The Kite Maker

If Rainbow Runtz is your strain, this is your sign: the Kite Maker. A flat roof above the city at twenty to five, the river wind just coming up, and a patchwork kite stitched from four rooftops’ worth of cloth, already high above the water tower.

The tower roof, twenty to five, when the river wind comes up. One patchwork kite up, one reel, and the river wind doing the rest.

If Rainbow Runtz is your strain

You make things out of other people’s leftovers and get them off the ground. A torn shirt, a print-shop offcut, a corner of striped ticking: give you a flat roof and an afternoon, and by twenty to five it is in the sky. You have never built the same kite twice, and you stopped apologizing for that years ago.

You move the way a good line moves: tug and give. You feel for the pull before you can see it, you let out line when the wind asks for it, and you take a little back before the wind gets greedy. You are quick with your hands and slow to decide, which is the right order on a roof. People who watch you up there say you look as if you are listening to something. You are. It is coming up off the river.

At your best you are the person who gets things up. A neighbor’s half-finished idea, a bag of spare cloth, a plan that keeps diving at the water tower: you add a tail, give it line, and it climbs. When it does, someone on every roof points and says it is theirs, and you let them, because they are right.

Your flaw is the origin story. Ask where a kite came from and you will give four answers, all true and none of them short: the blue from the dye works, the red from the print shop, the cream from somebody’s old sheets, the stripes from two roofs over. People who wanted one answer go home with a map. The ones who love you have learned to ask something simpler: is it up?

What you need is a flat roof, a steady wind and a ladder rung to tie off to, and somebody willing to do the running launch. Give you that and a little cloth, and the afternoon goes up in pieces and comes down whole.

Your hour: Twenty to five, when the river wind comes up
Your place: The tower roof
Your object: A wooden reel of red line
Your tempo: Tug and give
Your weather: A steady wind off the river
Your flaw: Four answers to one question

Your people

The Night Courier (Sour Diesel)The Night Courier works the streets after dark; you work the roofs before it. When your last kite comes down, his first envelope goes out.
The Sprinter (Green Crack)The Sprinter does your running launches and treats every one like a race. You have never told her the kite was going to fly anyway.
The Mountain Elder (Hindu Kush)The Mountain Elder reads lines in the sky; you put them there. He says yours are crooked. You say that is how he knows they are real.

Things you say

Give it line. Then give it a little less.
If it dives, it needs a tail, not a lecture.
Every kite is four kites underneath.
Ask the laundry, not the forecast.
It’s up. That’s where it’s from now.

A scene from your world

Twenty to five

At four o’clock the Kite Maker climbs the ladder to the tower roof with a new kite under one arm. It is a diamond of four patches stitched together: blue from the dye works, red from the print shop, cream from the laundry’s retired sheets, and one striped corner from the upholsterer two roofs over. Every roof on the block gave her a piece. None of them match, and each of them, she has been told, is the important one.

She lays out the afternoon the way she always does. The reel, wound with red line. The bag of tails. The three old kites that always fly, in a row along the parapet: the blue one, the cream one, and the red one that sulks if it goes up last. Then she checks the wind: a wet finger, the windsock on the chimney next door, the laundry on the next roof hanging straight down. Nothing yet. The river wind comes up at twenty to five most days, and it does not like to be watched.

At twenty to five it comes. The laundry lifts first, then the windsock, then the loose ends of the red cloth in her hair. She launches the old kites one after another, letting out line in short pulls, and they climb over the flat roofs in a ladder of blue, cream and red. Across the block people step out of roof doors and look up. Someone on the print shop roof raises a hand.

Then the patchwork kite. It goes up crooked, leans, and dives at the water tower. She reels it in and tries again. It dives again, the other way. On the print shop roof they say it is the stripes. On the dye works roof they say it is the red. She does not argue. She knots a longer tail from the bag, blue and cream and red, ties it on, and gives the kite line. Then a little less.

It climbs. It goes past the cream one and the blue one and the red one, past the height where the old kites always stop, into the cleaner wind above the roofs, and it sits there, steady, the four patches catching the low sun one after another. On every roof someone points up and says, that one’s ours. Every one of them is right.

She ties the line off to the third rung of the water-tower ladder and sits down on the warm tar paper. When the sun goes down behind the roofs she brings the old kites in, one at a time. The patchwork one she leaves up a while longer. Nobody asks which roof it belongs to anymore. It is up. That is where it is from now.

The roofs

The tower roof: Flat, tar-papered and warm by afternoon, with a wooden water tower at one corner and a ladder up its side. The kites go up from here; the line gets tied off to the third rung.
The river wind: It comes up off the water at about twenty to five most days, lifts the laundry first and the kites second, and leaves at sundown without saying goodbye.
The four roofs: The dye works, the print shop, the laundry and the upholsterer’s. Each one gave a scrap for the patchwork kite, and each one calls the kite theirs.
The reel: Wooden, worn pale where the thumb goes, wound with red line. It hums when the kite is happy and goes quiet just before a dive.
The tail bag: A pocketful of cloth strips in blue, red and cream. A kite that dives gets a longer tail before it gets an argument.
The windsock: On the chimney next door. The Kite Maker checks it, then the laundry, then her own hair, always in that order.