We crawled into the cave on our hands and knees, the sailmaker and I, our flashlights splashing light over the walls, looking for the source. The hiss was loud and insistent, and I was amazed I had not heard it sooner, in spite of the wind’s wailing. As we went deeper, I started to feel a little queasy with the smell. The hydrium was forcing out all the air. There wasn’t enough oxygen to breathe. The roof of the cave slanted down into a dead end.
“There she is,” said Mr. Levy, fixing his circle of torchlight on the back wall. I could see a narrow gash in the stone. I was closer, and I scrambled toward it. I put my hand over the crack and felt the gush of escaping hydrium, rushing up from beneath the ocean floor.
“We can fit a collar to the stone,” Mr. Levy said, “and lock the rubber hosing to it.”
From his belt he took a small sack made of goldbeater’s skin, the same material the gas cells were made of. He held the opening of the sack against the crack in the stone. The sack filled quickly, and Mr. Levy gathered the bottom in his fist. We awkwardly backed out of the cave. Captain Walken waited with Mr. Rideau. I took deep breaths, glad to be out in the open.
“It’s the finest hydrium I’ve ever smelled, sir,” Mr. Levy announced. The sack of goldbeater’s skin ballooned from his hand, straining skyward. He let it go, and it shot up into the trees like a rocket. The sack flared open at the bottom, releasing its hydrium to the sky, and then fell back down into the sailmaker’s hand.
“This stuff’s purer than what comes from the refineries in Lionsgate City.”
“Well done, Mr. Cruse,” the captain said. “Well done once again.”
“Two miles back to the ship is my guess,” said Mr. Rideau, managing to look put out despite the good news. “We’ll need all that hosing.”
“We’re losing the day now,” said Captain Walken. “We’ll work through the night, patching, and by first light we should be ready to lay the pipeline.”
I was nodding and smiling.
They wouldn’t have to butcher the ship.
She would fly again.
The news spread through the ship faster than hydrium through air. I walked into the crew’s mess to grab a quick dinner before I went on duty, and suddenly everyone there was on their feet.
“Here’s to Mr. Cruse!” one of the mechanics said.
Dozens of glasses were lifted high into the air.
“To Mr. Cruse, the finest ship’s boy you could have!”
“Lighter than air, that’s our Mr. Cruse.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just smiled and looked down at the table and wished they would put down their glasses and go back to their meals.
Chef Vlad came in from his kitchen with a steaming plate of smoked Muscovy duck, scalloped potatoes, and asparagus. He put it before me.
“Your favorite, Mr. Cruse.”
“How did you know?”
He looked insulted. “You do not think I watch people as they eat my food? I am a chef! I could tell you the favorite foods of everyone in this room!”
“Thank you, Mr. Vlad,” I said. “Thank you very much.”
“You have saved us, I understand,” said the chef. “Really, I should be angry. I could have dwelt here. I could have cooked fish for these people. It would have been a marvelous thing!”
“We can always leave you behind Mr. Vlad!” one of the crew called out.
“And who would cook for you, imbecile!” Mr. Vlad looked at me and smiled. “You’re a good boy, Mr. Cruse. You understand food, not like some of the lunkheads in here!”
I set to my dinner, and I can’t remember a time when I’d enjoyed my meal more. It was like I’d never tasted these things before. The rich savory flavors filled my mouth, and a tremendous sense of well-being spread through me as my stomach filled. I’d been missing meals, with all my time in the forest. I paused and took a deep breath. My head was aswirl: the crippled cloud cat leaping through the trees, the storm hurtling branches through the air, the ruined ship.
I’d been holding myself in so tightly the past few days, and now I could feel a little tremor going through me, and I suddenly felt like I was going to bawl if I wasn’t careful. I was unfit, really. This island had completely undone me.
But we had hydrium now, and with hydrium we could fly away.
Everything was going to be all right again.
I fell.
