The Boy Who Flew

by Fleur Hitchcock

  “Won’t change my world,” mutters Grandma. “Not if it’s anything to do with that—”

  “Shut up!” Ma and Polly say together.

  For a moment Ma looks at me. As if she might almost believe me and so I step closer. “Ma,” I say quietly. “You’re being led astray. We need to stand against him, keep him out.”

  There’s a long pause. Ma turns to look at herself in the mirror. Bedraggled and undone, her hair hangs in wet coils, some stuck to her neck, the black around her eyes wandering madly down her face. The red of her lips has gone completely. “Lost two children, I have.” She breathes in and her whole body shakes with sobs. “One to thieves, the other to lies.”

  “They’re not lies, Ma. I’m not lying – that man’s dangerous.”

  “Hush,” she says. “Athan, Athan – you know he’s the best thing to happen to me for years. How can you be so cruel?” Her eyes vanish behind the crying and I step forward to hold her, to hug her, but she pushes me away, me and Beatty’s doll as if we’re the worst things she’s ever seen.

  She turns and goes off up the stairs. Her soggy skirt thumping behind her.

  From the top of the stairs, she shouts, “Go, boy. Go. Take that evil man’s box out of this Christian house and don’t come back until you’ve learned to tell the truth.”

  “C’mon,” says Tod from behind me. “You can’t do nothing about it.”

  “What d’you do that for?” asks Tod as we leave the house.

  “I don’t know,” I say, shoving the ball deeper in my pocket. “I hoped she might believe me.”

  “Stop!” shouts a voice from behind us, and Polly comes clattering down the street, her skirts held up around her waist. “Athan,” she pants. “What’s going on?! What is that thing – I want to know and I want to know now!”

  Todd goes to check the timber yards on his way home. Me and Polly stand shivering in an alley, a dusting of grey daylight snow falling all around us as the church bells strike eight.

  “Well?” she says. “Tell me.”

  “From the beginning?” I say.

  She nods.

  I check the alley, and down the street, and listen hard for footsteps.

  “C’mon, Athan, tell me before we both freeze to death.”

  I take a deep breath, and start talking. “Mr Chen and me, we built a flying machine.”

  “Oh, Athan,” she gasps, slapping her hand over her mouth. “How wonderful!”

  “And there’s a prize, as you know.”

  “Ten thousand guineas, in the paper.”

  “Yes, but the Colonel must have got wind of it – he’s after it. So he’s taken Beatty to make me give him the flying machine.”

  Polly shakes her head. “So he’s not Ma’s shining prince then,” she says after a million snowflakes have landed on us.

  “No,” I say. “He almost certainly murdered Mr Chen and Mr Haddock, and tried to murder Uncle.”

  Polly shivers. “So he did all that to get his hands on this machine. Which you’re going to give him,” she says.

  “I’m going to give him the plans for it,” I say, rolling the ball around my pocket.

  With her toe, she traces a circle in the snow.

  “But I’m not going to give him the actual machine.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “He doesn’t know about it. We could build it, get it up in the air, get the prize while he’s still puzzling out the drawings. They’re all in Chinese anyway. It’ll take him ages.”

  A carriage rattles past over the cobbles, the horses skidding on the ice and the coachman shouting.

  “So you’re thinking that you hand over the plans to this murderer, and he gives back Beatty.”

  “Yes.” I nod.

  Polly gazes off down the street, the snowflakes eddying and landing on her thick hair until she looks like some kind of snow princess.

  “He might not,” she says.

  “He’ll have to, or I won’t give them to him.”

  Polly twists her mouth. She’s finding the holes in my plan but I can’t afford to let her.

  “It’ll work,” I say.

  “How are you going to do it then?”

  “I need to get him to give me proof that Beatty’s still alive first. And then arrange for the handover to be in a public place – like the assembly rooms, or by the abbey.” I’m making it up as I go along.

  She knows I am and sucks snowflakes off a strand of hair.

