Kite Spirit (12 page)

Metal clanked at the front of the house and a dog barked, making Kite jump bolt upright. She wondered if Seth had heard the noise too and she thought about calling for him, but
his stuttery snore was already echoing through the house. Cautiously she walked over the bridge, stepping over the glass panels and sticking to the sturdier stone. She pressed a button on the wall
beside the entrance and the glass slid open. There was no one there, but a folded note lay on the sandstone walkway, peeping from underneath the Japanese tree.

Kite stepped out, picked up the envelope and walked briskly back inside, pressing the button behind her. The door closed and made a little click-locked noise that helped her feel a little more
secure. As she walked over the bridge she caught flashes of the sheepdog as he ran along the path below. The woman was feeling her way down the uneven track by the side of the waterfall, steadying
herself from time to time with her driftwood stick. In her other hand she was holding a torch. Bardsey looked up and barked a friendly greeting at Kite. She waved but the woman did not wave back.
Instead she nodded twice, raised her stick in the air and wandered on with her empty hessian sack draped over her shoulders like shawl. What had she done with its contents?

Kite followed the path of the woman and her dog along the stream and through the darkening valley. Then, as she realized that she herself was sitting in the gloom she stood up and searched along
the walls for the light switch. She couldn’t find one, so she picked up the remote control and pressed a button at random. A huge blind, lit from above, unravelled from a wall cavity. On the
back someone had painted an abstract impression of the landscape. Kite flicked another button and the blind lifted again. She could still see the flickering torchlight in the distance.

Kite looked down at the letter. She supposed she should wait till Seth woke up to open it but . . .

The address at the top of the quality paper that read ‘Mirror Falls, Swindale, Cumbria’ had been scored out, as had all the letters after the name . . . Agnes Landseer. So that woman
had once lived here. For all Kite knew, she even owned the house. Kite read on.

Underneath was written
‘Scar View’
and the words.

‘
For everyone’s sake. All I ask is that you lower the blind every night.
’

What? How weird was that? The woman must be mad. Her name suited her. Agnes was old fashioned, sharp and matter of fact, and Landseer made Kite think of something slightly spooky, someone who
could see things on the land, ghosts or spirits maybe. Kite shivered as she remembered the way Agnes had seemed to look into her and then refused to get in the car.

Kite walked back over to the window. Agnes’s torch beam remained steady. Was she watching the house? Perhaps when Kite had inadvertently lowered the blind, Agnes had thought that she was
doing what she was told. Kite felt the anger rise up in her again. Why should she be dictated to by a stranger? And what was the point of having a house made of glass if you couldn’t watch
the sun set and the moon rise? Kite lay down and watched the multitude of stars reflecting off the glass. Where was Dawn now in this vast glistening universe? Had she appeared to her in the stream
because she was somewhere nearby?

If only she could take herself back to Fairview, run down to Dawn’s flat on the night before it happened. And instead of Facebooking,
talk
to her and make her see that things were
not as bad as she’d thought. If she could have caught her right there at her low point, then Dawn might be sitting in her room now, practising for her next concert. Or she might even have
come up here to the Lakes with them. She could imagine her listening to the waterfall, picking up her oboe and playing a piece of watery music. Kite took Dawn’s iPod out of her pocket,
plugged in her earphones and let the music float over her. As she stared at the moon, a tiny wisp of a cloud floated over its surface and her mind cleared. It all made sense now: her dreams in the
car, Dawn’s face in the rock pool, even the sheep’s carcass; they were all signs. Dawn was coming to talk to
her
, to answer her questions, to take away all the aching pain,
guilt, bitterness, anger and terrible sadness. Dawn
wants
me to be close to her, Kite told herself.

A high-pitched screech cut through the rare peace of Kite’s sleep. She sprang bolt upright on the sofa, her heart thudding so loud it almost drowned out the sound of the
waterfall. And then she saw it, with its wings stretched to their widest expanse, every cream feather dappled with brown, lit from behind by the moon, like an X-ray image. As it glided towards her
beyond the glass, the owl lifted its heart-shaped face upward to reveal Dawn’s delicate features and her iridescent moon pallor . . . then it SMASHED itself into the glass, with the speed and
violence of gunshot. For a second it seemed that it hung there, stunned; then it dropped away. Kite stared down through the gloom as the feathered form spiralled out of control towards the
gully.

