Book 2, chapter 16
For a while I stood still in the center of the sky and made a miniature tornado zoom around me just for fun, feeling absurdly like some kind of weather goddess but liking it all the same. I still didn’t want to stop when I got tired, so I tried pulling more energy from somewhere like I had back when I’d wrecked that mall. I did it until my brain made that weird shift, and the wind was easy again. It was amazing how wonderful it felt, how alive it made everything seem. I felt like I was having something akin to a temper tantrum, except I wasn’t angry. It just felt great to let myself cut loose. I thought about how I’d have to restrict all my impulses come the next day, and that provoked me to begin playing with my winds harder, trying to get it all out now so I could stand another day of the same. I did it until I couldn’t tell where the wind stopped and I began.

Later on in the same book, Ivy discovers what a satisfying release wind is and begins to practice it:

Book 2, chapter 17
So, today, instead of flying around hyperactively or making sandcastles and blowing them up, I created a bigger release. I figured out how to make a special kind of wind, one where I opened myself up purposely until I felt the way I had in the mall, and I just went with it. All I had to do was concentrate on making my energy bigger, and after a minute or so it responded as if it had always wanted me to use it that way. I made a huge whirlwind, and the formidable way my energy ripped through the air took my breath away. It was so weird that it was almost scary, but I also liked it, and it felt so good to get all this extra energy out of me. After it was over, I felt a little bummed, but I couldn’t keep it up unless I wanted to fall out of the sky. At least it had worked, I didn’t feel volatile anymore.

Ivy continues to practice and gets rather addicted to her new activity:

Book 2, chapter 18
I flew out over the ocean and unleashed my energy gleefully on the mild, unprotected waters below me. It was neat to see such stormy-looking waves under a clear sky. I made one of my big winds and my thoughts scraped the sky as my soul seemed to fly into bits around me. If there was a Heaven it must feel something like creating wind.

And then she begins to recognize that it is indeed an art form.

Book 2, chapter 19
And then there was the wind art. After I’d been doing it for a while, I suddenly discovered that there was definitely an art to making winds and waves; there were some aesthetically pleasing techniques that made bells go off in my head when I did them right. When the wind and the waves fell into a certain type of rhythm, I felt a sudden profound happiness. I wondered if this was anything like the “rhythm” Bill had in basketball. I couldn’t imagine it was, though. It was just something that made me want to scream or yell or sing or all three at once, yet if I did make any sound I ruined it. I had to let the sounds I would have made with my mouth be encompassed by the shape and rhythm of the strange energy fields I was using to storm the sea.

By Book 3, Ivy has begun to practice wind now and then, acknowledging it as a hobby of hers. She’s still in a stage of wonder at what she’s discovered, however. Zeke takes her on a picnic, and upsets her to the point of tears by making romantic advances. To get away from it and calm herself, Ivy immediately turns to making wind:

Book 3, chapter 7:
I swept a little wind across myself, smiling as the moving air cooled my hot skin. It was hard to make wind, but today I felt like it. I stirred up the wind some more, and then even more, liking the way it felt. I took a deep breath through my nose and marveled at the way the wind in my head dizzied my senses. . . . My wind spun in a certain way then, lighting my mind up like someone had flipped a switch as something inside me fell into a rhythm. I laughed out loud as bells went off in my head exactly the way they didn’t when Zeke kissed me. There was something pleasing on an artistic level about causing the actual air to move, and I’d never known why this part of my power was something that entranced and delighted me, but it was, and I went with it. I closed my eyes and lost myself in the breathless sensation of the random bits of the sky whipping through my mind so fast I couldn’t count them.

Later in the same book, Ivy decides to make a wind and realizes it’s her own form of art. She’s never thought of it that way before this moment, but definitely knows that wind fits the definition of art. She briefly explores how she feels about her only form of art being something no one else understands:

Book 3, chapter 31
I hadn’t made a nice wind in a while so I shut my eyes and got to it. I made the air dance around my body as well as I could; I couldn’t completely control the air but I could at least direct it. My hood blew back and set my hair free. I didn’t care that it was going to get knotted and just let my wind blow on.

