Where the world breaks up into islands among the blue waves of an eastern sea, in a little house by the seashore, lived Katipah, the only child of poor parents. When they died she was left quite alone and could not find a heart in the world to care for her. She was so poor that no man thought of marrying her, and so delicate and small that as a drudge she was worth nothing to anybody.

Once a month she would go and stand at the temple gate, and say to the people as they went in to pray, “Will nobody love me?” And the people would turn their heads away quickly and make haste to get past, and in their hearts would wonder to themselves: “Foolish little Katipah! Does she think that we can spare time to love anyone so poor and unprofitable as she?”

On the other days Katipah would go down to the beach, where everybody went who had a kite to fly--for all the men in that country flew kites, and all the children,--and there she would fly a kite of her own up into the blue air; and watching the wind carrying it farther and farther away, would grow quite happy thinking how a day might come at last when she would really be loved, though her queer little outside made her seem so poor and unprofitable.

Katipah’s kite was green, with blue eyes in its square face; and in one corner it had a very small pursed-up red mouth holding a spray of peach-blossom. She had made it herself; and to her it meant the green world, with the blue sky over it when the spring begins to be sweet; and there, tucked away in one corner of it, her own little warm mouth waiting and wishing to be kissed: and out of all that wishing and waiting the blossom of hope was springing, never to be let go.

All round her were hundreds of others flying their kites, and all had some wish or prayer to Fortune. But Katipah’s wish and prayer were only that she might be loved.

The silver sandhills lay in loops and chains round the curve of the blue bay, and all along them flocks of gaily coloured kites hovered and fluttered and sprang. And, as they went up into the clear air, the wind sighing in the strings was like the crying of a young child. “Wahoo! wahoo!” every kite seemed to cradle the wailings of an invisible infant as it went mounting aloft, spreading its thin apron to the wind.

“Wahoo! wahoo!” sang Katipah’s blue-and-green kite, “shall I ever be loved by anybody?” And Katipah, keeping fast hold of the string, would watch where it mounted and looked so small, and think that surely some day her kite would bring her the only thing she much cared about.

Katipah’s next-door neighbour had everything that her own lonely heart most wished for: not only had she a husband, but a fine baby as well. Yet she was such a jealous, cross-grained body that she seemed to get no happiness out of the fortune Heaven had sent her. Husband and child seemed both to have caught the infection of her bitter temper; all day and night beating and brawling went on; there seemed no peace in that house.

But for all that the woman, whose name was Bimsha, was quite proud of being a wife and a mother: and in the daytime, when her man was away, she would look over the fence and laugh at Katipah, crying boastfully, “Don’t think you will ever have a husband, Katipah: you are too poor and unprofitable! Look at me, and be envious!”

Then Katipah would go softly away, and send up her kite by the seashore till she heard a far-off, sweet, babe-like cry as the wind blew through the strings high in air.

“Shall I ever be loved by anybody?” thought she, as she jerked at the cord; and away the kite flew higher than ever, and the sound of its call grew fainter.

One morning, in the beginning of the year, Katipah went up on to the hill under plum-boughs white with bloom, meaning to gather field-sorrel for her midday meal; and as she stooped with all her hair blowing over her face, and her skirts knotting and billowing round her pretty brown ankles, she felt as if someone had kissed her from behind.

“That cannot be,” thought Katipah, with her fingers fast upon a stalk of field-sorrel; “it is too soon for anything so good to happen.” So she picked the sorrel quietly, and put it into her basket. But now, not to be mistaken, arms came round her, and she was kissed.

She stood up and put her hands into her breast, quite afraid lest her little heart, which had grown so light, should be caught by a puff of wind and blown right away out of her bosom, and over the hill and into the sea, and be drowned.

And now her eyes would not let her doubt; there by her side stood a handsome youth, with quick-fluttering, posy-embroidered raiment. His long dark hair was full of white plum-blossoms, as though he had just pushed his head through the branches above. His hands also were loaded with the same, and they kept sifting out of his long sleeves whenever he moved his arms. Under the hem of his robe Katipah could see that he had heron’s wings bound about his ankles.