Perhaps the screech had been hers after all, because Seth came hurtling down the stairs, shouting at the top of his voice.

‘What on earth’s wrong?’

Kite folded her legs under herself and hugged her knees tight in a fetal position, rocking backwards and forward. Seth placed an arm around her shoulders and held her close as she whimpered in
fear.

‘What is it?’ persisted Seth, looking around to see what could possibly have traumatized her.

Kite lifted her right arm and pointed towards the great expanse of window.

‘There’s nothing there!’ Seth picked up the remote control and switched on the dimmer lights. Now he stepped closer. Etched on the glass was the perfect imprint of an owl.

‘Poor thing!’ Seth traced his fingers over the outline. ‘Hopefully just stunned.’ He looked down towards the ground below and then turned back to Kite.

‘You know, that scream of yours was enough to wake the dead!’

Kite stared at him, her heart still thudding violently in her chest.

‘Sorry! I didn’t mean . . .’ Seth trailed off.

‘It’s OK, I’m OK,’ Kite reassured him. ‘It was just the shock of it!’

What she couldn’t tell him was that for the first time since the Falling Day she felt something like hope stirring inside her, even if it was mixed up with fear of the unknown. She had
wished for Dawn to come and find her, and as soon as the owl had flown towards her she’d felt in her gut that Dawn was back.

It didn’t matter that she hadn’t slept or that her mind had raced all night as she listened to Dawn’s music. When she unwrapped the lemon soap the next
morning she felt as if she could breathe again. It was the most luxurious bath that she had ever had. The tub had jacuzzi bubbles and a pillow for her head, but the best thing about it was that
when she got out she smelt Dawn all around her.

‘Breakfast!’ Seth shouted up from the kitchen, his voice competing with the cascading echo of the waterfall.

‘Coming!’ Kite called back as she dried herself, rummaging in her bag and throwing on some leggings and a T-shirt.

Downstairs she was relieved to find the Dawn owl still stretched across the living-room window. There was the proof. Kite cast her eyes down through the valley to see where Agnes could have been
heading the night before. Right at the end of the valley was a raised egg-like mound of rocks.

‘What is another word for “Basket of egg scenery?”’ The question from her Geography exam came back to her.

‘Try revising! Roche Moutonnée, idiot!’ Kite laughed out loud at the sound of Dawn’s voice so clear and close to her.

‘Now that’s something I haven’t heard for a while!’ Seth drew her into a hug. ‘That giggle of yours.’

‘Nor me!’ Kite smiled, as Dawn’s voice still echoed through her head. She looked down through the glass panels to the empty ledge.

‘Did you move the sheep?’

‘No – probably got washed away.’ Seth shrugged and wandered away to finish making breakfast. ‘How was your bath? Can’t wait to have a wallow in there
myself!’

‘Good.’

Kite sat at the beechwood table. In front of her, propped up between jam pots, was the weird note about the blinds. She picked it up and read it again.

‘I read that just now!’ Seth said, placing a mug of tea in front of her.

‘Last night when you were asleep, that woman with the dog came by. She didn’t knock or anything, just left the note outside!’ Kite took a sip of sweet tea.

‘When we go to the village later, I intend to find out about her. Something’s not quite right there.’ Seth tapped his nose and narrowed his eyes in a mock Sherlock Holmes
gesture.

‘You don’t need to be cheerful around me all the time. I know you’re not. I saw you crying in the car yesterday.’ Kite was surprised by the sharpness of her own words,
and as soon as they escaped her mouth she felt sorry. This was exactly how she had decided not to be.

Seth paused with his back to her as he buttered the toast, then turned to Kite and handed her the plate.

‘There’s no shame in crying. You know, it’s lovely to hear you laughing again, but it might help if you could cry too.’

‘It’s hard to cry when everyone’s telling you to,’ Kite answered.

