Where the world breaks up into islands among the blue waves of an
eastern sea, in a little house by the seashore, lived Katipah, the only
child of poor parents. When they died she was left quite alone and could
not find a heart in the world to care for her. She was so poor that no
man thought of marrying her, and so delicate and small that as a drudge
she was worth nothing to anybody.
Once a month she would go and stand at the shrine gate, and say to the
people as they went in to pray, “Will nobody love me?” And the people
would turn their heads away quickly and make haste to get past, and in
their hearts would wonder to themselves: “Foolish little Katipah!
Does she think that we can spare time to love any one so poor and
unprofitable as she?”
On the other days Katipah would go down to the beach, where everybody
went who had a kite to fly--for all the men in that country flew kites,
and all the children,--and there she would fly a kite of her own up
into the blue air; and watching the wind carrying it farther and farther
away, would grow quite happy thinking how a day might come at last when
she would really be loved, though her queer little outside made her seem
so poor and unprofitable.
Katipah’s kite was green, with blue eyes in its square face; and in
one corner it had a very small pursed-up red mouth holding a spray of
peach-blossom. She had made it herself; and to her it meant the green
world, with the blue sky over it when the spring begins to be sweet,
and there, tucked away in one corner of it, her own little warm mouth
waiting and wishing to be kissed: and out of all that wishing and
waiting the blossom of hope was springing, never to be let go.
All round her were hundreds of others flying their kites, and all had
some wish or prayer to Fortune. But Katipah’s wish and prayer were only
that she might be loved.
The silver sandhills lay in loops and chains round the curve of the
blue bay, and all along them flocks of gaily coloured kites hovered and
fluttered and sprang. And, as they went up into the clear air, the wind
sighing in the strings was like the crying of a young child. “Wahoo!
wahoo!” every kite seemed to cradle the wailings of an invisible infant
as it went mounting aloft, spreading its thin apron to the wind.
“Wahoo! wahoo!” sang Katipah’s blue-and-green kite, “shall I ever be
loved by anybody?” And Katipah, keeping fast hold of the string, would
watch where it mounted and looked so small, and think that surely some
day her kite would bring her the only thing she much cared about.
Katipah’s next-door neighbour had everything that her own lonely heart
most wished for: not only had she a husband, but a fine baby as well.
Yet she was such a jealous, cross-grained body that she seemed to get
no happiness out of the fortune Heaven had sent her. Husband and child
seemed both to have caught the infection of her bitter temper: all day
and night beating and brawling went on; there seemed no peace in that
house.
But for all that the woman, whose name was Bimsha, was quite proud of
being a wife and a mother: and in the daytime, when her man was away,
she would look over the fence and laugh at Katipah, crying boastfully,
“Don’t think you will ever have a husband, Katipah: you are too poor and
unprofitable! Look at me, and be envious!”
Then Katipah would go softly away, and send up her kite by the seashore
till she heard a far-off, sweet, babe-like cry as the wind blew through
the strings high in air.
“Shall I ever be loved by anybody?” thought she, as she jerked at the
cord; and away the kite flew higher than ever, and the sound of its call
grew fainter.
One morning, in the beginning of the year, Katipah went up on to the
hill under plum-boughs white with bloom, meaning to gather field-sorrel
for her midday meal; and as she stooped with all her hair blowing over
her face, and her skirts knotting and billowing round her pretty brown
ankles, she felt as if some one had kissed her from behind.
“That cannot be,” thought Katipah, with her fingers fast upon a stalk
of field-sorrel; “it is too soon for anything so good to happen.” So she
picked the sorrel quietly, and put it into her basket. But now, not to
be mistaken, arms came round her, and she was kissed.
She stood up and put her hands into her breast, quite afraid lest her
little heart, which had grown so light, should be caught by a puff of
wind and blown right away out of her bosom, and over the hill and into
the sea, and be drowned.
