Chapter 4 4.wind blowing tree

When the weather is hot and windless in summer, Anthony's mother always sits in the orchard and does some needlework like nailing buttons and mending patches.From time to time, she put down the work in her hand, opened her beautiful paper fan, and fanned it for a while.When she was fanning, no matter what Anthony was doing, whether he was trying to catch a pig, or hugging the neck of a big hen with the greatest enthusiasm, he would stop in the middle, so surprised I watched with amazement that my mother was able to generate wind with a single movement of her arm.Sometimes he felt so hot that little beads of sweat came out of his sticky face, and he would run to her and say, "Give me some wind, mother!" and she fanned him. Fanfeng wiped his forehead and his face with her delicate handkerchief, hugged him on her lap, and showed him the painting on the fan.On one side of the fan, a slender branch of plum blossoms is drawn from one end to the other.It stretched across the folded fan, like a branch of a fruit tree stretching motionless in the still air above his head.But soon the branches moved a little, and as they moved, a very light wind moved among them.Anthony looked at the branches blowing in the air and said to his mother, "These trees are blowing the wind." His mother laughed and kissed him and patted his head.

Henceforth, whenever the trees shook their branches, slowly or quickly, Anthony knew that they were producing either a gentle wind or a violent wind, all produced by their motion.So when it was very hot and there was no wind, he played alone, and sometimes he ran to the nearest tree and said, "Fan me!" When nothing happened, he I would turn around and think: "My mother will fan me for me." Although he could not make the trees understand him, he lay in the heat on a small island in the creek by the mill with his eyes half-closed, motionless as if sleeping, bathed in light and In the green and gold haze of the heat.But he knew he wasn't asleep.Soon, in a trance-like vision beyond his lashes, Anthony saw the meadow, the grove, full of little fairies waving their fans, waving the beams, the poplars, and the silver Birch trees, they were walking up the hillside towards the valley below, their heads together, whispering as they went.At that time, the mist of time and the shade of those trees began to flicker, and a breath of air blew across his forehead, and he knew all too well that those winds could only come from those trees.

But sometimes on howling autumn nights, the wind they made was just too much, and Anthony couldn't sleep because they were fanning so madly and making so much noise.And in the morning, their broken fans would be everywhere in the valley.