaze, then looked over her head at me with sparkling eyes. “You think maybe I should win this one for Rocky, instead?”

Glory and Rocky.

Henning had nicknames for everyone, even his stepdaughter’s best friend. Hearing it from his lips always made something inside me squiggle and squirm.

Rocky because I was scrappy and loyal. He said people were prone to underestimate me due to my slight and dainty build, but they’d inevitably find out some day that I was a champion.

Glory because Cleo’s full name was Cleopatra, which meant “glory of the father,” and Cleo was his pride and joy.

Cleo instantly nodded, grinning at her stepfather, then at me. “Definitely.”

“You’re so damn sweet.” Cleo’s mum, Kate, bumped Henning with her shoulder, then pressed a kiss there. “You know that?”

In response, he pressed a kiss to her brunette head.

“What do you want, Mei?” Cleo asked me, wiggling her hand through the stuffed animals to grab my own in a tight squeeze.

I stared up at the prizes hanging between two poles at the side of the axe-throwing game and knew immediately which one I wanted. It wasn’t the largest or boldest prize, but it meant something to me because it was a dragon.

My Chinese last name was Lung,which meant “dragon” in Cantonese. Everyone called my grandfather Old Dragon, and the symbol of one had protected my family for centuries. Even though I addressed him asGung Gung, the Cantonese title for my maternal grandfather, I always thought Old Dragon suited him perfectly. He was the wisest person I knew.

When I pointed at the small red animal with gold wings, Cleo protested because it was too small, but Henning only gave me that tiny, mysterious smile and stepped up to pay the carnie to take his turn at the bullseye.

“It’s a long way,” I muttered to Cleo as we stood with her mum to one side to watch him.

The target was at least thirty paces away from where he stood, and it wasn’t very big.

Cleo giggled softly, her hand still in mine, sticky with the refuse of cotton candy. “He’ll win. Didn’t I ever tell you his daddy was a builder? Hen’s been using an axe since he was younger than us.”

I didn’t think using an axe and throwing one were quite the same thing, but I didn’t say another word because Henning was getting ready to throw.

Through my twelve-year-old eyes, he seemed as big and mythical as a Viking, his thick muscles rippling under the tight white tee shirt plastered slightly to his torso by the humid summer air. He raised the axe with only one hand, back over his blond head, and then with a hard flick of his wrist, he released it with his elbow extended toward the target. I watched with my mouth hanging open as it wheeled end over end across the length of the grass until it embedded itself just to the left of the centre target.