Kite Spirit (20 page)

Images of the day flashed through her head: waving Ruby off on the station and feeling as if she was saying goodbye to her forever; the vision of the fish opening and closing its mouth, gulping
air and fighting for life; the vacant expression on Ellie’s face when they’d entered the Carrec Arms; the tears for Jack. She walked over to the table, picked up Agnes’s note,
turned it over and wrote.

She left the note on the sandstone slab weighted by the key and walked down the steep path that led away from Mirror Falls. As she followed the stream she looked up at the sky
to find white clouds gathering in little clumps. She had only come out in her T-shirt and shorts and she felt with relief a cool breeze play on her skin.
Please, please let the weather break so
that I can go down to the dam and bury Dawn’s reed.
It became a chant, filling her head as she walked.
Let the weather break, let the weather break.

She entered the little coppice where she’d seen Dawn and heard her music. Would she come again to comfort her? Kite peered in among the trees, her nerve endings
prickling, every sense alert. Then she heard an enormous splash. She hid behind a tree, held her breath and watched and waited as a human head broke the surface of the water. Was this Dawn gliding
across the lake towards her with smooth, even strokes? But she was too far away to see and the sun glinted off the surface, reflecting light in every direction, playing tricks with her eyes. Kite
hid and watched as the graceful figure swam towards her now, through the darker shaded water, till she came into view. It was not Dawn but Agnes Landseer. Kite’s heart sank as Agnes emerged
seal-like in her black swimming costume, wading towards her and now dancing her way over the sharp little stones and slates. She was surprisingly fit-looking, with swimmer’s shoulders and
lean strong limbs.

Agnes looked up momentarily, peering into the woodland as if she sensed that someone was watching. Kite did not move a muscle, and she held her breath steady so that she would not have to come
face to face with her. Agnes wrapped a towel around her head, ducked behind a boulder and emerged dressed in a fleece and trousers. Kite shivered. It was cooler in the woodland, without the sun on
her back. She scrunched her eyes closed as Agnes walked between the trees, treading only a few paces from where she hid. High above her head came the hollow tapping of a woodpecker. Agnes stopped
in her tracks and peered up among the branches. Kite clung on to the trunk of the tree. When she was sure that Agnes was gone she stood up slowly and walked towards the lake. Behind her the
woodpecker began its insistent tap-tapping again as if it was calling her back into the shelter of the wood.

Kite looked up to where the red birds circled above her head. She followed a path past the waterfall where she had stood with Garth and around the edge of the lake. At the far end was a high
rock platform. Above it the hillside receded and the branches of a large tree hung out over the water. From one of these sturdy branches a thick rope swing had been securely tied. Kite clambered
up. Maybe if she flew through the air like a bird Dawn would come and sit by her side just once more. It was so long since she’d been on the trapeze she wondered if her muscles would be
strong enough to hold her. Then again, what harm could it do? The worst that could happen is that she’d fall into the lake and have to swim to the edge as Agnes had done. She climbed up on to
another step-like ledge and finally pulled herself on to a piece of rock that jutted out over the lake like a diving board. Kite tugged on the rope to check that it was firm and attempted to climb
up as she’d so often done in training with Annalisa. She pulled herself towards the tree, her arms shaking with the effort. It was hard to believe how weak she had become.

‘Come on, Kite,’ she willed herself on and climbed to the top then down again on to the slate platform. She wrapped the ends of the rope around her leg so that it was secure,
returned to the back of the platform and began to run towards the lake. As she did, the kites above her sent up a deafening screech. She stretched backwards and let her body glide over the lake,
she felt the breeze in her hair and the moment of forgetting that always came with flying . . . then she opened her eyes as she flew and looked down into the deep clear water. There was Dawn
smiling up at her.

The water was ice cold, and as she hit the surface her heart clamped in shock as her body sank down, down, down to the bottom of the lake, following the golden path of Dawn’s smile. The
water was surprisingly clear except for the bubbles rising from her own mouth as she slowly breathed the air out of her lungs, but as she drifted further and further away Dawn’s face faded
and Grandma Grace’s voice surged through her body.

