Cloud Walker, All Fools' Day, Far Sunset Read Free Page A

leggings. You have a lambskin jacket and good boots. These I have packed in the deerhide bag. Keep warm, Kieron, eat well. We – we love you and shall watch your progress.’
    He sensed that she, too, was miserable. He could not understand why. It was supposed to be an important and joyful occasion for all concerned.
    ‘I will see you soon, mother.’ He smiled, trying to cheer himself up as well.
    ‘Ay, but you will not lie again in the bed your father made for you. You will not curl up under the sheets I wove and the down quilt I made before you were born.’
    ‘Enough, Kristen,’ said Gerard. ‘You will have us all whimpering like babies.’ He looked at his wife and was aware of the white streaks in her hair, the lines etched on her face. She was twenty-eight years old; but her back was still straight and her breasts were high. She had worn well.
    Kieron picked up the deerhide bag. Suddenly, the sense of occasion was upon him, and he felt very formal. ‘Good day to you, then, my parents. Thank you for giving me the breath of life. Thank you for filling my belly in summer and in winter. Ludd rest you both.’
    Kristen fled into her kitchen, sobbing. Gerard raised a great hairy arm to his forehead, as he often did in his workshop, and wiped away sweat that did not exist.
    ‘Ludd be with you, my son. Go now to Master Hobart. As I am the best joiner in fifty kilometres marching, so you will become the best painter within a thousand kilometres.’
    ‘Father, I want to—’ Kieron stopped. It had been on the tip of his tongue to say: I do not want to be a painter. I want to learn how to fly.
    ‘Yes, Kieron?’
    ‘I – I want to be worthy of you and to make you proud.’
    Gerard laughed and slapped his shoulder playfully. ‘Be off with you, changeling. From now on, you will eat better food than we have been able to give you.’
    ‘I doubt that it will taste as good.’ There was more he wanted to say. Much more. But the words stuck in his throat. Kieron went out of the cottage and began to walk along the track that led down to Arundel. He did not look back, but he knew that Gerard was standing at the door watching him. He did not look back because there was a disturbing impulse to run to his father and tell him what he really wanted to do.
    It was a fine October morning. The sky was blue; but a thick carpet of mist lay over the low land stretching away to the sea. Arundel lay beneath the mist; but the castle, its grey stone wet with dew and shining in the morning light, sat on the hillside clear above the mist. A faerie castle, bright, mysterious, full of unseen power.
    There was a saying: those who live in the shadow of the castle shall prosper or burn. Master Hobart had a house under the very battlements. He had prospered. Kieron hoped that he, too, would prosper. Only a fool would risk burning. Only a fool would want to build a flying machine.
    High in the sky a buzzard circled gracefully. Kieron put down his bag and watched it. Such effortless movements, such freedom. He envied the bird. He envied its freedom, its effortless mastery of the air.
    ‘Some day, buzzard,’ said Kieron, ‘I shall be up there with you. I shall be higher. I shall look down on you. You will know that a man has invaded your world. You will know that men have reconquered the sky.’
    Still, this was no time to make speeches that no one would hear, and particularly speeches that no one should hear. Master Hobart, doubtless, would be waiting and impatient. Kieron bent down to pick up his bag.
    He saw a dandelion, a dandelion clock. A stem with a head full of seeds. He plucked the stem, lifted the head and blew. Seeds drifted away in the still, morning air. Seeds supported by the gossamer threads that resisted their fall to earth.
    Kieron watched, fascinated. A few of the seeds, caught by an undetectable current of warm air, rose high and were lost against the morning sunlight. Even dandelion seeds could dance in the air. It was