Characters & world
Everyone the wind reached
A short field guide to the people in the tale — including the one the story is usually told without.
Chima Greaves
Sixteen. Warehouse cleaner. Builder of one very bad idea.
Born under a great name and into a small body, and he never managed to get the two to agree. He is the great-great-great-grandson of Isaac Greaves — a descendant, not a repeat.
- Works night shifts on the cleaning crew
- Wears a white PPE coverall, not a costume
- Reads the family book far more often than he admits
Isaac “the Bellows” Greaves
The ancestor in the picture books.
Three houses in one afternoon, two of them flat, and ninety years of editions since. In the book he is never given a childhood and never given a reason.
- Nine editions on one library shelf
- Drawn enormous in every illustration
- Dead long before Chima was born
Ada Okonjo
The person the wind reached.
Ada is not a plot device and not a pig in a rhyme. She had a roof, a gate, and a kid called Tom, and Chima learned all three of those names far too late.
- Roof repaid over fourteen months
- Gate fixed on a Saturday
- Mother to Tom
The Industrial Fan
Salvage, ambition, and physics.
Found in a lot behind a shuttered mill and rebuilt over months. It does exactly what it was built to do, which turns out to be the entire problem.
- Built from mill salvage
- Wheeled out on a cold Sunday
- Under a tarp in the shed, still