He stopped. The kite drifted menacingly before him, blocking the path. Oliver thought longingly of his safe, warm bed. He had to come up with a way out of this. The last thing he wanted to do, given his reputation, was run through Windblowne being chased by a kite.
“Look,” he said to the kite, “be reasonable.”
The kite hovered warily.
“There’s nothing I can do to help Great-uncle Gilbert, whatever’s happened to him, even if I wanted to. Even if he had trusted me. Even if he hadn’t almost shoved me down the stairs and set his kite-eater on me and”—Oliver realized he was getting carried away—“and everything else.”
The kite buzzed, tail lashing like a whip.
“You heard Great-uncle Gilbert,” Oliver said. “I don’t have any talents. I’ll never be a kitesmith. My great-uncle wants nothing to do with me, and neither does anyone else!”
The kite’s sails sagged mournfully.
“So that’s it,” Oliver continued uncertainly. This had been easier when the kite fought back. “If you don’t want to come with me, then fine. I promise to tell the Watch all about this.”
The kite drooped away. It drooped past Oliver and back up the path. Oliver watched it go. It appeared determined to fly on, whether Oliver was coming or not.
“Fine!” declared Oliver, without conviction. He turned toward home. The path ahead swirled with fallen leaves. A few low, bare oak branches draped the path, their shadows tracing the ground.
A distant sound came to his ears—an immense wave of wind, far off but rolling closer. The world seemed to gather itself. The treetops stilled, oak leaves settled to earth, and Oliver held his breath. He knew this sound. A windburst was coming, and a big one.
Before he felt it, he could see it, as oaks in the distance began to thrash wildly, sending up clouds of leaves to join the wave.
Oliver braced for impact as the wave hit. He threw up his hands to protect his face when the leaf-cloud enveloped him, rushing past.
The winds pummeled and fought, and he fought back, pushing with all of his strength. Step by step, he battled forward.
He risked a glance back.
The crimson kite, buffeted by the winds, was drifting heavily up the path. In moments, it was lost to Oliver’s view.
Oliver dropped his hands. The winds rose again, and thousands of oak branches shook together. Then the wind-wave passed, and Oliver listened as it rolled away across the mountain.
He fell to his knees, exhausted from his struggle with the winds.
I win, he thought. I can go home.
But he didn’t go. He crouched there, hearing the weird and distant dying voices of the windburst.
He plucked a few dead leaves from his sweater. Looking at them, he could see that they were not all from the sick oak. One of them came from a sentinel, and another from the oak across the Way from his own home oak.
He looked at these leaves, and he remembered the soft feel of the sick oak’s bark, and he remembered the way Great-uncle Gilbert had shouted “No!” and looked at him, and how that distraction had resulted in his great-uncle’s defeat and disappearance. Something was very wrong with the oaks, and he had a feeling that Great-uncle Gilbert had been trying to do something about it.
And all this with the Festival only two days away.
Oliver groaned, then ran after the kite. When he caught up, it whirled about in surprise, then spun happily in the air.
This is madness, thought Oliver, and in a way that sealed it for him. He was mad like his great-uncle and his parents.
“All right,” he said with resignation. “If you know where Great-uncle Gilbert is, then take me there.”
The kite shot back up the path, and Oliver followed, buffeted by the winds. He ran all the way back up the path, following the lashing tail, past the turn to his great-uncle’s house—and then, in horror, he realized where the kite was leading him. The crest.
In moments they reached the oakline, where the path emerged onto the crest. The kite stopped, hovering, and Oliver stopped too, just a few feet away. He clutched at a nearby branch and squinted as dust and debris from the raging winds swarmed over him.
On the crest, the grass was bent flat as a sheet, and the moonslight stabbed down through a chaotic cloud of unbridled power, a screaming maelstrom where the protection of the oaks ended and the night winds leveled everything. Oliver felt as though he were staring into the maw of an invincible creature bent on total destruction.
