Kites Down by Moonrise

Once there was a village on a high round hill, and it was the windiest place for miles. Washing on the lines there never hung down. Hats were tied on with string. And everybody in the village, from the oldest grandpa to the smallest girl who could hold a reel, flew kites.

The other thing about that hill was the moon. In most places the moon comes up a long way off, over a sea or a forest or somebody else’s roofs. On the high round hill she came up right over the top, so close that the grass on the brow went silver a whole minute before she showed. She was big and slow and shy. She came up carefully, the way you come upstairs in your socks when everybody else is asleep.

So the village had a rule, and the babies learned it before they learned their own names.

“Every kite comes down before moonrise.”

The grown-ups said it the way they said “wipe your feet,” without thinking about it much. Nobody could quite remember why, except Grandma, and nobody had thought to ask her.

Ned thought about it a great deal.

Ned made the best kites in the village. He made box kites and bird kites, and a long green dragon kite that wriggled when the wind got under it. He was clever with his hands and hopeless with time. Whatever Ned was doing, he wanted five more minutes of it. Five more minutes of kite. Five more minutes of bath. He once asked for five more minutes of staying up, and the very next morning, five more minutes of staying in bed.

And what Ned wanted, more than any five minutes in the world, was to see a kite fly right across the face of the full moon. Just once. Nobody in the village had ever seen it, because of the rule. Ned had pictured it so often he could have drawn it with his eyes shut.

So that spring he made the white kite.

It was the lightest kite he had ever made, white as a clean plate. For its tail, he went to every house in the village and asked for one odd sock. Every house has one, the sock whose other half has gone wherever those halves go, and nobody had to look for long. He got red socks and gray socks, a woolly bedsock and a baby’s sock no bigger than his thumb. Grandma gave him a striped one, blue and yellow, the longest of the lot.

Grandma kept a crochet hook stuck through her bun, the way other people keep a pencil behind one ear. She could undo any knot ever tied. She had undone bootlaces and fishing nets and the cord on the attic hatch, and once, on a wet Sunday, a whole drawer of necklaces. She watched Ned tie the socks on, one after another.

“That’s a granny knot,” she said.

“It holds,” said Ned.

“Oh, it holds,” said Grandma. “Getting it undone is another story.”

“I’m never going to want it undone,” said Ned.

* * *

The night of the full moon was clear, with a steady wind over the hill. All afternoon the sky was full of kites. As the light went blue, the village wound them in and went indoors for supper.

Ned did not wind in. He climbed to the very top of the hill and let the white kite out, higher and higher, until the sock tail was only a wiggle in the blue.

Grandma called up from the garden gate. “Kites down, Ned! She’s coming.”

The grass on the brow had begun to go silver.

“Five more minutes!” said Ned.

One look, he thought, and then he would wind in faster than anybody ever had.

Up came the moon. First a silver edge, then a bright curve, then more of her, slow and shy, with her eyes cast down, the way she always came. And she came up right into Ned’s kite string.

Now, you might think a moon is far too big to be caught by a kite string. Almost anywhere else, you would be right. But on that hill she came up so close, and so carefully, that the string slipped over her before she knew it was there. The kite swung round. The sock tail wrapped round her twice. And Grandma’s striped sock, with Ned’s granny knot in it, pulled tight.

The moon stopped.

She tried to climb, and could not. She hung there, low and round, just over the top of the hill, looking puzzled. She was so close and so bright that every bedroom window in the village lit up like a lamp left on.

Everybody woke, except the babies, who could sleep through anything. The whole village came out in slippers and dressing gowns and climbed up to the top, whispering, so as not to wake them.

Ned stood on the hilltop with the reel in his hands. He tugged the string, very gently. The moon only bobbed lower, and looked sheepish, as if she thought it must be her fault.

“It’s my fault, not yours,” Ned said to her. Then he took out his penknife.

Mom had come up the hill with his coat. She put it round his shoulders. “Don’t cut it,” she said. “She’ll go up with your kite still knotted round her, and she’ll have to wear it across the sky every night.”

Ned put the penknife away.

Then Grandma came up the hill, slowly, in her slippers, with a lantern. She looked at the moon, and the string, and the striped sock pulled tight against the moon’s round side. She took the crochet hook out of her bun.

“Hold the lantern, Ned,” she said. “I can’t see a knot against all that moon.”

* * *

At the very top of the hill, the moon was close enough to touch.

Ned held the lantern up with one hand. With the other, just to see, he touched her. The moon was cool and smooth, like a pebble out of a stream. And close up, she smelled faintly of clean washing, like sheets brought in off the line.

Grandma worked one loop at a time. She did not pull. She slid the hook in, and eased, and slid it in again.

“Higher,” she said. “There. Keep it still.”

Ned kept it still. His arm began to ache, and he did not ask to put it down.

“Grandma,” he said. “Is this why we have the rule?”

“It is,” said Grandma. “She comes up closer here than anywhere in the world. She comes up shy, with her eyes down, and she can’t see a string. So we keep her road clear. That’s all the rule is, Ned. It’s not for us. It’s for her.”

The moon went a little pink around the edges.

“I’m sorry,” Ned said to the moon, and she gave a small bob, which Grandma said meant it was quite all right.

Then the last loop came loose. Grandma drew the striped sock free and tied it back on the tail with a bow. “A bow,” she said. “For next time.” Ned lifted the string off the moon, as gently as lifting a hat off somebody asleep.

The moon rose a little. Then she stopped again, and waited.

“What’s she doing?” Ned said, very quietly.

Grandma pushed the crochet hook back into her bun. “She’s waiting for you,” she said. “Go on, then.”

Ned let out the string. The wind took the white kite up and up, and the moon held quite still, big and round and close, and the white kite flew right across her face.

It was exactly the picture Ned had wished for, and it was better, because the whole village saw it too. Nobody cheered, because of the babies. But all down the hill, in slippers and dressing gowns, everybody said “Oh,” very softly, at the same time.

The moon waited for one long moment. Ned, who was hopeless with time, never knew how long it lasted. Grandma said it was about five minutes.

Then the moon went on up into the sky, slow and easy, the way she always had. Ned wound his kite in, every inch of string and every sock, without being asked. The bedroom windows went back to ordinary moonlight. The village went home to bed. The babies had slept through all of it, and at last Ned slept too.

* * *

From that night on, Ned’s white kite shone very faintly silver at the edges. You could only see it at dusk, and only if you knew to look.

The next spring the little ones came up the hill with their first kites, and it was Ned who told them the rule.

“Every kite comes down before moonrise,” he said.

“Why?” said the smallest girl.

“Because she’s shy,” said Ned, “and she’s coming upstairs in her socks.”

And when the brow of the hill went silver, the first kite down, every single night, was Ned’s. He had been given his five more minutes once, by the moon herself, and he said that would do him for the rest of his life.