Brightstorm

by Vashti Hardy

  Felicity frowned. “But Great Uncle Mungo swore it was forged in the silver mines of Berick Barr, the lying lizard!”

  Maudie shrugged awkwardly. “Sorry.”

  Footsteps clunked across the deck. Arthur recognized the highly polished shoes of Welby. “You obviously chose Madame Wiggety for her language and charm,” he said to Harriet, in his polite Uptown tone.

  “Despite her salty language, her chocolate cake is legendary in Lontown,” Harriet said. She smiled and shrugged.

  Welby looked at Arthur and Maudie. “When you two have finished having fun, we’ve got a ship to steer. And after that little delay, our rivals are already much higher than us.”

  “Then all crew to the pumps!” declared Harriet, her cheeks glowing and an undeniable sparkle in her eyes.

  CHAPTER 12

  THE AURORA

  There wasn’t a moment to recover. After squeezing Arthur and Maudie into a tight hug, Felicity tugged them both over to the port side of what had once been a rooftop and was now the ship’s deck.

  “What in Lontown’s sails happened to delay you?” she said.

  “Someone locked us in a cellar,” Maudie said.

  “Good gracious.”

  “We don’t know who.”

  “Everyone, to your posts!” Harriet called.

  “Best talk later,” Felicity said.

  The Victorious was visible above the docks a short distance away, rising powerfully into the sky, its wings spread majestically wide. Another sky-ship rose beside it, dwarfed in size. Then another caught Arthur’s eye further west. A fizzling knot of competitiveness formed inside him.

  “Turn! Turn!” Welby shouted rhythmically from the other side.

  Arthur threw all his energy into turning the cog. The great fabric balloon grew bigger by the second and a judder came from the engines below as something fitted into place. Then a repeating whirr, clunk sounded like a great heartbeat.

  Harriet Culpepper stood at the wheel, her hair and scarf flowing messily in the wind. She looked ahead through her binoscope. “Good work,” she called. “Get those sails fully open – we need more lift, to aid the balloon.”

  Great connected cogs with handles ran along the inner edges of the deck. Half of the crew lined each side. Maudie took the handle in front.

  The sun, due east of the city, was a glowing peach rising over the ridge. Below, the houses and streets had become miniature, like a child’s wooden model.

  “Move the cogs or we’ll end up crashing into one of those towers and it’ll be the shortest expedition in history!” Harriet ordered from the central wheel.

  “Put your backs into it,” Welby called from the other side.

  Felicity patted Arthur on the shoulder. “Focus on the cog – it’s just like stirring Granny’s stottle cake – that mixture was deadlier than a glue bog. C’mon Arthur, we can do this. You just swung one-armed from a flying house; anything’s possible!”

  “Come on, port side – push harder,” Arthur shouted along the crew line.

  Behind him, Maudie was encouraging the other half to turn faster. The cogs gained momentum, then there was movement and a flash of white to the sides. Great sails began extending from the Aurora into view of the deck. It was beautiful, like the wings of a bird unfolding for their first flight. Parthena gave a screech of approval. She flew above them, gliding effortlessly on the wind, showing them how it was done. The Aurora lifted, the whirr-clunk of its engine heartbeat slowed a little. Glancing over his shoulder, Arthur saw the Lontown Chronicle Tower just beyond the Geographical Society, getting closer by the second. The other ships were already higher than them, the smaller ship shooting into the lead, followed by the Victorious and the others. They passed far above the dome of the Geographical Society, then over the Lontown Chronicle Tower.

  “Don’t stare. Keep turning!” called Harriet.

  The wings were halfway out when Arthur’s arm jarred and machinery groaned. The sail had jammed.

  Harriet ran to look over the side of the ship. “The sail’s stuck in the extender,” she said, as though it was a mere inconvenience, while the tower loomed closer and closer.

  Arthur felt certain they wouldn’t make it.

  Without a thought, Harriet jumped up, then did a forward somersault through the air, landing with absolute precision on the edge of the wing.

  Arthur swallowed a big gulp of air.

