Windblowne (13 page)

“What’s wrong?” shouted Two.

“The winds,” hissed Oliver through clenched teeth. “Can’t you hear it?”

“Hear what?” said Two. “Come on, we have to hurry!”

But Oliver couldn’t hurry anywhere, not like this. The winds were somehow causing his headache, boring into his skull with an insistent, aching cry. He tried to focus his attention elsewhere, on the kite and his great-uncle and—

The hawk sensed open air and was battering at the sides of its cage. Oliver dropped to one knee and fumbled for the door latch, hanging on to the kite while trying not to lose a finger. At last the door popped open. There was a blur—a shriek—and the hawk was gone.

With a spinning heave, Oliver hurled the cage as far as he could into the forest, hoping that the winds would
smash it to bits on an oak. “Let’s go!” he said. The headache was still there, but he’d been able to push it down to a manageable level.

Together, the Olivers pushed their way through the windstorm. The winds pulled at the crimson kite, but Oliver kept it close to his body.
Not yet
, he told the winds.
Wait for the crest
.

Oliver shuddered as they passed the riven oak. The gates had been left open, and the oak’s moonslit silhouette loomed over them like a beast with two arms, writhing in agony. The foul shadows of Lord Gilbert’s machines hunched around, clutching at the tree. Somehow the shadows seemed hunched around Oliver, too. He hurried past, shadows on each side, peering for a way through, and then he realized Two was no longer with him.

The boy had found a pocket of calm on the leeward side of one of the machines. His whole body was shaking, and tears tumbled down his cheeks.

“Come on!” Oliver shouted.

Two shook his head, struggling to speak. Oliver leaned in close, trying to catch his words, which were faint and whispery against the wind.

“… would have done anything for that. I’m sorry.”

“Anything for what?” said Oliver.

Two seemed to be drifting away. “It’s my fault—I helped him … but after today … I realized I couldn’t take your family from you.…”

“My family?”

“… yes … if I were there and you were trapped here …”

“That’s why you helped him kidnap Great-uncle Gilbert,” said Oliver suddenly. “That’s why you were making a kite to escape. You wanted my family. My life. You wanted to trade places with me.”

Two nodded. “I’m sorry.”

Oliver stood wondering. A few days ago, the idea that someone would risk dying so that he could have Oliver’s parents and Oliver’s life would have seemed like the most absurd idea imaginable. But now his parents looked pretty good, compared to a great-uncle who performed scientific experiments on you, who cut the brains out of hawks, and who planned to destroy the giant oaks on one world after another. And with Two’s kitesmithing talents, he’d probably be a big hero back home.

“You can still have it!” said Oliver eagerly, much to his surprise. “Sort of, anyway! We can both escape! My parents
will help you!” Affection for his parents suddenly flooded him. He grasped Two’s arm. “Come on! You can make it!”

“I don’t think so,” sighed Two, shaking his head.

“You have to!” said Oliver, tugging. “What will Lord Gilbert do when he finds out I’ve escaped?”

“I don’t know,” said Two weakly. He reached out to stroke the crimson kite. “But even if the kite can fly, could it carry two of us?”

Oliver looked down at his poor, torn kite. He didn’t think it could carry even one. “I don’t know,” he said. “But we can at least try.”

Two shook his head. “I”—he coughed—“I can’t make it to the crest in these winds.” He slid down the side of the machine.

“Come on!” ordered Oliver. “You can!” He fought to pull Two to his feet.

“No!” croaked Two, his eyes wide with fear.

Oliver began to argue, then realized Two was not looking at him; he was looking at something over Oliver’s shoulder.

Oliver turned.

High in Lord Gilbert’s treehouse, windows blazed with light.

“Go!” screamed Two
. He pushed Oliver’s hands away and struggled to sit up, hands slipping in the grass.

Oliver hesitated.

Two shouted furiously. “Go, or I’ll—” He punched weakly at Oliver.

Oliver stood. “I’ll come back for you! I’ll find Great-uncle Gilbert and—”

But Two was crawling now, crawling back toward the treehouse, whose windows were flaring up one after another. Lord Gilbert’s treehouse was waking.

Oliver took a last look at the riven oak.
I’ll come back for you, too
, he promised. Then he was running as the treehouse came alive with blazing lights, sending beams stabbing through the nearly leafless oaks, illuminating
their bare branches, making an eerie labyrinth of unnatural shadows. Somehow he felt that Lord Gilbert was watching him, and maybe he was, with mysterious machines like eyes glaring down. As Oliver ran, he felt more and more like a tiny mouse, escaping from a—

A hawk. Oliver realized he had completely forgotten about the hunters.