I was a slick wet bundle of bone and hair, and I was in the sky, falling. I knew I should fly, knew I was meant to. But my wings would scarcely open. I tried to flap, but I was so weak I could barely push against the tower of air thrusting past me. Why couldn’t I do this? Every bit of my body was born to do this, so why couldn’t I?
My wings would not move.
But the ground flew up toward me.
I woke myself from my mango-scented nightmare, and it was still dark. With dismay I saw that it was not far past two o’clock. I tried to lure sleep to me, but she slowly shook her raven tresses and would not come back. Despite all the good news, my weather eye could still glimpse a big black cloud of panic on my brain’s horizon. If I stayed in bed, eyes closed, fretting, I would be engulfed.
Quietly, so as not to wake Baz, I swung myself off the bunk and dressed. Closing the door behind me, I slipped out onto the keel catwalk. One of the things I loved about night aboard the Aurora was how the ship never really slept. There were always crew about, sailmakers working their shifts along the axial catwalk and shafts, machinists manning the engine cars. On the bridge, the captain and officers were bathed in the deep orange glow of their controls. Beyond the windows it was dark, but we were always flying toward dawn. The bakery and kitchen staff would be up before long, preparing for the first meal of the day. Listen, and you could hear footfalls; take a breath, and you would soon smell the ambrosia of baking bread. It made me feel better, just being out among it all.
Even airborne, there were times sleep evaded me, though I never panicked then. I liked reading in my bunk, or just dreaming, content to be carried through the night. Or, sometimes, I did what I was about to do now.
I let myself into the passenger quarters, climbed the grand staircase to A-Deck, and slipped through the dim, deserted lounges and reception rooms to the cinema. With my ring of keys, I let myself into the projectionists’ booth. I fitted the first reel of the movie onto the projector and warmed up the powerful tungsten lamp. I pressed a button, and the curtain in the cinema lifted. When the lamp was ready, I started the film, and hurried back into the cinema to take my seat in a red velvet-upholstered chair.
Baz and I would do this sometimes when we couldn’t sleep, discombobulated from too many night shifts or just too excited after leaving some exotic port. We’d start the movie and sit side by side smack in the middle of the deserted cinema and let the movie just wash over us. And sometimes I’d do it by myself. Once the movie starts, if it’s a good one, you sort of forget if you’re alone or not. The cinema smelled of perfume and cigar smoke and roasted almonds.
Gilgamesh. I hadn’t seen this yet. Judging by the tall stack of reels in the booth, it would be a juicy long one. The Lumière triplets always made good movies. Light played on the screen and, as always, the story pulled me right in. There was a creature called Enkidu, half man, half animal, who falls from the sky. The cruel king Gilgamesh is jealous of his power over people and animals and wants to kill him. I sat riveted, except when I had to change reels on the projector. I’d race back, pull off the old one, and slap on the new one and hurry back to my seat. Near the end of the movie, Enkidu travels to the city to confront Gilgamesh, and they start to fight high atop the city’s towers.
My heart was pounding, my hands clenched the armrests, and I was leaning forward toward the screen. The tower was impossibly high. There was a terrible storm blowing, and clouds scudded past—it was almost as if they were airborne. They were fighting closer and closer to the edge of the tower, lightning flashed, thunder rolled, and Gilgamesh slipped. And fell.
I shouted in surprise.
Gilgamesh fell so slowly, arms spread, right off the tower’s edge and toward the clouds, but somehow Enkidu grabbed hold of him. He seized him around the wrist and was so strong he could lift him back over the edge and onto the tower.
I didn’t really see the end of the movie. I was having a good cry in the dark.
My father fell.
But no one could save him. There was no one close enough. He was coming back from Kath-mandu on the Aurora. Over the East China Sea there was a storm, and part of the ship’s skin ripped away near her tail flaps. He was a sailmaker, my father, just a junior one. After years working cargo ships for the Lunardi line, he’d been offered a position aboard the Aurora. It was Captain Walken who’d hired him.