  “Is there anyone you could use as a go-between – a reliable person? So there’s less chance of the Colonel double-crossing you?”

  Straining to think of someone, I remember Mr Katz. I don’t know him well but he’s sound. “There is,” I say. “I could ask that Beatty be left there, and give the plans over to him to pass on.”

  “Hmmm,” she says.

  “What?” I say.

  “You’re taking a big chance, Athan,” she says eventually. “If you’re right, and the Colonel killed Mr Chen, how do you know he didn’t find out about the machine? How can you be so sure? He might be after much more.”

  I watch her go back inside the house, and shortly afterwards the Colonel crosses from one house to the other, smiling, walking easily with long loping strides. I think he knows I’m watching him. And it doesn’t bother him one bit.

  Although I’m tired, I know that whatever happens we have to get on with the machine and, struggling up into Tod’s loft, I catch him fast asleep at his desk.

  “We’ve got to get it finished,” I say, lugging the soggy structure through the window and into his workshop.

  “Oh, Athan.” he says, rubbing his eyes. “No trace of Beatty, by the way – I asked in the timber yards.”

  “You won’t find her – he’s hidden her well. Anyway, we need someone who can sew,” I say. “And not Polly – he’s going to have his eyes on her.”

  “What are you on about?” Tod staggers to his feet and sits down again. “Thought if we couldn’t find her you were going to deliver the plans?”

  “I will, I will, but Polly’s going to talk to the Colonel, try to get proof that Beatty’s still alive first. That buys us a few hours, but once they have the plans they’ll build it in days – if we’re going to win the prize we need to beat them to a finished machine.”

  “If you say so,” says Tod.

  “The engine’s more or less sorted. But Mr Chen and me, we never attached the silk to the frame properly. We kept trying with glue, but it needs sewing together. Neat little stitches, not the kind of thing I’d do. Small stitches are stronger.”

  “I’m no good for that,” says Tod, attempting to stretch the wet fabric over the wooden frame. “Nor’s anybody here.”

  “Do you think Mary would do it?” I ask.

  Tod looks at his boots. “You could ask her.”

  I remember what Polly said about go-betweens. “Right,” I say. “I will. And while I’m gone, see if you can work out a way of attaching the engine to the frame.”

  “Yes, sir,” says Tod, taking a bite out of an apple and sitting back down on the floor.

  The shutters are open on the Katz house and I slip around the back, up over the garden wall and down again, so that I can catch Mary in the kitchen.

  “Oh, Athan!” she says, sitting down suddenly in a chair. “You gave me a turn.”

  “I want to ask you a favour.”

  There’s a warm pie, just out of the oven, and the smell is almost unbearable. I can’t keep my eyes from it. I must make it too obvious because Mary covers it with a cloth and sticks it out of sight, but I can still smell it.

  “You know about Beatty,” I say.

  “Is she still missing?” she asks.

  “Yes, and we know who took her and why.”

  “Tell the constable,” she says.

  “No, I can’t prove it, but we can get her back – I’m sure of it. It’s just that we need someone who can sew really well.”

  “How on earth is sewing going to help get your ba
by sister back?”

  “It’s not.”

  “I don’t understand you, Athan. What about Polly? She’s the best seamstress in town.”

  I shake my head. “No – she can’t. It’s too dangerous. But I wondered if you could?”

  She tilts her head to look at me. “Too dangerous for your own sister, but you’d ask me?”

  “I don’t think you’d be in danger – it’s just Polly.”

  Mary puts her hands on her hips and frowns. “Athan Wilde, you make no sense and you’ve told so many stories in your time I don’t know whether to believe you or not.”

  “I know it doesn’t make sense, but I really need your help. And – I might need Mr Katz’s help. If you think he’d be open to a proposition?”

  Mr Katz is in his drawing room. Drawing.

  He has a huge piece of paper and he’s scribbling on it and drawing lines from one point to another and measuring stuff. He rolls it up as we step through the door, pushing up his sleeves, and looking, for the first time since I met him, irritated.

