The Kite City at Midnight

Pip had counted the same thirty-one steps from the roots of the Great Tree to the edge of the moss patch every day of her life, and never once gone further. Not because anyone told her not to. She just liked knowing exactly where the edge was.

The Great Tree held up the whole city of kites — hundreds of them, red and gold and patched with old handkerchiefs, tethered by silver-brown strings to every branch, swaying gently like sleeping birds. Pip lived in a snug burrow between two roots, and from her doorway she could see maybe a dozen kites bobbing against the stars. She had never seen the ones at the very top. She told herself she didn't need to.

Tonight was different, though everyone said so. Tonight, once every long while, the wind changed direction for exactly one turn of the moon, and the kites came untethered just enough to drift and dip and touch each other's tails, and small creatures said that if you climbed high enough on a night like this, you might ride one clear across the sky and be home again before the seams of night came undone at dawn. The Kite-Keeper, a heron named Ottilie with a voice like a creaking gate, was arriving at first light to check every string herself, as she did once a year, and the mice of the root-village were baking acorn cakes for her visit, which meant tonight mattered twice over.

"Four hours till dawn," said Whisk, appearing beside Pip's doorway in his soft blue glow, apron drifting like he'd just stepped out of a kitchen that wasn't there. "Three hours forty-nine, if you want it exact. I've been counting."

Pip startled, then didn't, because it was Whisk, and Whisk always turned up when things were about to be interesting, ever since that very small adventure they'd shared before. "You're counting the minutes till Ottilie comes?"

"I'm counting the minutes till anything," Whisk said, a little sheepish. "Keeps my hands busy. Or would, if I had proper hands." He looked up, up, up at the tallest kite, a great green one shaped like a fish, tugging softly at its string near the top of the Great Tree. "They say tonight the strings go loose enough you could walk right up a tether like a road. I've never tried it. I don't go far from my kitchen, as you know."

Pip knew. Whisk had lived in the same warm hollow for longer than anyone could count, and the one time he'd wandered from it, he'd fretted the whole way that he'd never find his way home again. She understood that fret better than she let on — thirty-one steps, and never further.

But the wind was doing something strange right now. It smelled of rain that hadn't fallen yet and of somewhere-else, and the fish kite dipped so low its tail nearly brushed the moss patch, as if it were bowing, as if it were asking.

"I want to see the top," Pip said, surprising herself with how much she meant it. "Just once. Before Ottilie comes and the strings go tight again."

Whisk's glow flickered, uncertain. "That's an awfully long way up, little one."

"You don't have to come," she said, and meant that too, though her voice wobbled on it.

He was quiet a moment, watching the kite's tail sweep the grass. Then he said, "No. I think — I think I'll come as far as I can. And we'll see."

They climbed the tether together, Pip's small paws finding grip in the woven fibers, Whisk drifting alongside, his glow lighting the knots so she wouldn't miss her footing. Three hours to dawn, then two, then the lit windows of the root-village grew smaller and smaller below, until they were just a handful of gold dots, and Pip's chest went tight with how far thirty-one steps now seemed.

"Whisk," she called down, "how will we find the way back?"

"I don't know," he admitted, and there was old fear in it, the same fear she'd heard from him before. But he kept climbing. "I don't know, and I'm coming anyway. Isn't that strange?"

At the top the wind took her properly for the first time, and the whole city opened beneath them — every kite dipping and turning like a slow dance, tails crossing tails, and far off, past the furthest string, the black shape of hills she had never known were there. Pip laughed, a small startled sound, and gripped the tether tighter, and did not look away.

They stayed only as long as it takes a held breath to run out, because the sky was already softening at its eastern hem, gray sliding into rose, and somewhere below a heron-shaped shadow was surely already stretching her wings toward the Great Tree. Going down, Pip found she remembered every knot, every twist of fiber, as if her paws had learned the road without asking her mind.

They reached the moss patch just as Ottilie's great gray wings creaked overhead, and the mice of the root-village came spilling out with acorn cakes still warm, and someone struck up a thin, cheerful tune on a blade of grass. Whisk hovered near the doorway again, glowing steadier than Pip had seen him all night, and when she looked at him he said, "Well. I found my way back," in a voice that sounded almost surprised at itself, almost pleased.

Pip took a cake, still hot enough to warm her paws through, and looked up at the fish kite settling into its ordinary place against the pinking sky. Thirty-two steps, she thought. Tomorrow she'd count from there.