“He must be very good,” thought Katipah, “to be so beautiful! and indeed he must be very good to kiss poor me!”

“Katipah,” said the wonderful youth, “though you do not know me, I know you. It is I who so often helped you to fly your green kite by the shore. I have been up there, and have looked into its blue eyes, and kissed its little red mouth which held the peach-blossom. It was I who made songs in its strings for your heart to hear. I am the West Wind, Katipah--the wind that brings fine weather. ‘Gamma-gata’ you must call me, for it is I who bring back the wings that fly till the winter is over. And now I have come down to earth, to fetch you away and make you my wife. Will you come, Katipah?”

“I will come, Gamma-gata!” said Katipah, and she crouched and kissed the heron-wings that bound his feet; then she stood up and let herself go into his arms.

“Have you enough courage?” asked the West Wind.

“I do not know,” answered Katipah, “for I have never tried.”

“To come with me,” said the Wind, “you need to have much courage; if you have not, you must wait till you learn it. But none the less for that shall you be the wife of Gamma-gata, for I am the gate of the wild geese, as my name says, and my heart is foolish with love of you.” Gamma-gata took her up in his arms, and swung with her this way and that, tossing his way through blossom and leaf; and the sunlight became an eddy of gold round her, and wind and laughter seemed to become part of her being, so that she was all giddy and dazed and glad when at last Gamma-gata set her down.

“Stand still, my little one!” he cried--“stand still while I put on your bridal veil for you; then your blushes shall look like a rose-bush in snow!” So Katipah stood with her feet in the green sorrel, and Gamma-Gata went up into the plum-tree and shook, till from head to foot she was showered with white blossom.

“How beautiful you seem to me!” cried Gamma-gata when he returned to ground.

Then he lifted her once more and set her in the top of a plum-tree, and going below, cried up to her, “Leap, little Wind-wife, and let me see that you have courage!”

Katipah looked long over the deep space that lay between them, and trembled. Then she fixed her eyes fast upon those of her lover, and leapt, for in the laughter of his eyes she had lost all her fear.

He caught her half-way in air as she fell. “You are not really brave,” said he; “if I had shut my eyes you would not have jumped.”

“If you had shut your eyes just then,” cried Katipah, “I would have died for fear.”

He set her once more in the tree-top, and disappeared from her sight. “Come down to me, Katipah!” she heard his voice calling all round her.

Clinging fast to the topmost bough, “Oh, Gamma-gata,” she cried, “let me see your eyes, and I will come.”

Then with darkened brow he appeared to her again out of his blasts, and took her in his arms and lifted her down a little sadly till her feet touched safe earth. And he blew away the beautiful veil of blossoms with which he had showered her, while Katipah stood like a shamed child and watched it go, shredding itself to pieces in the spring sunshine.

And Gamma-gata, kissing her tenderly, said: “Go home, Katipah, and learn to have courage! and when you have learned it I will be faithful and will return to you again. Only remember, however long we may be parted, and whatever winds blow ill-fortune up to your door, Gamma-gata will watch over you. For in deed and truth you are the wife of the West Wind now, and truly he loves you, Katipah!”

“Oh, Gamma-gata!” cried Katipah, “tell the other winds, when they come, to blow courage into me, and to blow me back to you: and do not let that be long!”

“I will tell them,” said Gamma-gata; and suddenly he was gone. Katipah saw a drift of white petals borne over the tree-tops and away to sea, and she knew that there went Gamma-gata, the beautiful windy youth who, loving her so well, had made her his wife between the showers of the plum-blossom and the sunshine, and had promised to return to her as soon as she was fit to receive him.

So Katipah gathered up her field-sorrel, and went away home and ate her solitary midday meal with a mixture of pride and sorrow in her timid little breast. “Some day, when I am grown brave,” she thought, “Gamma-gata will come back to me; but he will not come yet.”