Kite Spirit

by Sita Brahmachari

  ‘Seriously though, I think this place is going to be good for both of us.’ Seth sighed with pleasure. There it was again, his favourite topic – the healing power of the countryside.

  ‘I just wish we could have come here with your Grandma Hannah.’

  Kite had only been vaguely listening when Seth had started talking about tracing his family history, but now she realized how revved up about it he really was. At least if he gets caught up in that he might leave me alone, she thought as she stood up and meandered along the stream, using her hands to steady herself over the uneven boulders. If Miss Choulty was here she would be waxing lyrical about this glacial scenery – rocks and boulders deposited everywhere in the ice melt. What was it she always said? ‘Landscape is living history.’

  Kite came to a rock large enough to sit on, climbed up and stared into a deep pool of water. Tiny golden fish gathered in its mossy depths, glistening in the sun, like millions of coloured pixels. Then suddenly they were shoaling together, gathering into a shape she recognized as Dawn’s face. The image of her friend was so accurate Kite felt she could reach out and touch her fine auburn hair as it floated under the water. Her face shone white and clear, and she smiled her gentle smile at Kite with her soft hazel eyes that reflected colours off the moss beneath her. Kite held her breath. Her heart raced with pure joy to see Dawn again so close. This must be what Dawn wanted too, to find a way of explaining what had happened. She reached out to her, down into the water, and the hundreds of tiny fish scattered in every direction, making her stumble backwards as a long shadow fell across the empty pool.

  ‘We’d better get back to Boss-Nav if we’re to arrive before dark!’

  As Seth held out his hand to help her back on to the bank, the ground spun under her so that she felt as if she was about to pass out.

  ‘Steady!’ Seth grabbed her arm and pulled her to safety. ‘You hardly touched your lunch. You’ve got to try to eat more,’ he muttered as he walked her slowly back to the car.

  Find Your Way

  Now here they were, back at the stream, in the exact same place they’d been sitting half an hour before. There was no denying the fact that they’d been driving around in circles.

  ‘Make a U-turn now!’

  ‘That’s back the way we just came. Some help you are!’ Seth slammed his hand flat against the satnav. ‘Have they not heard of street signs here?’

  ‘There aren’t any streets.’

  A small flock of sheep approached the car, the one in front bleating loudly.

  ‘OK, worth a try! Know the way to Mirror Falls?’ Seth asked the vacant-looking ewe.

  ‘Don’t be an idiot!’

  ‘At least this idiot can still make you laugh!’

  Kite felt the muscles tense and her smile disappear as she forced herself to purse her lips closed. How could she laugh when Dawn was dead? The distorted sound of her own laughter echoed in her ears.

  The ewe surveyed them with its docile black eyes, opened its mouth and appeared to yawn.

  ‘Guess not! We should have asked that boy on the tractor.’

  At the mention of him Kite felt the heat of embarrassment rise to her face.

  ‘We could always turn around and head to that little pub we passed back there. They should know where it is.’

  They heard it before they saw it. The sheep scattered in all directions at the first bark. A black sheepdog with a white flash came bounding towards them, ignoring the sheep and heading straight for Kite’s open door. It laid its paws on her lap and flattened its head against her arm, panting contentedly.

  ‘Where did you come from?’ Kite stroked the dog’s head.

  Seth pointed further up the river to where a woman carrying a gnarled piece of driftwood for a walking stick slowly made her way towards them. Her coarse greying hair was pulled back into a severe ponytail, the taut strands drawn so tight over her ears that it made Kite’s own scalp sting. She was wearing walking boots, trousers, a cheesecloth blouse and a waistcoat. In her right hand she carried a heavy-looking hessian sack. As she came closer Seth raised his hand in a friendly greeting and called out to her. Her blank expression did not change for a moment.

  ‘Come away!’ Her dog obediently leaped back from the car and returned to her side. Instead of moving closer, she stood stock still, so that Seth had to project his voice to be heard.

  ‘We’re looking for Mirror Falls,’ he called over to her.

