A great undulating form seemed to be rolling or boiling within. David came up beside us with a crate of supplies. He leaned back a bit to get a better view. “The last time you flew it, it seemed much larger.”
Whatever the pulsing thing was, it could not possibly get any larger. It was enormous, filling the entire barn.
“Oh, my dear Lord,” I murmured as the mass began to take shape and rise.
An immense oblong balloon rose out of the barn and into the falling dusk. Mist swept off the fabric in waves as the cool evening air met with the heated balloon. A gondola, shaped suspiciously like a pirate ship, hung from great cords of rope attached to the keel framework of the balloon above. The fabric swelled and ebbed as it strained against the confining ropes, and I couldn’t help thinking of the body of a great dragon breathing and belching smoke as steam vented from the ship. Slowly a pair of guide wings unfurled as the airship reached the limit of its tether.
I didn’t have words. It was glorious.
“Na ja! We will sail the skies. It has been too long a time. Come! Come!” Albrecht entered the stables, waving his arms for us to follow.
As we passed through the door, I whispered to David, “Are you sure about this?”
He looked at me as if I were the one who had gone daft. “Of course. No one can take us to Scotland faster.”
We climbed an unsteady wooden stair into what should have been the loft of the barn. The airship bobbed lazily before us. “I’m not worried about arriving quickly so much as arriving in one piece.”
“Worry not, Miss Whitlock. This ship is perfectly safe.” Clearly, the old man’s hearing was as sharp as he was spry. “One day the sky will be full with airships. You will see. Once people learn to float among the clouds as one with them, there will be no other way to travel. There is no disaster that could possibly taint the glory of an airship.” Albrecht led us over a swinging rope bridge and onto the deck of the ship. He opened up a large chest and pulled out some long, heavy leather coats, along with caps, gloves, and goggles.
I glanced at the boilers and imagined the ship plummeting to earth in a ball of fire. No disaster indeed. A pair of gloves smacked me in the chest, and I instinctively caught them. Albrecht removed his leather apron and donned one of the long coats. “David, use the starter to get the fire going in the propeller engines.” He tossed David a cap. “I must adjust the condensation feed from the envelope. Miss Whitlock, if you would, please wind the navigation system at the bow of the ship.”
I pulled on my own coat. It felt reassuringly heavy on my shoulders and warm as it wrapped over my entire body and nearly reached the hem of my skirts. I buttoned the front and pulled on one of the thick leather caps. Stray wisps of my hair refused to be contained and tickled my cheeks.
Near the bow of the ship, I found a large map on a table surrounded by an extremely intricate machine. The joints and arms created a lace-like impression as I tried to follow the connections to several different instruments and gauges. To the right was a large wheel. I turned it slowly even as the fading light of dusk finally died.
Albrecht joined me and lit a lamp hanging from the machine. In the light I could make out a very detailed map of Great Britain. Albrecht inspected the machine, making a few adjustments, then placed the ball of a pointer attached to an arm suspended from the machine on a point on the map. “We are here.” His thin finger touched the map. “As we fly, this machine will track our progress. If all goes well, we will reach the Foundry by morning.” He tapped a second location on the map. Loch Ness. It seemed so far, and so much could go wrong.
It didn’t take long before we had the ship in full working order.
I heard a churning, chugging sound, not unlike a locomotive, and the great blades of the propellers at the back of the ship slowly turned.
Albrecht perched his goggles merrily on his thin nose, then reached for a large lever at the center of the deck. He pulled it, and I let out a gasp as the deck lurched. Ropes from along the rail all released at once, falling away to the ground like dying serpents. Albrecht jumped into a seat next to the map and deftly turned each of the four different wheels surrounding him. I ran to the rail, mostly to hold on to something as the deck tilted sharply to the sky and we rose, the dark countryside falling away beneath us.
