Windblowne

slipping down the tail. He tried to pull himself up, hand over hand, but that made him slip even more. Flutters of panic began—he tried to tighten his grip, but there wasn’t much to hold on to. He did not look down—there was nothing to see but mist—but he realized he was alarmingly close to falling.

Within moments there was only an inch or two of tail left. Oliver grasped desperately, trying to wrap the tail around his wrist as the kite had done, trying to make some kind of knot.

He slipped through the loose loop he had made. Any second now he would fall, and the kite would fly on—

The loop tightened.

Startled, and relieved beyond measure, Oliver looked hopefully at the kite. “Was that you?” he shouted over the winds.

There was no hint of a reply.

They suddenly pitched downward, roughly, almost as though they were going to land. Oliver was surprised. Last night it had taken them much longer to fly between the two Windblownes.

Abruptly, the mist vanished, and the ground filled his vision, a vast shadow expanding with sickening speed.

He slammed into the ground, rolling, crying out as the rolling took him over his many slashes and bruises. When he stopped, he could feel his shirt clinging wetly to his back.

He sat up, hugging the kite. Home. He ached all over, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t held captive in another world. He was home. The two moons gleamed, the familiar crest spread around him, and somewhere below, his family and treehouse waited for him.

“Home,” Oliver whispered to the kite. He stood, wincing, and scanned the night sky. No hunters—not yet, anyway.

He shivered a little. No hunters—and no night winds, either, he noticed. Though he stood in the middle of the crest, he could hardly feel any wind at all. The air was dead calm. The night was perfectly quiet.

“Maybe I’m just getting used to the winds,” he whispered, then shook his head irritably. That was ridiculous, and why was he whispering, anyway? He wasn’t in any danger, at least for the moment—was he? Something felt wrong.

He peered around in the darkness, which was beginning to lift. Dawn was breaking.

Dawn on the day before the Festival of Kites, he realized. He’d almost forgotten.

The feeling of wrongness grew. The light of dawn was revealing something below, something on the oakline.

Oliver gasped. He turned in a slow circle, taking everything in.

Though he stood on the peak of the mountain, he could not see a single oak. He couldn’t see anything of Windblowne at all. Surrounding him, surrounding the entire crest in a great circle where the oakline ought to have been, rose an immense and towering wall. 

13

“Is this the hell-world?” whispered Oliver.

His kite trembled faintly.

No, this couldn’t be the hell-world. The sun was warm, the morning sky clear and blue, the air cool; dew lay on the grass. A pleasant midsummer day. Birds were here, chirping optimistically. Nothing seemed wrong or out of place besides the lack of wind, and the wall.

Actually, besides the wall, there wasn’t much to see. It dominated everything, completely enclosing the crest in stone. Along its west face, the early-morning sun glinted off the smooth granite. The east face threw a shadow that covered most of the crest. A few bare oak branches became visible on the other side, their highest points waving gently over the top. So there was wind outside the wall.

Oliver tried to guess the sheer quantity of granite required to build something like this. The wall had to be extraordinarily thick and strong to withstand the night winds. Its foundations must be deeply rooted in the mountain. Whatever the amount, it was a lot, and there didn’t appear to be a single door or any stairs or any other way off the crest. He and the kite were trapped.

Pain flared in his back. If the hunters …

Quickly, he scanned the sky.

He saw no hint of the ominous dark forms. But he was certain they would come. Two had said they could track the kite now.

Oliver held up his kite. “I’m going to stop Lord Gilbert,” he promised, hoping for a response. Was that a little nod? It was hard to tell. At any rate, he had to get off the crest. He hurried toward the base of the wall, one eye on the sky.

The closer he got, the more the wall towered over him, dispelling the faint hope that he had returned to his own Windblowne and the townspeople had simply decided to build a giant wall in his absence. Something on this scale would take many years to build. Obviously, the kite did not have the strength to guide him home. This meant they were simply blundering from world to world. And there were many, many worlds, Lord Gilbert had said.…

Oliver shivered.

He wished he could get some use out of his great-uncle’s handvane, but it was still pointing in the wrong direction. The wrong direction was hard west, which was a little ridiculous considering there was no wind at all. He tried to give it a twirl, but it insisted on west. “Fine,” Oliver muttered. He removed it and dropped it into his pack.

At least his bleeding had stopped, and the blood seemed to be caking up on the back of his shirt quite nicely, so he didn’t have that uncomfortable wetness anymore. There, he thought, darkly cheered. It’s not all bad. Sure, his body ached with every step, but the headache that had plagued him in Lord Gilbert’s Windblowne was gone. He could listen to the winds again without fear.

Oliver hurried on. He arrived at the wall and was met with a blast of wind.

He staggered, then found his footing and straightened. Why was there wind here? His eyes roamed over the curve of the wall. Something about its shape must direct whatever wind leaked in, accelerating it so that it ran around the edges in a powerful stream.

He looked up again, bracing himself, feeling dizzy. The wall seemed to lean over him, impossibly tall. The wind swept around, making an empty, hollow moan.

On top of the wall, something moved.

Oliver whipped his head toward the motion. For an instant, out of the corner of his eye, he thought he had seen someone with long hair, leaning over. If it had been there, it was gone.

“I’m imagining things again,” he whispered to the kite.

The kite offered no opinion.

He smacked his lips, noticing that his throat was parched. He recalled hearing once that blood loss makes you thirsty. The information hadn’t seemed relevant to his life at the time.

He felt something soft snaking around his wrist and yelped.

He slapped at his arm, thinking Snake!, then, feeling rather foolish, realized it was only the kite’s tail, which meant—

YANK!

His arm was nearly pulled from its socket—again— and he found himself being swept upward, out of control, banging against the hard granite as he went. In ten painful seconds he found himself tumbling over the upper edge of the wall; then the pressure on his arm was released, and he was falling. Somehow he was able to turn his body and land semi-gracefully on top of the wall, rolling onto his back. He stared up at the blue sky. Not bad, he thought. I’m getting the hang of that.

He sat up and looked for his kite.

It lay a few feet away, flat on the stone, rippling faintly in the gentle breeze.

He crawled over to it. “Hey,” he said uncertainly. He gave it a poke but got no response besides the weary ripple. Whatever energy it had used to get him up the wall was completely exhausted. “Thank you,” Oliver