I discovered something new right then. I could make two winds at once, blowing one clockwise around me and one counterclockwise around the other one . . . and then I could squeeze them together and make them meet. I’d never tried that before. The effect was astounding. When my two breezes met each other, my energy tangled in itself and created a delightful feeling of confusion. As soon as it happened one time and I’d finished laughing, I did it again. It was different the next time but still had such a funny, great feeling. I loved it when I discovered new things about how to use my winds. I’d only discovered last year that they were an art form at all.

I realized suddenly that my wind really was art. The only thing was, I couldn’t show it to anyone and have them understand it. The only way to interpret a wind was to make one, and no one else could. I felt a funny sorrow inside me then. My only way of being creative was some formless thing no one else could see. I couldn’t even describe it, much less make someone feel it. I imagined myself putting a wind in a box and introducing it to a bunch of art students, saying, “I call this Wind Piece #3 . . . ” They’d probably think I was some crackpot and go look at the real art. I scowled and kicked that image out of my mind.

I decided it didn’t matter to me that no one else would ever understand why my wind was an art form. I knew it was real, and I was the only person who mattered in that respect. In a way, I was more creative than those creative types for discovering a completely original way to make beauty. There were no classes on my art, I’d thought it all up myself. And I didn’t need any paint or brushes or any props at all; all I needed was myself. That was satisfying.

In Book 4, Ruben begs to differ on the question of whether wind is art:

Book 4, chapter 1
“Well, if you can’t share it with anyone else, I guess if you wanna get technical it’s not really art.”

Ivy proceeds to show him a wind, trying to include him, and even though just a small indoor wind lights her right up, he doesn’t see anything special about it.

Book 4, chapter 1
For some reason I didn’t feel particularly disappointed. I pondered whether it was sad that I was the world’s lone wind artist and interpreter. I supposed it should have been disheartening but I certainly expected it by now.

Ivy finds that without the proper emotional input, the wind is nothing but moving air.

Book 4, chapter 18
The wind was as dry as paper and about as emotional as a blank sheet. I closed my eyes and tried to pour what I was feeling out into the air, but nothing really came. I was moving the air, but nothing was lighting up. My lack of emotion made me shiver. I felt thirsty.

In the same chapter, she finds what she’s looking for by going home and using the ocean—a powerful symbol and connection with home for her—to fix what’s wrong.

The ocean, now more black than blue, was waiting. I picked a nice spot far offshore and began to formulate a wind there. I drew some of the water up into my funnel of air, and that, of all things, added the element that had been missing when I’d tried to make a wind earlier. The ocean’s water somehow quenched my “thirst.”

All of my emotions finally bled into the air around me, and I felt like I’d released a dam. My breezes tossed my braids in every direction and yanked at my clothes, and something gave way inside me the way it hadn’t for so long. It was that second level of energy I’d discovered back when I was in school; it amplified every small motion I made so that gentle breezes became powerful gusts and moderate gales became hurricane strength. I usually regretted stumbling into this level since it made my energy difficult to control for a while afterwards, but at the moment the repercussions were not something I was thinking about. I funneled the ocean and the air through my mind into a splashing spiral all around me. I felt the old sorrow of being the only one who could appreciate this art form; the sadness bubbled up in me again, changing the colors in my head.

Soon enough, Ivy starts focusing on feelings of alienation, and in making a wind to comfort herself, she ends up making herself feel even more separate.

