Lu Half-the-Sky's Kites

At the mouth of South-City Cross Lane stood an old locust tree, and beneath it a kite stall. The keeper, surnamed Lu, was just past sixty, slightly stooped, his fingers gnarled like the knots of old bamboo - yet the moment they touched a strip of bamboo, they grew lighter than a girl's embroidery needle. The neighbors nicknamed him "Lu Half-the-Sky."

Why Half-the-Sky? Because the kites he built would rise and hang beneath the clouds for half a day without falling. True enough - but the real wonder lay further on.

Lu built frames without a ruler. He took a strip of three-year purple bamboo, split it into splints, laid one across his knee, and flicked it with his thumb. At the single ringing sound he closed his eyes and knew exactly how long to cut it and how far to bend it. Miss by half a fraction and his brow furrowed; miss by a full one and he tossed it aside and began again. People laughed at his fuss. He said, "Bamboo has bone. Miss by a fraction and the wind will bully you."

His paper swallows were stranger yet. Others' swallows, caught in a crosswind, would dive and spin; his climbed steady into the height, whatever the wind - east, west, gust or gale - the tail flicking as if alive. Once a strange wind rose west of the city and flattened every kite in the street; only his swallow circled thrice in the eye of it and settled, unharmed, on the roof.

Strangest of all was the third wonder. When the line of one of his kites snapped, it did not fall at once. It rode the wind and circled, as if it knew the way home, and at last settled gently in his own courtyard. Some said he had spelled his kites. He only smiled. "No spell. I merely learned the temper of the wind."

Lu kept a rule: for a poor child's kite he charged half; for one with no coin at all he turned, took a small one from the rack, and pressed it into the boy's hands - "Take it, and don't lose it." They told him a day's work could buy two good meals; why give it away? He waved them off. "Kites belong to the sky. The sky charges nothing; why should I?"

That Qingming, the little grandson of the Zhou family at the lane's end was lost in the temple fair. The family wept and searched the whole city to no avail. At dusk Lu heard, said nothing, took bamboo, split and papered it, and built a great eagle with a brass bell. He carried it to the city wall.

The northwest wind rose. The eagle climbed, and the bell rang across half the city. Lu narrowed his eyes along the sound and pointed toward the river. "In the reeds. The red coat."

Doubting, they ran with torches. At the river they found, deep in the reeds, a speck of red - the child, wrapped in his red padded coat, lips blue with cold, feeling his way back along the sound of the bell. In his hand he still clutched half a sweet. "I heard Grandpa Lu's eagle," he said, "and followed it home."

Afterward they asked how he had known. He said, "The wind that carries a child away will carry my eagle too. The bell is my ear; the kite is my eye. Where the wind took him, the kite could bring him back."

From then the name "Lu Half-the-Sky" rang louder still through South City. Yet he kept his stall, kept his half-price for poor children, and every day still narrowed his eyes to listen to the wind and flicked bamboo to hear its voice.

The wonder of a craftsman was never in magic. It was only in doing one thing, clear down to the bone.