by Georgia Byng
“Breathe, Petula,” Molly said, and Petula, her eyes shining from confusion and fear, panted. Molly felt like crying. But there was no time for tears now. Molly put a scarf and a sweater around Petula to keep her warm. Then, double-checking that the whole bag was strapped properly onto her, she tightened its drawstring and held it close. Then she put on the gloves that came with her kit. Now Molly stood ready. She could feel Petula’s heart beating through the bag, and Petula could feel Molly’s heartbeat, too.
Molly leaned forward. “I love you, Petula,” she said. “Whatever happens, remember that.” Then Molly took a deep breath and tried to find some sort of calm in herself. She tried to think logically. She’d often watched sky dives on TV, and it occurred to her that people all over the world jumped out of planes every day of the year for fun. Bolstered by this thought, Molly steeled her nerves.
I can do this. I can do this. I can do this, she said to herself. She watched Malcolm putting on his parachute while flying the ailing plane at the same time.
I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. Molly let her mantra wash through her.
Micky walked toward her, steadying himself on the walls of the plane. Lily clung on to him like a limpet. They were ready to jump.
“I can’t believe this!” Micky shouted over the moaning of the engines. He sounded confident, but his eyes betrayed how terrified he was.
Then Malcolm’s voice came over the speaker again.
“I am going to open the parachute door at the tail of the plane. When I say go, you go. I will be following right behind you.”
Molly nodded. She couldn’t believe this was happening. Her fear came back again in thick, fast breaths. She, Micky, and Lily linked arms and moved to the tail of the aircraft. And then, with a rumble and a screech, the bottom of the plane began to open. The noise of the engines and the wind outside was now deafening. What was more, the children felt themselves being pulled toward the ever-widening opening.
Molly’s hands were sweating profusely as apprehension tore through her body. Petula curled up into a ball in her bag, pressing her nose into her mask. She felt Molly’s terror and was full of dread herself. She shut her eyes tight and tried to think of meadows and long grass, of streams and flowers. How she longed to be at home in her safe basket.
“Oh, no,” Molly whispered, her heart pounding. “This is bad.”
“Get a grip, Molly,” Micky shouted over the raging noise. “Remember people do this for fun!”
“Not in storms!” Molly yelled back as the tug of the cold air outside became so strong that she could hardly stop herself from being pulled into it. But then she smiled. For she was touched that Micky had had the same thought as her. “You’re right, though, Micky.”
“Look!” Micky shouted. “There are compasses on your straps. See—the numbers on it change as you move. Just kind of steer your parachute toward 0, 08.00 South, and 78, 10.49 West.” He linked his arms through Molly’s and Lily’s again, and together they resisted the pull of the wind outside. Molly nodded and bit her teeth together hard as she forced bravery to overtake her natural instinct, which was to cry. She looked at Lily, who had gone all quiet and limp, and wondered whether she stood any chance at all of reading her compass. Molly held Lily’s arm firmly, and Micky’s, too. The threesome made a ring.
“Ready?” Malcolm’s voice grated loudly over the plane’s intercom. “Holding hands. All together. But let go of each other before your parachutes open at twenty thousand feet. Keep your legs together when you land. Now…GO! GO! GO!”
Molly put a thumb up at him, and in the next moment the bottom of the plane clunked fully open. It gaped wide, showing nothing but chilling blackness. At the same time, the air outside sucked like a massive, noisy, death-wishing vacuum cleaner so that everyone began slipping toward the dark void.
“One! Two! Three! JUMP!” Molly cried, and as though in a dream, and as if simply jumping into an inky pool, everyone leaped at once.
Twenty-two
Molly’s body hit the air. Freezing cold, it smacked her face. For a moment, Molly wasn’t sure whether she was dead or alive. She felt tiny, as though she were the size of a speck of dust tumbling in a gale-force wind. She was falling and spinning—flipping like a coin that had been tossed by some crazed devil.
“Heads you lose, tails you die!” These words screamed through her head as though the icy wind was shouting at her. “Heads you die, tails you die!” Molly felt that Miss Hunroe was the fiend who had tossed her.
