Henry had been eleven for a fortnight when a broken cart gave him an afternoon with nothing to do.
The timber they were waiting for never arrived. Besson paid him for the morning and told him to go home. Henry stayed long enough to stack the empty baskets, then walked back to the orphanage with his hands in his pockets.
Ivo was at the receiving yard. He had been getting occasional mornings there during the past few months, checking returned equipment against written lists. Nadir would still be at the workshop. Henry considered going to see him, but they had agreed on another day, and he disliked arriving only to be told to come back later.
At the orphanage, the yard was full of washing. He ducked beneath a sheet, which dragged across his dirty-blond hair and left it damp on one side.
"You're back early," Mrs. Vautrin called from the kitchen window.
He explained about the cart and asked whether she needed anything done.
"You could take that basket upstairs. After that, please leave my laundry alone. I've counted it."
He took the basket. The shirts on top were still warm from the sun.
Upstairs, the dormitory was empty. Henry put the washing where it belonged, straightened his blanket, and sat on the bed. His trouser hems had begun to show his ankles. The rest of him had done little to fill out his clothes; when he folded his arms, the loose sleeves slipped down over his narrow elbows.
He could read. He could go for a walk. He had spent the morning wishing he could stop carrying things, and now that he had stopped, he could not settle on anything else.
A voice rose from the yard.
"If you pull it again, I'll make you swallow it."
Henry went to the window.
Tessa sat on the back step with a kite across her knees. She was twelve, with a long dark braid that struck the ground when she leaned over her work. Her mouth was set in a thin, disapproving line.
Bram stood beside her, holding a length of string pulled tight between both hands. He was the nine-year-old who had taken Nadir's bed. He slept with his knees drawn up and talked while looking for his shoes, while finding them, and usually while putting them on. Henry had become quite good at knowing when an answer was expected.
"I only wanted to see whether it was strong," Bram said.
"It's string. It doesn't get stronger because you keep testing it."
Henry came down and leaned against the doorframe.
The kite was made from two thin strips of wood and brown wrapping paper. Smaller scraps patched the corners. Tessa had drawn a face on it in charcoal, with round eyes and a mouth full of square teeth. A tail of knotted cloth lay across the step.
"What's the face for?" Henry asked.
"Looking at people."
"It'll be looking at the ground."
"That's where the people are."
He considered this, then crouched to look at the knot beneath the crossed sticks.
"Did you make it?"
"Most of it. Bram made the face worse."
"I gave it teeth."
Henry's amber eyes followed the string to the little bundle beside Bram's foot.
"Is that all you've got?"
Tessa nodded. "It was enough to try it in the yard. We're going to the bare ground above the washhouse. There's more wind there."
Henry knew the place. People spread blankets on the low grass when the public drying lines were full. Beyond it stood a long retaining wall, with tufts of yellow flowers growing between the stones.
"I could come," he said.
Bram looked at him. "Then come."
They passed a stall selling thread, buttons, and bundles of needles. Henry stopped to look at the string wound around a wooden reel beside the counter.
"How much for a length of that?"
The woman named a price and held her hands apart to show him how much it bought.
Henry took out the purse Nadir had made. He counted his coins, then counted them again. He usually knew what his money was for before he spent it. Even buying bread felt different from buying something simply because he wanted to see a kite fly higher.
"You don't have to," Tessa said. "It flies with what we've got."
"I know."
He bought the string.
The woman wound it around a scrap of wood for him. Bram watched the reel turn until Tessa pulled him away from the counter.
They walked uphill past the washhouse, where water ran beneath a grate in the street. The smell of wet cloth followed them to the open ground. Blankets lay in pale rectangles on the grass, weighted at their corners with stones. Farther along, where there was room to run, the earth had been worn smooth by feet.
Tessa set the kite down and joined the strings.
Henry watched her tie the knot. "Leave the end longer."
"I am."
"It could pull through."
She held it out to him. "Then pull it."
He tugged once. The knot held.
"Harder than that."
He pulled harder. Tessa let him examine it before taking the string back.
"You and Bram can finish testing everything later."
Bram was delighted to be included.
Henry sat on the wall with the winding stick. Tessa carried the kite out across the bare ground. She waited until a gust lifted the loose end of her braid, then raised the frame above her head.
"Now."
Henry drew the string tight. The kite rose unevenly, steadied, and began to climb. Its paper made a low rattling sound. He let out more string, feeling each pull through the wood in his hands.
