Windblowne (2 page)

Today was the Fifth Day of the Second Moon. Four days remained.

The wind blowing down from the crest brought a chorus of young voices, shouts mixed with laughter. Oliver grimaced. The voices belonged to those he had most been hoping to avoid, but there was no help for it. He marched grimly upward, gripping his kite.

A group of children came into view, all carrying kites. Oliver felt his usual shudder of envy, and a surge of embarrassment for his own kite. For his classmates’ kites were more than just kites; they were brilliantly painted eagles, bats, and dragons. The elaborate kites had hinges and latches that allowed them to be folded flat and carried, and then opened to full size when launched. These were kites that were, without question, worthy of the Festival, and all of the children were brimming with excitement and confidence.

They spotted Oliver. He braced himself.

“Marcus, do you see that?” one of them called, in
mock astonishment. “Oliver has gotten hold of another kite somehow!”

Marcus held his eagle kite behind his back as though shielding it. “Oh, Oliver,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “What did that poor, defenseless thing do to deserve this fate?” He turned to his friend. “Alain, do you think there’s room in the trees for another one of Oliver’s kites?”

Alain looked thoughtful. “I’m not sure,” he said. “They’re getting pretty crowded up there. It might be more merciful just to burn this one. Need a match, Oliver?”

Peals of jeering laughter were carried off on the wind as Oliver quickened his pace, leaving the others behind.

All but one. A black-haired girl with a dragon kite broke away and hurried after Oliver. She had a red knit pouch slung over one shoulder, and it bounced on her hip as she ran. He groaned. Of all the humiliating episodes in his ill-fated flying career, this girl represented one of the worst. She had spent months making one of the most beautiful kites Windblowne had ever seen, a school of flying fish fashioned from silk and bamboo. In a moment of poor judgment, she had asked Oliver if he
would like to fly it. Unable to resist, he had accepted the reels—and to his horror, had promptly steered the kite directly into the ground, destroying it. The violence with which he had managed to accomplish this was a frequent topic of discussion at school.

“Ilia!” Alain shouted from down the Way. “Better stay away from Oliver! Bad luck before the Festival.”

Ilia ignored him and dashed up beside Oliver. “Oliver,” she said anxiously, “you’re not going to the crest, are you?”

He did not answer. He wished she would stop being so nice about everything. She ought to hate him for what he had done.

“Well,” said Ilia after an awkward pause. “Be careful, Oliver. The night winds are coming.”

“Ilia!” shouted several of the others.

“Wait!” she called. She rummaged in her red knit pouch and produced a tiny golden kite charm on which a name had been etched—
Ilia
. She offered it to Oliver. “For luck. You can give it back to me tomorrow.”

Oliver shook his head, wounded. Why did Ilia think he needed her luck? “No thanks.”

“Well, good luck anyway,” said Ilia. Before Oliver
could react, she pressed the charm into his hand, then raced down the mountain to her friends.

Well, that’s over with
, thought Oliver miserably, dropping the charm into his pocket. But then he heard more voices, carried on the wind—more classmates, coming home late from practice. More ridicule. He would have turned around if he weren’t so desperate.

He paused. How desperate? Desperate enough to use his secret path? It lay just ahead.…

No
, he reminded himself sternly.
That’s only for emergencies. Someone might see!

But the voices were advancing, and the pointer on his handvane was wobbling violently. If anything qualified as an emergency, this was it.

He spied the entrance to the path, hidden behind a seemingly impenetrable wall of brush. He would never have discovered it were it not for two oaks located on either side, like twin sentinels guarding the trail, their lower branches dipping down just so.

Here lies the path
, the sentinels seemed to say.

The voices were nearly upon him. He dove into the wall of brush, gliding through an almost invisible gap. From the safety of this hiding place he watched as more
children passed, laughing and waving their wonderful kites. He burned at the sight. He burned particularly because he wanted to join them so very badly. When the children were gone, he turned and stumbled up the path.