And then Molly remembered to breathe. With a deep breath into her oxygen mask, she tried to take control. But it was so cold and she was so dizzy that she could hardly think. She realized with horror that she could no longer feel Lily linked through her left arm, but that Micky, with his arm through her harness, was still attached. For a brief second, Molly opened her eyes to see whether Lily was still holding Micky’s arm. Micky’s face, grimacing with fear, flashed in the moonlight, but there was no Lily beside him. And it was too difficult to make out anything else. So Molly didn’t know where Lily was at all. Nor did she know whether Petula was still breathing or not. The sharp air stung Molly’s eyes so much that she had to shut them again.
Molly and Micky were alone, careering down through the icy air together. The out-of-control spin that they were in was horrible. Molly fought through her brain’s utter confusion. With a huge effort, she pushed herself through the torrent of rushing air to swing her left arm toward Micky. Her helmet crashed into his. Terrified, they clung together and continued to fall.
The crescent moon shone down on them. The two twins held on to each other as they had done eleven and a half years before—before they’d been born. They dropped as one like a spinning black ball, down, down, down through the subzero night sky. The moonlight reflected off them, spotlighting them as they plummeted. It was bitter cold, and their bodies were numb. Molly’s face burned, her eyes hurt, and her stomach had swollen from the high air pressure. And she felt sick from the turning and falling.
Then she remembered watching a program about skydivers, and she remembered what to do.
“WE’VE GOT TO STRAIGHTEN OUT!” she shouted to Micky.
“WHAAAAT?” he yelled back with his eyes shut.
“STRAIGHTEN OOOOUUUUT! STAAAAR SHAPES!”
“STAR SHAPES?”
“YESS!”
To show what she meant, Molly pushed away from him and pushed out her legs. This leveled them a little, but still they flipped.
“DO IT!” Molly screamed.
As Micky straightened his legs, he stretched his arms out, too. He and Molly were joined where their hands held each other’s harnesses. Their legs flailed behind them like the forked tails of strange high-altitude birds.
“BETTER!” Micky hollered. And it was. Without the mad spin, they could think properly. Both braved the sharp air and opened their eyes. Molly looked once again for Lily, and now for Malcolm, but they were nowhere to be seen. She wished she could check on Petula. Micky glanced at his altimeter.
“Forty-five thousand feet!” he cried.
Both knew what this meant. Both looked down. Like a terrible beast that was waking up to the twins’ imminent arrival, the clouds below them roared and flashed. Lightning showed Molly and Micky what was to come—a diabolical, dark mass of air, full of electrical storm. And in the next moment, they were in it.
At once hail hit them. Freezing cold, hard, icy lumps the size of walnuts smashed in their faces and pummeled their bodies. But neither Molly nor Micky let go of each other to shield their faces. Seconds felt like minutes, but still they clung bravely together.
Eventually the hail turned to icy rain. Now Molly and Micky felt like flies inside a massive cold shower. Then, with a sudden rip and a tug that felt as though a giant was poking them, their parachutes began to open.
Both Molly and Micky opened their eyes.
“GOOD LUCK!” Molly shouted.
“KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE COORDINATES!” Micky shouted
back. And then, heeding Malcolm’s warning, with a push the twins separated.
Molly’s parachute unfurled, and Molly felt the weight of her body supported by the canopy above. And as soon as she was able, Molly put her cold, half-numb hand inside her bag to check Petula’s oxygen mask. It was still fixed to her. This was a comfort, but not enough to make Molly feel better. She was now alone with Petula in the unrelenting rain. She wondered if the parachute had opened too early. Maybe it would have been better to drop like a stone as fast as possible through the tumultuous storm. Instead they were going to have to parachute slowly down through it.
Molly did up Petula’s bag safely and began to observe the horrific weather below. Thunder rolled around her deafeningly, and lightning coursed through the heavy air. Molly caught a glimpse of Micky hanging like a barnacle from the bottom of his jellyfish-shaped parachute. She thought she saw another parachute behind him, too, but wasn’t sure whether she was simply imagining it. Whipping her face, the wind now gripped Molly’s parachute with a vengeance. Its gusts were so violent, it could rip the silk of the canopy apart. Molly looked down as another blast of thunder and lightning thrashed the sky. Beneath her dangling legs was a dreadful swirl of black tunneling cloud, like some hellish plughole. It was, Molly realized, some sort of tornado. Molly hugged Petula close. “I’M SORRY, PETULA!” she yelled. Molly wished she could climb into the bag and snuggle up with Petula. But she couldn’t, so she did the next best thing. She silently asked her pet, What are you thinking?