  Mary bobs in the doorway and stands aside and I hover, uncertain. “Mr Katz, sir,” I begin.

  “Mr Wilde, how can I help you?”

  “My sister Beatty, the one who disappeared from the inn – do you remember?”

  “Yes,” he says. “I remember you coming here to look for her.”

  “Well she’s been kidnapped.”

  “No!”

  “I know what the kidnapper wants and I need to swap Beatty for it. But I want her to be safe, so—”

  “What?” says Mr Katz, staring at me, his face almost radiant.

  “So I wondered if I could do it here – give you the thing that the kidnapper wants, and get him to leave Beatty here.”

  Mr Katz bows deeply. “I would be honoured,” he says, “to be your broker.”

  It must be Mr Katz agreeing that makes Mary agree, and she follows me back to Tod’s loft, her skirts bundled up so that they don’t trail in the slushy snow. She talks all the way, but I don’t really listen. I’m thinking how straightforward it all seems.

  Mr Katz agreed so easily; he didn’t even ask when it might happen.

  Wonderful.

  If the swap goes ahead, and Mary sews the fabric on the bird, then we’ll have Beatty back in a trice and we’ll just be trying to launch it. I wonder how you win the prize.

  “So what is it I’m sewing?” says Mary, bumping her elbow into mine.

  “I’ll show you when we get there,” I say.

  “Tod’s loft?” she asks. “I’ve been up here before.”

  “Have you?”

  “I’m friends with Tod, you know,” she says, fixing me with her eel-brown eyes.

  Friends? “So did you know about the kite?” I ask, embarrassed and trying not to show it.

  She tilts her head from side to side. “Sort of. Have you got the plans with you?”

  “Shh,” I say. We stop at the coffin yard.

  “I can’t climb up in these skirts,” she says. “Have to go the proper way.”

  The door stands a crack open so we peer around it. It’s dark inside, but a single candle illuminates what’s going on. Tod’s uncle leaning over a tiny coffin, pouring something down a funnel.

  “Oh Lor’,” says Mary. “He’s pickling the poor mite – Tod says he likes to experiment with the little ones.” She shudders. “He wants to make the bodies last longer so they can stay in an open box.”

  “Hello!” I say, pushing the door open wide and looking away from the coffin. “We’ve come to see Tod, if we may.”

  Mr Ballon’s mournful face looks up at us. His eyes so dark I can’t see them, sunken deep in the white skin.

  I don’t know how Tod lives here, his uncle like a living corpse, his father a thug. And so cold, this place is so cold.

  Mary bobs a greeting and we push on through to the tiny kitchen and up the ladder to Tod’s loft.

  Tod’s folded the kite over to one side and has laid all the pieces of the engine across the floor.

  “Ah – Athan, I need to ask you how this bit moves.” He holds up the wooden fan. “Does it fit in here?”

  For an hour or more, we work like demons. I take the plans from the ball and stretch them across the table. Mary and Tod pore over them, and I explain and point and tap the engine together.

  “What’s this?” asks Mary, pointing to a square of red script in the top corner.

  “Dunno, can’t read Chinese,” I say.

  “It’s not in Chinese, it’s in English,” says Mary.

  “Ah, of course,” I say. I exchange looks with Tod. Neither of us can read.

  “Oh,” says Mary. “It’s to you, Athan.”

  “What does it say?” asks Tod.

  Mary leans over the plans, her mouth moving as she sounds out the letters. “Dear Athan,” she begins slowly. “If you are reading these plans, you have found what I knew you would find because you are persistent and clever. I am hiding them because I think we have been found out. I believe that there are other people after our machine, and that they may use any means to get it. I want you to guard it with your life, but no more. Don’t put your family at risk, your enchanting sisters or your splendid mother. Better to give in gracefully than to let them suffer.

  “But I like to think that you and our bird will some time fly free, and take humanity a step further.

  “Your friend, Isaac Chen.”

  “Isaac?” says Tod. “I never had him down as an Isaac.”