My heart hammered and my throat went dry as I clung to the rail, watching the dark shadows and glimmering lights from windows in the houses below sink farther beneath me. We drifted along past as if we were sailing on a very clear lake. The trees were nothing more than the rocks at the depths, and the lights, reflections of golden stars in the water.
I had never witnessed anything so utterly beautiful and terrifying at once.
CHAPTER THIRTY
ONCE WE REACHED A DIZZYING height, the deck of the ship leveled out and we floated along amid the clouds. I refused to let go of the rail and gripped it tight enough that my knuckles blanched as I watched the lights and shadows move along beneath us.
“We’re at thirty-five knots, Onkel,” David called from the engines in the back. “All system pressures are normal.”
“Good, good.” Albrecht hummed a tune to himself as he checked the map again, then adjusted one of the two smaller wheels.
The great fans were spinning behind us, catching the cooling mist trailing off the envelope. The loose tendrils of my hair brushed against my face as the mist rained down on us. With the breeze it was quite cold in spite of the large, heavy coat I was wearing. I shivered.
David appeared next to me and wrapped a quilt over my shoulders. I could see the glow of London like a blanket of fire on the dark countryside.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he said, leaning his forearms on the rail as if he were sailing on a ship and not suspended thousands of feet in the air by hot gas.
As I took in the sight of London, burning like some glorious beacon in the night, I had to admit he was right. The last time I’d flown, I had nothing but a pair of wings on my back with thin straps of leather holding them on, and a fervent prayer I wouldn’t drop from the sky.
That had been a wholly different experience. With the solid rail beneath my hand and the deck steady under my feet, it was the world around me that seemed to defy what was possible. The clouds drifted over us, close enough to touch, and I wondered if they felt soft, or if, like ghosts, they’d elude such earthly connections.
“It is beautiful,” I admitted, pulling the quilt closer around my neck. “Perfect, really.” I watched my breath turn into fog before my face. I felt no danger here, no thrill for my life. All was still and so very cold.
As I thought back to the time I had flown with the wings, I remembered the touch of the light of the dying sun on my skin, and the feel of Will’s hands on my face as he kissed me, hot, desperate, and so alive.
I had soared.
Now I drifted.
We sailed on for a time in companionable silence before David spoke again.
“What is it about him?” he asked. He didn’t bother to say more as he turned to me. The moon glowed behind him, lighting his hair with a silvery hue and turning his blue eyes to elusive mercury.
I didn’t wish to answer. I wasn’t sure if I knew. Will had nothing, and yet was willing to give. He was cautious, and yet was willing to stand in the face of danger. He was scarred, and yet he knew joy. In my heart his spirit burned, and it filled me with warmth every time my thoughts turned to him. When Will and I were together, I felt I could be more myself.
David accepted my silence and stared back out at the dark horizon. David was an enigma. I wasn’t entirely sure I knew what lay behind the cool mask. He was a man not of deception but of illusion. It was that mystery that had me in its snare, but mystery so quickly fades.
“What is it about me?” I whispered.
He glanced down at his hand on the rail and the signet ring on his finger, but he didn’t answer.
I turned and walked away from him, joining Albrecht at the controls.
“Beautiful night for flying,” he said. I couldn’t see his eyes through his goggles, but I smiled at the way his eyebrows perched above them like the caterpillars of a very large moth. “Very romantic.”
I watched the pointer on the map inch slowly north.
“Did you ever marry?” I asked, wondering what type of woman would have taken dear Albrecht as her own.
He let out a sharp bark of a laugh. “Marry? Nein, ah, no. No, I have never married.”
“I imagine you cut quite the dashing figure in your youth,” I said, brushing some condensation off the edge of the navigation machine.
Albrecht lifted the goggles and looked me in the eye. “I had only one passion in my life.” He filled his lungs, pushing his chest out as he looked around him with pride. He patted one of the wheels in front of him, then took the vertical wheel at his hip and turned it. The nose of the airship rose toward the clouds, and he smiled. “Some callings demand too much.”