  “Oh my, what if she falls!” said Felicity.

  Harriet scampered along the wooden spine towards the end of the half extended wing.

  If she doesn’t sort this out, we’re done for!” said one of the crew members.

  The entire crew stared wide-eyed as she sat balanced on the edge, wrestling with the mechanism.

  Suddenly, her arms flew backwards as the sail became free and the momentum propelled her back. The crew cried out in alarm, but Harriet reacted quickly and regained her balance. “The mechanism is released,” she called as she hurried back along the wing.

  Felicity erupted with applause. “Bravo!”

  Arthur raised his hand to Maudie’s, and together they clapped.

  “No time for celebrating! Make haste, crew! Back to the cogs!” Harriet shouted, staring at the approaching tower. “And work like your life depends on it, because it does!”

  “Yes, Captain,” the crew chanted.

  Both sides of the ship wound the cogs furiously, and after a minute a firm clunk travelled through the deck. “Starboard sail open,” Welby called.

  “Come on,” Felicity said from the other side. “Last push, everyone!”

  Arthur put everything he had into it until his shoulder burned and muscles cramped. After one huge effort, a rumble vibrated the deck as the port side sail clunked into place.

  Harriet Culpepper was back at the bow, legs planted, hands firmly clasped on the handles of the enormous wheel. Queenie leapt across the top as she turned it. The shadow of Parthena stretched as the ship tilted.

  “Everybody hold on! Clip in your safety rope!” Harriet called.

  Anything loose began rolling across the deck of the ship.

  “Hope you’ve got your air legs on, twinnies,” Felicity called. Her voice was carried away on the wind.

  Arthur realized he wasn’t secure and stumbled as he reached for the handle of a cog. His hand still felt numb from the pumping and he missed. Before he knew it he was slipping down the deck. He stopped suddenly as Felicity grabbed hold of his belt and pulled him back and clipped a safety rope to him. They tilted even more, to a heart-stopping angle. Arthur’s stomach turned.

  “I keep telling you – don’t look down.” Felicity laughed a huge hearty laugh and whooped at the top of her voice.

  Queenie, who was surprisingly agile for her size, remained balanced on the wheel in front of Harriet.

  The tower was now only seconds away. Other buildings whizzed below, alarmingly close.

  “Are we going to crash?” Maudie shouted, her eyes wide and terrified.

  “Not on your nelly. Hold tight,” Felicity called.

  There were several alarmed shouts as they neared. The great sails missed the building by a whisper.

  Every member of the crew looked behind as they passed out of harm’s way, rising higher and higher. The Aurora levelled, and the crew collapsed in a grateful heap on the deck. Harriet laughed. “What a start!”

  Maudie turned to Arthur. “I’ve got to examine the engine and the wings – the mechanism is genius,” she said, her eyes wildly keen and excited. “And there’s something different about the engine; it doesn’t sound like they normally do.”

  Arthur smiled at her. He’d not seen her so happy since before. Since Brightstorm House.

  He looked over his shoulder to Harriet, who had her binoscope fixed on the Victorious. Eudora Vane’s ship seemed to have travelled twice as far as they had in the same time and powered ahead with a thick black trail of pitch smoke chugging from two huge outlets. The smaller sky-ships had only one outlet each, but fo
llowed not far behind.

  “The smallest ship looks like the Fontaine original!” Maudie said.

  “I didn’t know they were making a try for South Polaris.”

  “Which means the other is probably the Bestwick-Fords. Everyone else must have dropped out.”

  “Ours is by far the best-looking ship,” Maudie said with a smile.

  Arthur had to agree. Their balloon was streamlined, the wings as graceful as Parthena’s, the woodwork perfection. He put his hand to his iron arm. “We’re on our way, Dad.”

  Felicity joined them. “Right – I’d say we deserve a nice cup of tea.”

  *

  They flew through night and day across the rolling hills of the lower lands of Lontown, passing over small towns and buildings clustered below, patchwork fields, and farms. At first, they could name the villages: Dreyton, Summerville, Bifflewick, but the further away they flew, the harder things became to recognize. On the second day, they passed over Chesterford, the second largest city in the First Continent and the furthest Arthur and Maudie had ever travelled before.