And now her eyes would not let her doubt; there by her side stood a
handsome youth, with quick-fluttering, posy-embroidered raiment. His
long dark hair was full of white plum-blossoms, as though he had just
pushed his head through the branches above. His hands also were loaded
with the same, and they kept sifting out of his long sleeves whenever he
moved his arms. Under the hem of his robe Katipah could see that he had
heron’s wings bound about his ankles.
“He must be very good,” thought Katipah, “to be so beautiful! and indeed
he must be very good to kiss poor me!”
“Katipah,” said the wonderful youth, “though you do not know me, I
know you. It is I who so often helped you to fly your green kite by the
shore. I have been up there, and have looked into its blue eyes, and
kissed its little red mouth which held the peach-blossom. It was I who
made songs in its strings for your heart to hear. I am the West Wind,
Katipah--the wind that brings fine weather. ‘Gamma-gata’ you must call
me, for it is I who bring back the wings that fly till the winter is
over. And now I have come down to earth, to fetch you away and make you
my wife. Will you come, Katipah?”
“I will come, Gamma-gata!” said Katipah, and she crouched and kissed the
heron-wings that bound his feet; then she stood up and let herself go
into his arms.
“Have you enough courage?” asked the West Wind.
“I do not know,” answered Katipah, “for I have never tried.”
“To come with me,” said the Wind, “you need to have much courage; if you
have not, you must wait till you learn it. But none the less for that
shall you be the wife of Gamma-gata, for I am the gate of the wild
geese, as my name says, and my heart is foolish with love of you.”
Gamma-gata took her up in his arms, and swung with her this way and
that, tossing his way through blossom and leaf; and the sunlight became
an eddy of gold round her, and wind and laughter seemed to become part
of her being, so that she was all giddy and dazed and glad when at last
Gamma-gata set her down.
“Stand still, my little one!” he cried--“stand still while I put on your
bridal veil for you; then your blushes shall look like a rose-bush
in snow!” So Katipah stood with her feet in the green sorrel, and
Gamma-gata went up into the plum-tree and shook, till from head to foot
she was showered with white blossom.
“How beautiful you seem to me!” cried Gamma-gata when he returned to
ground.
Then he lifted her once more and set her in the top of a plum-tree, and
going below, cried up to her, “Leap, little Wind-wife, and let me see
that you have courage!”
Katipah looked long over the deep space that lay between them, and
trembled. Then she fixed her eyes fast upon those of her lover, and
leapt, for in the laughter of his eyes she had lost all her fear.
He caught her halfway in air as she fell. “You are not really brave,”
said he; “if I had shut my eyes you would not have jumped.”
“If you had shut your eyes just then,” cried Katipah, “I would have died
for fear.”
He set her once more in the treetop, and disappeared from her sight.
“Come down to me, Katipah!” she heard his voice calling all round her.
Clinging fast to the topmost bough, “Oh, Gamma-gata,” she cried, “let me
see your eyes, and I will come.”
Then with darkened brow he appeared to her again out of his blasts, and
took her in his arms and lifted her down a little sadly till her feet
touched safe earth. And he blew away the beautiful veil of blossoms with
which he had showered her, while Katipah stood like a shamed child and
watched it go, shredding itself to pieces in the spring sunshine.
And Gamma-gata, kissing her tenderly, said: “Go home, Katipah, and learn
to have courage! and when you have learned it I will be faithful and
will return to you again. Only remember, however long we may be parted,
and whatever winds blow ill-fortune up to your door, Gamma-gata will
watch over you. For in deed and truth you are the wife of the West Wind
now, and truly he loves you, Katipah!”
“Oh, Gamma-gata!” cried Katipah, “tell the other winds, when they come,
to blow courage into me, and to blow me back to you; and do not let that
be long!”
“I will tell them,” said Gamma-gata; and suddenly he was gone. Katipah
saw a drift of white petals borne over the treetops and away to sea,
and she knew that there went Gamma-gata, the beautiful windy youth who,
loving her so well, had made her his wife between the showers of the
plum-blossom and the sunshine, and had promised to return to her as soon
as she was fit to receive him.
