Windblowne

by Stephen Messer

  He could not fathom how his parents slept through this unusually powerful windstorm, but they seemed completely undisturbed. Oliver’s heart pounded and his mind raced. He was covered in sweat, his sheets twisted into knots.

  I’m going to light a candle, he thought. He threw the covers aside. I’m going to light every candle I can find.

  But then

  BAM

  something crashed against the treehouse so close to him that the wall shook and Oliver nearly screamed. He pulled the covers back over his head. And then a sound came again,

  tap tap tap

  like a person rapping on the shutter. He lifted his head cautiously from beneath the blankets. That had really sounded like

  tap tap tap

  someone knocking to get in. But no one could possibly be out at night, sitting on an oak branch, rapping on the window next to Oliver’s bed. He waited for several seconds.

  TAP TAP TAP

  Oliver rolled over and yanked the curtains aside. Moonslight flashed on something flickering among the lashing branches. No, he thought, it can’t be.…

  He pulled up the window.

  The winds invaded with a roar and nearly threw him from his bed. He clung to the windowsill as Great-uncle Gilbert’s kite, the simple long-tailed crimson kite, came crashing in, slamming into walls and bouncing off the floor and ceiling. It thrashed uncontrollably as Oliver struggled to close the window. Then the winds slackened briefly, the kite flew over Oliver’s head and out into the night, and the window slammed home.

  Oliver fell back on his bed in astonishment. Somehow, improbably, the winds had gotten hold of the hidden kite. It was a colossal piece of luck. Now he possessed something his great-uncle wanted. Or he would possess it, anyway, as soon as he chased down the wayward kite.

  This is a really stupid idea, said a little voice in the back of Oliver’s head. But Oliver had ignored that voice before, and he was going to ignore it now. He fished his rugged flier’s outfit from under the bed, dressed quickly, and raced from the room.

  Using the front door was out of the question. With the winds hammering at the walls, opening the door would invite disaster. Oliver went straight to the emergency wind hatch in the tiny room off the kitchen. He lifted the trapdoor and put one foot on the first rung of the ladder.

  Below him the ladder descended through the protected wind shaft and then along the trunk into battering darkness. He wavered. The odds of catching the kite were terribly low, and the odds of breaking a leg were terribly high. Should he really do this? The plan was sheer madness. Runs in the family, thought Oliver. Flattening himself against the trunk, he descended swiftly and dropped into the open winds.

  He braced himself against the turbulence, his back to his solid home oak. The world was wild around him. Everything not rooted firmly in the ground had been lifted and thrown. The scream of the winds as they tore through the oaks was deafening, as though the night had life and was warning him back. Trembling, Oliver recalled childhood tales of wicked boys and girls who had been carried off by the winds, never to be seen again.

  But I must have the kite, thought Oliver. I’ll catch it and come straight home. And I’m not going anywhere near the crest.

  He staggered away from the oak. The moment he abandoned the oak’s solidity he became disoriented, all sense of direction lost in the churning night. The winds came up from behind and pushed him forward, and he fought back, peering about for the kite. At first he feared that it might have been blown too far away to catch, but then he spied a crimson blur.

  The kite was flitting among a line of oaks. None of them were oaks that Oliver recognized. For a confused instant, he felt as though he had stepped into another world. Seven trees stood before him, looming in the dark; seven anguished silhouettes, broken and tortured. Then the winds shifted, the shadows changed, and Oliver realized he was not looking at seven oaks racked in pain but seven sculptures lining Windswept Way—his mother’s art.

  His map restored, he ran, stumbling as the winds lashed him. His exposed face stung as twigs and leaves became missiles in the driving winds. He could barely keep the kite in sight, with all of the weird and distracting shadows changing each moment. He saw that it had moved upward on the Way. He gave chase, but the kite bobbed just out of reach, flying tantalizingly close and then darting away just as Oliver closed his fingers.

  Suddenly the kite ducked sideways, into the forest. They had come to the secret path, and the kite had flown between the sentinels as though it knew the way. In fact, the kite had been flying in an oddly deliberate fashion all along.