The crimson kite dipped down like a flier preparing to leap.
“Please,” Oliver begged, screaming. “Don’t! You’ll be destroyed!” He held out one hand in supplication. “Please.”
The kite shook proudly, sails snapping, and flew into the storm.
Oliver screamed and lunged for the tail, but too late. It flickered just ahead of his hand, and was gone.
As he stumbled across the oakline, the night winds knocked him flat, driving the breath from his body. Ahead he could see the kite, somehow resisting utter destruction, flying defiantly toward the peak.
Then the winds picked him up and threw him as though he were a scrap of silk. They slammed him into a nearby oak, knocking the breath from him and causing him to see a dazzling array of stars. He managed to crawl around to the lee side of the trunk, away from the full force of the winds. The crimson kite, illuminated by moonslight at the peak, turned in circles as though searching for something. It spied Oliver and flew at him.
The kite came to an abrupt halt only a few feet away. Oliver did not understand how the kite could fly in the night winds, but he didn’t care, for the kite’s tail was now dangling in front of him tantalizingly. He leapt and found a fistful of silk. He whooped in triumph as the tail lashed itself around his forearm like a striking whip.
The whoop died as the kite began to drag him, powered by the irresistible force of the night winds, onto the crest.
“I can’t!” screamed Oliver over the roar of the winds. Bits of leaf and twig blistered his cheeks. He dug in his heels and fought back, knocked from one side to another as the winds beat at him. He pulled as hard as he could. But with the night winds powering the kite, Oliver couldn’t win.
The savage winds tearing at him, he struggled up the crest, expecting at any moment to be hurled away. But no matter how ferociously the winds blew, the kite held firm, pulling him higher. He passed the jumping marker, hardly noticing it. His mind was filled with cautionary tales told to Windblowne’s children, stories of how the night winds could take a piece of straw and drive it into the trunk of an oak like an arrow—or into the body of a foolish child who defied the night winds.
The kite had nearly reached the peak, dragging Oliver just behind. He felt nearly at the end of his strength. The kite loomed over him. The two moons gleamed beyond.
For one instant, the night winds slackened, just enough for Oliver to gather himself for one last pull.
Then the winds blasted back in all of their fury. The tail snapped taut and pain tore through Oliver’s shoulder. The kite shot into the sky, and Oliver went with it.
Terror flooded him. He had never learned to kite jump, and yet here he was, leaping out from the crest, legs kicking. Already he was too high to let go of the kite, even if he could. His only chance was to hang on and attempt a safe landing.
The kite and Oliver rose rapidly, the barren ground racing below. Oliver saw moonslight glinting off the granite marker.
A new thought replaced the terror: I’m going to come close to the record.
Now he was flying faster, still rising.
I’m going to BREAK the record!
The granite marker sped by in a blur. Oliver would have yelled in triumph if certain death had not been seconds away. He was hurtling straight toward the oaks, a hundred feet off the ground. The kite continued to rise. The oaks came near, then passed beneath them, the tips of their highest branches brushing Oliver’s legs.
Looking down, he saw the treehouses of Windblowne, now far below,
and a light escaping through the trees where someone, woken by the winds, moved restlessly, unable to sleep.
Then they passed upward into a chilling mist, and Oliver could see no more.
6
Oliver had always admired carrier kites, immense kites large enough for a person to sit in and be flown high above the mountain. He had admired their daring passengers even more. Though carrier kites were controlled from the ground by teams of fliers, it nevertheless took nerves of oak to soar at such altitude, held aloft only by silk and bamboo and the work of your own hands. But Oliver had now achieved an entirely new understanding of altitude. From where he soared, he would be looking down at any carrier kite that had ever flown. And from the ground, Oliver and the kite would be no more than a speck in the sky.