So Katipah gathered up her field-sorrel, and went away home and ate her
solitary midday meal with a mixture of pride and sorrow in her
timid little breast. “Some day, when I am grown brave,” she thought,
“Gamma-gata will come back to me; but he will not come yet.”
In the evening Bimsha looked over the fence and jeered at her. “Do not
think, Katipah,” she cried, “that you will ever get a husband, for all
your soft looks! You are too poor and unprofitable.”
Katipah folded her meek little body together like a concertina when
it shuts, and squatted to earth in great contentment of spirit. “Silly
Bimsha,” said she, “I already have a husband, a fine one! Ever so much
finer than yours!”
Bimsha turned pale and cold with envy to hear her say that, for she
feared that Katipah was too good and simple to tell her an untruth, even
in mockery. But she put a brave face upon the matter, saying only, “I
will believe in that fine husband of yours when I see him!”
“Oh, you will see him,” answered Katipah, “if you look high enough! But
he is far away over your head, Bimsha; and you will not hear him beating
me at night, for that is not his way!”
At this soft answer Bimsha went back into her house in a fury, and
Katipah laughed to herself. Then she sighed, and said, “Oh, Gamma-gata,
return to me quickly, lest my word shall seem false to Bimsha, who hates
me!”
Every day after this Bimsha thrust her face over the fence to say:
“Katipah, where is this fine husband of yours? He does not seem to come
home often.”
Katipah answered slily; “He comes home late, when it is dark, and he
goes away very early, almost before it is light. It is not necessary for
his happiness that he should see _you_.”
“Certainly there is a change in Katipah,” thought Bimsha: “she has
become saucy with her tongue.” But her envious heart would not allow
her to let matters be. Night and morning she cried to Katipah, “Katipah,
where is your fine husband?” And Katipah laughed at her, thinking to
herself: “To begin with, I will not be afraid of anything Bimsha may
say. Let Gamma-gata know that!”
And now every day she looked up into the sky to see what wind was
blowing; but east, or north, or south, it was never the one wind that
she looked for. The east wind came from the sea, bringing rain, and
beat upon Katipah’s door at night. Then Katipah would rise and open, and
standing in the downpour, would cry, “East wind, east wind, go and tell
your brother Gamma-gata that I am not afraid of you any more than I am
of Bimsha!”
One night the east wind, when she said that, pulled a tile off Bimsha’s
house, and threw it at her; and Katipah ran in and hid behind the door
in a great hurry. After that she had less to say when the east wind came
and blew under her gable and rattled at her door. “Oh, Gamma-gata,” she
sighed, “if I might only set eyes on you, I would fear nothing at all!”
When the weather grew fine again Katipah returned to the shore and
flew her kite as she had always done before the love of Gamma-gata had
entered her heart. Now and then, as she did so, the wind would change
softly, and begin blowing from the west. Then little Katipah would pull
lovingly at the string, and cry, “Oh, Gamma-gata, have you got fast hold
of it up there?”
One day after dusk, when she, the last of all the flyers, hauled down
her kite to earth, there she found a heron’s feather fastened among the
strings. Katipah knew who had sent that, and kissed it a thousand times
over; nor did she mind for many days afterwards what Bimsha might say,
because the heron’s feather lay so close to her heart, warming it with
the hope of Gamma-gata’s return.
But as weeks and months passed on, and Bimsha still did not fail to say
each morning, “Katipah, where is your fine husband to-day?” the timid
heart grew faint with waiting. “Alas!” thought Katipah, “if Heaven
would only send me a child, I would show it to her; she would believe
me easily then! However tiny, it would be big enough to convince her.
Gamma-gata, it is a very little thing that I ask!”
And now every day and all day long she sent up her kite from the
seashore, praying that a child might be born to her and convince Bimsha
of the truth. Every one said: “Katipah is mad about kite-flying! See
how early she goes and how late she stays: hardly any weather keeps her
indoors.”
