‘You said you’d copied the City,’ I said, pointing to the castle. ‘So what is that?’
‘A little joke,’ said Halley. ‘See?’
I did see. The castle was directly above Parliament House and was a satire on it, an elaborated fantasy version of the old building’s sandstone battlements and turrets.
A cloud of flashing light and dark burst from the top of the castle and poured up, luminous as fireworks, flickering this way and that, now silver, now blue, as it wheeled and turned. It divided down the middle and swirled above us, stencilling complex whorls and twists against the dark. The cloud, made up of individual fliers as I now realised, swooped together again. Another flock, green and gold, exploded up with a giant churring of wings from a cloud above the gardens and rose through the first flock. They arced, fell, peeled away and re-formed. The flocks shattered into a spray of fliers, then regrouped, flowing away over the harbour.
The catwalk Halley and I were on intersected below us with another catwalk that led to the castle. I pointed to it and Halley nodded. The castle moat, so high above the City, was filled with sparkling liquid. Shrieks of laughter drifted across the gulfs of air as fliers rode fantastical creatures, mechanical dragons and phoenixes, around and around the moat, knocking each other off.
Astonishing how quickly the miraculous becomes commonplace. Here I was, climbing through the sky, druggedly fearless, suspended on threads of delicately strong stuff as if I were an artificial spider, greeting the fliers we passed, who all complimented Halley on her work.
Then it hit me. Is that what this SkyNation was foreshadowing? Would the notoriously overcrowded, overpriced and underserviced city below be built up into the sky in this gossamer way? There could be vast parks, entertainment platforms and play areas. Halley had said Sky- Nation was a laboratory and I began to wonder. Was this a template for a whole sky city? It had been created by architects after all. Were the fliers trying to escape us?
As we drew near, the castle loomed above, airy yet impressive, and ahead of us I saw a stairway that switchbacked up the outside. Two masked men swooped down past me, leaping, half running, half flying, as I mounted the stairway. They swept past so quickly I only caught a glimpse of them and couldn’t tell if their costumes represented superheroes or acrobats. As I scaled the wall, marvelling at how substantial the ‘stones’ looked, grained with textures of moss and granite, I heard a warning shout.
‘Look out!’ A mass of white fell towards me. I just had time to think, They’re defending the castle, when I was enveloped in something light and cold and buoyant, like the ‘snow’ I’d seen in Hugo’s nursery. I floundered to the top of this powdery dry ‘snow’ drift. Luckily it was not as dense as real snow or I would have been in trouble.
‘Oh dear!’ the flier gasped. He launched himself off the parapet and into the night.
‘You okay?’ Halley said, coming up behind me.
‘’Tis nothing, madam,’ I said carelessly. ‘A mere flesh wound.’
I hauled myself over the parapet to stand on the ledge from which my attacker had jumped. It was piled a metre deep in snow. I should’ve been more alarmed—the falling snow could easily have swept me off the castle—but nothing seemed real at SkyNation. Perhaps the insouciance proper to my character as a fighter ace was affecting me, along with the Zefiryn.
‘I can smell food,’ I said.
‘Yes, I’m starving. This way.’
We climbed higher into the castle, Halley spreading out her wings for balance on the stairs, and then we pushed our way through the crowded cloister out onto a flat roof on the top of the castle’s highest tower. Halley led me past rows of tables to one set right at the edge. It was reserved for her.
‘Look,’ said Halley, ‘they’re preparing for the opening ceremony for Cloud City later.’ She pointed to a darkened tower to the west of us—Cloud City, I realised—and I saw that in the gulf between the castle and Cloud City had been fastened a net, upon which musicians and other performers were now setting up equipment and rehearsing.
Halley turned to me and, lowering her voice, said, ‘Speaking of Peter, I just wanted to say how devastated we all were to hear about Hugo. We hoped and hoped it was going to be alright but now . . . ’ her voice trailed away. ‘Anyway, I just wanted to say how sorry I am.’
I looked at the floor. She laid her hand on my arm.