Oliver thought he ought to feel terrified. Here he was, clinging to the tail of a small kite, miles above the ground in the midst of the most ferocious windstorm he had witnessed in a short life filled with ferocious windstorms. Not only was he in ridiculous danger, but he was also not the boy best equipped to bring this flight to a successful conclusion, one that did not involve breaking every bone in his body and becoming the posthumous laughingstock of all Windblowne.
And yet, he wasn’t frightened. Instead, an unfamiliar feeling surged through him: happiness. He tried a few experimental screams of joy, which were snatched away on the winds.
Perhaps it was that the night winds carried him so smoothly, as though wrapped in a blanket of air, although they must have been hurtling at unheard-of speeds. The crimson kite had lashed its tail firmly around his forearm.
They seemed to be flying through a cloud. Oliver wished he could see the stars, or the lights of passing towns racing by below, or anything at all besides the faint glow of enveloping mist illuminated by the moons.
Still, he was flying higher and farther than anyone had ever flown, he was sure, and he began formulating big plans for his triumphant return to Windblowne. He had broken about seven different records that he could think of, and had set about five others that he had invented along the way. Twelve new records! His homecoming would be grand, even if it took him a few weeks to get back from wherever he landed. He wondered where they would put the granite marker, which would now be emblazoned with his name. The new placement would be many leagues from Windblowne, which was a shame, but at least this record was sure to be unbreakable. In the absence of the marker, Oliver would just have to remind everyone of the accomplishment himself. And in a distant town somewhere, people would gather around the granite marker and ask themselves, “Who was this Oliver, this bold adventurer who descended from the skies? What sort of brilliant flying was required to—”
Abruptly, Oliver noticed that he was no longer being pulled directly behind the kite. He was not flying but dangling, a tiny figure lost in the vast sky. The winds were slowing. Dawn was arriving with surprising swiftness. He became conscious of the miles of empty space below him. Without the strength of the night winds, the kite would not be able to keep both of them aloft.
“Shouldn’t we begin preparations for landing?” Oliver shouted. He attempted a few experimental tugs on the tail, but the kite took no notice.
A brighter glow spread through the mist. “Kite,” said Oliver firmly, hoping that for once a kite would listen to him. “Landing time. Let’s go.” He gave another tug. No response.
Then the kite began to sink, slowly at first, then faster. Oliver was sweating now and kicking his legs. The winds that had carried him along gently for hours were now rushing straight up past him, and not gently. He thought of a thirteenth record he was about to set—first flier to be squashed while flying a kite. No one in Windblowne would be surprised that Oliver had set that record. They could plant the granite marker on the spot where he met his violent end.
Then, in a smooth, silent rush, the mist cleared.
Oliver could see the ground approaching with alarming speed.
They were falling through the last wisps of the dying night winds, straight toward the crest of another mountain.
Since there were no other mountains anywhere near Windblowne, Oliver knew they must have flown very far indeed. He was going to die, alone, on a strange and faraway mountain, a mere splotch on the landscape, with no one to document the twelve records he had just set. At least he would avoid the public embarrassment of record number thirteen.
Oliver shut his eyes and waited for impact.
There was a loud snap, and pain shot through him—but the snap was only the kite’s sails going taut once more, and the pain was only from his beleaguered shoulder. Oliver opened his eyes and saw the ground rushing up below his feet. He tucked his legs, hit the ground hard, and rolled forward onto his back. He looked up at the kite, which hovered over him, dancing back and forth as the final night winds curled away.
“Very funny,” Oliver said.
The kite fluttered proudly.
Oliver lay there for a minute, glorying in the feel of being alive and on solid ground and in possession of an intact skeleton. He had braved the greatest heights ever achieved by a flier. No one needed to know how terrified he had been at the end.
In the thrill of the flight, he had almost forgotten why he had followed the kite in the first place.
“So where’s Great-uncle Gilbert?” he said to the kite. “Where are we, anyway?”
But the kite was simply flying around him in anxious circles.