  Still she did not approach.

  ‘Take the track to where the land rises up there.’ The woman pointed to a narrow path they had ruled out as hardly being wide enough for the car. ‘There’s a steep climb after that. Follow the track to the end – you can’t miss it.’ Her voice was clipped and sharp and carried across the land. Then unexpectedly she added, ‘I’m going that way. I can show you if you want.’ Her voice was still expressionless as she finally came towards them. ‘As long as you don’t mind Bardsey here.’ The dog’s ears pricked up at the sound of his name.

  ‘Seems like a friendly soul!’ Seth smiled, patting the dog’s head as it offered him his paw.

  ‘Down, Bardsey!’ she ordered. ‘He’s still a puppy. I’m training him!’ Her mouth betrayed a glimmer of a smile for the first time as Bardsey obediently returned to her side. Her arms rested firmly on her stick as she took the last steps towards the car and looked inside. She was not as old as Kite had first thought. Maybe Grandma Grace’s age, in her sixties. Her skin was clear and unlined, not a face that had been exposed to the weather all its life. Only her blue-grey eyes seemed to fit with the mountain slate. She stared at Kite, and as she did her tight, closed expression shifted and a look of terrible sadness came over her. As she looked back into the woman’s eyes Kite had the strangest sensation that this woman could see into her and was reading what was happening inside her. Then, dropping her driftwood stick and placing her hand on Kite’s arm, she said the oddest thing: ‘I’m sorry. I won’t intrude. I hope you find your way.’ She turned and strode powerfully away carrying her hessian sack and forgetting her walking stick altogether.

  ‘There’s plenty of room, really,’ Seth called to her, but she ignored him and carried on her way. Kite wondered why she needed the stick at all.

  ‘Come away, Bardsey!’ she instructed in a firmer voice than before, and the dog picked up her stick, ran over and offered it to her before falling back in line at her heels.

  Seth shrugged. ‘Something I said?’

  Kite lay down on the back seat and closed her eyes. Her mind was full of dreams and what could she call them . . . visions? Hallucinations? Dawn’s grave, the Angel of the North, Dawn’s reeds floating in the water, the giant carrying Dawn to safety, Dawn’s face in the rock pool, the farm boy and now this crazy old woman. Kite raised her hand to her neck and held on to her St Christopher. She would have to get a hold of herself if she wasn’t to go mad. She took a deep breath. She would be better when she’d slept more.

  ‘Come on; don’t give up on us now!’ Seth urged the labouring car up the impossibly narrow track. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t rain, or this will turn into a river!’

  As they passed the woman and her dog, she peered into the car. Something in the hessian sack she was carrying shifted. Whatever it was, it was the size of a large cat.

  Kite shivered and rubbed her fingers over her St Christopher. Maybe her sleep-deprived mind was playing tricks on her, conjuring up all these strange images in its attempt to make sense of what had happened to Dawn. For the first time in her life she wished that she believed in something. She wished that Ruby had forced her to accompany her to church every week to sing in the choir and pray. Maybe if Kite could believe that Dawn had gone to a better place, then she would find a way to accept what Dawn had done, forgive her even. She would love to believe that Dawn’s spirit was now set free into a peaceful haven, beautiful beyond human understanding. But the vision of Dawn’s pitiful grave kept returning to her. Out of all the feelings she had about Dawn, it was the guilt tha
t she hadn’t been able to help her best friend that was eating her up, feeding off her so that she felt all shrivelled up inside.

  Mirror Falls

  ‘Come on! You can make it!’ urged Seth as their car spluttered up the hill. ‘Good job we’re all stocked up on food! I would have liked to see the place in the light though,’ he complained as they bumped along the final stretch of track. The light was fading fast as the courtyard and Mirror Falls came into view. The place was bathed in an eerie pink light, making the surrounding trees and the outline of the single-storey glass building resemble an etching. It appeared to Kite like an enormous glass barge jutting off the landscape, or perhaps a giant icicle.

