The Lesson

A Taper

Someone had put a thin wooden taper with the head of a horse into the ground by Ezra’s grave. Such things existed in the world. Gerard had heard of them soon after Ezra’s death, and thinking that there might be people flocking to the graveyard to pay their respects (a thing that never actually happened), he purchased a store of these horse-head chess-themed tapers, which he kept on sale in a little gift shop which adjoined the house which adjoined the gate which adjoined the cemetery, or which, as we have previously said, was within the cemetery. All of it was within the cemetery.

And so someone had come and bought one, and having bought it, had set it there, but having set it there, had not lit it.

Loring mused on the matter and, after a while, forgot what she was thinking about. At that point it even become possible for her to look at the taper and not see it, to look at it and not think anything at all. Aren’t our minds fragile and terrible? Anything can escape us — no matter how large, how small.

The sky was wonderfully clear of obstacles. No planes, no balloons, no dirigibles, if ever such things came and went thereabouts.

But in the distance it appeared a lone kite was flying, or being flown. Loring’s sharp eyes picked it out. It was a red kite and it moved speedily here and there, darting like a fish.

Where Loring was, there was no wind. All the wind had gone elsewhere, to the kite perhaps. Could it be that kites draw wind to them? Is that why the owners of windmills embrace the pastime of kiting? Or do they despise it? It must be one or the other.