Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Testing the Winds
Gou Haoyou knew that his father's spirit lived among the clouds. For he had seen him go up there with a soul and come down again without one.
It happened down at the harbor, the day the Chabi put to sea. When she set sail, Haoyou's father, Gou Pei, would be among her crew and gone for months on end. So Haoyou went with him, down to the docks, to make the most of him on this, their last day together. “When I get home this time,” said Pei, “we must see about you becoming an apprenticed seaman.”
Haoyou's heart quickened with fear and pride at the thought of stepping out of childhood and into his father's saltwater world.
For the first time ever, Pei took him aboard'showed him where the anchor was lodged, where the sailors slept, how the ship was steered, where the cargo would be stowed. And the biggest excitement of all was still to come: Soon, the Chabi's captain would be “testing the wind,” checking the omens for a prosperous voyage.
Farther along the harbor wall, a great commotion started up, as a ship, newly arrived from the south, disembarked its passengers: a traveling circus. For the first time in his life, Haoyou saw elephants ponderously picking their way across the gangplank, while tumblers somersaulted off the ship's rail and onto the dockside. There were acrobats in jade-green, close-fitting costumes, twirling banners of green and red, and jugglers and stilt walkers, and a man laden from head to foot with noisy birdcages. There were horses, too, ridden ashore across the sagging gangplank as recklessly as if it were a broad, stone bridge by Tartar horsemenin sky-blue shirts.
“Ragamuffin beggars,” grunted Haoyou's father -- which made Haoyou laugh, since the gorgeous circus people, finding his father's tattered rice-straw jacket, would probably have fed it to one of their elephants. The Gou family was not exactly the cream of elegant Dagu society. Still, he sensed that he should not ask to see the circus perform: Circus people were obviously not respectable -- especially when they included Tartars.
The ship on which his father, Pei, was about to set sail had a Tartar name now. Last season she had had a perfectly good Chinese name, but in an effort to curry favor with the conquering barbarians, the captain had renamed her after the Khan's favorite wife: Chabi. Pei muttered gloomily about it. Her hull had been retimbered, a new layer of wood hammered on over the old, so that she was beamier than the year before. “It looks as if the Khan's wife has been eating too many cakes,” said Pei. He laughed and put a loving arm round Haoyou's shoulders.
“Impertinent dog,” said a voice close behind them, and the Chabi's first mate took hold of Pei by his jacket and pushed him over the edge of an open hatchway.
It was no great way to fall, but Pei landed awkwardly, his leg twisted under him, and lay gasping on top of the sacks of rice that were the ship's provisions. Haoyou went to the hatchway and lowered one leg over its edge, going to help his father. But the first mate took hold of him by the collar, wrestled him along to the gangplank, and threw him off the ship.
Haoyou wondered whether to run home and tell his mother, or stay and see what happened. His father injured on the eve of a voyage? It was not good, not lucky. Lucky for Haoyou (who hated his father going away for months on a voyage), but not for the family dependent on his sailor's wages.
Haoyou decided his mother should know, and turned to run. But he found his way barred by the corpulent bellies of the merchants mustering on the dockside. Word had gone out that the Chabi was testing the wind this morning, and it seemed as if every merchant in Dagu had hurried down to judge the omens for themselves. The prosperity of the whole voyage depended on how the “wind tester” behaved.
Only if it flew well would they entrust their cargoes to the Chabi. If it flew badly, they would use some rival ship.
It was for this magnificent sight that Gou Pei had brought his son to the harbor; Haoyou had asked a hundred times to see it.
“I'm not sure,” his mother had said. “What about the poor soul on the hurdle?”
But Pei had only shrugged and said that worse things happened at sea.
Haoyou looked back at the ship. He did not want to miss the testing of the wind. Perhaps his father had only twisted his ankle, and would be fit to sail after all. The boy stood on tiptoe to estimate the depth of the crowd, his chances of pushing his way through them. None, he decided, and stayed where he was.
A strong, gusty breeze was blowing. Members of the crowd held up wetted fingers and nodded sagely. All the signs were auspicious. A cheerful sunlight brightened all the colors in their silken clothes, bleached the rust-red sails of the Chabi.
A foreigner stood among the crowd -- neither Chinese nor Mongol, but a tan-colored man with eyes shaped like a horse's or a dog's. The Chinese man alongside him was explaining the process of testing the wind.
“A hurdle is hooked to the end of a rope and set flying in the breeze . . .”
“Like a flag?” asked the foreigner.
“Not a flag exactly . . . more like a kite. Pardon my foolishness: I don't believe you have the word in your language: ‘kite.' As the men tug on the rope's end, the hurdle rises up higher and higher on the wind. If it rises up straight, the voyage will prosper. If it flies out so” -- the guide's hand, in darting out at an angle, dislodged Haoyou's cap -- “there may be problems...
The Kite Rider. Copyright © by Geraldine McCaughrean. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
