Bird by Rita Murphy

if arranged properly, make a pair of wings. I could not imagine it but agreed to bring as many as I could. They were light but awkward, and I had to be careful not to trip on their strings and tear their delicate coverings as I descended the stairs to the main floor.
    I let the Hounds out with me, holding on to their leashes for security, and hurried down to the lake.
    It was a beautiful day, the sky clear and the breeze strong and warm. Farley was there, involved in some pressing concern in the sand.
    “Come look at what I’ve made,” he shouted. I let the Hounds loose and laid the kites on the sand, placing a heavy rock on them so they wouldn’t fly away. Farley stood and stepped aside. He had crafted a house out of sand, an exact replica of the Manor, which towered above us.
    “It’s magnificent,” I said.
    “Why, thank you, miss.” He took a bow.
    “However did you make it?”
    “You wet the sand and pack it down. It’s best if you have a tin, like this,” he said, pulling an empty square tobacco tin from his pocket. “And a bucket.” He proudly displayed a rusty bucket he said he had found tangled in the driftwood.
    “We’ll make another one. One that’s not so sad. This house . . . that house,” he said, pointing up at the Manor, “it’s sad.”
    “Yes,” I said. “It is sad.” It’s more than sad, I wanted to say. It was full of something I didn’t understand, something that drew me and at times made me want to run from it and never return.
    “Farley?”
    “Yes, miss.”
    “If you owned a dwelling such as the Manor, what would you do with it?”
    “What do you mean, miss?”
    “Would you live in it?”
    “No, miss. I don’t think it likes me.”
    “Would you sell it, then?”
    “I think that would be the only thing to do.”
    “Yes,” I said. “I think the captain, Wysteria’s husband, wanted to sell it, too. At least, that is what the doctor said.”
    “But what of your mistress?”
    “She would never have left it.” Suddenly, I understood the captain’s desire to be free of everything that had to do with the Manor, the curses and the rumors of madness and the ill-gotten fortune. And I also understood that Wysteria never would have allowed it. She would have stopped him any way she could.
    “We’ll wreck it.”
    “Oh, no. You’ve worked so hard.”
    “It’s fun to wreck them. Then you can start over. Watch.” Farley took the bucket from beside him, walked down to the water’s edge and filled it to the brim. He poured the first bucket and I poured the second. After three bucketsful, the Manor had melted back into the beach, and I felt a surprising relief and joy at its demise.
    “Now,” he said. “Let’s build a different sort of house.”
    “What sort?”
    “Your dream house.”
    “I don’t have a dream house.”
    “Every girl has a house of her dreams.”
    “A cottage,” I said, remembering a tiny stone cottage I’d seen a long time ago in a storybook.
    “Yes,” he agreed. “Perfect. A neat white cottage with a cozy fire.”
    “And flowers in boxes beneath the windows.”
    “Just big enough for wee folk.”
    “Just big enough for me.”
    “Indeed.”
    We built a perfect little cottage out of sand with the help of Farley’s tin and the rusting bucket, and some lichen we peeled from rocks for window-box flowers. We left it there all day, and when the tide came up, the waves refused to disturb it, only lapping away at the foundation enough to cement it more firmly to the beach.
    The morning we spent with the kites, arranging them in different combinations and attempting to lace them to each other, but they were unwieldy, and as the wind was strong, we spent most of our time trying to keep them from flying off. By late morning, Farley had managed to arrange several of the paper kites into something that resembled a wing, for these were the ones sturdy enough to bear weight and had the appropriate clasps attached to them.
    “The paper,” Farley