Windblowne

Начало книги

Oliver sat back on his stool. He was finished. His hands were blistered, his head ached, and his nostrils burned with the stink of boiling glue, but he was sure this one would work. After a lifetime of embarrassments and disappointments that made his toes curl to think about, he’d finally done it. This time he would fly.

For two days Oliver had snipped and sewn, boiled glue in the glue pots, lit new candles when the old ones had burned down to nubs, cursed and sucked on his cuts when he was clumsy with a knife, and paced back and forth crumpling up papers covered with his carefully drawn designs before hurling them into the corners in disgust. Then he would sit at his workbench to draw up new designs, and snip and sew some more. All the while, the midsummer winds had howled ceaselessly outside the treehouse.

Oliver stood, kicking aside discarded fragments of bamboo spars. With a triumphant sweep of his arm, he cleared the workbench. Everything spilled onto the floor with a tumultuous crash. He pulled open drawers and laid out his tools. He had new twine, new reels, his handvane, and several other useful odds and ends. He jammed it all into his pack.

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