  The weather was fine. As time went on, Arthur kept checking the binoscope to see if they were gaining any distance. They remained close to the small Fontaine, and the Victorious and Bestwick-Ford sky-ships remained visible through the binoscope – always ahead on the horizon leaving their dark trails across the blue, like dirty roads in the sky. Harriet carried on in her steady, sure way – un-panicked by the fast progress of the other ships and the increasing gap between them.

  The first week was filled with the rigorous learning of procedures. Life as cook’s help meant Arthur spent lots of time below deck with Felicity in the Aurora’s galley. It was non-stop with fifteen crew members to feed. He could peel an apple in seconds, thanks to the spring-mechanized clamp Maudie made for him, and her spike board helped him chop vegetables even without his iron arm. At first he had worn his iron arm all the time, unsure of how the crew would react, especially after his experience with the Begginses, but he soon learned that every member of the crew had a kindly nature and nobody stared or made unkind comments.

  By the end of the week, he still couldn’t remember every crew name, but they all had a role and Harriet insisted everyone took a turn assisting another crew member to learn new skills, in case anyone fell ill or had an accident. He’d particularly liked helping Meriwether, a smiley young meteorologist, and Gilly the enthusiastic, curly-haired botanist, who told him stories of rare plants and animals he’d found on his last expedition with Harriet to the East Insulae.

  Carried on a favourable wind, by the eighth day they’d reached the border of the First Continent and the fens, where they stopped for the night to refresh the engines. Harriet ordered complete rest for the crew and insisted on cooking while everyone came together to eat on the deck, watching the sun set across the marshy land, orange light shining between the reeds.

  Maudie had found out everything about the engine in the first week. “It runs on water – can you believe it? Harriet Culpepper is a genius. Forbes told me about it in the engine room. Apparently, her parents were great inventors too. But water, Arty! Clean, efficient fuel, not like the smelly pitch other ships use – it’s nothing short of inspired. The idea stemmed from something the people of the Second Continent are developing for irrigation.”

  “Sounds impressive,” he said. But he wasn’t truly paying attention; he was thinking about what lay ahead. He didn’t particularly care about how the ship worked and how they got there, as long as they did.

  “I know you’re not really listening, Arty. But you’ll be interested in this.”

  “I was listening,” he protested.

  “Sure you were.” Maudie shook her head. “Well, the clever thing is Harriet’s been developing the water engine technology for two years, all in secret – I spoke to the crew second-mate, Hurley, and she said if other explorer families had known, they would have stolen her technology. Think about it, Arty – sea ships have been restricted by the dangerous waters surrounding the Third Continent and some other parts of the known Wide. Sky-ships are limited by the amount of pitch they can carry and where they can get supplies. With a water engine, anything is possible! Adapting a house that could become a sky-ship was the perfect cover. And by renting that small decoy ship at the docks, nobody even realized what she was up to!”

  Arthur smiled. It was a brilliant idea.

  That evening, as they took off from the shores of the First Continent, a great weight lifted from Arthur – they were really starting the journey towards the truth. The Culldam Sea stretched endlessly ahead. Arthur wondered how anybody ever discovered land beyond it. Everything looked so much bigger than the maps in the books. Dad had told him that the first explorers from their continent to reach the Second had travelled in sea-bound ships, before sky-ships were invented. The first sea-ship sailors felt they’d gone so far, they were sure they’d gone full circle when they finally landed, until they realized they’d only crossed the Culldam Sea and had actually discovered a whole new Continent.

  The next morning Arthur awoke before anyone else, when it was still dark. He got up, trying his best not to make his bunk creak, and slipped on his trousers and shoes. Leaving his iron arm by his bed, he then sneaked along the hallway and up the stairs to the deck.