A chorus of greeting erupted from a crowded table behind us and I turned to look. A portly man dressed in a white astronaut’s suit and carrying a space helmet under his arm waddled over to the table.
‘Oh god, it’s David Brilliant,’ I said, turning back to Halley. His boldly striped wings were unmistakable.
I shifted in my seat and took off my leather jacket. I didn’t want to start an argument with Halley by telling her that Chesshyre and Brilliant were responsible for what had happened to Peri and Hugo and Luisa, and that her sympathy was wasted on her colleague.
Of course Brilliant had to toddle over and suck up to Halley. ‘You’ve outdone yourself this year, my dear,’ he said. I’d just had time to put on my aviator glasses but I needn’t have bothered. Brilliant didn’t even look at me.
Halley said, ‘A lot of this is Peter’s work, too. I’ll tell him you like it.’
Brilliant stumped back to his table.
Halley’s gaze wandered to the table next to us, where four women sat together, all dressed in flying helmets, their goggles hanging by straps from their chairs. One woman looked familiar, with her sleek tin-coloured hair. She wore a khaki military tunic with blue flashings on the collar and over her chair she’d flung a heavy leather flying jacket. Worn leather gauntlets lay on the table in front of her. Slashings of light in her feathers and skin caught my eye. I was dazzled by the shimmer as she moved. She turned.
‘Dr Ruokonen.’
She peered at me. ‘Mr Fowler. I am surprised to see you here.’
I’ll bet. Didn’t know I was so well-connected, did you?
‘Hello, Aleta,’ said Halley. ‘You look convincingly warlike.’
‘I’m Lilya Litvak,’ said Ruokonen. ‘This is Beryl Markham,’ she waved her hand at the woman next to her, ‘and Amelia Earhart. The startling plum satin jumpsuit over there is Harriet Quimby. An early aviatrix known for her indescribable fashion sense, as you can see.’
‘Who’s Lilya Litvak?’ said Halley.
‘Why, the white rose of Stalingrad. I was the premier female fighter ace of the Second World War. Twelve German kills to my name. Luftwaffe pilots were utterly terrified when they saw my Yak One bearing down on them.’
‘Gosh,’ said Halley. ‘How romantic.’
‘Well, not for her,’ retorted Ruokonen, her mood darkening. ‘She was dead at twenty-two and quickly forgotten, like all the other female aces. She got no glory to compensate for her short life. Women like her become invisible to history overnight. Hard to understand why, though. It took eight Messerschmitts to shoot her down. Knocks the Red Baron into a cocked hat, if you ask me.’
‘Yes,’ laughed Halley. ‘From now on I never shall think of the Red Baron, only the White Rose.’
I smiled at Halley, impressed by her instincts as a peacemaker. What a likable person she was. It was rare to meet a person as successful as she was who even noticed other people’s feelings, let alone bothered to soothe them.
Halley indicated Ruokonen’s skin. ‘What have you got there?’
‘It’s new,’ Ruokonen said. ‘You won’t see it on anyone else yet. Take a look.’
We stared at the warm moonlight that made up part of Ruo- konen’s body.
‘Pearl,’ said Ruokonen. ‘I’ve grown it. Relatively easy with pearl, which is produced organically anyway.’
‘May I?’ said Halley and skimmed her hand over the pearl skin. ‘Oooh, nice.’
Ruokonen leaned back
in her chair, crossing her long legs at the ankles. ‘Thomas is coming along quickly,’ she said to me. ‘Not long till he’s flying now.’
‘Yes,’ I said, not trusting myself to say more.
Halley glanced at me, surprised. ‘Your son is having the treatments?’
‘The research is advancing all the time,’ Ruokonen continued. ‘I’ve been doing work on insects but there’s been a setback.’ Anger came into her voice. ‘There was a raid on a lab where I’ve been overseeing a project.’
‘Diomedea?’
‘How did you know? Hard to believe fliers would do such a thing but I guess there are ignorant fanatics and self-styled revolutionaries in every time and place.’
‘Could they have been Wild?’ I said.
