Chapter 5 — The Leaving Wind

The year Isolde turned fifteen, the world seemed to move faster than she could follow. The drought had passed, but so had the easy rhythm of childhood. Her father’s hands grew slower in the fields, her mother’s hair began to silver, and her brother, now taller than her, spent his days helping with the plow.

Isolde no longer dreamed under the fig tree. She read — anything she could find. Old schoolbooks passed from cousins, yellowed pages from newspapers, even torn fragments wrapped around market goods. Words became her secret world. They painted cities she’d never seen, oceans she’d never smelled, and lives that seemed impossibly far from hers.

One afternoon, a letter arrived at the village post — a rare thing in those parts. It was from the district school, inviting Isolde to sit for an entrance exam. Her teacher, the only one who had noticed her quiet hunger for learning, had sent in her name months ago. Without telling her.

Her father frowned when he read the letter. “The city is too far,” he said. “And books won’t feed you.” Her mother stayed silent, pressing her lips together the way she always did when she wanted to say something but couldn’t. Only her brother spoke up. “Let her go, Father. She’s not like us.” The words hung in the air, sharp and soft at once. Her father looked away. That night, no one ate much.

Days passed before he finally came to her room, the lamplight trembling in his hand. He didn’t look at her when he spoke.

“If you go, you must promise one thing — never forget where you came from.”

Isolde nodded. She didn’t cry. She knew her father’s love wasn’t in the words he said, but in the permission he struggled to give.

When the morning of departure came, the sky was pale gold. Her mother packed a small bag — a loaf of bread, a worn blanket, and her father’s old scarf. Her brother walked beside her to the edge of the dusty road, where the bus would come only once a day.

The air was still. Even the wind seemed to wait.

“You’ll write to us?” her brother asked.“Every week,” she smiled, though she knew letters took months to reach their way back here.

As the bus approached, a shiver ran through her — part fear, part thrill. She had never gone farther than the next village, yet something inside her felt ready, as if she had been walking toward this moment her whole life.

The bus door opened with a hiss. Isolde climbed aboard, turned once to wave, and then the road began to pull her away —past the fields, past the hill, past the home that had shaped her.

Through the window, she watched the horizon stretch and the wind lift her hair. She didn’t know what waited ahead, but for the first time, she felt not small —but endless.

Isolde Does Not Look Back