LAquilone du Estrellas | Page 5

the Rajah Sumibon's lost turtle shell in the southern lands of
Diya al Din) cut the glimmering tether.
Up, up, up, higher and higher and higher she rose. She saw the winding
silver ribbon of the Pasigla, the fluted roofs of Lu Ecolia du Arcana
Menor ei Mayor, the trellises and gardens of the Plaza Emperyal, and
the dimmed streets of the Mercado du Coristas. And Maria Isabella
looked down and thought she saw everything, everything.
At one exquisite interval during her ascent, Maria Isabella thought she
spied the precise tower where Lorenzo du Vicenzio ei Salvadore, the

Stargazer, must live and work. She felt the exuberant joy of her lost
youth bubble up within her and mix with the fiery spark of love she had
kept alive for sixty years, and in a glorious blaze of irrepressible
happiness she waved her free hand with wild abandon, shouting the
name that had been forever etched into her heart.
When a powerful wind took the kite to sudden new heights, when
Ciudad Meiora and everything below her vanished in the dark, she
stopped shouting, and began to laugh and laugh and laugh.
And Maria Isabella du'l Cielo looked up at the beginning of forever and
thought of nothing, nothing at all.
And in the city below, in one of the high rooms of the silent Torre du
Astrunomos (where those who had served with distinction were housed
and honored), an old man, long-retired and plagued by cataracts, sighed
in his sleep and dreamed a dream of unnamed stars.

Story copyright (c) 2002 Dean Francis Alfar
The story "L'Aquilone du Estrellas (The Kite of Stars)" by Dean
Francis Alfar, is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.
If you redistribute this story, please include a link to
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2003/20030106/estrellas.shtml.

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