The Blank Tag at the Sea Wall

The kite shop stood in a narrow building at the end of the sea wall. For three weeks it had been the scene of a war with no weapons. On one side was Damir, who had worked there for two summers. On the other side was Vasco, who had arrived in July with a rucksack and a smile that Damir did not trust.

The war was kept on a whiteboard behind the counter. Every kite sold was marked beside a name. The owner had drawn the board herself, and she had made one promise about it. Whoever sold more kites by the night before the festival would fly the shop's giant kite on the beach, in front of the whole town.

By Friday evening the score was thirty-eight to thirty-eight.

"This is ridiculous," Vasco said, leaning on the counter. "You sold that last diamond kite to your own cousin."

"And you sold a box of string to a man who only wanted directions," Damir said.

"He wanted the string."

"He wanted the pier."

The owner interrupted them by dropping a heavy metal ring on the counter. It held nine keys, and eight of them wore small paper labels in her neat handwriting: Front Door, Till, Cellar, Bike Lock, Store. The ninth key was longer and darker than the others, and its label had worn away completely. A blank square of grey card hung from it.

"I have to drive to the next town at dawn to collect the festival order," she said. "I will meet you on the beach at noon. The giant kite is in the loft, and the lines are in the locker on the sea wall. Do not lose the keys. Do not break anything. And do not kill each other."

"Which key opens the loft?" Damir asked.

"You are clever boys. You will work it out."

She left before either of them could point out that this was not an answer.

The morning of the festival arrived bright and breezy, and the first problem arrived with it. The loft door had a brass padlock, and neither of the two boys could find the key for it. Damir tried the keys in the order he thought made sense. Vasco tried them in the opposite order, because he refused to do anything Damir did. Neither of them bothered with the labels for other rooms: Store, Cellar and Till.

By nine o'clock they had both tried every other key twice, and the padlock hung there like a stubborn tooth.

"It must be the blank one," Vasco said.

"Obviously it is the blank one. I tried it first."

"You tried it upside down."

"I did not try it upside down."

Vasco took the ring, turned the blank key the other way, and pushed it into the lock. It stopped halfway. He pulled and twisted, and then he swore quietly, a word that was very mild and very Vasco. The lock did not move.

For a few minutes they argued in the narrow hallway, close enough to hear each other breathe. Then Damir stopped in the middle of a sentence.

"Wait," he said. "Say that again."

"Say what?"

"The part about the blank key. You said it stops halfway."

"Because it is the wrong key."

"Or because it is not for this lock," Damir said slowly. He took the ring from Vasco's hand. For the first time that summer he looked at the key properly instead of looking at the person who held it. "The owner said the lines are in the locker on the sea wall. We never opened the locker. We assumed the old key was for the loft, but the loft is a normal padlock. This one is a long barrel key. I have seen a lock like that. It is the locker."

Vasco looked at him for a moment without his usual smile. "Fine. You go and open the locker. I will find the loft key."

"You already tried them."

"I tried them as a person who was angry at you. Give me ten minutes."

It was not an apology, and Damir knew it, but it was close enough to be useful.

He ran out to the sea wall with the ring jangling in his fist. The locker was a grey steel box bolted into the stone, half hidden by a rusty life ring, and the blank key fitted it perfectly. Inside lay six coils of kite line, a pair of gloves and a canvas bag with the shop's name printed on it. Damir carried the bag to the shop. There he found Vasco kneeling in front of the loft door with a pencil and a page of the owner's old receipts.

"Look," Vasco said. "She writes everything down. The loft key is on the list under Store, not Loft. She never changed the label. It is that one."

The padlock opened with a small, ordinary click.

It took them another twenty minutes to carry the giant kite down the narrow stairs. It was three metres wide, built of orange sailcloth and thin white poles, and every corner of the staircase seemed designed to catch it. Damir took the front. Vasco took the back. They stopped arguing about who should walk backwards, and then they simply took turns.

At twenty to twelve they arrived on the beach, breathless, with a kite that smelled of dust and old wood. The festival was already bright with colours. Children ran across the sand dragging paper dragons. Somebody had set up a loudspeaker. Half the town seemed to be there, and the owner stood at the front with her arms folded and an expression nobody could read.

"You found the loft," she said.

"We found the loft," Damir said, "and the locker."

"Good." She looked at the blank tag on the ring. "I meant to write that label last week. I forgot."

"You forgot?" Vasco said.

"I am a kite maker, not a locksmith." She almost smiled. "Which of you is flying it?"

The two boys looked at each other. The whiteboard in the shop still said thirty-eight to thirty-eight, and they both knew it.

"It needs two people," Vasco said. "Look at the size of it."

"Somebody has to launch and somebody has to hold the line," Damir said. "It is not a one-person kite."

"No," the owner said. "It never was."

They carried it down to the water's edge, where the wind came in steady from the sea. Damir held the line. Vasco lifted the kite over his head, ran six steps across the wet sand, and let go. For a heartbeat it hung there, heavy and undecided. Then the wind caught the orange sail, and the line pulled hard against Damir's gloves, and the whole kite rose.

The crowd cheered, and the loudspeaker crackled. Neither boy heard any of it.

Later, when the festival was over, they sat together on the sea wall with the ring of keys between them. The giant kite flew far out over the water, a small orange shape against the last light, and the line hummed softly in their hands.