by Peter Bunzl
“Lily!” Robert called out.
She tried to turn her head, but only her eyes would move. The floor hummed beneath her and a dull ache rippled round her chest. She watched as Roach dragged Robert by his arms to the end of the cargo ramp and threw him off. There was another figure at her side, but she could barely make out his face, it was so filled with shadows. “Papa, is that you?” she asked, squinting through the dim light, trying to see him. “You’re still here. Promise me you won’t leave this time.”
He nodded. “I promise. I’m sorry, my love, sorry for everything. Sorry I never told you the truth about yourself. About what happened. I was so worried. Worried you’d feel guilty. Worried you wouldn’t love me when you heard what I’d done. Worried about how weak you were, how the shock of all this would hurt you more.” He brushed at her face. “But, most of all, worried I’d lose you to the truth: that I’d sacrificed Mama, my work, everything for you.”
Lily shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now, Papa. Honestly it doesn’t. You haven’t lost me, I’m right here.” She wanted to say more, but the words dried on her lips. The breath was being pushed from her as a heavy metal weight calcified in her chest. She swallowed a lump in her throat.
“The Cogheart. It’s… It’s going to stop. I can feel it.”
“Don’t say so. It’s not your time.” Papa pushed a lick of sweat-soaked hair from her forehead.
She squeezed his hand. “I have to go now,” she said.
“Don’t go, Lily.” Papa’s voice wavered. “Please don’t go. Not again. I’m sorry for everything I’ve done.” His brown eyes, so close, blinked back glistening tears, and he pressed his balled fist against her bleeding chest and pushed hard.
Lily smiled up at him. His words and actions felt so distant, like it was happening a long way off. The pain had begun to envelop her. The Cogheart gave a final shudder beneath her ribs, and she opened her mouth and let out one last breath…
Malkin raced downhill, dodging the various pedestrians who jostled along the pavements wrapped in their thick scarves and coats. Around him, hawkers and cog-and-bone men shouted from every corner and crevice of the street, selling newspapers, mittens, roast chestnuts and machine parts. He streaked past them all, slaloming between their legs.
He jumped down a brick passageway between two buildings, and came out behind a row of outhouses and a small unhealthy-looking courtyard piled high with rubbish.
Two butcher’s boys in bloody aprons with rolled-up sleeves, talking shop in a sawdusted doorway, glanced up as he shot past.
Malkin leaped a pool of frozen water, snapped at a group of squabbling pigeons, and sped on across the cracked uneven paving stones of the back alleys of London.
He was getting close to Anna’s mooring at Counter’s Creek now, he could sense it. Finally, as he got to a block he recognized, he spotted the tip of Ladybird’s zep bobbing above a ruined burned-out building.
He darted through the bars of a fence onto the weed-filled empty lot and ran along, jumping piles of shingle and bricks dotted with patches of white frost.
He passed the twisted metal frame of a beached airship, and the half-built crumbling walls of an unfinished warehouse, then leaped over a pile of broken crates. Finally, he reached a row of wooden mooring posts along the river, at the far end of the lot.
Ladybird was tethered to an iron loop embedded in the ground. Her ladder swung back and forth, its lowest rung grazing the icy grass.
Malkin rushed over and yapped up at Ladybird’s doorway until Anna, wearing woollen fingerless gloves and her hat and flying goggles, peered out. She gazed down at him. “What the devil’s wrong, Malkin?”
“Lily and Robert are in trouble,” Malkin barked. “You have to come.”
She nodded, and disappeared inside the gondola, then threw down a basket on a rope.
“Climb aboard,” she yelled at him. “You can explain on the way.”
Malkin’s tail drooped, and he sniffed at the basket distastefully. Did this mean more clanking air travel?
Robert woke with his face mushed against the frosty gravel. He tried to stand but his knees were weak. A sickening emptiness whirled in his belly and twisting dizziness filled his head. The pulsing backwash from some sort of engine had swept him off his feet.
Behemoth – it was taking off, with Lily onboard! He glanced up as, in a blur of noise, the airship pulled away from the jetty, raised its landing gears and floated out over the river.
