Mina and the Sky-Loom

Morning on the cliff smelled like salt and warm flour. The windmills of Norridge groaned and laughed as their sails spun. Cloth kites tugged at their strings like puppies eager for a walk. Mina ran along the path above the harbor with a kite on her shoulder and a small metal bird hopping after her. The bird’s tin wings flicked with a neat ticking sound. It was hardly bigger than her two hands, and its brass eyes blinked.

“Tock, are you ready?” she asked. The bird tilted its head and let out a soft chirp that sounded like the little click you hear when a clock agrees.

Mina’s hair was a mess of brown curls, tied back with a ribbon that used to be part of a kite tail. Everyone in Norridge knew she could fly anything that had a string. She smelled the air to test it, the way Old Laleh had taught her. The breeze tasted of rope and clean nets. Good wind.

From the square below, bakers carried sacks of new flour, and the miller’s boy shook out his hands, grinning at the fast sails. The Wind Festival banners flapped. Their bright shapes were already awake, even though the sun had barely climbed over the line of the sea.

“Finn!” Mina called. Her little brother leaned on the fence by the path, a slice of apple in one hand and his other hand tucked in his sweater sleeve like a shy crab. “Come on! Laleh will be opening the shop early!”

Finn trotted to catch up, his boots slapping the packed dirt. “Will your dragon kite do a loop today?”

“It will if the wind behaves,” Mina said. She lifted the kite, a green diamond with stitched eyes and felt teeth. Tock fluttered up to her shoulder and pecked the top of the frame as if inspecting it.

The kite-maker’s shop was a purple door squeezed between a rope seller and a tea stall. Ribbons hung like seaweed in the window, and spools of thread sat in the sun like little round cats. Laleh stood behind the counter, brown hands busy, hair wrapped in a scarf that used to be part of a sail. She wore a silver thimble on her thumb.

“Ah, Mina-bird,” she said. “And clock-sparrow. Come to show me how high you’ll climb today?”

Mina put the kite on the counter. “The wind is perfect. I can feel it in my eyelashes.”

Laleh chuckled. “Then go, go. The sky is big, and you are small, but the string is the right size for both.”

A caravan creaked past the shop window. Bottles clinked softly. A thin man in a coat the color of fog walked beside the cart. He had a neat beard and careful hands. The bottles were stoppered with wax and labels painted with names: Harbor Whistle, Mill-Gust, Kite’s Laugh.

“That’s Mr. Bramble,” Finn whispered. “The bottle-man. He’s been buying breezes all week.”

Laleh’s mouth went flat for a second, then softened. “He says he keeps the best winds safe. Hm.”

Mina leaned closer to the window. Mr. Bramble lifted one bottle, smiled at its faint rattling, and tucked it under a cloth.

“Winds don’t like cages,” Mina said. She stepped outside, and the breeze stroked her cheek in answer.