For a while, he watched the face growing smaller.
The kite leaned toward the washhouse, then swung back. Its tail followed a moment later, the knots of cloth twisting separately in the wind. Henry could feel the changes before he saw them: a firm pull, a slackening, a sudden sideways tug that made him close both hands around the stick.
"Why doesn't it just turn over?" he asked.
Tessa came to sit beside him. "The tail helps. It kept spinning before we put that on."
"Does a longer one work better?"
"I don't know. We ran out of cloth."
He looked along the string again, trying to see what changed when the kite tilted. He wanted to bring it down and try another tail. He also wanted to let it go higher, and was still deciding when Bram held out his hands.
"My turn."
Henry passed him the stick and showed him how to keep the string from unwinding all at once.
"Don't hold it so tight that—"
"I have flown it before."
Henry sat back. "All right."
Bram settled beside him, his heels drumming against the wall. There was a stone in his lap, rounded and brown, which he had brought from the yard.
"Feel that."
Henry picked it up. It was faintly warm.
"[Warmth]," Bram said. "It works with both hands."
"Does it get hotter?"
"No. It just gets warm. Then it goes cold again." He nodded toward the stone. "I keep that one because it fits."
Henry turned it over in his palm. A shallow hollow on one side held his thumb comfortably.
"It does," he agreed, and gave it back.
Tessa had brought an apple. She cut it into three uneven pieces with a small knife, gave the largest to Bram, and offered one to Henry.
He bit into it. Juice ran over his thumb.
"Make mine sour," Bram said.
Tessa took his piece, held the cut side against her fingers, and returned it. He ate a mouthful and screwed up his face with evident satisfaction.
Henry looked at his own piece.
"Is that your talent?"
"[Sour]. A little more sour, anyway. I can't make something sweet."
"Could you do bread?"
"Yes, but it tastes horrible. Why?"
"Just wondering." He finished his apple and rubbed the juice from his hand onto the grass. After a moment, he added, "Can I try a bit of yours?"
She let him. It was sharper than he expected, but he liked it.
They took turns with the kite. Bram wanted to see how much string he could let out. Tessa wanted to keep it away from the washhouse roof. Henry kept asking for a little longer, until she pointed out that he had begun saying it before his turn was halfway over.
"You said you'd count," he told her.
"I am counting."
"You're counting faster for me."
"Then you count."
He did, aloud and at a steady pace. Bram joined in. Tessa lay back on the grass and covered her face with her arm.
By the time they reached thirty, Henry was laughing too much to finish properly. He gave her the stick anyway.
They stayed until the shadow of the retaining wall reached their feet.
Henry wound in the string while Tessa walked out to catch the kite. It came down slowly, the face tipping toward them as though it were trying to see where it would land. One corner of the paper had worked loose. Tessa pressed it back against the wood and said she would mend it after supper.
Henry helped Bram gather the tail so it wouldn't drag through the wet street below the washhouse.
"Do you want your string back?" Tessa asked.
He looked at the winding stick. For a moment, he wanted to take it. He had bought it, and he liked the neat weight of it in his hand.
"Leave it on," he said. "We'll need it next time."
On the way home, Bram kept turning to describe what the kite had done, although both of them had been there. Henry listened. Once he interrupted to argue that it had gone higher than Bram was claiming, and the argument lasted until they reached the orphanage gate.
Mrs. Vautrin was taking dry sheets from the line.
"You found something to do, then."
"We flew a kite," Henry said.
"So I gather." She glanced at the charcoal face poking over Bram's shoulder. "Leave it somewhere it won't be stepped on."
They put it on a high shelf in the passage. Tessa tucked the tail beside it, and Henry set the winding stick on top so it couldn't roll off.
At supper, Bram sat beside him. This made it difficult to get through a mouthful without being asked something. Henry moved his bowl out of reach of Bram's elbow and stayed where he was.
Later, he took a scrap of paper to the end of the table and began a letter to Nadir. He could give it to him when they next met. It would be good practice, and there were things about the afternoon he wanted to explain properly.
He wrote about the kite's teeth, the stone Bram kept warm, and Tessa counting too fast. Then he stopped with the pencil above the paper.
His father would have wanted to know how they had made the frame. His mother would have asked whether he had remembered to eat. He could almost hear the questions. For a little while, he let himself think about the answers.
Then he finished the letter.
Before going upstairs, Henry drew a small kite beneath his name and gave it a tail so long that it ran off the edge of the paper.