A Tail for the Kite

Part One · The Hill

Ruby made the kite at the kitchen table on a windy Saturday in March. She used two thin sticks, a sheet of brown paper, some glue, and a ball of string from the kitchen drawer. Her grandpa sat across from her and drank his tea. He did not help her. He had promised he would not help, and he meant it.

The plan came from an old notebook of his. The drawing was faded, but she could still read the words beside it. Cross the sticks, tie the middle, glue the paper. Her kite was a little lopsided when she finished, and the glue had made the paper wavy. She thought it was the best thing she had ever made.

The hill behind the house was the windiest place Ruby knew about. The grass bent flat, and her hair blew sideways into her mouth. Grandpa followed slowly behind her with his hands deep in his pockets. "Wind is good," he said, "and too much wind is still good. You will see." Ruby lifted her kite over her head and let go.

The kite jumped out of her hands like a living thing. It climbed, and climbed, and then it suddenly started to spin. It went around once, around twice, and dived straight into the grass with a soft paper crunch. Ruby hurried over to it. One stick was fine, but the paper had a tear in the corner the size of her thumb.

She tried again, running with it this time, down the slope with the string trailing behind her. The kite rose, wobbled, spun around, and dived into the grass. She tried a third time with a shorter string, and it spun and dived again. Grandpa said, "Hmm," and did not take his hands out of his pockets. Ruby sat down slowly in the wet grass.

"It wants to spin," she said. "Why does it keep wanting to spin?" Grandpa studied the sky instead of answering her. "Things that fly have a lot of parts, and yours has two sticks and some paper," he said finally. "Look around you and tell me what else is up there." Ruby looked, and a crow was crossing the hill, low, into the wind.

The crow did not spin. Whenever the wind pushed it sideways, it spread its tail feathers wide and tipped them, and it came right back. Its tail was doing all the work. Ruby watched the crow travel across the hill until it disappeared behind the trees. Then she looked at her kite lying in the grass, and it had no tail at all.

Then she noticed the other kite. It was down at the bottom of the hill, red, with a long white tail flapping behind it. The boy holding the string was not even running. His kite sat up in the wind as if it were nailed there. The tail streamed out behind it, straight and steady, exactly the way the crow's tail had.

Part Two · The Scarf

A tail. Of course. The tail dragged along behind the kite and held the bottom down. That kept the nose pointed upward, so the kite could not tip over and begin spinning. Ruby understood it suddenly, the way you understand a song you have only heard once. Now she needed something long and light to tie onto it.

She turned out her pockets and found one glove, a pencil, and half a cracker. The string was all used up, and so was the brown paper. She looked at Grandpa, and Grandpa looked carefully at the sky. "I said I would not help you," he said, "but I never said I would stop you." Ruby's hand went slowly up to her neck.

Her scarf. It was red and white with stripes, and it was long enough to wrap around her neck three times over. Her grandmother had knitted it for her last winter. It was the warmest thing she owned. The wind pulled at the loose end as if it had already decided something.

Ruby unwound the scarf slowly, one loop at a time. The wind got in at her collar right away. She tied one end of the scarf to the bottom of the kite with a double knot, and then a third knot to be safe. The scarf lay in the grass behind the kite, long and red, like a road.

She lifted the kite over her head, and the wind took it. It climbed steadily, and the scarf rose off the grass behind it, one loop, two loops, every loop. The kite leaned left, and the scarf pulled it straight. The kite leaned right, and the scarf pulled it straight again. Ruby completely forgot to breathe.

It did not spin. It went up and up, with the string humming in her fingers and the red stripe streaming out beneath it. She let out string until the ball in her hand was tiny. The kite became a brown dot, and the scarf became a thread of red. Grandpa took one hand out of his pocket and waved at it slowly.

The wind dropped late in the afternoon, all at once, the way it always does. The kite came down slowly and settled in the grass with the scarf curled beside it, wet at the end and streaked with mud. Ruby untied the knots with cold fingers. She did not even care about the mud. She wound the scarf back around her neck.

It was damp, and it smelled of wind and wet grass, and one stripe was brown now instead of white. She wore it all the way home anyway. "Tomorrow," she said, "I am going to make the tail longer." Grandpa said, "Hmm," but he was smiling, and Ruby saw it.