Book 4, chapter 32
I swung my energy at the water like a fist, punching the only thing I could get a hold of. The water made a satisfying splash. I needed to take out my anger so I did it again. I couldn’t help it then: I had a little temper tantrum, like I hadn’t in a long while. I beat up the air and stirred the sea up into a froth, but it didn’t seem to be helping. It wasn’t solving my problems even though it felt good. I wasn’t willing to listen to my own reason, though. I pulled a bunch of water up into my wind and threw it around as wildly as I could, bringing it all the way up around me in a suspended little funnel. I curled up inside it, watching what I was doing with my eyes wide. I hadn’t always been able to do this sort of thing. I was glad to be getting good at it. I felt so big, so formidable, with this cloud of water and air and energy all around me; I no longer felt like the tiny balled-up little girl I really was, not when I let loose like this. I knew that I was still that girl to everyone else, though. No one else knew what I was like, or what I felt when I did things like this. If they were to watch me do it, all they would see was a bunch of water suspended like magic in a mysterious wind, and a little floating girl making herself dizzy. They wouldn’t understand that this was a piece of art, a device of emotional representation, a masterpiece in motion, like a dance but completely unique and unrehearsed. They wouldn’t get it. They would think I was making it seem like more than it was, thinking I was silly and that it was all just a bunch of moving air. Even Ruben, King of Art, hadn’t been able to experience it. I felt so amazed . . . and excited and scared and alone.

It’s in this chapter that she meets Nicholas. This turns her whole world upside-down, because Nicholas can also make wind and also considers it an art. He asks her to try to say what wind is to her. She finds it’s fairly elusive:

Book 4, chapter 33
“It’s like weaving a brocade but it doesn’t stay still. It’s alive. It moves. It’s real. It’s the biggest thing in the world. I’m not really controlling it. I can’t really control it. When I do it right. . . . ” . . . “It’s a candle in my head. When I stop the candle burns out.”

Nicholas replies similarly:

“It is a way to be larger than one’s physical self. It is a release and a creation. It is a poem that can’t be written down, one which constantly rewrites itself. . . . ”

Because Nicholas cannot handle water and Ivy can, she realizes her experience of making wind is a little different, not to mention that she can fly. She decides to share her wind-making experience with Nicholas, and he joins in:

Book 4, chapter 34
I shut my eyes and smashed the ocean with my energy, scraping up a delightful spray around us. I suspended it with a powerful wind and spun it around and around. I had a feeling that hanging out in a water spout wasn’t something anyone besides me normally got to do. As I’d hoped, Nicholas’s face radiated his excitement and amazement, even though I couldn’t hear what he said with his mouth over the roaring splash around us.

Another wind entered my air stream, and of course I could only assume it was from Nicholas. It felt funny, like he was holding my hand even though we weren’t touching. I enjoyed making our twin wind. I cleared my mind of everything except the air around me and how wonderful I felt right now, even though I was starting to get exhausted. We stayed over the ocean making our wind for a very long time, longer by far than I’d ever spent making a wind alone. It was just too magical to stop, too alive to let die. I felt I would disappoint him if I let go of the water, since he couldn’t suspend it himself but could experience it because of me. I felt like I must be glowing, like I was on another level and communicating with something spiritual, something mysterious and awe-inspiring. I hadn’t felt such perfect joy as far as I could remember.

Unfortunately, since wind is so personal, Ivy ends up feeling a little ashamed about sharing with Nicholas:

Book 4, chapter 35
Today had been so unreal. Not just finding him, but especially that half hour before I’d crashed on the beach. I could hardly comprehend it. Such complicated, weird beauty, made possible partly by someone I’d known for less than twenty-four hours. It was the strangest thing. He was so new to me and I’d gotten so personal . . . it almost felt like I had let him inside my head, and like I’d seen into his. Even though we hadn’t been touching each other it had felt like we were holding hands. I couldn’t do that with Max, I couldn’t feel his energy. I couldn’t feel Nicholas’s either but his could take substance in the wind, which was close enough. It was so amazing, and somehow so intimate in a way I couldn’t understand, that it made me feel ashamed. . . . I felt like I’d let this man see a part of me that was private. And I couldn’t take it back because he’d remember it forever. Just like I would remember what I’d seen of him. I shuddered but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