A team of sailmakers went out onto the ship’s back in the storm. They needed to repair the hull. My father was among them. The wind was fierce, but my father did not falter. The ship’s back was slippery slick with rain, but he did not slip. He was doing some patching when a big panel of ship’s skin tore free and struck him in the head. He was knocked unconscious, and the weight of his fall ripped his safety line from the cleat. The others tried to reach him in time but couldn’t. They saw him fall off the ship’s back and soar down through the stormy sky. They saw him disappear into the low cloud churning above the sea.
They were never able to recover the body; the seas and skies were too rough. They told us that, from such a height, the impact on the water would have killed him instantly. But I liked to think of him sailing clear. I liked to think of him soaring around the world, crossing paths with me.
Morning came and I was on the pipeline crew, guiding them to the cave. It seemed strange to be trudging through the forest without Kate, but I had to admit I was relieved to be free of her. I had not seen her last night in the dining room; Baz later told me Miss Simpkins and Kate had taken their dinner in their stateroom. It seemed the chaperone had Kate under lock and key, and I couldn’t help thinking it was good sense. I knew she would want to go back and see the cloud cat again, and I was worried I would not have the strength to say no to her. A proper weakling I’d become down here.
It was slow, hot work, unrolling the heavy rubber hosing through the forest, like wrestling with some mythological boa constrictor. It was noon before we reached the cave and the sailmakers had attached the end of the hose as best they could to the collar on the hydrium vent.
“Back to the ship!” the chief sailmaker told me, “and tell them to turn on the pump!”
I raced back. The end of the pipeline fed directly into the forward gas shaft in the Aurora’s bow. A pump had been rigged to suck the hydrium along the pipeline and into the shaft. From there the captain could fill each and every gas cell simply by opening the valves that connected all the cells.
“Prime the pump!” I yelled to the mechanics. “She’s ready!”
I heard the pump start and then went back out onto the beach to watch.
It was silly, because I knew that it would be a slow process, not like watching a party balloon get blown up. The rubber hosing was thin, and I’d heard the sailmakers say it would take at least twenty-four hours to completely replenish the Aurora. All through the night, the sailmakers had been working, once again patching the Aurora’s skin. By this time she looked like a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster, stitched together so that both flanks and back were covered with raised scar tissue. That could be fixed. Back in harbor, all that could be taken care of.
I watched. I wanted to see something happen.
Mr. Nguyen, one of the machinists, came out to tell me the hydrium was feeding in just fine.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“Just watching her, that’s all.”
“You’re crazy, Mr. Cruse. It’ll be hours before you see a difference.”
I went aboard, and no sooner had I set foot on A-Deck when Miss Simpkins came dashing around the corner as fast as her long skirt would allow, waving a bone in the air. I flattened myself against the wall: she looked to be in a running-down frame of mind.
“How dare you poke about in my room!” Kate hollered, barreling around the corner after her chaperone.
“This is too much!” Miss Simpkins said, rounding on me. She waved the bone in my face. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Give it back!” shouted Kate. “You’ll damage it!”
Miss Simpkins, it seemed, had just discovered our bones.
As luck would have it, the captain was strolling out from the upper lounge, and Miss Simpkins went straight for him.
“Captain Walken!”
“Miss Simpkins, I trust your tropical headaches have eased, under the care of our fine doctor.”
“My head is simply throbbing!” Miss Simpkins declared. “And likely to get worse given recent events!”
“Perhaps we could talk somewhere more private,” the captain said gallantly. “Please, will you all join me in my cabin. You too, Mr. Cruse.”
“Yes, very well,” said Miss Simpkins, turning to Kate. “Come along!”
Kate glared at her chaperone and then turned to me.
“Hello, Mr. Cruse. How are you today?”
“I’m well, Miss de Vries. And yourself?”
“Quite angry.”
We followed the captain down the catwalk and into his cozy cabin, where he offered Miss de Vries and Miss Simpkins the two chairs. I stood.
“Captain,” the chaperone began, holding the bone out before her as if it were the most gruesome and gore-soaked thing imaginable, “to have my charge and your cabin boy cavorting about the forest is quite bad enough, but now I find that they’ve been grave digging!”