Something heavy and hard slammed into his back. A flash of pain tore across his shoulder, and he crashed to the ground. Fear flashed through him too—the crimson kite!—but the impact had knocked it away. He rolled over in agony, his breath gone, groping for his kite, but it was nowhere to be felt.

Through the haze of pain he heard a vicious
whish
as another hunter shot past. He struggled to his feet, shoulder screaming, looking around wildly for anything crimson. A chorus of screeching warnings cracked the air.

“RETURN AT ONCE!”

A booming voice—Lord Gilbert’s—seemed to come from everywhere. It boomed up the mountain, drowning out even the winds, making Oliver clap his hands to his ears. Somehow Lord Gilbert could project his voice
like thunder, rumbling over the oaks and into the moonslit sky.

Oliver spied a burst of crimson smashing helplessly out of control between oaks, at the mercy of the winds. He chased after it as a hunter whizzed by the edge of his vision, black and low, and pain tore through his arm. He ground his teeth to keep from screaming. He ran onward, then dove for the kite just as another hunter swooped in, talons raking. He could hear it shriek as it struck him.

He had the kite in his hands.

The oak in front of him had distinctive branches, dipping just so, as if to point the way. It was one of the sentinels. The oak next to it, the second sentinel, was also pointing. His map of the mountain clicked into place. He started toward the crest.

Out of habit, he glanced at the handvane on his wrist. It looked undamaged, but though the winds were swirling all around, the pointer did not waver. It pointed resolutely in one direction—west.

It’s broken
, thought Oliver. In these winds, the pointer ought to be spinning like mad.

The pain in his shoulder and back and head began to be a lesser concern than the pain in his chest. Oliver had never run like this, and he could not seem to get enough air. Blurs came down from the sky, some missing, some hitting, as though he were in a hellish hailstorm.

Still he ran, at last reaching the oakline.

Ahead lay the tempest—the night winds.

For an instant he was afraid to release the wounded kite, afraid the winds would destroy it, but then shadows flicked across the moons, and he knew he had no choice. He gripped the torn tail.

“Take me home,” he gasped.

He tossed the kite aloft.

BANG
—the winds caught the sails, whirring through the rips. Somehow the sails didn’t tear further, and captured enough wind to jerk the kite up—

And Oliver with it. He leapt forward, throwing himself fearlessly into the winds, he and the crimson kite at one with the maelstrom. Last night, he had resisted the night winds, but tonight he allowed them to hurl him toward the peak, reveling in their power and fury. His boots pounded the grass, his strides lengthening as his speed increased.

Three more hunters dove, silhouetted by the moons.

They buzzed past, talons slashing, but all three strikes missed as Oliver raced up, up, up, staggering to the peak as his lungs wept for air and his legs begged for mercy.

They reached the peak. The ascent continued without pause.

Now Oliver was flailing above the ground toward the oakline. He caught a glimpse of circling hunters, but their strikes were hopeless now, hurtling by above and below but not managing another hit. Oliver would have screamed in triumph if he were able.

But as he banged along at the end of the kite’s torn tail, he realized that they weren’t rising fast enough. The oaks and their hard, mostly bare branches were approaching alarmingly fast. And he realized, from the way the kite flew and the way its tail had not wrapped around his arm, that the kite did not have the strength to carry him much higher.

Oliver’s shin struck the first branch with a thundering crack.

Then the winds blew in and seized them and threw them higher, above the oaktops. They flew over Lord Gilbert’s treehouse, ablaze with light. Oliver could see
hunter silhouettes firing past below. They had abandoned the hunt. In the open winds, he was safe. He managed a grin through the horrible pain in his shoulder, back, legs, arms, and head.

I did it!
he thought triumphantly.

FLASH

Uh-oh
, he thought less triumphantly.

FLASH

The hunt was not over.

FLASHFLASHFLASH

Each flash shot a bolt of agony through his skull.

FLASH

In the blazing lights of Lord Gilbert’s treehouse, Oliver could see the hunters firing in straight lines, directly at the disc beneath the riven oak.

He hadn’t escaped at all, not yet anyway. Lord Gilbert was sending the hunters after him.

He clung to the kite’s tail with both hands, wishing he could feel it wrapped around his arm again. The kite flew raggedly as the night winds carried them ever higher. He worried that the crimson kite, in its damaged condition, might not find its way into the void between worlds. But
soon they entered the mist, and then its cold damp added a chill to the list of Oliver’s discomforts.

He looked automatically at the handvane. It insisted on pointing in the wrong direction, directly opposite the flow of wind.
Useless
, thought Oliver. He gave it an awkward shake, but the pointer was adamant in its wrongness. He’d have to get Great-uncle Gilbert to fix it too, once he found him.…

If
he found him.

He noticed something dismaying.

He seemed to be a little farther away from the kite than he’d been before. His hands, slick with sweat, were 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.

“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.