What had I done? I’d let myself get caught up in the newness of the situation and gone way too far and let him see way too deep. It was hard to remember what I’d been thinking at the time because everything had been so alive with wind and water, and I’d been concentrating on absolutely nothing, with no words in my head. I knew that he had been experiencing the same thing, and that was so weird to me. Someone else had seen my soul. I wanted to hide my face and fly away and never see him again. I also wished he could fly so he could come out here of his own accord and do it again, right now. Make another twin wind with me, so I could feel it again, and feel those emotions again. I felt like I was choking. I was scared. I didn’t want to feel so many different things, so intensely. I wasn’t used to it. My life had been so simple for so long; I wasn’t ready for the way I felt. I was so confused. I wished Zeke was here to figure it out for me, or Adele to tell me what it all meant and what I should do. I just wanted an answer. But I didn’t know what question to ask, or who to ask, or whether I’d trust the answer.

Why was it that making wind with Nicholas felt so wonderful, but at the same time like I’d lost control of myself? I felt almost like he’d taken something away from me, or taken advantage of me. He hadn’t been able to make me show him my dancing, though. For some reason when I thought that, I felt stronger. He didn’t make me do anything, I realized. I did it because I decided to.

It was exciting. I could do it again. But not until I agreed to it. I wouldn’t let him get the best of me, I didn’t want to feel this way again. I had just gotten too excited and eager to have a new experience. It was kind of sad that I’d had to wait so long to find the person I could do this with.

Nicholas gives Ivy some things to think about as far as religion goes, and though she’s not entirely sure she believes that God created her on purpose, sometimes making wind makes her think about the divine.

Book 4, chapter 44
I made my unexpected rendezvous with the clouds. It was so wonderful that I felt like dancing, so I did. And as the air braided itself around me and cold, dewy clouds turned my mind to ice, I thought about whether this was really God’s creation. Could it really be? Everyone had their own ideas of who and what God was and what He wanted, but just for an instant, I was convinced God had made the world just for me, and I whispered a brief but utterly sincere “thank you.” I didn’t have time to dwell on the meaning of that experience, though, because all coherent thought was swept from my brain when my energy kicked into high gear and made Heaven spin.

In the next book, there are just a couple of wind reflections so far:

Book 5, chapter 6
My wind played out over the ocean, so far from me but intimately connected anyway. The water smashed and sprayed inside the air I moved, my body was sitting on the shore but my soul was out there in the middle, mesmerized by the beauty and power of my art.

Here’s the one she does as a demonstration for Skyler, who (of course) understands what it means to her once she sees it in action:

Book 5, chapter 12
I spun my wind softly, slowly, braiding my energy through the air until I was one with it. My nervous system lit up like it was electric when I found the right rhythm. I always felt so strong and yet so delicate when I created wind art; my power was unusually tangible when I spun the air, which was delicious, but I also felt my own fragility balanced against it. My energy jumped up a level with the familiar but startling crunch in my head, and then the wind turned from art to moving poetry, Heaven was right here around me. I wished I had some water, to taste it against this dry air, to feel it caged in my invisible spiral. Beauty pounded in my heart, pushing light through my veins. I had to stop because I was having trouble catching my breath.

In one chapter, Zeke videotapes one of Ivy’s wind art pieces and it makes her very angry that she’s been recorded doing something so personal. But finally she understands why Zeke did it and forgives him:

Book 5, chapter 15
He didn’t understand, and that was exactly why he’d done it. He was a curious scientist, and he was one of my admirers, so it stood to reason that he’d want to capture something rare and beautiful on film. He didn’t get what it meant to me, even though he’d known it meant a lot. Nothing had been taken away from me. I still had my secret beauty, because that couldn’t be seen, not with a video camera or anything but my soul’s own eyes. It bothered me that my expressions of pure innocent wonder had become his to gawk at, but they only hinted at the true meaning of what I’d done. He’d only know about that after he took mind-reading lessons from Skyler for a couple hundred years.

In short, wind art has become a very important and powerful part of Ivy’s life, and as the story develops, her creations will too.