He rolled onto his stomach and climbed achingly to his feet, rubbing his arm, which burned where the kite had unlashed its tail just before landing. He wondered how many leagues he’d flown—ten? a hundred? Was he in a new land? Would the people here speak a strange language? Would they grasp the epic scope of his accomplishments? Would they object to the new placement of the granite marker?
Oliver looked around, the light of dawn revealing everything—and cried out in dismay.
He’d thought he had shattered half the records in the book. But now he could see he was standing right on the Windblowne crest, exactly at the point from which he’d taken off. There was the granite marker, far off, glinting in the morning sun. He hadn’t set the record after all—unless it was the record for the shortest jump of all time. He wondered if there was a record for the longest jump for the least distance, for surely he’d broken that record many times over. They must have been going in circles the entire time.
Oliver shot the kite a disgusted look. “Couldn’t you have at least set me down a little past the marker?”
The kite’s sails drooped sadly.
“No, it was a great flight, really,” said Oliver hastily. “I just wish we could do it during the day.” He imagined turning circles around the crest, waving at admiring crowds of tourists arriving for the Festival.…
Speaking of which … the crest ought to be busy with preparations. Though dawn had only just broken, he ought to have seen the first trickle of fliers arriving for a few precious hours of practice. He ought to have seen workers arriving to set up reviewing stands for tourists who couldn’t bear to sit on the grass. He ought to have seen Festival officials arriving to put up banners that snapped in the wind, announcing the schedule of events, and carts arriving full of food to sell.
But Oliver could see none of those things, and the only sound he could hear was the light whistle of the cool winds of dawn, sounding strange to him even though he had heard them so many times. This morning they seemed louder, more piercing, and somehow he felt they were even giving him a slight headache.
“Let’s go,” he said to the kite, which was still flying those anxious circles. He held out his hand. “Come on! We’ve got to go find help.”
Shockingly, it obeyed instantly, flying directly to him. He tucked the kite under his arm. The kite’s long tail whipped out and wrapped around his waist, and the kite huddled next to his body, pressing against him. It seemed to be shivering, too.
As he walked toward the secret path, his unease increased. He realized that he had not heard a singl
e birdcall. Normally, when dawn broke, birds would fill the air with chirping and song. But Oliver heard nothing but the unsettling whistle of the winds, which pierced right through him and left behind a growing headache. And under his arm, the kite was now noticeably trembling.
“What’s wrong?” Oliver asked irritably.
He stopped. He’d reached the entrance to the secret path.
But the secret path was secret no longer.
Someone had cleared away all of the brush that had disguised the entrance. And the rest of the path had been cleared too, as though it were now a common thoroughfare. Oliver, feeling possessive, considered covering it up again, but he couldn’t see any of the cleared brush nearby.
Oliver felt the kite vibrating under his arm. “Would you relax?” he said anxiously, tightening his grip.
Then he noticed the strings.
They were up high in the oaks—you had to look up to see them—and they weren’t really strings exactly, but Oliver did not know what else to call them. They were long strands of something thin and black, and they were strung from oak to oak, fastened to the trunks somehow, winding off in all directions.
Oliver stood thinking for several minutes. The kite huddled next to him, shaking all the while.
No fliers on the crest. No Festival preparations. No birds. The secret path revealed. The black strings in the trees.
A couple of dead leaves drifted by. Oliver snatched them from the air. He knew them immediately. One came from the sick oak next to Great-uncle Gilbert’s treehouse. The other, from the Volitant Dragon’s oak.
The leaves looked exactly as Oliver expected them to, besides being prematurely dead. The rest of the world, though, seemed subtly different. The grass was heavy and green, more so than usual. The blue sky was empty, not only of birds and kites, but there was also no sign of the cloud from which Oliver had flown. The world had changed in a hundred different ways—its scent, its light, and many other things Oliver could sense but not identify. Nothing looked, felt, or smelled quite as it should.
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