You know you have all my love, and no matter how far I am, or what trouble life brings, I will always be with you in spirit.

What was she doing here, putting her own life at risk? As she kicked her arms and legs to swim up to the surface her St Christopher released itself from around her neck. She
cast about for it frantically, stirring up the mud on the lake bed and clouding the water. Her lungs felt as if they were about to explode and she knew if she left it any longer that she would not
have the strength to return to the surface. It was then she felt the necklace being placed into her palm and her fist close tight around it. An arm wrapped around her waist and something pushed her
upward with superhuman force, propelling her from the bottom of the lake up through millions of bubbles up, up, up through the clear water until she broke the surface. Kite opened her mouth and
gulped the air into her starving lungs and began to cough and splutter violently. She caught sight of Bardsey swimming ahead of her, looking back in concern every few seconds and barking
insistently. The hand moved from around her waist to under her chin and someone was pulling her now exactly as she and Dawn had practised together in life-saving lessons. Kite struggled against the
helping hand as she began to kick her arms and legs. She closed her eyes for a second, preparing herself to find Dawn swimming by her side.

‘Kite, are you OK?’ It was Garth, hovering too close, ready to catch her as if he thought she might drown.

‘I got cramp from the cold, and my leg went a bit dead for a minute, that’s all,’ Kite explained as Garth wrapped a towel around her shoulders.

‘I was coming for a swim anyway!’ Garth said. ‘But Bardsey here made such a fuss that I ended up sprinting down to the lake. Wait till I tell Gran that she’s got a
life-saving dog on her hands!’ Garth laughed as Bardsey shook his drenched coat, showering them both with water.

‘Catches folk out how cold it is to swim in the tarns. Maybe wasn’t such a clever idea with a bang to your head like that either.’ He pointed to the now purple bruise on her
forehead. ‘Hey, you’re shivering.’ He took the towel and started rubbing her arms and back. ‘You need more layers,’ he said, running over to his rucksack and pulling
out a fleece. Kite attempted to pull her T-shirt away from where it clung to the contours of her body before he ran back to her.

‘Here, take these too. They’ll be way too big for you, but they’ve got a drawstring waist! I always pack something in case the weather turns.’ He handed her some jogging
bottoms, indicating the boulder behind which Agnes had got dressed.

‘Do you think the weather is going to change?’ Kite asked him as she pulled on the clothes and attempted to stop her teeth from chattering.

Garth looked up at the kites flying above his head and listened to their incessant screeching.

‘They’re always noisier when the weather’s on the turn.’

Kite closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. Soon she would be able to give Dawn the burial she deserved and then she might be able to stop searching for her.

Garth skimmed stones while she dressed. She got the impression that he didn’t believe her about the cramp, that he was waiting for her to tell him the truth.

‘I saw your gran swimming here earlier,’ Kite said as she came to stand by his side.

‘She swims pretty much every day, rain or shine. She’s even been known to break the ice!’ Garth laughed as he skimmed a stone across the water. ‘She loves this place,
reckons it’s full of “presences” though.’

‘Do
you
believe in that sort of thing?’ Kite asked.

Garth paused a moment before he spoke. ‘Can’t say for sure, but what I will say is there are certain spots that give you a feeling of something else, something beyond what we can
see.’

There was the determined little hammering of the woodpecker again, working away at the tree.

Kite agreed. Even without her visions of Dawn, there was no denying that this place had a charged atmosphere.

As Garth packed his rucksack he took out a newspaper wrapping she recognized, dipped his towel in the water, wrung it out and wrapped it around Jack’s trout. ‘That should keep it
cool.’

‘Where did you get that?’ Kite asked.

‘Your dad brought it over. He’s fair cut up about old Jack going, isn’t he? Gran will be too. Still, I’ll cook this up and take the bones back to the sculpture as your
dad wanted.’ Garth sighed deeply. ‘I dread giving Gran the news.’

‘I thought they didn’t like each other, Jack and her?’