I felt like I should have gathered some pity or sorrow for the lonely old man, but as I watched him there at the wheels of his ship, I couldn’t see anything to feel sorry for. “But it is worth it?”
He didn’t look away from the heavens. “Always.”
I stepped into the bow of the gondola and looked up at the envelope above me as it climbed to the clouds. I reached my arm out and grasped one of the ropes tying us to the envelope. It trembled in the still air.
Out on the ocean waters Will was traveling north as well. I couldn’t let him die. It would kill a part of me forever. I gave the rope a squeeze. We had to make it in time.
The night stretched on endlessly. David and I took turns manning the firebox and going down into the hold to shovel fuel toward the hopper that fed it into the lift. From there the mechanized engine fueled itself and chugged along merrily, mile after mile.
Every time I checked the needle sliding along the map, it hadn’t seemed to have changed at all from the time before, and yet slowly it had crept away from London and steadily north.
Uncle Albrecht had taken to singing opera to pass the time. He had a rough but pleasant voice, but even that couldn’t fill the hours upon hours of tedium. It left me too alone with my thoughts. I watched David as he maintained the engine, climbing down into the hold to shovel the dwindling fuel into the hopper.
He came out of the hold with a dark smear across his cheek and forehead as he looked to the lightening sky to the east. In that moment his pretenses were gone. In those moments when he was true and the mask was down, I could understand the potential of us.
As I sat with my back to the rail near the engines, my eyes kept drifting closed. It was warm this close to the firebox, and I had had a very long day. Uncle Albrecht took another swig from his flask of tonic, and continued humming to himself.
David adjusted one of the cranks on the engine, then sat down next to me. “Dawn is on the horizon,” he said as he rested his forearms on his knees.
“Let’s hope so.” I tilted my head back and closed my eyes.
I could sleep, but only for a moment.
I woke suddenly with a jolt.
The sky was much brighter. I had to shield my eyes from the glare of it. Lifting my head, I realized I was cuddled up against David’s side, his arm slung lightly around my back and resting on my hip. His head had dropped to his chest, and he was snoring slightly. I could feel the warmth of his body lingering on my cheek, and smell the scent of his fine cologne mixed with smoke from the fire surrounding me.
I pushed myself away from him, scrambling to sort out my skirts and find my feet. An unsettling scraping noise trailed along the length of the gondola.
The clouds seemed very high in the sky.
Oh no.
Uncle Albrecht.
I rushed toward the old man slumped in the pilot’s chair at the bow. As I reached him, he rumbled out his own loud snore. Large pines loomed on a rising hill. We were heading right for them.
“Uncle Albrecht!” I screeched.
He woke with a start and immediately grasped the wheel, blinking. “Was, was ist los?” I grabbed on to the navigation machine as Uncle Albrecht’s eyes went wide. Letting out a very explicit turn of phrase in German, he furiously spun his control wheels.
“Stoke the fire!” he yelled.
I ran aft as David was beginning to stir. “David, the bellows!”
He sprang to his feet even as the gondola lurched when it hit the top of one of the trees. I reached the lever attached to the bellows on the left while David spun the dials on the engine, diverting all steam and hot air to the envelope.
I pushed down on the handle with all my strength, but didn’t have the power to lift it again until David pushed down on his from the other side. The two levers were connected, and together we pumped life back into the airship.
“Hold fast!” Uncle Albrecht shouted as he turned the wheel at his side and the nose of the gondola tipped straight toward the sky. I clung to the bellows as my feet slipped from beneath me, and I almost crashed into the rail at the stern of the gondola. Finding my feet again, I still managed to work the bellows, my arms and chest burning with the effort.
The airship rose, but it wasn’t enough.
The bow of the ship crashed into the tops of the trees. Ropes snapped as the gondola shook violently. The motion threw me from my feet, and I crashed against the back rail. The force of the blow knocked my breath from me, and I tipped and began rolling over the edge. I hooked the rail in the crook of my arm and closed my eyes as I felt my feet swing over nothingness. I wrapped my other arm tightly on the rail and clung to it with all my strength.