One day the west wind came full-breathed over land and sea, and Katipah
was among the first on the beach to send up her messenger with word to
Gamma-gata of the thing for which she prayed. “Gamma-gata,” she sighed,
“the voice of Bimsha afflicts me daily; my heart is bruised by the
mockery she casts at me. Did I not love thee under the plum-tree,
Gamma-gata? Ask of Heaven, therefore, that a child may be born to
me--ever so small let it be--and Bimsha will become dumb. Gamma-gata, it
is a very little thing that I am asking!”
All day long she let her kite go farther up into the sky than all the
other kites. Overhead the wind sang in their strings like bees, or like
the thin cry of very small children; but Katipah’s was so far away she
could scarcely see it against the blue. “Gamma-gata,” she cried; till
the twilight drew sea and land together, and she was left alone.
Then she called down her kite sadly; hand over hand she drew it by
the cord, till she saw it fluttering over her head like a great moth
searching for a flower in the gloom. “Wahoo! wahoo!” she could hear the
wind crying through its strings like the wailing of a very small child.
It had become so dark that Katipah hardly knew what the kite had brought
her till she touched the tiny warm limbs that lay cradled among the
strings that netted the frame to its cord. Full of wonder and delight,
she lifted the windling out of its nest, and laid it in her bosom.
Then she slung her kite across her shoulder, and ran home, laughing and
crying for joy and triumph to think that all Bimsha’s mockery must now
be at an end. So, quite early the next morning, Katipah sat herself down
very demurely in the doorway, with her child hidden in the folds of her
gown, and waited for Bimsha’s evil eye to look out upon her happiness.
She had not long to wait. Bimsha came out of her door, and looking
across to Katipah, cried, “Well, Katipah, and where is your fine husband
to-day?”
“My husband is gone out,” said Katipah, “but if you care to look you can
see my baby. It is ever so much more beautiful than yours.”
Bimsha, when she heard that, turned green and yellow with envy; and
there, plain to see, was Katipah holding up to view the most beautiful
babe that ever gave the sunlight a good excuse for visiting this wicked
earth. The mere sight of so much innocent beauty and happiness gave
Bimsha a shock from which it took her three weeks to recover. After that
she would sit at her window and for pure envy keep watch to see Katipah
and the child playing together--the child which was so much more
beautiful and well-behaved than her own.
As for Katipah, she was so happy now that the sorrow of waiting for her
husband’s return grew small. Day by day the west wind blew softly,
and she knew that Gamma-gata was there, keeping watch over her and her
child.
Every day she would say to the little one, “Come, my plum-petal, my
wind-flower, I will send thee up to thy father that he may see how fat
thou art getting, and be proud of thee!” And going down to the shore,
she would lay the child among the strings of her kite and send it up to
where Gamma-gata blew a wide breath over sea and land. As it went she
would hear the child crow with joy at being so uplifted from earth,
and laughing to herself, she would think, “When he sees his child so
patterned after his own heart, Gamma-gata will be too proud to remain
long away from me.”
When she drew the child back to her out of the sky, she covered it with
caresses, crying, “Oh, my wind-blown one, my cloudlet, my sky-blossom,
my little piece out of heaven, hast thou seen thy father, and has he
told thee that he loves me?” And the child would crow with mysterious
delight, being too young to tell anything it knew in words.
Bimsha, out of her window, watched and saw all this, not comprehending
it: and in her evil heart a wish grew up that she might by some means
put an end to all Katipah’s happiness. So one day towards evening, when
Katipah, alone upon the shore, had let her kite and her little one go
up to the fleecy edges of a cloud through which the golden sunlight
was streaming, Bimsha came softly behind and with a sharp knife cut the
string by which alone the kite was held from falling.
“Oh, silly Bimsha!” cried Katipah, “what have you done that for?”