“Robert! Lily! John!” Voices bellowed behind him, mixed in with the clattering of metal legs. Mrs Rust and the rest of John’s bullet-ridden mechanicals tumbled from the arch of the secret passageway.
“What happened?” Mrs Rust asked, helping Robert to his feet.
He caught his breath, let go of Mrs Rust’s arm and hobbled forward a few steps. “Lily’s on that airship. I have to get her back. I think she’s still alive.”
A shadow passed overhead, along with the putter of engines. Ladybird was floating above the chimney stacks of the house. Thank goodness! Robert felt a wave of relief. Malkin had got through – and now help had arrived.
With a loud hiss, Ladybird descended from the sky, careening towards them. Robert gasped and ducked, and the mechanicals threw themselves to the ground and rolled against the walls of the folly, as the airship dropped, wavering over the garden.
Her patched wooden hull barely missed the house’s frosted roof; she skimmed above the stone balustrades of a retaining wall, and knocked the head off a giant topiary fish. Hovering barely a foot in the air, she passed the ice-sprinkled folly, and squelched into the manicured lawn. Turning with a muddy skid mark, she bumped along the path and out off the end of the mooring pier, where she finally came to rest, her hull floating in the Thames.
Her engines puttered to a standstill, her door opened, and Anna and Malkin jumped down onto the icy slats of the pier. Malkin’s ears flicked and he swayed dizzily from side to side; it had only been a ten-minute trip but, what with his journey across town through the traffic, it felt as if he had spent an hour on a fairground ride. He ran towards Robert and the mechanicals, who stood slowly and dusted themselves off, and collapsed at Robert’s feet. By the time Anna had arrived he’d shaken off his jitters and jumped to attention.
Anna pulled the goggles from her eyes. “Now I remember why I stopped trying to land this thing,” she shouted. “Ladybird’s all right at take-off and flying around, but she doesn’t like landing!” Then she saw Robert’s face, and her smile fell. She pulled him close, embracing him in a bear hug. “What happened to you?”
Robert winced, clutching his side, while the mechanicals twittered and chirped with each other, trying to repair their damage.
“I was thrown from the airship.” Robert steadied himself against Anna’s shoulder. “They’ve taken Lily aboard, John too. Lily’s been shot. You have to help us save her.”
“How?”
“We can give chase in Ladybird – she’s faster than they are. We can board them from the air. It’ll be like air piracy.”
“We can’t do that!” Anna cried. “I’ve got no fuel.”
“We’ll take it from over there.” Robert pointed across the garden towards the yard on its far side, where the coal shed sat.
“Quick, everyone,” he shouted to the mechanicals. “Run and bring as much coal as you can carry.”
Anna flew Ladybird above the river, following in Behemoth’s wake. In the engine room, Miss Tock, Captain Springer and Mr Wingnut threw great handfuls of coal into the furnace, and Robert shovelled with them. The pistons turned manically and, in between spadefuls, he peered out the open side porthole to see if they were gaining on their enemy.
Behemoth had a good ten minutes’ head start; it steamed ahead, bloated with air, its spiked hull bristling. Robert watched it bob low over the suspension cables of the Albert Bridge. He closed the porthole and, leaving the mechanicals in charge of the engine, ran down the corridor to the flight deck.
A
nna and Mrs Rust stood at the wheel with the wind battering against them, staring dead ahead. Malkin had his head stuck out of the broken windscreen; his tongue lolled out, and the air rippled through his fur. Beneath them, on the south side of the Thames, a park whizzed past. Tugs and night-steamers and the odd airship streamed up and down the river.
“She’s crossing Chelsea Bridge and the Victoria Railway Bridge,” Anna called, pointing out through the shards of glass.
Robert saw she was right – Behemoth had already breached the top of the next looping suspension bridge, and was wending her way over a puffing steam train on the railway viaduct beyond.
“Where do you think they’re headed?” he asked.
“Who knows?” Anna said. “Maybe St Thomas’s, or maybe they’re going to take the north–south airway at the top of the next river bend – that would take them out of town altogether.”