“Meg, hold on!” David grabbed me by the arm, then grasped the back of the long coat.
“We need more lift!” Albrecht shouted. I kicked my feet, trying to find purchase, but it was no use.
The ship leveled off enough for David to haul me back over the rail.
We tumbled together onto the deck, but there was no time to shake off my terror. Another mountain was coming up fast. “Back to the fire,” I gasped.
We worked the levers, trying desperately to keep the ship aloft. “Harder!” David screamed as the ship rushed up the slope of the mountain, startling a herd of shaggy brown cows.
A sharp warning whistle cut through the air, and David abandoned the bellows and tended to the gauges.
I ran forward to the navigation machine. Planting my hands on the map, I took in the position of the pointer.
“We’ve flown too far north,” I said, looking up at the broken ropes. The gondola swayed precariously. “Loch Ness is south of us. We have to turn the ship around.”
Uncle Albrecht stood from his seat, turning yet another wheel. “How much fuel is in the hold?”
I skittered across the deck and down into the hold. I stared for a moment, as if wishing I could somehow fill the hold with more fuel. We were done for.
“There’s none left,” I shouted as I climbed the ladder back onto the deck. Another rope snapped with a loud crack, and the gondola swayed as what sounded like a wounded groan filled the air.
“Then we climb as high as we can and hope for the best,” Uncle Albrecht said as he pitched the airship higher.
We were hundreds of feet in the air. Hoping for the best didn’t sound like much of a plan. I joined David at the engines.
“We’ll make it,” he said, but his expression was both determined and grim.
Together we worked to pull as much lasting heat as we could out of the engines. Albrecht managed to turn the limping airship around, but we hadn’t climbed very far, and the terrain was treacherous at best.
David and I worked the bellows until I feared my arms would pull from my shoulders. We had to make it, we had to.
The airship continued to sink toward the rugged hills beneath us. I clenched my hands tight on the handle and prayed as we neared another ridge. We weren’t going to make it.
“Hold on,” David shouted as we swept toward the rocky peak. The bottom of the gondol
a glanced off the top of the ridge, but then to my relief a long stretch of dark water appeared.
“Aim for the lake!”
We careened over the sweeping mountains and gained speed as we flew toward the ruins of a castle. Albrecht put on his goggles and threw off his coat. “Get ready. We swim.”
I struggled to open the heavy coat and threw it off. I ripped at the sleeves of my dress. Then remembered the knife. I grabbed it out of my pocket.
Taking the point of the knife, I stabbed it into my skirts and ripped a wide swath. I brutally freed myself of cloth until I was left with a ragged skirt that barely touched my knees. I had almost drowned once because of my skirts. I wouldn’t do it again. When I was done shearing off fabric, I had bare arms and naught but my knickers and stockings covering the lower half of my legs.
David grabbed me by the arm. “When we get close enough to the water, you jump. If that envelope comes down on top of us, we’re dead.”
I nodded. “Take care of your uncle.”
Uncle Albrecht joined us at the rail. “Don’t worry about me. You are young. You must make it to shore.”
“Onkel, I—”
Two more ropes snapped, and the gondola lurched. A high-pitched whine came from the engines as we rushed closer and closer to the water.
“Schnell!” Uncle Albrecht shouted, shoving us both to the rail.
David grabbed me and kissed me so suddenly, I didn’t even realize what was happening before he pulled me forward, taking me with him over the rail.
I screamed as I stretched out. The dark water rushed up to meet me, and then I plunged into the icy depths.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I HIT THE WATER HARD and felt the blow deep in my head and chest as the water crushed me. The force of the fall knocked the air from my lungs, and my nose burned from the lake water that had pushed in. My limbs stung and felt numb as a deep throbbing pounded in my head. It ached with every beat of my heart.
Rise of the Arcane Fire (The Secret Order) Page 25