  With a crash, Oliver went headlong into the brush.

  The kite reached the turn to Great-uncle Gilbert’s treehouse and slipped off the path. Oliver slipped after it.

  Then light exploded through the oaks, a brilliant split-second flash that lit the forest in stark relief.

  Oliver was momentarily blinded. When he opened his eyes again, the kite had disappeared.

  He ran through the trees, moonslight spilling across his path, until he reached the clearing.

  He arrived in the midst of a battle.

  The seconds that followed were entirely confusing. Oliver saw Great-uncle Gilbert flying two of the bladed fighting kites, one in each hand, with astonishing skill. The kites were cutting tight circles on their short tow-lines. The old man was fending off three other kites, dark, speed-blurred shapes. But who was flying those kites? Oliver couldn’t see anyone else in the clearing.

  “Great-uncle Gilbert!” Oliver shouted.

  Great-uncle Gilbert glanced over. “Oliver!” he cried. “No!”

  The distraction was all the dark kites needed. Two of them dove in, and Great-uncle Gilbert’s fighting kites disappeared in snapping spars and shreds of silk. The third attacked Great-uncle Gilbert directly, hooking onto his robe. Oliver whirled around. Where were the fliers?

  A shout of pain came from the treehouse. Then someone, a boy, burst through the front door and pounded down the wooden steps.

  The other boy was dressed in a flier’s outfit, exactly like Oliver’s. His arms were full of folded kites.

  “Go!” cried the boy.

  There was another dazzling flash.

  Oliver’s vision spun and wavered, and it seemed as though he were seeing double. Two treehouses, two of every oak. He looked at the other boy. He was seeing double there, too. When he looked the boy in the face, he could have sworn that the face he saw was his own.

  Two dark kites flew to the boy, hooking onto his gloves.

  There was another blinding flash, and for a minute Oliver staggered about the clearing, groping, completely blind.

  When his vision recovered, the clearing was empty. He saw no sign of Great-uncle Gilbert or any of the kites, or the other boy.

  He looked toward the treehouse.

  The front door was wide open, dim light spilling from within. Every few seconds something blew from inside—candlesticks, papers, odd bits of furniture—filling the air with swirling debris.

  From within the treehouse there came a tremendous crash.

  5

  Oliver raced up the steps.

  Inside, the treehouse was in shambles. The winds had reduced everything to pure chaos. Oliver pushed against the door and shoved it closed. He looked around the living room. His great-uncle’s supplies had been knocked over, bits of the fighting kites had been smashed around, and the wall once covered with battle plans now had only a few scraps remaining. One of the barricaded windows had been bashed open. There were several long, deep slashes in the fallen board, as though a powerful animal had raked its claws across it. Somehow, an oil lamp tucked in one corner had survived, its weak flame casting a weirdly flickering glow. Oliver hurriedly retrieved it.

  “Great-uncle Gilbert!” Oliver cried. “Hullo!”

  A terrific ruckus came from the workshop. Oliver ran toward the sound, nearly tripping on an overturned stool, and burst into the room.

  “Great-uncle …,” Oliver
began, but the words died away. He set the lamp aside. His great-uncle was not here, and neither were most of his kites. The shelves were empty, the workbenches cleared—even the kite racks stood open and bare. Only two kites remained—the crimson kite, which was being madly chased around the workshop, and the ravenous black kite-eater, which was doing the chasing.

  Oliver leapt. He fell upon the kite-eater and pinned it to the floor. Pain shot through his hand as the kite-eater caught him in its jaws. Oliver cried out and pulled; the kite-eater heaved and struggled. He looked desperately for a weapon. Nearby, on the floor, he spotted a book. Not just any book but a heavy, familiar, boring book. Just the book, in fact, to trap a kite-eater. Oliver grabbed for it with one hand, hauled it over with a tremendous grunt, and rolled aside, pulling it onto the kite-eater as he went.

