“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 single 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.
Especially the winds, with their shrill, keening, painful cry.
The quivering kite pressed itself ever more closely to Oliver.
“Where are we?” whispered Oliver.
In the sky, something moved.
On the other side of the crest, a distant kite had risen. With the peak between them, Oliver could not see who had launched it. But the graceful movements indicated an expert flier.
And then that kite, circling high and smoothly, flapped its wings.
Oliver blinked and peered harder. Flapping wings? It couldn’t be a kite. Now that it had flown closer, it looked more like a hawk, hunting its prey.
The crimson kite pulled violently, yanking Oliver aside.
“Ouch! What?” he said, struggling to hold his ground.
A second hawk had risen to join the first. While Oliver watched, a third rose from the oaks to join the others.
Suddenly the crimson kite stopped pulling and crept under Oliver’s arm. It huddled there, eerily still.
The hawks circled, circled, in the bright blue sky. The circles brought them closer to Oliver, until they were nearly over his head. He developed a distinctly hypnotized, mouselike feeling as he realized that he was utterly still too, just like the crimson kite.
And as they drew near, he realized they were not hawks.
They were kites after all, and he’d seen their dark shapes before. They were the fighting kites that had attacked Great-uncle Gilbert. Silhouetted against the sky, they looked exactly like hawks.
The fighters dove.
Oliver threw himself to the ground as the crimson kite shot away. The three fighters rocketed after it. In the morning sunlight, something within their sails flashed and gleamed in a very unkitelike way. The crimson kite streaked into the forest, the fighters close behind.
Oliver scrambled to his feet, blood pounding. He raced toward the peak for a better view, and heard voices.
He slid to a halt a few yards short of the peak. Voices rose from the other side, coming closer:
“It’s back! The hunters spotted it; they—”
A second voice interrupted. Oliver could not make out the words. The voice was crackled and muffled as though the owner’s head were wrapped in silk and he had a terrible cold.
The first voice spoke again, sounding out of breath. “Yes, sir, I’ll find it right away, I—”
Then the owner of the voice came rushing over the peak.
Oliver found himself face to face with a boy dressed in a familiar flying outfit, with fur-lined boots and leather gloves and a wool cap exactly like the ones Oliver was wearing.
“Who are you?” gasped Oliver.
Last night, looking into this boy’s face had been like looking into a mirror. But in the daylight, the face was not quite identical. The other boy looked somewhat gaunt, with sunken eyes and a pale complexion. His left hand was wrapped in a large bandage.
The sunken eyes widened with delight. “Hullo, Oliver!” the boy said with a smile and a cough.
“You kidnapped Great-uncle Gilbert,” said Oliver, stunned, advancing on the boy.
“Yes!” said the other boy, stumbling back. “I mean, no!”
“Who are you?” said Oliver again. “Are you my twin? What are those things chasing my kite?”
“No, no, I’m not your twin,” the other boy said desperately. His smile had been replaced by wide-eyed fright as Oliver came closer. He coughed again. “The crimson kite will be fine—don’t worry. The hunters are just going to capture it, that’s all. It won’t be hurt!” He held out his kite like a shield.
Oliver glanced at the kite—a beautiful green-and-black power kite he could not help admiring—then snapped back to the other boy. “Hunters? Those fighting kites? Who were you talking to?”
Now the other boy looked terrified. “Why don’t you come back to the treehouse with me? Great-uncle Gilbert can explain everything!”
Oliver stopped short. “Great-uncle Gilbert? He’s back?” That had been a very brief kidnapping.
“Y-yes. He’s fine,” said the other boy. “Please, just come with me.”
The other boy was lying. Oliver could see it instantly. The way his eyes shifted and his voice pitched unnaturally high. Oliver wondered if he himself looked this obvious when he told lies. He remembered involuntarily a couple of the worst lies he had told, and cringed.