Up in air the kite made a far plunge forward, fluttered and stumbled
in its course, and came shooting headlong to earth. “Oh dear!” cried
Katipah, “it my beautiful little kite gets torn, Bimsha, that will be
your fault!”
When the kite fell, it lay unhurt on one of the soft sandhills that
ringed the bay; but no sign of the child was to be seen. Katipah was
laughing when she picked up her kite and ran home. And Bimsha thought,
“Is it witchcraft, or did the child fall into the sea?”
In the night the West Wind came and tapped at Katipah’s window; and
rising from her bed, she heard Gamma-gata’s voice calling tenderly to
her. When she opened the window to the blindness of the black night, he
kissed her, and putting the little one in her arms, said, “Wait only a
little while longer, Katipah, and I will come again to you. Already you
are learning to be brave.”
In the morning Bimsha looked out, and there sat Katipah in her own
doorway, with the child safe and sound in her arms. And, plain to see,
he had on a beautiful golden coat, and little silver wings were fastened
to his feet, and his head was garnished with a wreath of flowers the
like of which were never seen on earth. He was like a child of noble
birth and fortune, and the small motherly face of Katipah shone with
pride and happiness as she nursed him.
“Where did you steal those things?” asked Bimsha, “and how did that
child come back? I thought he had fallen into the sea and been drowned.”
“Ah!” answered Katipah slily, “he was up in the clouds when the kite
left him, and he came down with the rain last night. It is nothing
wonderful. You were foolish, Bimsha, if you thought that to fall into
the clouds would do the child any harm. Up there you can have no idea
how beautiful it is--such fields of gold, such wonderful gardens, such
flowers and fruits: it is from there that all the beauty and wealth of
the world must come. See all that he has brought with him! and it is all
your doing, because you cut the cord of the kite. Oh, clever Bimsha!”
As soon as Bimsha heard that, she ran and got a big kite, and fastening
her own child into the strings, started it to fly. “Do not think,”
cried the envious woman, “that you are the only one whose child is to
be clothed in gold! My child is as good as yours any day; wait, and you
shall see!”
So presently, when the kite was well up into the clouds, as Katipah’s
kite had been, she cut the cord, thinking surely that the same fortune
would be for her as had been for Katipah. But instead of that, all at
once the kite fell headlong to earth, child and all; and when she ran to
pick him up, Bimsha found that her son’s life had fallen forfeit to her
own enviousness and folly.
The wicked woman went green and purple with jealousy and rage; and
running to the chief magistrate, she told him that while she was flying
a kite with her child fastened to its back, Katipah had come and had cut
the string, so that by her doing the child was now dead.
When the magistrate heard that, he sent and caused Katipah to be thrown
into prison, and told her that the next day she should certainly be put
to death.
Katipah went meekly, carrying her little son in one hand and her
blue-and-green kite in the other, for that had become so dear to her she
could not now part from it. And all the way to prison Bimsha followed,
mocking her, and asking, “Tell us, Katipah, where is your fine husband
now?”
In the night the West Wind came and tapped at the prison window, and
called tenderly, “Katipah, Katipah, are you there?” And when Katipah got
up from her bed of straw and looked out, there was Gamma-gata once more,
the beautiful youth whom she loved and had been wedded to, and had heard
but had not seen since.
Gamma-gata reached his hands through the bars and put them round her
face. “Katipah,” he said, “you have become brave: you are fit now to
become the wife of the West Wind. To-morrow you shall travel with me all
over the world; you shall not stay in one land any more. Now give me our
son; for a little while I must take him from you. To prove your courage
you must find your own way out of this trouble which you have got into
through making a fool of Bimsha.”
So Katipah gave him the child through the bars of her prison window, and
when he was gone lay down and slept till it became light.
In the morning the chief magistrate and Bimsha, together with the whole
populace, came to Katipah’s cell to see her led out to death. And when
it was found that her child had disappeared, “She is a witch!” they
cried; “she has eaten it!” And the chief magistrate said that, being a
witch, instead of hanging she was to be burned.
