Eastwind: An Etymology

In the second novella, entitled "A Story", the character Eastwind is Number Five, the birth twin of V (John V. Marsch or the prisoner from "V.R.T").

The East Wind, Euros, is the singular among the Anemoi in Greek mythology in that it is not associated with a season. In the Bible it always brings trouble:

• Bringing fierce storms that often wreck ships.(Psalms 48:7, Job 38:24, Isaiah 27:8, Ezekiel 27:26, Acts 27:14)
• Withering plants.(Ezekiel 17 and 19, Jonah 4:8)
• Just plain bad or brings misery and famine.
  (Genesis 41, Exodus 10:13, Job 15:2, Jeremiah 18:17, Hosea 12:1, 13:15)

The only arguable exception is that it was the fierce East wind that separated the Red Sea and let the Israelites cross on dry land. But it was still a bad omen for Pharaoh (Exodus 14:21, Psalm 78:26). There's a Sunday School lesson in there, I suppose. 

Perhaps taking a tip from that lesson, sometimes in British literature the East wind brings cold weather that is a necessary change. Mary Poppins is brought to the Banks house on an East wind like an Egyptian plague of locusts and, like them, leaves on a West wind. In "His Last Bow", Sherlock Holmes predicts a cold East wind to blow over Britain, as an unpleasant but purging remedy.

But mostly, the East Wind as a metaphor is treated as received literally from the Bible:

• In "The Lord of the Rings", the East Wind comes from Mordor.
• In George MacDonald's the "Back of the North Wind", we are told of the East Wind that one "does not exactly know how much to believe of what she says, for she is very naughty sometimes".

In Southern Europe, North Africa, and Egypt it is the southeast wind that brings misery. The hot, withering sirocco blows out of the Sahara sometimes with hurricane force. 

According to Victor Trenchard, Eastwind was his ancestor, the first abo to greet the French when they landed on St Anne. According to him, when the French arrived they found a man flailed to death, floating in the water, just as described in "A Story". All of this is certainly a lie. What is true and unsaid is that Victor Trenchard is one of the discarded clones of the Maison du Chein on St Croix. When John V Marsch, much later, sets to writing his hidden biography ("A Story" by John V Marsch), he gives the name Eastwind to Trenchard's true "great ancestor", the prisoner's twin who is simulated by Mr Million.