Free Bird by Rita Murphy Page B

and everything to do with flight. He’d flown many kites with his brothers along the Irish coast, as that was where he had come from.
    “A great green island,” he said of it. “With mountains and streams, dragons and wee folk.”
    “Dragons?”
    He laughed. “No. There are no more dragons, though people say they once roamed the high ridges. But there are wee folk still. Me cousin Leo saw one himself in the grove at St. Bernard’s. They live in the valleys mostly, but they’ll come out into the fields now and again.”
    “What are they?”
    “Small folk. A quarter the size of yourself. Mischief makers, the lot of them, unless you find one with his stash of gold, catch him and tie him fast. Then you’ll come out a rich man in the end, with no landlord to hover over you.”
    “It sounds like a fairy-tale place.”
    “It is . . . in a way. But it’s a hard place, too.”
    “Are there all sorts of seabirds there?” I asked.
    “By the ocean, you mean?”
    I nodded.
    “Get on with you. Have you never seen the ocean yourself ?”
    “Never.”
    “A girl like you? ’Tis criminal.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    He adjusted the tension on the line and swung his leg over the rock on which he sat. “You can’t imagine how many there are . . . like yourself. You can’t imagine until you’ve seen it with your own eyes.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “They’re everywhere. Dodging and flying about. Small ones with tiny pencil legs and great big ones with beaks to beat the band.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Don’t you know what you are, girl?” I shook my head.
    “You’re a bird, for sure.”
    I laughed. “I am not.”
    “The ones deny it are the ones that are. Me gran in Donegal used to know one.”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    “That’s why you can’t go out on your own, why you wear those boots, isn’t it? So the wind won’t take you?” I felt my face flush.
    “They’re all slight, like you, and bound to the wind and in need of protection till they can find their way. Me gran said the one she knew got blown away while she was still too young to know.” I couldn’t believe what he was saying.
    “I’ve known it from the start. You can’t believe it yourself yet, only ’cause you haven’t known.”
    “But I’ve never seen anyone else like me. I’ve never even heard of anyone who gets picked up by the wind.”
    “You haven’t known who you are, so why would you look for others like yourself ?”
    “If what you say is true, where would I look?”
    “Have you ever had a thought to go somewhere? Someplace you’ve never been?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “Aw, come on now. Don’t you know?”
    “Well, I’ve always wanted to go across the lake,” I said, pointing to the opposite shore. “Close to the mountains. I had a dream once that I was sitting on that tall one. The one with the little bald spot gracing the top.”
    “Maybe the mountains are calling you. Maybe there are others there like you.” His eyes lit up. “Maybe it’s the place the wind is always trying to take you, only you’re afraid to let it.”
    “How would I get there?”
    “Fly.”
    “It’s not like that, Farley. I don’t fly. I just get picked up and the wind decides.”
    “Then you need wings.”
    I laughed again. “And where would I find wings?”
    Farley pointed up to the sky at the Red Dragon and the Blue Devil, as he had named it. “There, miss,” he said. “There are your wings.”

11
    I dreamt of wings. All through the night. Wings of birds and dragons and even the tiny wings of fireflies. All beating at a constant rhythm. All open to the wind. I woke with the feeling of them about me, fluttering above my head, pulling at my shoulders, as if I too possessed appendages for flight.
    I did not notice the day outside or even stop for breakfast but gathered as quickly as I could all the kites from the walk and those still remaining in the attic. Farley had proposed the idea that the kites might,