‘I know.’ Seth sighed and sat down at the table opposite her. ‘Spoke to Rubes this morning. I only had to walk to the end of the track. You should have heard the mouthful she
gave me for not calling last night! She sends her love though. She asked how you are. I said I thought you were a bit better. You slept well last night, didn’t you?’

‘Yep!’ Kite lied as she stood up to avoid his searching gaze and padded barefoot out into the sunshine of the courtyard, chewing on the corner of her toast.

The very last thing she expected to find was another note under the Japanese tree, exactly where the first had been. As she bent down to pick it up one of the branches bowed and a delicate leaf
brushed her cheek. She felt as if Dawn was a mere breath away from her. She walked further into the courtyard. Her hands shook as she opened the note. There were the same crossings out and the name
Agnes Landseer and the new address of
‘Scar View.’

Kite looked back through the building at the ghostly shape of the Dawn owl pinned against the glass. As she read the note over again she wondered what that strange woman, who
had once lived in this house, knew about the owls? She felt her cheek where the soft branch of the Japanese tree had reached out to her like a human hand of friendship. She would do what Agnes
Landseer ordered, for Dawn’s sake.

‘So this is what they call a cantilever house!’ Seth mused as they stood under the building. ‘I was reading that they have to put enough weight on one end so
that the rest will have the confidence to jut out into space without falling flat on its face!

‘I wonder how long the owl print will stay?’ he continued, as they scrambled down under Mirror Falls in search of the fallen owl. With the sun glinting off the glass, the imprint was
less visible from this angle. ‘The windows are supposed to be self-cleaning, impossible to get a ladder to them –’ Seth surveyed the steep angle up to the living-room window
– ‘but I think it’ll take some rain to wash that away.’

Maybe, thought Kite it will only fade when Dawn has given me the answers to all my questions. She looked up at the cloudless sky. That didn’t look like it would be any time soon. Anyway,
she didn’t want it to fade, not until she could make sense of why the Dawn owl was seeking her out.

‘I suppose the poor thing could have been washed away, like the sheep.’ Seth sighed.

‘Wait!’ Kite called after him, reaching out her hands as a falling creamy-white feather came wafting towards her. She caught it and clasped it in her hands as if she was holding on
to her best friend. ‘Dawn,’ she whispered. Now she knew for sure that she was not imagining it. Here was another sign. As she let her fingers brush over the soft feathers she felt
comforted by the presence of Dawn’s spirit all around her.

‘I think she was just stunned,’ Kite said as she caught up with Seth. ‘She must have flown away.’

Seth smiled at Kite and linked arms with her. ‘How do you know it was a she-owl?’ he asked as they began to climb the steep path home. Kite shrugged but there was no doubt in her
mind.

‘I just know!’

Driving through Swindale Common they passed a small group of boys around Kite’s age jogging along the road. A tall boy wolf-whistled as he caught sight of Kite through
the open window, and the others laughed.

‘If you’ve got breath enough to whistle at the lasses, then you should be running faster!’ the boy in front called back in a soft Lake District accent. It was the boy who had
been driving the tractor. When he recognized the car he looked inside and smiled at Kite with his sparkling grey eyes.

‘Do you know her?’ the boy behind called to him in a thick Birmingham accent.

‘Not yet!’ she heard him reply as Seth negotiated his way over the cattle-grid.

‘Do you think you might start running again, when you feel a bit stronger?’ Seth asked.

Kite shrugged as she looked through the side mirror at the farmer boy urging the others on into a sprint.

The Carrec Arms was a limewashed stone building positioned in the middle of a hamlet of tiny cottages. Inscribed on an ancient stone lintel above the pub’s low doorway
was the date (1606) in Roman numerals. Seth ducked and went through. Inside there was only a single room, with a bar at the far end. Even the colours of the place, bathed in soft amber light,
seemed to soothe. There was nothing bright or dazzling or new here. The beams were dark oak, all gnarled and knotted. Copper and silver pennies had been wedged into the gaps between the beams. In
one thick opening someone had lodged a line of £1 coins. Kite wondered how long these would have lasted in a London pub.