She glanced at me sharply. ‘You know my views on that.’
‘I do,’ I said. ‘What I don’t know are your views on whether there are any limits on what Diomedea will do to tackle the fertility problems. Are there any limits on what they’ll do to track down Peri Almond and her baby, for instance?’
Ruokonen laughed. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, spluttering into her drink. ‘I believe there is someone here tonight who’s probably wanting to catch up with you.’
‘Well, that’s just great,’ I said. ‘Can’t imagine Diomedea wanting you to admit that.’
Ruokonen waved her hand airily. ‘No law against putting someone under surveillance. As you know very well. Bit rich you complaining about it.’
‘Surveillance is one thing. Break and enter is something else. Especially as my lion was nearly killed. My concern is to ensure this Raptor intends no harm to Peri and Hugo.’
‘Don’t know anything about a break and enter,’ said Ruokonen. ‘No doubt you’ve annoyed any number of people who might want to do that. As for Peri and Hugo, of course no harm will come to them. They’re needed for follow-up, as I think you know very well.’
Ruokonen was not telling all she knew, I thought, as Halley and I sat down again. Wine and food had arrived while we’d been talking to Ruokonen and I was grateful to sit quietly, absorbing a little of all that I’d done and seen. The plates in front of us showcased artful constructions, architecture rather than food. I glanced at Halley; she would appreciate this. But she ate quickly, demolishing her highrise of shaved crispy greens, landscaped with its own delicate garden, as if it were nothing more than a toasted sandwich. ‘Something I must show you,’ she said, wiping her mouth and rising to her feet.
‘This is the most incredible place I’ve ever been,’ I said.
Halley took my hand. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it? It’s good to get away from everyone for a little while. It’s nice being congratulated and everything but I’d just like to enjoy the party without interruptions for a moment.’
We stood in a park of deep forest and rolling meadows floating high above the castle.
We’d climbed a long ladder up to the park and now walked along green airy lanes, past sweet flowering vines. Trees almost met over our heads: avenues of beech, oak, pine and willows shivering down their long strands of leaves like green hail. We walked on paths woven of tangled roots and through small gaps and fissures between the roots we looked down to the glinting lights of the City below, shifting as the park moved in the air currents.
It was fantastic, dreamlike: a walk on a forest path over an abyss. A breeze streamed through the branches with a keening note, something high in its timbre, as if the very sound could tell us we were hundreds of metres in the air. I pulled my flying jacket around me, grateful for its warmth. Heat radiated from Halley’s skin and feathers; she did not seem to mind the increasing coolness of the night air.
Stars shone above our heads and below our feet. We walked on a shadowed island of trees floating in a well of light.
A trilling, chirping song running as sweet and clear as a brook fell from the trees over our heads.
‘Nightingale,’ said Halley.
We paused at the edge of the forest, looking over a rustling meadow bordered at the edge furthest from us by three smooth hills forming the southern boundary of the park. A waterfall splashed down the side of the highest hill into a pool. As we headed towards the waterfall, the meadow gave slightly under our feet. It was unutterably strange to walk on this undulating mat of green and trees and water in the sky and look over the edge and see the City winking below.
‘So this is where the fledglings will play,’ I said. A rush of anger heaved up like bile in my throat, despite the Zefiryn. These fliers wanted everything, no compromises. They wanted all the beauties belonging to the earth—flowers, trees, water, grass—but they wanted it all up here, away from the muck and creatures that generated it. It was all artificial, even though living, but they didn’t care because they were the same, they were alive but artificial too. They wanted to be just like these plants, uprooted, purged of dirt. This was the life promised by the Church of the Seraphim, with all the blood and shit and tears left behind for others to suffer through and clean up.
I stared into the waterfall clattering over boulders at its base. This was just showing off. Boulders in the sky! The audacity of it. I looked at Halley, one of the architects of this new world, with a heady mix of admiration and fury.
