Some sort of calamity has happened. Something called the 'Wind' comes out of nowhere and turns people into dust, as though hunting them down. The story starts with a boy and his mother, the mother is dying for an unknown reason -because of "what they did to me." The mother has prepared the boy to go to the 'place of wishes' and provides him with a map of his destination and a device referred to as a 'scanner.' She has shown him how to use the scanner to divert or cancel the 'Wind' and how to proceed so as to be as safe as possible in his journey towards the place that grants wishes.After his mother dies, he proceeds on his way and meets a girl, a woman scientist, and a British soldier who travel with him. The woman diverts them to a mansion belonging to another scientist whom she hopes will help her build a device that will do the same thing as the boy's scanner, but automatically. While in the mansion the girl goes to dust. The boy, traumatized, proceeds towards his original destination, the soldier and woman following.At some point they reach a field where the Wind comes up and moves very strongly and steadily across the field, seeming to ignore them. The soldier's late wife appears in a kind of bubble in the midst of the Wind. The soldier requests the boy to help him get to his wife. He reaches her, touches her hand, but then are turned to dust. The boy then sees his mother in the same kind of bubble and requests the woman to use her device to help him reach his mother. Just then, the girl, previously deceased, appears in another bubble next to his mother. With the scientist woman's help he goes to his mother and the girl. Both reach out their hands and his mother says he has to make a choice -which hand to take. The boy takes each of their hands and puts them together so the mother is holding the hand of the girl, they smile, walk off, then poof -disappear, but without turning into dust.At that point the Wind falls away and the boy heads back to the woman, finding an envelope on the way with a message in it, apparently from his mother. The boy doesn't seem to know what it means but the woman understands it and tells the boy that they have been given a new destination and does he want to go? The boy says yes and the story comes to an end.