Tove, I said.
He sat up.
I did not say, Come outside, or even please. I said, My store is burning. There is something outside. It is for you.
He stared at me for a good while. Did he hate me? He could have lain back in his bunk. Instead, he labored down slowly. He waved his antennae at his sons, and they followed at a distance.
There were tears sliding down my face. Why didn’t you defend yourself, I asked. Why?
He led the way outside, tiptoeing as if walking towards a dangerous secret. Finally, he said, Wouldn’t you have killed us all, if we had fought back and lost? You have books that say only the weak will inherit the earth. In our prophecies, the only way to stay was to not fight back.
I didn’t mean fifteen years ago, I meant in my backroom, but this answer was as good as any. I said, But why did you not fight back?
I wanted to live so badly, he said. For the first time I noticed seams on his legs where they must have been broken before, the source of his strange tiptoe walking.
And if you inherit the earth, what would you do with it? I said.
Silent, he waited for me behind the trunk of my car. A crowd of Dragonflies gathered behind us to see what this human woman wanted with one of their kind.
I opened the trunk door, passed out the kites I’d saved. Of what use could they possibly be to me? I handed the end of a rope to Tove, two others to his sons. I had five other rope ends that I passed out. Each was one piece of the giant kite.
This wasn’t charity; this wasn’t forgiveness. How could it be, after all that I had done, was still doing? I wanted to fling it in their faces, what they had lost. I wanted to see them hurt for that sky, sing for that lost planet. I wanted them to sing my own song and break open with it.
Then Tove led the eight of them forward, began running slowly with their curling legs. The kite, the sky over them as oppressive as my fear. All around me I heard gasps and yips, long protracted vowels, what they called their home planet in their own language. They moaned as the hang glider went up, that cathedral shard taking off above us, begging us all to rise.
About the Author
Brenda Peynado’s stories have won an O. Henry Prize, the Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award, a Dana Award, a Fulbright Grant to the Dominican Republic, a Vermont Studio Center Residency, and other prizes. Her work appears in The Georgia Review, Daily Science Fiction, The Sun, The Kenyon Review Online, Prairie Schooner, The Threepenny Review, and other journals. She received her MFA at Florida State University and her PhD at the University of Cincinnati. She teaches screenwriting, fiction writing, and worldbuilding at the University of Central Florida. She’s currently writing a novel about the 1965 civil war in the Dominican Republic and a girl who can tell all possible futures. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Brenda Peynado
Art copyright © 2018 by Chris Buzelli
The Kite Maker Page 3