Like a magical screen, a thought bubble popped up over the nylon bag. In it were images, not of the storm, but of fields and flowers and blue skies and of places that Petula loved. There were the llama-filled meadows of Briersville Park and pictures of Micky and Rocky. They were all looking happy. And then Molly saw images of herself laughing and throwing sticks for Petula to fetch.
Though the slapping rain hurt Molly’s eyes, she kept them open. This was exactly what to be thinking about now, Molly realized. For these moments in the air might be the very last moments of their lives. Molly’s eyes filled with tears as she saw the people in her life who she loved. Her tears were washed off her cheeks by the howling wind. She thought of Rocky and wondered whether she would ever see him again. She remembered how she’d been dreading lessons and wishing for some adventure last time she’d been with him. How she would love to be doing math homework now!
Then her mind turned to all the people she hadn’t seen for a long time. Not Rocky and Ojas, Lucy, Primo, and Forest, but people from her past, the other orphanage children who were now in Los Angeles. She thought about Mrs. Trinklebury, the kind old lady who had, years before, found Molly in a box on a doorstep and saved her. She wished a giant Moon’s Marshmallow box would suddenly appear and scoop her and Petula out of the sky. Molly shut her eyes and held Petula close to her. And she wished. As her parachute was buffeted and she was swung violently underneath it like a human pendulum, she wished. She wished and wished with all her heart that everything would be all right.
And then the rain began to subside. Moonlight slipped through a crack in the clouds, and Molly saw that the storm was above her now. The worst of the storm was over.
She glanced down. There was one very bright spot on the land below. But Molly had no idea how far below her that bright spot was. Nor could she imagine why one spot was so bright when all the rest of the land was so dark. Then Molly realized. The plane they had been in must have nosedived. And the brightness below was fire—fire from its explosive crash. She hoped Malcolm hadn’t gone down with the plane. She glanced at the altimeter on her harness.
10,000 FEET, it read. Molly didn’t know how long it would take for her parachute to drop through ten thousand feet of air, but she suspected it wouldn’t be long. So, reaching for her coordinate compass on her harness’s left strap, she clicked on its tiny light and tried to work out which direction she should be heading. The compass indicated that southwest, and the spring of the Coca River, were straight in front of her. She assumed that she was going in almost the right direction. She reached for the toggles on her parachute. They were, as Micky had said they would be, above her ears, hanging down from the parachute’s canopy strings. Molly pulled on the left-hand toggle to try to start moving westward.
Above her, the canopy sagged a little as she redirected it, and the parachute turned. Molly checked the compass. Its arrow flickered and altered. The altimeter now read 7,000 FEET. Molly hoped the wind was strong enough to get her to where she wanted to go, but not so fast that it would push her past the spring of the Coca River.
Lightning lit the sky again, and now Molly saw the land below, a vast, inhospitable jungle. With every flash of light, she searched the skies for the others. They must be out there somewhere, she thought, but she couldn’t see them. Trying not to think about how alone she and Petula were, Molly concentrated on steering herself down.
The closer she got to the ground, the faster she seemed to be coming down, and the warmer the air felt. The rain forest was huge and mighty and packed full of trees. Molly really didn’t want to land in one. Glad for the lightning now, she looked for a clearing. Spotting one, Molly turned her parachute so that the rain was hitting her in the face, and she shot toward it. Then she loosened the fastenings on Petula’s bag and took off her pet’s mask. She took off her own, too, and breathed in the clean, warm air.
“Hold tight, Petula. This is going to be over soon!” she shouted.
Molly held her legs together as Malcolm had instructed, and she made them as bendy as she could, not knowing what sort of surface she was going to encounter.
Closer, closer the land came. Rushing up at her. And then, there was impact. And with the impact came coldness.