  He had finally found a use for one of his father’s massive tomes. It made the perfect restraint for an aggressive kite. Oliver crawled backward, panting from the unexpected wrestling match. At first he feared that even this book would not be enough to hold down the kite-eater, but no matter how much it twisted and fought and snapped its jaws, it could not escape the sheer weight of The Social and Cultural History of the Lower Warfeld Valley in Late Mid-Age Macherino. Oliver knew the feeling well.

  The crimson kite collapsed onto a workbench, seemingly exhausted, its sails heaving.

  “Great-uncle Gilbert!” shouted Oliver.

  He quickly searched the rest of the treehouse. There was no sign of his great-uncle.

  He stopped in the living room, looking at what was left of the strange maps and overturned barrels. The crimson kite had recovered and was swooping in agitated circles around and around the room. Oliver looked out the bashed-in window into the windblown night. Feeling useless, he picked up the fallen board and shoved it back into place.

  grrrrrr

  He heard a noise, like a faint grinding, almost as though something were … chewing.

  Oliver ran back into the workshop.

  The kite-eater was still pinned under the enormous book, or rather, part of the book. It had already managed to chew through some of it. Bits of torn paper surrounded the abused book and the kite-eater, which snapped its jaws savagely when Oliver entered.

  “Oh no you don’t!” said Oliver sharply. Setting down the lamp, he ran to the shelf of his father’s books and reached up for the next one. As he hauled it down, he noticed the title—The Mountain Before Windblowne—just before the book slipped from his grasp and crashed to the floor, narrowly missing his foot.

  Gasping with the effort, Oliver lugged the book over to the kite-eater and threw it on top of the pile. Then another book. Then another. The kite-eater gnashed its jaws. “Sorry,” Oliver panted, “but you’re not eating that kite.”

  The crimson kite was peeking into the workshop. “You can come in,” Oliver said. “I’ve got the kite-eater trapped.”

  Oliver had always talked to his kites, but he’d never had the impression that one of them might be listening. Or if they were, it was only so they could do the exact opposite of whatever he asked. For example, “No, please, not in the tree” was interpreted to mean “Please dive directly into that tree,” or “Watch out for the crowd of people” meant “Smash into the crowd of people in order to humiliate me as much as possible.”

  And that record remained unchallenged, as the crimson kite shook dubiously and refused to enter.

  Oliver looked around. Most of his great-uncle’s beautiful kites had been stolen. They’d apparently been stolen by that other boy, who in the confusion and blinding flashes had looked just like him. Somehow the boy had been able to make his escape under the cover of those flashes, and he’d managed to kidnap Great-uncle Gilbert and thoroughly ransack his workshop in the process. Everything of value was gone.

  Almost everything, Oliver realized. The kite rack that concealed Great-uncle Gilbert’s secret room, where he kept his most valuable possessions, was still in place.

  Oliver pushed and pulled in every direction, but the rack refused to yield. He took a hammer that had fallen to the floor and tried to pry the rack from the wall. He even gave it a few kicks, which resulted in nothing but a minute or two of hopping around in pain. The kite-eater seemed to be enjoying the spectacle—it had stopped chewing on the book and was watching Oliver avidly. Oliver had a sense that it was grinning at him. “Stop that,” he ordered, “unless you want another one of those books on you.” The kite-eater quickly resumed chewing.

  Oliver inspected the kite rack. From all appearances, it was part of a solid wall. He thought back to what he had seen through the window. His great-uncle had not actually been anywhere near the rack when it slid aside. He had been somewhere else in the room, somewhere Oliver couldn’t see from where he had been crouched. Turning the oil lamp up to its brightest level, Oliver surveyed the workshop.

  Across the room, just above the shelf from which Oliver had pulled all the books, he spotted the tiniest depression in the wall. A hidden button, nearly invisible.

  Oliver gave a whoop of triumph. “I’m brilliant,” he said to the kite-eater. The kite-eater replied by snapping at his ankle as he passed by. Oliver pushed the button. There was a click, and behind him the kite rack slid smoothly aside.

  Oliver was disappointed to discover that the secret room was more of a secret closet. It was small and terribly dusty. On the back wall was a peg on which a single kite could be hung. Below that were a few dust-coated items sitting on shelves.