Although it was a more direct route to the crest than Windswept Way, the path was overgrown and difficult to traverse. Fallen tree limbs mostly concealed what remained of the trail. Oliver crashed along. It must have been years since anyone had walked this old path regularly. He had used it only a few times himself.

A flash of color caught his eye.

Oliver crouched beside a sharp bit of broken oak limb. Hanging from the tip of it was the tiniest scrap of crimson silk. He touched it.

Kite silk.

Someone else had come this way.

Oliver stood, furious. This path was
his
secret! Now that he looked, he could see other signs—snapped twigs, footprints. Someone else had been through. Not far along he found a low branch that had a torn bit of wool on it, like the wool from which his own flying cap was made.

Oliver began to smash along. Maybe the person was
still on the trail. Maybe he could catch up. Perhaps the other person would be willing to keep the secret. It would be better than having all of Windblowne tramping up and down the path every day.…

But whoever it was had not gone to the crest. The trail of snapped twigs and footprints and torn thread ended abruptly, halfway up. Or rather, it didn’t end but turned off the path and went deeper into the forest.

A cascade of dead leaves tumbled past.

Odd!
Oliver thought, and for a moment he wavered. Then determination returned as he saw how the twilight gloom was gathering. He hurried up the path, resolving to come back after the Festival and explore this mystery further.

Soon he neared the crest.

As always, Oliver thrilled to the sound of the rising, rushing winds racing through the oaks. Normally he liked to look up into their tossing branches. Not tonight, though. Tonight he kept his eyes fixed firmly on the path.
No more distractions, Oliver
, he told himself.
Focus
.

He emerged onto the crest through another invisible gap in the brush. The oakline ended abruptly at the crest border, forming a wide circle around it. From this line
the open ground rose a quarter mile to the peak, where the most unpredictable and treacherous winds blew. Nothing was able to grow on the crest itself but a thin covering of hardy mountain grass. Strong as they were, even the giant oaks could not withstand the crest winds.

He had hoped he would be the only one here at this late hour. Surely no one, at least no one who wasn’t as desperate as Oliver, would risk damaging his kite or himself this close to the Festival. But near the peak, a few daring fliers were getting in some final minutes of practice. Oliver recognized them. They were all young men and women who had nearly made the final rounds last summer. They were braving the winds in these last hours, hoping to find some edge that could catapult them to the championship this year.

As he removed reels and twine from his pack, Oliver could not resist an intense and grudging admiration for those fliers. They were handling, with expert skill, the most sophisticated type of power kite, built specifically for jumping. Each kite had precision folds and angles designed to master the shifting winds of the crest. Complicated lines wound down from the kites to the reels held by the fliers, who heaved on the multiple strands, causing
the kites to plunge in breathtaking dives and rise in swooping arcs. The kites danced about in complex forms, sometimes joining their neighbors to create intricate aerial patterns. Each kite commanded the air, seeming as though at any moment it might break free and fly off on its own, sweeping all of the others from the sky.

As Oliver watched, a flier left the group and fought toward the peak. Oliver held his breath.

For the briefest moment, the flier balanced herself, pulling hard against the unpredictable gusts, jousting with the wind. Then, in one expert motion, she swung her kite into the teeth of the gale and jumped.

She flew up and out, over the heads of her friends, who whooped and cheered. She twisted in flight, still in control, her legs kicking. At last she landed, far from the peak. Oliver was in awe. Her leap was just yards shy of the flat granite marker that noted the spot of the farthest jump on record. The dream of every flier in town was to break that record, but the marker had not been moved in almost fifty years. For this jumper, however, the extra practice was paying off. She looked as though she were ready to enter the first rank and threaten that mark.

With a guilty start, Oliver realized that he had gotten
so caught up in watching that flier that he had delayed longer than he intended. He checked his handvane. The pointer was dancing wildly. He knew he ought to come back in the morning. The other fliers were urgently reeling in their kites.