‘Not sure what’s gone on between them . . . exactly. All I know is Gran got it into her head that Mirror Falls wasn’t a good place for her, because the owls kept crashing into
the windows.’ Garth paused for a minute. ‘Whatever it was they fell out about, it had something to do with that place. They’d been great friends before, but they never spoke again
after it was built.’

The kites let out a screech. Garth lay back on the mossy ground, crossed his arms behind his head and stared up at them. Kite lay down beside him, both now looking up at the sky where the great
birds circled, their wings casting shadows on the lake below.

‘What are they looking for?’ asked Kite.

‘I suppose they’re just staking out their territory, protecting their nests.’

‘Is that what you’re doing with your sculpture?’

‘Not sure, but now you put it like that . . . !’

‘I wish it would rain soon.’

Garth turned to her in surprise and laughed. ‘Most folk want it to be sunny forever, but I know what you mean. I could do with a change myself. Anyway, as soon as the reservoir starts to
fill, my sheep’s going under so that’ll be the end of that one! I could do with starting something fresh anyway.’

It was not until they were high up on the path, surrounded by bracken, that Garth explained that they were walking the ‘Corpse Road’ where once the dead had been carried over the
hills to the nearest graveyard.

‘Why is everything about this place so full of death?’ Kite sighed.

She could feel Garth’s piercing stare as she looked out over the sunlit fell.

‘Life and death all wrapped up together,’ he said. ‘Jack must have known these fells like the lines on his own face.’

Little wisps of clouds were crossing the sky like a flotilla of ghost ships.

As they walked Garth pointed out patches of yellow and blue flowers that clung on inside the crevices; some of them he told her had been around since the Ice Age. ‘Delicate-looking things,
but tough as rock,’ he smiled, picking off a tiny blue star-shaped head and placing it in Kite’s hand. Is that how he saw her? Delicate but tough? That’s how she’d felt
before Dawn . . . and maybe that’s how she would feel again one day.

‘Dawn’s favourite flowers are bluebells!’ Kite told him.

‘Who’s Dawn?’

Of course she had never once talked of Dawn to him, and there was no reason anyone else would have either.

‘My best friend.’

She didn’t know how or why it was so much easier to talk to this quietly spoken boy of sparse words than to any of her family or friends, or Miss Choulty, or Dr Sherpa. But as they walked
in the sunshine, it seemed natural for her to tell him about Dawn. Maybe it was because he wasn’t connected to anyone who had ever known her. Or perhaps it was because he didn’t try to
force her to talk. As she finally released the words she felt strangely numb, as if she was telling someone else’s story.

Garth listened as she retraced her steps backwards to the Falling Day. He did not say much, except to acknowledge her words with the occasional nod or glance her way. At one point, when she felt
she’d said all there was to say, he took her hand in his and they’d walked on in silence.

‘You talk about her like she’s still here with you,’ he said after a long pause, and the words had started to flow again. Now she told him about the Dawn owl
at Mirror Falls; seeing her image in a rock pool and in Kite Carrec; Dawn’s music that seemed to flow in and out of her; and finally, her idea to bury Dawn’s reed in the sheep sculpture
to lay her spirit to rest.

‘That would be a fair place to settle,’ was all he said as they stepped across a narrow part of a stream, where a bank of tiny stones blocked the path of the water.

‘That’s exactly how I feel, as if I’ve been dammed up,’ Kite explained.

‘It’s good you’re talking now,’ Garth said as they sat down by the stream.

Garth picked one stone off the little dam and held his hand out to Kite as if to say,
your turn
.

They removed a stone each until the tiniest ripple of water began to flow between the remaining stones.

‘Sounds to me like it was your friend who was all dammed up inside.’ Garth stood up again and offered her his hand once more as they crossed the stream. ‘Dawn was why
you’d been crying when I first met you.’

Kite nodded. ‘Crying in my sleep. I don’t seem to have any tears for her when I’m awake.’

‘It looked like you’d been crying for a long time,’ Garth commented.

‘Is that why you were staring at me?’