Next to a pool on the other side of the stream stood a young god, Eros. He was tall, with chopped pale hair and a filmy gold mask covering his eyes and cheeks. His wings swept behind him, luminous warm white, like mother-of-pearl. In one hand dangled a crossbow, held against the white tunic that came to his thighs. He was searching for someone; he looked around him and when his eyes rested on Halley and me, he startled, just the vaguest tremor, suppressed. He turned and began walking away towards the dark lane of trees. I stared after him. Something familiar in that walk; I should have recognised it but I was distracted by Halley.
‘Let’s find somewhere to sit down.’ I wanted to get Halley alone. It seemed fitting we’d run into Eros and now we searched among the hills till we found a bowl scooped into the side of the hill, less than a cave, more than a ledge. We sat and gazed over the falls and forest and past them to the rest of SkyNation, watching fliers darting and dancing in the clouds. Sound pulsed up from the net and spread all around us, vibrating through the whole of SkyNation; it had become the very substance of the air.
‘What is that noise?’
‘Songs from the Blue,’ Halley said. ‘Music made from weather, in real time. Waves, storms, earthquakes under the sea, ice cracking, solar wind, meteors, electromagnetic fields.’
Halley leaned into my shoulder, her feathers rustling against me. Perfume was released from the feathers every time she moved. I was intensely curious. What would touching her be like? I took the end of one of her wings in my hands and stroked the great primary feathers. They were softer than I’d imagined. I ran my hand over the broader part of her wing, from the shoulder down, careful not to brush her feathers the wrong way. My watch snagged on one of her feathers and she winced.
I kissed Halley. It was spine-tingling, electric, to feel her sleek feathers against my skin but it was strange. Every time she moved in my arms her feathers released a rush of sensation along my skin, soft and thrilling, along with drifts of warm, rosy scent.
I stopped kissing her after a while. I’d like to think it was the Zefiryn but I was overwhelmed by sensation. I needed to catch my breath. Halley curled up on her side. She yawned and then laughed, putting her hand over her mouth.
‘The twenty-hour days leading up to this must be catching up with me. I have to close my eyes for a moment.’
I was relieved. Kissing Halley was great but I needed time to think. I’d never touched a flier before and she wasn’t just any flier but Peter’s colleague. What did she really want from me?
I must have dozed for about half an hour. Halley was next to me, asleep. She looked lovely, pillowed on one barred wing with the other one coveri
ng her. Directly on the edge of the hill in front of me, her burnished chestnut wings with their green undersides shimmering in the darkness, stood Peri. So she had come back then, just as she said she would. Clever of her to find me at SkyNation. She held up baby Hugo and I reached for him but as I took him, he slipped into the dark. Peri shrieked and then both were gone. I woke up properly, then. I leaned over Halley and tucked a strand of her dark hair back behind one ear.
A movement caught my attention and I peered upwards. The luminous white Eros was high above me on a narrow walkway. I knew I recognised that flier climbing steeply away from me but who was he? Seized by the need to know, I pulled on my flying jacket and began confidently scaling the almost-vertical incline myself, amazed at how easy it was. The island-park dropped away and there was nothing and no-one near me, no floating bars or netted rooms, no other walkways. We were heading towards one of the cloud towers, far higher than anywhere I’d yet been. Eros didn’t seem to be aware of me as, far beneath, I followed him.
Eros disappeared into the cloud tower. Singing fell down from it like rain.
I pushed my way into the cloud tower but could see nothing but the cloud-stuff itself, which parted like mist and yet was springy and bore me up. This was cloud just as I’d dreamed of it as a child, as if the clouds were blissfully springy pillows.
I could see nothing except the glow of colours as they played through the cloud. Was Eros hiding in here? A warm tenor voice floated towards me from a purple mist. A chorus of voices rose to a crescendo around the tenor.
As I made my way through the mist I caught a glimpse of a trailing white wing in front of me. I hurried as much as I dared after him. All the while that song went on and then faded into other songs that poured over me as if the sky itself was singing and still the singing went on and the voices did not pause but drifted, swelled and died away and then gathered strength as a new voice, a bass and then a soprano, took up the main melody and soared above the others. This is flying, I thought.
When We Have Wings Page 45