At the beginning of time, on the sixth day, before man and woman had set foot on the earth, there was no wind. The trees stood tall and straight, their leaves moved not an inch, no gentle breeze ran through the slender wild wheat. Even when the first people came from the earth and populated the land, still there was no wind. It wasn’t until the first soul rose from its mortal body, that wind appeared.

It was almost imperceptible at first, the gentle brush of an immortal soul against a soul bound in the confines of a body. As more and more souls joined the first, the people began to notice a difference in their world. Leaves swayed to the ground in unnatural curving patterns, grass rippled, creeks created little waves.

The souls were kind to the earth. They played tunes in the trees and made the flowers dance. The little souls took the dry leaves as playthings and giggled as they whirled them round their heads. Some souls were mischievous tricksters. They stole hats and papers, leading the poor owners on a wild goose chase. Sometimes, they didn’t give them back, but mostly they did. The older souls were more docile. They ran their fingers through the hair of the living and blew cold breath into ears and sometimes faces. They were masters of the sky, and wherever they flew, they pushed the clouds out of their way.

The souls were as free as the sky, the stars, and the moon, and freer still than the earth, which was shackled and bred by the people, but often they missed the warmth of their former bodies. In spring and summer, the warmth of the sun comforted the souls, and they were content to lie dormant and leave the people alone. But in winter, when the sun’s appearance was less and less frequent, and its warmth faded away, the souls remembered being human. Then, they would float down to earth and wrap the people in their chilly embrace, nipping at bare noses and running icy fingers down their spines. They didn’t mean any harm, but the people closed doors and windows and wrapped themselves in blankets around crackling hearths. They ignored the pleas of the souls who tapped against windowpanes and howled through the trees.

The people didn’t know that the souls had once been like them. They didn’t realize that the souls only wanted to feel the warmth of their bodies and the beating of their hearts. So the people trapped them outside, alone and invisible, and they called them the wind.