Page 77 of Catch a Kiwi
“It’s like a butler,” Summer said. “Well, that’s completely charming.” She let go of my hand, then, because she was bending down and giving the duck a pat, which made it shake its tail feathers in delight and made me smile. When she stood up again, the duck started waddling and quacking its way around the back of the house, and Summer said, “I guess we follow it,” and took my hand again until we came to a gate at the side of the house.
“Duck in, you think,” Summer said, “or duck out?”
“Out,” I said, “as they’ve had it out.”
We closed the gate behind us, and the duck quacked indignantly and waddled back and forth along the gate as if it were patrolling the perimeter. We turned to head toward the party, which was when I heard a whirring of wings and the duck flew in front of us, landed, and kept leading the way.
“That is one determined duck,” Delilah said. I didn’t answer, because I was distracted by the crowd. Adults of allages chatted and laughed in little groups on the grass and on a concrete patio edged by a low wall and a little orchard and green lawns beyond it, nothing flash about any of it. Teenage girls perched on the wall and chatted, teenage boys slouched around looking cool, and little kids ran amongst them all. At the moment, a little girl with curly ginger hair was running hard toward us and waving a long strip of birthday banner behind her like a kite. Black letters on a gold background, saying100 years lovedover and over again.She was being chased by a littler girl, maybe three or so, with darker red curls, and the duck, on seeing them, abandoned us and waddled after them as fast as its little legs would carry it. A barely-walking baby boy with skin about my color and some coppery red in his own dark curls staggered past in a futile attempt to keep up, until he fell hard to his hands and knees in front of us and hesitated a moment, screwing up his face, before letting out a wail.
Summer didn’t hesitate. She scooped up the baby, cuddled him, and said, “That was some good walking. You’re a big boy, aren’t you?” Upon which he gave her a beaming smile, showing four pearly white teeth, and said, “Walk!”
A woman with, yes, ginger curls rushed up then, reached for the little boy, and said, “Thanks. Olivia! Isobel! Come back!” The littler girl turned, but the older girl kept running, banner and all. The ginger woman said, “At least she keeps me fit,” and set off after her, scooping up the younger girl with the arm that wasn’t carrying the baby.
I said, “Let me,” and ran to catch up with the banner-waver, who was at the gate now and determinedly attempting to work the locking mechanism. I only realized that I’d never picked up a kid until I did it. She was maybe five or six, and when I grabbed her and swung her around, she squawked and said, “No! I wasrunning!I want to run in a circle aroundthe house, because circles make you dizzy and I like being dizzy. And I’m too big for picking up.”
“Odd,” I said, “as I’m picking you up right now.”
She looked at me indignantly. “That just means you’re bigger. That doesn’t mean you’re s’posed to pick me up!”
“Oh,” I said. “I could put you down and we could hold hands instead.”
“I don’t like to hold hands and walk slow,” she said. “I like to run by myself. I’m a very fast runner.”
“I noticed,” I said. “Right, then. We’ll compromise. I’ll put you down, we’ll walk back very fast, and we can both hold the banner. I’m guessing that’s your great-granddad’s, eh.”
“No,” she said. “It’s Koro’s. OK. But I get to walk in front.”
“Done.” I set her down. She wasn’t wearing a party dress or whatever a person might think. She had on a sort of blue costume with a hood and blue wings on her back, but they weren’t fairy wings. “What are you being?” I asked. “With that thing you’re wearing?”
“Blue Beetle,” she answered. “Because he can fly and he can also fight, and he’s very strong, and I’m very strong and I can fight and I wish I could fly. There are superheroes who can only fly and only fight, but that’s stupid. I want to do both things.”
“Obviously,” I said. The ginger woman was still standing with Delilah and Summer, so I went to join them, but somebody else got there first. Matiu.
The little girl asked me, “What superpower do you want best? Flying or fighting? You can have other things too, but they’re boring, except making fire, but Mummy and Matiu won’t let me make fire. They won’t even let me light amatch.”She sighed.
I said, “I have to think about it. Mmm … swimming, maybe.”
“That’s not asuperpower,”she said, swinging around tolook at me and frowning mightily. “You could have invisibility, maybe. Then you could listen to everybody’s secret plans.”
Matiu said, “Roman. Hi. Glad you came.”
“I’mtalkingto him,” the girl informed him. “You aren’t s’posed to interrupt.”
“Excuse me,” Matiu said. “My daughter Olivia. Olivia, this is Roman. Thanks for catching her. She likes to run.”
“Especially if I’m being Blue Beetle,” she said. “People can’t actually fly even in a costume unless they have a jet pack, so running’s the closest. I asked for a jet pack for Christmas, but I didn’t get one. I got a special sliding thing that is wet and you can put it on the hill and go very fast down it on your stomach, but that’s not flying. It just feels a little bit like flying. Mummy says jet packs aren’t real things you can buy, but I saw it on telly and the personwasflying, so I don’t think that’s true.”
“They’re real,” I said. “But they’re very expensive. They cost as much as …” I tried to think what comparison would register with a kid her age. “About ten cars,” I decided on. “And you can’t fly very far at all, because the jet pack can’t carry enough fuel.”
“Then they should put more fuel in it,” she said.
Matiu said. “That’s probably a battery, or whatever makes the thing go. If there’s not enough power in the jet pack to keep you off the ground, there isn’t, full stop.”
“Because magic isn’t real,” Olivia said. “I thought it was real, but now I know it’s not.” She sighed.
I said, “Fortunately, science is almost as good as magic. What science says is, if you made the jetpack carry more fuel—a bigger battery—it would be too heavy to wear. Too heavy to stay aloft. It’s an engineering problem.”
“What’s that?” Olivia asked.