“You had no right to open that carpetbag, Marjorie,” said Kate. “I am terribly, terribly vexed.”
“She refuses to tell me how she came by these bones, and I am hoping her sly accomplice, this cabin boy of yours, might be more forthcoming!” said Miss Simpkins, patting at her hair.
“We haven’t been grave digging, Marjorie,” Kate said with a disdainful toss of her head. “The idea is quite absurd.”
“Then explain this, please!” she said, shaking the bone.
“That is a femur.”
“I don’t care what it’s called. I want to know where it came from and why you have it.”
“We just found it,” she said. “In a tree.”
“A tree! You see, Captain, she’s quite unbalanced.”
“Mr. Cruse,” said the captain, “I know I can rely on you to shed some light on this matter.”
I looked at Kate. Her face was giving nothing away. I knew I’d promised to keep it secret, but my captain had asked me a direct question, and I would not go against him any longer.
“She’s right, sir. We found the bone in a tree. Actually, we found an entire skeleton—”
“I take a great interest in bones,” Kate cut in at this point.
“Bones!” said Miss Simpkins with a shudder, finally setting the femur down on the captain’s desk as though it might come alive, snakelike, in her hand. “This is not a healthy pursuit, Kate. It is morbid.”
“It isn’t,” Kate protested. “It’s a perfectly fine pursuit. I plan to become an archaeological zoologist.”
“This does not have the approval of her parents, I can assure you,” Miss Simpkins told the captain.
It seemed that we might get away without telling them what kind of animal the bones came from. It did feel a bit dishonest. I would not lie, but I didn’t think I needed to volunteer information. I’d leave that up to Kate.
The captain picked up the bone and examined it thoughtfully.
“Sizable,” he remarked, looking at Kate. “I hadn’t thought there were any large animals on these Oceanic islands.”
“How my head throbs!” wailed the chaperone.
I was awfully grateful to Miss Simpkins: she was doing a wonderful job distracting the captain from the matter of our bones.
“Would you like me to arrange a visit from our doctor?” t
he captain asked, sounding amazingly sympathetic.
“I feel as though I’m likely to be laid low again,” Miss Simpkins said piteously.
“I’ll have him come to your stateroom immediately,” the captain told her.
“Since you’re going to be out of commission, Marjorie,” Kate said, “I was rather hoping we could have your permission to make another excursion.”
Miss Simpkins’s jaw fell. “You must be mad, child. Not only will you stay away from the forest, you will be locked within the stateroom until we leave this wretched island.”
“That’s imprisonment!” Kate protested. “Captain, surely you can’t allow that.”
“I have no authority over this matter,” said the captain. “But if truth be told, Miss de Vries, you have not exercised sound judgment. Harm could easily have come to you in that typhoon; you might have been lost or attacked by some animal. I’d prefer to have everyone aboard the ship now. It won’t be long till we depart, and I would hate to miss favorable winds because one of the passengers was unaccounted for.”
“But locking me in my room, I think, is most unfair,” said Kate. “My parents will be most displeased—”
“To learn of your shenanigans, yes, they will,” her chaperone cut in. “Digging up bones!”
“We didn’t dig them up, Marjorie.”
“I expect you to be rid of them before we leave! They’re not coming with us.”
“They most certainly are,” Kate said.
“Perhaps you can continue this discussion in the privacy of your stateroom,” said the captain, standing. “I must see to the ship. Thank you, Mr. Cruse, for joining us.”
“And, Captain,” said Miss Simpkins, “I would appreciate it if Mr. Cruse here would keep his distance from my charge. I fear he is a poor and perverse influence on her.”
“Marjorie, that is quite uncalled for!”
“Did you know that it was Mr. Cruse who discovered hydrium here on the island?” the captain asked her. “He’s saved us all, Miss Simpkins.”
“That was awfully clever of you,” Kate said to me, beaming. “Where?”
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