Chapter One
The Kite That Would Not Fall
On the morning the wind went missing, Sivi Varo was trying to put a kite back into its box.
The box was too narrow. Her mother had always said the tail should be wound loosely, or it would remember the crease. Sivi had left the tail loose for a year, draped across the shelf beside a cup of bent kite pins. Now the red cloth refused to fit. She was kneeling on it when Pek shouted from the lane.
"Sivi! Come and see what I did!"
Pek usually shouted that before anyone knew whether what he had done was clever. Sivi slid the kite behind her and went to the window. Above the bridge terrace, Pek's small green kite hung with its tail pointing straight down. So did all the others. A dozen bright diamonds floated above the roofs, each motionless. No strings bowed in the air. No tails flickered.
Pek gave his string a furious tug. The kite did not fall. It did not rise.
Sivi had seen a kite dive, snap free, roll, split and sail beyond the edge of Luri. She had never seen one wait.
She ran down the stairs. The familiar little sounds of morning were wrong. The chimes outside the tea stall had stopped. The bridge ropes, which usually hummed under the slow pull of the wind, hung as limp as wet washing. Across the gap, the nearest island sat under a clear sky. A sailboat between them seemed pinned to a blue sheet.