There’s still time for a quick test
, he decided. He looked nervously at his kite. It was a simple flat-wing model, or at least an attempt at one. He had heated the spine too quickly, and the whole thing was rather bent. He tried to ignore the other flaws, the clumsy rips and awkward joins. “You’re not so bad,” he whispered, stroking the kite in an attempt to smooth out its wrinkled sails. “I’ll just give you one test flight and then fix you up in time for the Festival.”

He looked around sheepishly, glad that no one was nearby to hear him talking to one of his kites, a childish habit that he could not seem to break.

He made his final preparations hastily, fastening lines to each side of the kite and securing them to the reel. He gripped the reel firmly in his hard leather glove. Time to fly. He grasped the kite with his other hand and, with what he hoped was a smooth, correct motion, tossed it up to catch the winds.

And then he heard it—an oncoming roar. The oaks behind him signaled their warning with a furious flailing:
The night winds have come!

Oliver’s kite was torn to shreds instantly. He was thrown to the ground, his breath knocked from him. He grabbed desperately for his things, but they were whipped away—his pack, his handvane torn from his wrist, all gone. Oliver crawled back to the safety of the oaks as broken branches smashed into the ground around him, leaves and dirt stung his face, and winds screamed in his ears. He reached the trunk of the nearest oak and struggled to his feet. He leaned, heart pounding, his chest thick with fear. He could have been killed.

Numbly, Oliver staggered back through the oaks to his hidden trail. Everything was gone. All of his equipment. His hope of entering the Festival. His kite. Everything.

And when he put his hand into his pocket, he discovered that he had lost Ilia’s golden kite charm, too.

He stumbled brokenly down the mountain, fighting tears, hardly hearing the din raised by the oaks as the night winds battered and raged. On another night he would have listened in rapture, but tonight the sounds seemed full of despair.

Oliver had lost his lamp along with his pack, and he might have wandered in complete darkness if his way were not lit by the two moons, which traveled together through the night sky every midsummer. Nahfa, the larger, and Aspin, his smaller companion, signaled the start of the Festival when they drew near each other in the sky. Normally he would have stopped and gazed at them shining together, but tonight they only reminded him that he would be watching the Festival from the sidelines again this year, as he probably would every year for the rest of his life.

Consumed with dark thoughts, he plodded down, shoving branches aside. In his misery and fatigue, he did not notice the slim form that slipped from the shadows, wearing a heavy wool cap fastened under its chin, watching him intently as he disappeared down the secret path, toward Windswept Way and home.

When Oliver woke, his bedroom was still dark
. Normally he left his heavy curtains open so that the morning sunlight would wake him. Last night he had left them closed, and now his room was cheerless and dim. He sat up, blinking, wondering how late it was. It had been nearly sunrise when he had finally gone to bed.

He had spent hours eliminating everything from his room that reminded him of his failures. Gone from the walls were the paintings of kites. The racks for kitesmithing supplies were bare, and the chest that normally held reels and twine stood empty. Nothing lay on the workbench except a book titled
Careers in Mining
, which sat open to page one. Last night, he had resolved to stay
up and read as much of it as he possibly could. Today, he resolved to read page two.

Even his not-so-secret drawer had been yanked open and emptied. He had tried to build it in the side of his workbench, as a place to hold his most treasured possessions, but since he was as skilled in carpentry as he was in kitesmithing, the drawer was crude and obvious and terribly unsecret. Anyway, it had held only kite supplies, and was empty now, so he didn’t care if it was secret or not.

He dressed slowly. With no kite, he had no reason to wear his flying clothes, and so he dressed only in a simple tunic, jacket, and trousers. In his closet he found his fur-lined boots, which he promptly kicked under the bed, where they joined the rest of his crumpled flying outfit. He peered around the room for something else to kick, but there wasn’t much left. He wondered if a tourist had come across the bundle of kiting gear lying beside the Way. Maybe they’d be able to make something useful out of Oliver’s things. Oliver certainly hadn’t.

Downstairs, his parents were sitting at the breakfast table. His mother was wearing her dusty smock and wolfing down cold meat and berry juice while waving her knife in the air and talking to his father. Oliver saw
that no fire had been made in the stove, so he began to build one.