“If they go onto that,” Robert complained, “we’ll never find them in all the traffic.”
“They’ve got to get there first.” Anna waved a hand at the sky ahead – beyond the river, past the rows of houses that clustered on either bank, a mass of black storm clouds was brewing on the horizon. “They’ll have to slow to avoid that squall, and if we cut across this bend here, through the city, we can catch them by hooking in on their port side, before they reach Westminster.”
She pushed the throttle to full and cut out across a cluster of riverside houses, keeping Behemoth dead on target on their starboard side.
In front the storm was rolling in along the river, and behind, over the wilds of West London, the fat red winter sun was setting. Its light glared in the side mirrors, flashing in Robert’s eyes, and he gasped.
“That’s good,” Anna said. “Sun behind us means we’re in their blind spot – with a bit of luck, they’ll be so busy with the storm, they won’t clock our approach.”
They were catching up fast now – Behemoth was barely sixty feet away, dipping low in the frame of the broken windscreen. Robert wiped his coal-dusted hands on his trousers and watched the other airship loom closer in the starboard window as they swept in towards it.
“How on earth am I to get onboard?” he asked.
Anna patted his back. “Don’t you worry, Robbie. I’ve a plan. Take the helm, Mrs Rust, and keep your hand on the throttle. Robbie and I are going to get some rope.”
“Boilers and brake levers!” the old mechanical cried. “Don’t put me in charge of this contraption! I ain’t even ridden a bicycle before. Malkin, you do it.”
The fox spread the claws on his forepaws. “With these?” he asked. “I’ve no opposable thumbs, you know!”
“Just keep the wheel straight, both of you,” Anna muttered. “Lock their zep in the centre of your view, and hold us steady. That’s all I ask.”
Anna grabbed a loaded harpoon gun and a length of rope from a hook on the cabin’s back wall, and pulled Robert out into the passage.
“Lucky we were attacked last night,” she explained, as she tied the end of the rope through the eye on the harpoon’s flight. “I had the gun but nothing to load it with; if they hadn’t shot the harpoon in Ladybird’s side, we wouldn’t have had anything to fire.” She handed him the looped lengths of rope. “Now, let’s get you onboard that ship.”
Turning the handle, she threw the cabin door open. Cold air rushed in, screaming in their ears and pushing them back against the wall. Far below, the waters of the Thames whipped past. Anna recovered first and began aiming the harpoon; Robert readied the loops of rope attached to it.
Behemoth’s fat silver zeppelin filled the aperture of the doorway, floating below to their starboard side a little beneath them. Robert could see its port-side propeller, sat halfway up the curve of the balloon. Even though it looked like they were right up close to it, he estimated there was at least thirty feet of sky between them.
“See that prop?” Anna said, putting the harpoon gun to her shoulder. “There’ll be a maintenance hatch behind it that leads into the balloon. From there you’ll be able to climb down into the gondola. I’d better try not to hit the silks!” She aimed hastily through the gunsight and fired out of the doorway at a support strut beneath the propeller.
The harpoon flew straight, its silver edge cutting through the dusky sky; lengths of rope unfurling behind it.
They held their breath and watched.
The harpoon slowed and seemed to hesitate, hanging in the air, then it dropped like a stone, falling far short of Behemoth.
“Blast it,” Anna cursed, and she and Robert quickly reeled in the rope.
It took a nervous few minutes to gather back all the length, plus recover the harpoon and reload it into the gun.
As they swooped over Vauxhall Bridge, Ladybird wavered and dropped back. Robert glanced over his shoulder. Mrs Rust was struggling with the wheel, but she seemed to regain control and they rallied. This time, Ladybird kept pace with Behemoth, buffeting about in the larger airship’s backdraught.
Anna steadied herself and aimed once more. She took longer squinting into the gunsight, bracing her body against the cabin wall. Aiming just behind the propeller, she bent her knees to compensate for the bucking of the ship, and fired.
The harpoon flew fast, reeling out the lengths of rope.