  ‘I’m feeling the pressure now,’ gasped Seth. ‘Sid’s obviously expecting me to produce something completely original, sending me here!’

  The sound of the waterfall was deafening. Kite vaguely remembered Seth saying something about it being directly under the building, but she’d had no idea what to expect. She opened the car window all the way down to let in the thunderous noise that seemed powerful enough to block out her thoughts. She felt as if she had entered some sort of parallel reality.

  ‘I’ll get out here!’ she announced.

  ‘I knew you’d be excited,’ Seth called after her, as he drove off the dirt path and pulled into the sloping courtyard. It was made of large sandstone slabs, flattening out at the entrance – an imposing-looking sliding glass door. To its left was a giant earthenware pot containing a Japanese tree with spindly acid-green arms. Kite pressed her face against the cold glass and peered inside. There was a clear view from the entrance into the whole house. Through the kitchen she could see a wide corridor that opened out on to another huge room, with a spiral staircase to one side. Beyond that the room expanded further, ending in another mammoth window that mirrored the entrance. So they had come to an open-plan, see-through house! Unsettled, Kite began to wish that they were staying somewhere more normal, like the stone cottages with little protected windows and wild-flower gardens they’d passed on the way.

  ‘The key is under the loose brick next to the acer!’ Seth read the instructions out loud and wandered over to the huge pot. ‘I wouldn’t have thought this plant was indigenous to the area!’ he commented as he lifted the brick and took out an electronic key. ‘Mind you, neither is this house! Open sesame!’ he laughed as he swiped the key-card across a metal sensor panel.

  Not for the first time, Kite felt like running away from Seth.

  ‘I’m just going to see the waterfall.’ She walked back out into the courtyard.

  ‘Don’t be long,’ Seth called after her.

  She discovered a narrow path that fell away steeply below her. From somewhere under the building a great jet of water spurted out of a hole in the rock and dropped away into a chasm below. Kite walked on a few paces and froze. On a jagged ledge, just beyond reaching distance, lay the skeleton of a sheep; its hollow head twisted upward as if pleading for help. Water cascaded through its eye cavities. Is this what would happen to Dawn’s body? Kite shuddered at the thought of the locket she’d given Dawn hanging off her bones. She caught her breath, felt the acid rise from her empty stomach and vomited bitter yellow mucus that seemed to tear at her guts as they contracted and she retched and retched until nothing was left inside her. Her legs were shaking as she scrambled back up the steep path towards the entrance.

  ‘Are you going to help me unpack?’ Seth called.

  ‘I want to go home!’ Kite said, shaking her head.

  Seth gnawed on his lower lip as if giving himself time to search for an appropriate response. ‘I’m exhausted, Kite. I’ve driven all this way. I think you are too,’ he said, reaching for her face.

  Kite stepped away from him so that he wouldn’t smell the sick on her breath. All she needed now was a new bout of his fretting.

  ‘Look how pale you are. I tell you what – let’s sleep on it and see how you feel in the morning.’

  ‘There’s a dead sheep in the waterfall.’ She felt icy cold again, just as she had on the Falling Day, standing outside Mr Scott’s office. ‘Frozen to the bone’ – people said that, didn’t they? That’s how that poor sheep must have felt too when it fell off the path and realized it was stranded. She wondered how long it would have taken for it to give up bleating for help.

  ‘Nature can be brutal. That must have been horrible for you. I’ll move it first thing in the morning. But apart from that, what do you think?’ Seth spread his arms out to show off the building. ‘I’ve never stayed anywhere as plush as this. Come on, Kite, give it a chance, eh?’ He took her by the shoulders and guided her through the entrance to the kitchen.

  ‘Dresser . . . wood-burning stove . . . magnificent wooden table!’ Seth enthused, running his hands over the smooth light wood. ‘This will do!’

  He had in his hands an instruction folder that he read from as he walked over to a dresser to the right of the stove and took out what looked like a TV remote.

  ‘Says that this is the key to making things work around here.’ He placed the folder on the table and took his reading glasses from his pocket.