It took Molly a few seconds to realize why everything was suddenly so cold. She had landed in water—in fast-flowing water. Wet and cold as she was from the icy air thousands of feet above, she hardly felt it. A panic gripped her. What kind of water had she fallen into? she wondered. Desperately, she tried to keep her head above the torrential stream. And then she began to worry about Petula, who, she realized, must be half drowning in her bag. As the river tossed and threw her about, Molly did her best to lift up Petula, still in her bag, to make sure that she didn’t drown.
The water knocked Molly and Petula, then carried them and submerged them, like some dreadful sprite that was playing with them. Molly swallowed mouthfuls of mountain water. It shot up her nose, stinging her sinuses. It crashed over her as its rapids splashed over her head. She and Petula were washed downstream like two bottle tops that had fallen into a rain-filled gutter.
A few miles away, Miss Hunroe cracked open a bottle of champagne. With a pop, the cork flew out of the bottle’s neck and shot up into a tree, sending a parrot squawking.
“Good shot!” Miss Oakkton cried, clapping. She, Miss Teriyaki, and Miss Speal, all in their night-clothes, raised their glasses.
“Well done,” Miss Speal congratulated Miss Hunroe, her voice greasy and deferential. “Your weather-manipulation skills are now fully honed.”
“Yes, Miss Hunroe, those storms you conjured up tonight were perfectly directed,” Miss Teriyaki, in a flowery kimono, agreed.
“Far better to have zose Moon kids ten feet under,” added Miss Oakkton, glugging back her champagne.
“They are tiny particles in the air, not under the ground,” Miss Teriyaki corrected her. “That explosion will have blasted them into billions of bits.”
“It vas a manner of speech,” Miss Oakkton informed Miss Teriyaki, irritated. “Ten feet under means dead and buried.”
“Well, it was a beautiful sight to see that plane drop from the sky and to watch its explosion, wasn’t it?” Miss Hunroe said dreamily. “Now there is nothing to stop us! What a relief!”
Twenty-three
Everything was still now. Petula came to her senses. She was soaking wet and half drowned and the nylon bag about her was cold and clammy, but she wasn’t in water anymore. She was
still reeling from the ordeal of hurtling down through the storm clouds with Molly. And the river had nearly killed her. It had mercilessly rolled her and Molly in its rapids. But then, like a careless small child throwing a toy aside, it had flung them onto its banks. Petula could feel that Molly was underneath the bag. She poked her head through its opening and struggled out.
The moon shone down, and Petula saw that the cold water of the river was still lapping about Molly’s legs. The rest of Molly’s body was lodged on the muddy bank. Her head was supported by a hard, flat rock, and Petula could smell Molly’s blood.
Molly had cut the back of her head. Petula clamped her teeth around a good chunk of Molly’s jacket, and using all her strength, she began to tug. Molly’s body shifted an inch or two, which was enough to give Petula encouragement.
Fifteen minutes later, Molly was fully out of the water. The air was warm, but Petula could feel with her nose that Molly was very, very cold. Being cold and wet all night could kill Molly, Petula knew—if a wild animal didn’t come first and eat her. The smell of Molly’s blood would alert all sorts of creatures. Right at this moment, animals would be sniffing the air and detecting that something had been wounded. Petula’s only hope was to get another human to help—though whether any people lived in this dense, dark forest was uncertain. Still, Petula had no choice but to hope, and so she began to howl.
Birds in their nests were woken. Pacas and armadillos, jaguars and bears stirred in their sleep. Rodents, owls, and other nocturnal creatures pricked up their ears and smelled the air.
Petula howled so long her throat hurt, but still she howled more. Though each howl cut like a knife, she kept on until she was hoarse and could only whimper.
There was a rustling in the bushes behind. The beam of a weak flashlight cut through the dark, and the light of it fell on Petula. She scrunched up her eyes and saw that a tall, thin figure had emerged from the undergrowth. It was a man. He wore earth-covered brown linen shorts and a waterproof parka and heavy walking boots, and he smelled to Petula of cloves, parsley, leaves, and campfire smoke and paper and ink and dog. Clicking his tongue to Petula, he crouched down over Molly and laid his palm on her forehead. He listened to her breathing, checked her body, and unclipped her harness so that she was no longer attached to the parachute. Then, swiftly, he lifted Molly up. Raising her onto his shoulders, so that she hung on either side of his neck like a human scarf, he clicked his tongue again to Petula and set off into the forest.