  I can’t speak. I try to sniff as quietly as I can, but obviously do a poor job of it because Mary takes a perfectly laundered handkerchief out of her sleeve and passes it to me.

  “My pa was a maker,” she says cheerfully. “He taught me lots of things when I was little, but this is remarkable, I’d love to show Mr K – he’d be dead impressed.”

  “Don’t think you better had,” I say. “Better not to know anything about it in my experience.”

  “No,” she laughs. “It’s not been a lucky machine, has it?”

  We all fall silent and stitch and screw and tap.

  “I’d better go and see Polly,” I say in the end. “See what she’s found out.”

  I clamber over the yard wall, brushing a parapet of snow on to the abandoned hen boxes. From the kitchen door, I can see Polly standing over the range, two little spots of pink on her cheeks.

  Tapping gently on the grimy glass, I wait for her to let me in.

  “Oh, Athan – it’s awful,” she says in a whisper. “Grandma’s already sleeping in your bed. She’s been chanting spells and laying garlic in the doorways.”

  “So soon?” I shudder.

  “And I never realised how much Ma loves you both. She’s wept all night, she won’t eat. She’s grieving. Anyone would think you were both already dead.”

  She’s struggling not to cry. “I’m sorry, Poll,” I say, reaching my arms around and holding her scrawny shoulders. “It won’t be for much longer – I’m going to get her back, today. I promise.”

  She nods and sniffs and wipes her hands on her apron. “And that stupid stove – I can’t get it to light.” She almost laughs, swiping a tear with the back of her hand, leaving a coal smut across her cheek.

  “It’s a beast,” I say.

  “Could you?” she asks.

  “Course,” I say, stepping over and opening the clinker drawer. A tiny flame licks over the paper. “Did you talk to the Colonel?”

  “I did. I said, imagine – if someone was holding Beatty, to get something from us, how would we know if she was still alive?” The fire grabs hold of a splinter of wood and sputters into life.

  “And?”

  “He dropped that round, just now.” She points to the table. “Brought it down here to the kitchen and handed it to me.”

  “He’s not still here?”

  She shakes her head. “It’s today’s,” she says.

  A rolled-up newspaper.

  I flick through it until the centre pages
fall open. There, right in the middle, one of Beatty’s birds and a hand print. A small, reddy-brown hand print.

  I cough and drop the paper.

  “What is it?” Polly runs to me. She picks up the bird from the floor. “One of Beatty’s birds? Oh my Gods – is that what I think it is?”

  I shake my head. I don’t trust myself to speak.

  “Oh!” Her voice drops away.

  “I was hoping you were wrong.” She speaks so low I barely hear her. “But you were right.”

  I nod.

  She turns away. “The devil!” She spits the words.

  I persuade Polly to write a note for me.

  6pm Mr Katz’s house. New King Street.

  That should give us long enough to get every scrap from the plans.

  After posting the letter through his door, I run down through the slithery streets to the loft and shin up the back. I can’t bear to walk through the coffin yard more often than I have to.

  Inside, Mary’s fingers are flying over the cloth and Tod’s done a sound job of fixing the engine underneath.

  “What we missing then?” he says.

  And I draw up a list.

  When the church strikes five, Mary sits back, her fingers red with stitching.

  “I’ve got to go and prepare the dinner,” she says.

  Folding the plans, I jam them into the ball and click it shut.

  “Would you carry it? And I’ll come just behind,” I say. “In case he decides to jump me for it.”

  Mary looks alarmed.

  “You’ll be all right,” says Tod. “He’s no idea who you are.”

  Mary blenches and reaches out and tucks the ball into her cloak. “And you’ll be right behind me?” she says.

  “Yes,” I say. “And we can run if you like. It’s not very far.”

  “I’d go in through the front door,” she says.

  “So will I then.”

  The streets are frozen and dark as we step out of the coffin yard. Mary walks ahead of me, the ball invisible under her cloak, and I walk about twenty yards behind.