  Kite walked out of the kitchen and along a wide adjoining walkway with a plain white wall to its left and a glass wall to its right that formed the outside of the house. It was like a sort of bridge between two rooms. Under Kite’s feet the floor was made of intermittent sandstone and glass panels, reminding her of stepping stones in a stream she’d crossed once with Dawn on a school trip to Wales. Dawn had picked her way cautiously across and Kite had leaped from stepping stone to stone, finally landing flat on her face and getting soaked. Dawn’s Tinkerbell giggle echoed back at her. Under the panels of glass gushed the waterfall that seemed to mirror light backwards and forward off the building. She supposed that’s why it was called Mirror Falls. The name was fitting, Kite thought as she glanced around the glass building; the mirror that Dawn and Kite had so often been reflected in together had fallen, shattered into a million pieces.

  Kite peered down through the glass stepping stones, and on the third panel she took a step backwards on to the firm stone. Under this transparent panel, one step away from her, the sheep carcass was clearly visible. She stared at the water rushing through the skeleton. With or without the grim carcass there would never be anything peaceful about this place because it would always be moving beneath her feet.

  ‘Don’t dwell on that now!’ Seth pleaded, taking her hand and dragging her through towards the living room. At the end of the indoor stepping-stone bridge, to her left there was a glass spiral staircase winding upward to a level above the glass ceiling of the living room. She was relieved to find that there was a loft-type upper floor to the house after all. Maybe the bedrooms would feel less exposed.

  ‘Close your eyes!’ Seth ordered, pulling her into a vast glass box of a living room with views on all sides, down through the floor and up to the sky.

  They walked slowly towards the enormous window that seemed to frame the countryside. Kite followed the path of the waterfall through the steep-sided valley as it merged with the stream and meandered away into the distance. Surrounding the widening stream were green fields dotted with sheep and fell ponies. On one side was hard grey rock and on the other a long stretch of woodland. Kite winced as the sky produced a perfect palette of pale pink and orange to replace the bright blues of the day. It was as if a master painter was at work. She felt as if she had been picked up from Dawn’s graveside and dropped into this picture-perfect world, except that everything about it felt fake to her, like a cover-up. Apart from the grim sheep’s carcass; that felt real enough.

  As Kite stared down at the gaping drop beneath she wondered if it was possible for her to have drifted into a worse place. If she’d been asked to draw a building that looked how she felt at this moment, she would have drawn Mirror Falls. How was it possible for so much of the building to be hanging off the mountain without it careering into the chasm below? One thing was for certain. Whoever had dreamed
up this house wanted to turn things on their head, to challenge nature.

  ‘And – if that doesn’t impress you – you’d better prepare yourself for this!’ Seth indicated the dark purple sofa behind her. ‘Sitting comfortably?’ He pressed down on the large cushions to test them.

  Kite nodded.

  ‘Then I’ll begin!’

  A smooth whirring noise came from somewhere above her head, and she noticed that Seth was pointing the remote upward. As she watched, the huge glass sheet panel retracted, leaving nothing above but the open sky.

  Kite picked up a cream woollen throw that was folded on the back of the sofa and wrapped it around her shoulders. ‘Impressive!’ Her voice was as expressionless as that of the strange woman they’d met on the road. ‘But could you close it for now? I feel cold.’

  Seth pressed the button and the roof slid back over them again. ‘Why don’t you go up and choose your bedroom, and I’ll fix us something to eat?’ he suggested. ‘I’ll bring your case up when I’ve unpacked the car.’

  Kite walked around the sofa towards the stepping-stone bridge and began to climb the glass staircase. The banister was carved from driftwood like the old woman’s walking stick. She ran her fingers along its winding surface. The unevenness of the wood with its random knots was comforting after the unforgiving harsh lines of the house. At the top was a narrow glass corridor with three misted-glass doorways leading off it. The wall at the end overlooked the living area and valley below. She looked down through the landing to the stepping-stone bridge and beyond that, through one of the glass panels, to the waterfall. There it was again: the macabre reminder of death. From here she could just see its skull.