by Lynne Jonell
There was a sound of rapid breathing behind her as Taft fell back in his seat. “Don’t think anything else for a while,” said Taft, “okay?”
Christina unstrapped the helmet in a hurry. Just ahead of them was the dark opening into the forest, covered by vines, etched now with violet light. If she hadn’t stopped, they would have gone crashing through, maybe lost a wing.
She took a deep breath and studied the instrument panel again. She wasn’t limited to just GO and STOP. There were buttons that said SLOW and UP and DOWN, and directional arrows, too.
Maybe those buttons were just to show the possibilities. She hadn’t had to push the stop button to stop. She had just shouted it, instinctively.
Slowly, tentatively, she strapped the helmet back on. She patted the side of the plane with a soothing hand.
“It’s not a dog,” said Taft’s strained voice from behind her.
“I’m just getting used to it.” Christina looked at the mouth of the tunnel and the hanging vines ahead. Go on, she thought gently. Go slow, don’t bump yourself. Give me time to move the vines aside.
The plane moved forward slowly. On the instrument panel, a button glowed suddenly brighter—RAISE LANDING GEAR.
Christina repeated the words in her mind and felt a little hitch as the wheels lifted into the body of the plane. She smiled to herself. Maybe the plane itself would teach her what to do, if she paid attention.
The airplane inched through the vines and out into the night, lurching slightly as it cleared a last stubborn branch.
Seat belts? thought Christina, and from the inside wall of the plane, a plastic belt came curving over her midsection and snicked into a port on the opposite wall. Behind her, a second snick followed.
“Unreal,” murmured Taft. “He thought of everything.”
Christina grinned. Inside the cockpit, the instrument panel glowed violet. The plane itself gleamed silver in the moonlight, hanging weightless in the air a few feet above the forest floor. The wood around them was alive with soft night sounds—an owl’s distant call, a tiny scurrying in the underbrush, the hushed whisper of leaves rustling in a quiet breeze. The sound of the humming plane was not nearly so loud as it had been in the tunnel.
But it was still too loud for safety. Christina glanced through the trees at the yard light of the orphanage, fifty yards away past the high electrified gate. Could you be any softer, please? she thought at the plane, and immediately the hum diminished to a musical purr.
She almost laughed aloud. She could hardly believe her luck. A little plane just her size that would do anything, go anywhere—and a friend to share it! They could fly over the town, they could loop over the river, they could land on the playground at the elementary school and jump on the swings . . .
“I don’t believe this,” Taft said. “It’s some kind of weird dream. And why does it work for you and not for me?”
Christina had a moment of doubt. Was it just a dream? It did seem as if it couldn’t be real—
The plane dipped suddenly. The pulsing hum skipped a beat. Behind her, Taft sucked in his breath.
No, she couldn’t think it wasn’t true. The zoom would react.
Christina shook off her doubts. The plane drifted upward. Its hum gained in strength.
She half turned in the red leather seat. “Don’t say that again. Don’t even think it. This plane runs on my thoughts, and if I think it can’t fly—”
Taft nodded, still gripping the back of her seat. “Sorry.”
“Okay, then.” Christina glanced at the orphanage yard, lit and fenced. No one seemed to be coming to investigate, but she had better not push her luck. “Where do you want to go first?”
Taft leaned forward, his face pale. “The Starkian Ridge, of course.”
Christina felt a little ashamed. How could she have forgotten?
Her stomach clutched as she thought the plane straight up through the trees, startling a row of sleeping birds. Pine needles brushed her arm as she and the plane searched for clear spaces between branches. Christina glanced down once and saw that the tunnel opening had all but disappeared, the vine-covered hole merging into dark leafy forest.
It might be a little hard to find again. But the opening was close to the orphanage yard lights. And no one would see them searching—after all, who would be out at this time of night?
We would, she thought gleefully, and soared above the tops of the trees, not tired in the least.
The great wedges of rock that made up the Starkian Ridge were distant at first, then grew larger, slanting across the night sky like giant teeth turned to stone. As they loomed so tall they blocked the moon, Christina reduced airspeed.
Even softer, she thought to the plane, and the chord diminished to a muted melodic drone. Watching carefully, flying slowly, she flew ever closer to the crest of the ridge.
Taft tapped her shoulder and pointed down.
Christina nodded. She had already seen the leaping fire, the rough guardhouse, the silhouettes of burly men. Now, circling above, she could see that the jagged teeth of the Starkian Ridge were like a high fence, enclosing a rough and lumpy basin. In places the basin had been chiseled away into terraced steps, with ramps leading up and down the sides, as if someone had been quarrying rock. In other spots, cone-shaped lumps rose up, looking for all the world like giant anthills that had turned to stone.
