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Updated: June 17, 2025
And all the way to prison Bimsha followed, mocking her, and asking, "Tell us, Katipah, where is your fine husband now?" In the night the West Wind came and tapped at the prison window, and called tenderly, "Katipah, Katipah, are you there?"
Then she said to the chief magistrate and to all the people that were assembled: "I am innocent of all that is charged against me; for, first, it was that wicked Bimsha herself who killed her own child." "Prove it!" cried the magistrate. "I cannot," replied Katipah. "Then you must die!" said the magistrate. "In the second place," went on Katipah, "I did not eat my own child."
When the magistrate heard that, he sent and caused Katipah to be thrown into prison, and told her that the next day she should certainly be put to death. Katipah went meekly, carrying her little son in one hand and her blue-and-green kite in the other, for that had become so dear to her she could not now part from it.
So presently, when the kite was well up into the clouds, as Katipah's kite had been, she cut the cord, thinking surely that the same fortune would be for her as had been for Katipah. But instead of that, all at once the kite fell headlong to earth, child and all; and when she ran to pick him up, Bimsha found that her son's life had fallen forfeit to her own enviousness and folly.
Then Katipah would rise and open, and standing in the downpour, would cry, "East wind, east wind, go and tell your brother Gamma-gata that I am not afraid of you any more than I am of Bimsha!" One night the east wind, when she said that, pulled a tile off Bimsha's house, and threw it at her; and Katipah ran in and hid behind the door in a great hurry.
Bimsha came out of her door, and looking across to Katipah, cried, "Well, Katipah, and where is your fine husband to-day?" "My husband is gone out," said Katipah, "but if you care to look you can see my baby. It is ever so much more beautiful than yours."
Now and then, as she did so, the wind would change softly, and begin blowing from the west. Then little Katipah would pull lovingly at the string, and cry, "Oh, Gamma-gata, have you got fast hold of it up there?" One day after dusk, when she, the last of all the flyers, hauled down her kite to earth, there she found a heron's feather fastened among the strings.
And now every day and all day long she sent up her kite from the seashore, praying that a child might be born to her and convince Bimsha of the truth. Every one said: "Katipah is mad about kite-flying! See how early she goes and how late she stays: hardly any weather keeps her indoors."
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