4
Each morning, before the sun rose and while Wysteria still slept, I used the skeleton key to leave my bedchamber and make my way to the attic and then to the widow’s walk to fly the captain’s kites.
I had come upon the entrance to the attic purely by chance, having accidentally fallen against the far wall of the captain’s study as I tried to free a volume from his bookcase. My weight was enough to move the wall ever so slightly, allowing me to see that it was in fact not a wall at all but a slender panel that when pushed open revealed a steep and narrow staircase. At the top of the stairs was a door that could not be opened by any key, and so I spent several fretful hours picking at it with a hairpin and file. Once inside, I was quickly overtaken by its curious contents: dozens of kites, a few bolts of silk and what appeared to be a paper-making device equipped with screens, frames and buckets for mixing slurry. After more than an hour’s examination, I took several kites from their shadowy lair up onto the walk to examine them in the light, for there was also a stairway that led from the attic, through a hatch that blended perfectly with the floorboards of the glass house.
As far as Wysteria knew, I entered the walk only by the obvious trapdoor and only in the evenings to light the lantern. I had no business up there at any other time, and she would have been shocked and angered to find me there with the captain’s kites about me, for I suspected she knew nothing of their existence. Yet I could think of no place I would rather be. In the light of day, the walk was most spectacular.
From the top of the house, I could see all of Fairfax County, and absolutely no one could see me. Only a rare gull flying inland might catch a sideways glimpse as I stepped outside onto the walk and let my hair loose. Long and wild and set free of its braid, it was whipped about me in all directions by the strong breezes. In Wysteria’s presence, I was required to keep it securely fastened and pulled tight to my head, as she did her own. “A woman’s hair is a vanity of the worst kind, Miranda,” she often preached at the dinner table.
Although no portrait of her hung on any of the Manor’s walls, it was evident that Wysteria valued her looks and harbored her own unique brand of vanity. I often observed her admiring her reflection in the mirror above the stone mantel in the sitting room. That Wysteria had once been attractive was not difficult to imagine. She had distinctly fine features, high cheekbones and translucent porcelain skin. Her figure was still as slender as a young woman’s. It was not surprising that she clung to her looks; after all, they had saved her from a life of poverty. Yet we were never to speak of appearances. If one was good-looking, one did not mention it. Beauty spoke for itself.
Try as I might, I could not see Wysteria as truly beautiful, for she possessed a cold, hardened quality. I certainly could not see her hair set free and roaming down her shoulders.
I loved the way my own hair fell into the breeze, though, and I would stand, a little too long perhaps, imagining what it would be like to let not only my hair but my whole self be taken again by the wind. Not since the day I was blown to Bourne Manor had I felt the awesome and frightening sensation of that powerful current sweeping beneath my feet, the strange invisible hands pushing me forward faster than I could go myself. I remembered distinctly that familiar prodding at my back, the brush of air at my side and the sudden feeling of being cut loose from the earth and carried along like a leaf. There was nothing I could do, no stopping it.
“Not so high,” I’d called out that last time. “Not so high!” But the wind had done as it pleased, tossing and lifting my light frame into the currents.
Though I cannot remember anyone ever seeing me taken up, there was always the lingering feeling upon landing or finally getting caught by a branch that perhaps someone had seen and, finding no rational explanation for what they’d witnessed, would judge me strange and maybe even wicked in some way. I knew that my being taken by the wind was something that must never be mentioned, something that must always be held close.
Perhaps one day the wind would come for me again, but until then I felt its power in the captain’s kites, which over time I smuggled up to the glass house on my evening’s watch and kept hidden inside the large trunk. My favorite was the Red Dragon. I’d named it for its fierce face and vibrant color. There were many kites with bold faces and long, swift tails, but the Red Dragon was different from the others. It was the most delicate of all, with silk so finely layered it resembled the wings of a dragonfly. It was, too, the most spirited, wild and impetuous like a young bird, ardently pulling against its line and diving dangerously close to the Manor.
I could not take the chance that Wysteria might ever see a kite flying from the top of the house, so I always flew the Red Dragon on the lake side, far from her window and far from the branches of the great elm tree. I was more likely to be swept away at that high spot with a kite in my hand than down at the shoreline, and, not wanting to end up pasted to the outside of Wysteria’s bedroom window, I took the precaution of securing myself to the wrought-iron railing with a long anchor line I’d rescued the summer before from the tide. It smelled of milfoil and fish gone rancid, and I hated to wrap it around myself, for I knew the rank odor would seep into the fibers of my wool bodice, requiring me to wash and dry it so as not to arouse Wysteria’s suspicion. The line remained a necessity, however, as I had stayed as small and thin as on the day that I’d arrived, though I was no longer as frail as in those early years.
I was never sure exactly how the captain’s kites were meant to be flown. The silk kites were simple enough, but the paper kites were unlike anything I had ever seen, as if a part of each was missing or was meant to be connected to something greater than itself. How to explain the extra cords and clasps that hung from their frames? How to decipher the meaning of the little flaps wrapped tightly to the midpole of each?
I could not cast the kites into the air with a running start, as one would on the beach, but instead had to fly them from a standing position on the walk. I devised a system of slowly letting out the line while holding a kite as far as I could from myself, setting it free only when I sensed enough of a breeze picking it from the underside and puffing it gently away from me. Of course, there were days, particularly in the fall and spring, when the weather was too wild to fly any of the kites, even the more robust paper ones, and I kept them inside. I felt a strong obligation to the captain’s creations and didn’t wish any to come to harm.
I became an expert in charting the weather, searching offshore for signs of low-lying clouds or fog and spotting thunderheads. I could feel the wind calling to me on certain days in those wild clouds, and I knew that given a chance it would come for me, ripping at the layers of the heavy woolen dresses and overcoats that Wysteria had so carefully stitched, and steal me away, leaving me high in a tree, or on the top of one of the mountains across the lake. I was not yet ready for such a journey. For that kind of journey I needed time. I needed Farley.