  One of these items was a small chest, ornately carved. Oliver ran his finger over the intricate designs, leaving a trail in the thick dust. He tried to open the chest, but it was locked.

  The next shelf held a soft velvet pillow, upon which lay a handvane. Though the pillow was covered in dust, the handvane was not. Oliver could tell right away that this was one of his great-uncle’s personal creations. It was carved from oak, and though it looked delicate and fine, Oliver suspected that it could stand up under the fiercest windstorm. He lifted it reverently and fastened it onto his wrist.

  As it snapped into place, he felt a moment’s hesitation. Was this stealing? No, he decided—this was preserving. After all, Great-uncle Gilbert’s abductor might return for further pillaging. Oliver ought to protect one of the old man’s most valuable possessions. The fact that Oliver needed a new handvane was just a coincidence.

  The only other thing in the closet was a book, which lay on the lowest shelf. It was not one of his father’s books, though it was equally enormous. The cover was rough and leathery. There had once been a title, but it was now too faded to read. The book had a musty odor, and dull jewels were set into the cover. Oliver reached out gingerly and lifted the cover, the spine creaking quietly. He held the oil lamp close.

  On the yellowed first page were words written in a style so elegant and ancient that Oliver could scarcely read them:

  MYTHS & FOLK-LORE OF WINDBLOWNE

  Fascinated, Oliver turned the delicate pages. The book was filled with lavish illustrations and dense type, most of which made no sense to him.

  He lifted the heavy book to look closer, and it fell open to a page that Oliver could see had been consulted often. The margins of this and the following pages were filled with tiny notes and sketches drawn in a loose and rambling hand that Oliver suspected was Great-uncle Gilbert’s. At the top of the first page in this section it said:

  The Whispering Baks

  Oliver leafed through it in wonder. Here were pictures of things he recognized. There were many drawings of tall oak trees, including his home oak and the oak that held the Volitant Dragon, though they all looked odd without treehouses in them. Next to one of these drawings was a passage that seemed to have particularly interested Great-uncle Gilbert. It was underlined, and the notes beneath it were more legible than the others. Oliver read:

  … but legends concerning the giant oaks of Windblowne remain pleasant stories for children, and for fools and madmen as well, who claim that in the whisper of win
ds passing through the oaks, a great mystery is revealed.

  Underneath this, in his great-uncle’s scrawled hand, Oliver read:

  “the winds do not whisper…

  but if you do whisper, O winds, then

  whisper to me,

  of oaks which dwell across the worlds.”

  Oliver shuddered, remembering the despairing cries he had imagined on the winds. A language for fools and madmen.

  He felt something nudge his arm, and looked down. It was the crimson kite, gently brushing him, its tail swirling clear of the kite-eater’s jaws.

  He slammed the book shut. The kite fled from the workshop.

  Oliver followed, pressing the button once more as he went. He heard the kite rack slide closed behind him.

  When he reached the living room, he found the crimson kite smacking itself against the front door.

  “You’re going to hurt yourself,” said Oliver. “Here.”

  He opened the door, and the kite flew outside into the night, then paused, hovering, its long tail beckoning.

  “Forget it!” shouted Oliver into the winds, thinking of the long slashes on the barricade, and the dark fighting kites. “I’m not following you anywhere else tonight. It’s too dangerous!”

  The kite rose higher, shaking frantically.

  “Come home with me,” pleaded Oliver, feeling guilty despite himself. “We’ll alert the Watch at dawn.”

  But the kite shuddered in the turbulent winds and flew no closer.

  “Fine!” he shouted. “I’m going home. Great-uncle Gilbert told me to stay away anyway. He doesn’t want my help!”

  Oliver came down the steps, leaning into the winds, as the kite danced backward, lashing its tail.

  “I’m not scared or anything! It’s just that I’ve got the Festival to think about!”

  He tried to march onward impressively, but before he could take his first impressive step, he heard a whoosh, and then the kite was in his face, beating its sails against him. He tried to grab the kite, but it slipped around him, striking at him. Oliver ran down the path, arms over his head, the kite in close pursuit.