  The breeze was silk against his skin and the Aurora flew beneath a cloudless sky, a dark blue sheet pricked with thousands of tiny lights. He could even see the shape of the galaxy in an arc overhead – millions of dense bright speckles, together unimaginably huge, and himself beneath it an insignificant dot on a flying ship. Yet he felt so connected with the sky, as though for that moment they were the same. He wondered if one day sky-ships would be invented to fly even higher, above the mountains and into the deep sky – he imagined Maudie engineering a ship to take people to the stars themselves.

  “What are you up to?” Maudie suddenly appeared behind him. But her voice faded as she became entranced by the sky too.

  He grabbed her sleeve and tugged. “Come on – let’s walk on the wing.”

  “Arty, seriously?” she said, but was already laughing and following him to the port side. “I’ll go first,” she said, pushing in front.

  “No way, it was my idea,” he said, pulling her back.

  They edged their way down the small rope ladder used for maintenance, crawled along the edge of the wing, then sat and swung their legs around so they dangled below. The sea was almost invisible, just the odd glint of reflected light. They put their fingertips to the sky and felt the breeze dance around them. The distant east was brightening to shades of light blue and orange. Parthena screeched three times from the side of the ship, then took flight. She circled them, and as a sliver of sun rose, she spun in the air in front of them. Arthur held his arm out like a bird’s wing and Maudie did the same on the other side. For the first time in many moon-cycles, nothing seemed to matter.

  When Arthur eventually looked back over to the ship, he saw Harriet leaning on the side, watching them. His heart jumped, as he expected a stern word, but she simply said, “My parents used to hate me doing that.” She smiled, then turned away, checking her compass.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE LIBRARY

  As the days passed, there was a place on the ship that Arthur and Maudie loved most of all, and they sneaked off to it in the free time allowed every evening after dinner. The Aurora’s library was a small room with wooden shelves from floor to ceiling and all the books were about geography, science, exploration history and engineering. Felicity had added some of her own – Rare Herbs of the Northern Marshes, Lontown Broths, and her favourite – One Hundred Teas from Afar. Maudie was already on the second shelf of engineering books and was reading A History of Ship Aviation by Corinthia Strunk, while Arthur devoured the books about history, many the same titles that had been in their library at home, but he never tired of them. To see them again felt like finding a little piece of home.

  Today, one particular b
ook caught his eye, a journal that must’ve been the notes for Exploring in the Third Age – a Potted Overview by Ermitage Wrigglesworth. Every word was handwritten and the illustrations meticulously drawn. Mr Wrigglesworth was a revered academic expert on everything explorer related. Arthur turned the pages with delicate precision making sure he didn’t smudge any. There were little additional notes scribbled in the margins with extra facts that he couldn’t remember having read in the printed copy in the library at home, and Arthur lapped up the details. He turned to the section with notes on Explorer Families of the Third Age. The directory was in alphabetical order, starting with the Acquafreeda family, then the Aldermysters on the opposite page. The name Acquafreeda was beautifully scrolled and beside it was a drawing – their explorer family symbol. It was a huge, fat fish, and each scale had been beautifully rendered. To the side was a description of the family traits and characteristics:

  Legendary and master handlers of sea-born ships

  Usually quiet in demeanour yet characteristically bold (especially in the water)

  Value all things seaworthy and of the sea

  He read on to the section on the page marked History.

  The Acquafreedas were the first explorers to ever take to the sea in the Second Age of Exploration. Their legendary crossing was to the Western Isles of Carrickmurggus (the most significant step since the discovery of the route through the Northern Marshes at the end of the First Age of Exploration). The Acquafreedas never took to the invention of sky-born ships at the dawn of the Third Age of Exploration, and while the family remains active in exploring, they mainly concern themselves with exploring down rather than out, and spend much time researching ways of travelling beneath the water itself (a much frowned-upon and often laughed-at exploit which has lost them some credibility over the years).

  Arthur looked over at Maudie sprawled on the floor, her nose an inch away from her book.

  “This explorer family wants to explore underneath the water, Maud – imagine…”

  “Fascinating,” she said dreamily as she snapped her book shut and took another from the engineering section. The shelves had become littered with strands of ribbon, marking the pages Maudie was most excited by.