“I have not eaten my child, and I am no witch,” said Katipah, as,
taking with her her blue-and-green kite she trotted out to the place of
execution. When she was come to the appointed spot she said to the chief
magistrate, “To every criminal it is permitted to plead in defence of
himself; but because I am innocent, am I not also allowed to plead?” The
magistrate told her she might speak if she had anything to say.
“All I ask,” said Katipah, “is that I may be allowed once more to fly my
blue-and-green kite as I used to do in the days when I was happy; and I
will show you soon that I am not guilty of what is laid to my charge. It
is a very little thing that I ask.”
So the magistrate gave her leave; and there before all the people she
sent up her kite till it flew high over the roofs of the town.
Gently the West Wind took it and blew it away towards the sea. “Oh,
Gamma-gata,” she whispered softly, “hear me now, for I am not afraid.”
The wind blew hard upon the kite, and pulled as though to catch it away,
so Katipah twisted the cord once or twice round her waist that she might
keep the safer hold over it. Then she said to the chief magistrate and
to all the people that were assembled: “I am innocent of all that is
charged against me; for, first, it was that wicked Bimsha herself who
killed her own child.”
“Prove it!” cried the magistrate.
“I cannot,” replied Katipah.
“Then you must die!” said the magistrate.
“In the second place,” went on Katipah, “I did not eat my own child.”
“Prove it!” cried the chief magistrate again.
“I will,” said Katipah; “O Gamma-gata, it is a very little thing that I
ask.”
Down the string of the kite, first a mere speck against the sky, then
larger till plain for all to see came the missing one, slithering and
sliding, with his golden coat, and the little silver wings tied to his
ankles, and handfuls of flowers which he threw into his mother’s face as
he came. “Oh! cruel chief magistrate,” cried Katipah, receiving the babe
in her arms, “does it seem that I have eaten him?”
“You are a witch!” said the chief magistrate, “or how do you come to
have a child that disappears and comes again from nowhere! It is not
possible to permit such things to be: you and your child shall both be
burned together!”
Katipah drew softly upon the kite-string. “Oh, Gamma-gata,” she cried,
“lift me up now very high, and I will not be afraid!”
Then suddenly, before all eyes, Katipah was lifted up by the cord of the
kite which she had wound about her waist; right up from the earth she
was lifted till her feet rested above the heads of the people.
Katipah, with her babe in her arms, swung softly through the air, out of
reach of the hands stretched up to catch her, and addressed the populace
in these words:
“Oh, cruel people, who will not believe innocence when it speaks, you
must believe me now! I am the wife of the West Wind--of Gamma-gata, the
beautiful, the bearer of fine weather, who also brings back the wings
that fly till the winter is over. Is it well, do you think, to be at war
with the West Wind?
“Ah, foolish ones, I go now, for Gamma-gata calls me, and I am no longer
afraid: I go to travel in many lands, whither he carries me, and it will
be long before I return here. Many dark days are coming to you, when you
shall not feel the west wind, the bearer of fine weather, blowing over
you from land to sea; nor shall you see the blossoms open white over the
hills, nor feel the earth grow warm as the summer comes in, because the
bringer of fair weather is angry with you for the foolishness which you
have done. But when at last the west wind returns to you, remember that
Katipah, the poor and unprofitable one, is Gamma-gata’s wife, and that
she has remembered, and has prayed for you.”
And so saying, Katipah threw open her arms and let go the cord of the
kite which held her safe. “Oh, Gamma-gata,” she cried, “I do not see
your eyes, but I am not afraid!” And at that, even while she seemed upon
the point of falling to destruction, there flashed into sight a fair
youth with dark hair and garments full of a storm of flying petals, who,
catching up Katipah and her child in his arms, laughed scorn upon those
below, and roaring over the roofs of the town, vanished away seawards.
When a chief magistrate and his people, after flagrant wrong-doing,
become thoroughly cowed and frightened, they are apt also to be cruel.
Poor Bimsha!