It missed the propeller strut by inches, and pierced the zeppelin’s silk with the slightest pop.
“Clank it,” Anna cried. “It’s gone into the balloon.”
But then there was a ripple around the entry point, and a thud echoed down the line – the harpoon seemed to have hit the zep’s internal frame, under the silks.
Anna yanked on the rope to check it had taken and was sturdy.
“Will the hole bring them down?” Robert asked, pulling the slack loops through a metal eyelet on the floor and tying the end off on a cleat on the wall.
“I shouldn’t think so,” Anna said. “For a thing their size, being hit with a harpoon’s like being bitten by a gnat.” From the footlocker cupboard, she produced a steel frame, like a heavy metal coat hanger with welded-on wheels, and a harness.
“What’s that?” Robert asked.
“It’s called a death slide,” Anna said as she clipped it over the length of taut rope.
Robert bit his lip as Anna checked the harness and wheels on the death slide, testing they would run along the quivering line. He felt a knot in his guts, and a sudden sickness welled up inside him as he realized just what he’d have to do.
“We’d better hurry,” Anna shouted at him through the wind. “It’s like hooking a whale on a fishing wire – if we’re not quick, their ship will drag us down.”
As she buckled him into the harness, Robert glanced down the vertiginous slope cutting between the two airships; his belly spasmed and his head swam. “I don’t think I can do this,” he said, “I can’t stand the height.”
“Nonsense, Robbie.” Anna secured various safety buckles around his waist. “At this altitude, the terror becomes abstract.”
“Abstract? How can it be abstract?”
“It’s a one-minute journey. Your brain won’t even have time to register it.”
“Until it’s smashed into the ground, or Behemoth’s hull, or—”
A barking yip interrupted his train of thought, and Malkin jumped into his lap.
“Trying to leave without me?” the mechanimal said. “I’m coming too. I’ve lots of experience of being thrown out of moving airships.”
“Do you think it’s wise,” Anna asked, “adding your extra weight to the slide?”
Malkin gave a sniff. “I know Lily’s scent. I’ll be able to find her quicker.”
“He’s probably right,” Robert admitted.
“Fair enough.” Anna tightened the last few chest-buckles around them both. “Oh, I almost forgot; when you need to stop, squeeze the brakes – here.” She reached above Robert’s head and tapped a silver lever on the frame that looked like the brakes on a bicycle. “Once you’ve found Lily and her fathe
r, get to Behemoth’s escape capsule. Lower it down on its rope and I’ll fly past and grab you. Oh, and you’ll need this.” She took off her flying helmet and stuck it onto Robert’s head, strapping it round his chin and pinging the goggles down over his eyes. “Ready?” she asked.
Robert nodded, and gave her a half-hearted salute. Tucking his head down, he clutched Malkin against his chest. With his other hand, he grabbed the crossbar of the death slide, and shuffled his feet to the edge of the doorway.
“No going back now,” Malkin muttered.
And, for a second, as Robert dangled half over the deck, half over the river, a fragment from his da came back to him: No one conquers fear easily, Robert.
Outside, the curved earth and the darkening sky butted against each other.
“Time to fly!” Anna gave him an almighty push and he zipped off down the line, leaving his stomach behind.
There was before and after.
And this was after.
A bright light flooded everything and, when it faded, Lily felt an empty aching heart-shaped stillness in her chest.
Mama was standing before Lily, holding the rosewood box. She was just as she’d looked when Lily had last seen her. “My darling,” Mama said, opening the lid of the box. “These things are for you.”
“What things?” Lily looked into the box. It was empty.
“You have them all already,” Mama said.
Lily felt in her pocket and was surprised to find the various objects there. Her mother’s ring, and her lock of hair, and the photograph, and the stone. She took out the stone and looked at the golden fossil at its centre.
“Just like you,” Mama said. “You carry part of Papa and me within you. I don’t mean just the Cogheart, but your lineage: who you are, your values and ideas. Everything you’ll be, and more besides. You’re something special, my tiger.”
Lily replaced the stone, and the other things, in her pockets. “But,” she asked, “what am I supposed to do?”