Behind a bank of scrubby trees was a blocky shadow the size of a garbage truck. And still farther away was a tiny campfire, just a flicker in the dark. Nervously Christina edged the plane well into the shadow of the ridge. She couldn’t be sure but it looked as if there might be people around the fire, too. Small people.
Christina’s braids lifted in the wind from their flight. She banked the plane in a long, slow curve just outside the ridged stone teeth, slid in between two prehistoric slabs set on edge, and set down in a sheltered corrie.
The plane’s bottom scraped with a harsh sound of metal on rock. Taft pointed over her shoulder to the control panel. LOWER LANDING GEAR, it read, dark letters against bright violet.
“Now you tell me,” whispered Christina, turning around. Her knee bumped the control panel.
“It wasn’t my job to fly the plane,” Taft retorted, and then suddenly the panel went dark and the humming stopped.
“What did you do that for?” Taft demanded, his voice low.
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Yes, you did, you pushed the stop button somehow—”
“Shhhh!” Christina hissed. “Listen!”
They sat perfectly still in the darkened plane. A muted humming came and went, rose and fell, carried softly on the night breeze.
“Wait!” whispered Taft. “I’ll go, you stay with the plane—”
But Christina was already over the side and moving cautiously toward the gap between the two massive slabs of rock.
Taft came up behind her, muttering under his breath. Christina ignored him. Instead, she slid sideways along the rock, her body flattened against the cool, smooth stone. Just as her fingers reached the far edge, she stopped. She poked her head around.
There, a little distance away, was the tiny campfire, surrounded by a hundred small shadowy figures, sitting with shoulders hunched and heads back. They were singing, very softly, and swaying as they sang.
The tune was familiar. The words Christina knew by heart.
The orphans were singing her mother’s lullaby.
“LET’S go find Danny,” said Taft.
Christina stared at him blankly. She was still thinking about her mother’s song—how had the orphans learned it?—and could hardly take in what he was saying.
“I think I see him,” Taft added, and stepped out of the rock’s shadow.
Christina clutched at his sleeve. “Wait. There might be guards.”
Taft shook off her hand. “They’re all back at the guardhouse. Besides, what do you want to do? Just stand here?” His face was pale and anxious in the moonlight.
“Listen.” Christina spoke low and rapidly. “We don’t want to get caught—that’s the first thing. Because if we’re caught, we can’t help Danny, or anybody else. Right?”
Taft’s mouth drew down at the corners. “I guess.”
“Okay. And second, you don’t want Danny to see you.”
“Yes, I do!” Taft’s whisper was fierce. “Then he won’t feel so scared!”
Christina shook her head. “Think about it. What’s he going to do when he sees you?”
Taft was silent.
“He’s going to say, ‘Taff! Taff!’ and he won’t understand why he should be quiet. And then he won’t understand when you have to leave him, either.”
“I’m not leaving him,” Taft said, his chin jutting. “He’s not some piece of trash to throw away.”
“There’s no room for him in the plane.”
Taft turned on her angrily. “So you want to abandon him? What did you even come up here for, then?”
“Will you please just listen?” Christina glared at him. “I want to rescue Danny, too. I wish we could rescue all of them. But let’s stay under cover. We need to watch until we know more.”
Taft leaned his weight on one foot, then the other. “All right. But I’m going closer, anyway. I can’t see their faces from here.”
Taft and Christina moved step by step in the dark, working their way silently around a large rock outcropping and down wide terraced steps before they finally settled in a shadowed niche behind a square metal vat the size of three garbage cans. In the meantime, the orphans had switched from the lullaby to a new tune, sung even more quietly.
Beside her, Taft grinned, his teeth catching the reflected firelight. “That’s the song I made up,” he whispered. “The one they never sing in front of Lenny.”
Christina pressed against the vat’s metal side, still warm from the day’s sun, and listened as the orphans sang under their breaths.
Lenny makes us say we love him
When we’d really rather shove him
Off a Starkian mountain cliff
Do we love him? Hah! As if!
“There are nine verses,” said Taft in Christina’s ear. “Do you see Danny anywhere?”
Lenny wants to win the Karsnicky
(Since he’s dumb, it would be tricky)
Christina flinched at a sudden sound. And then she heard it again—the sharp scrape of a boot on stone.
“All right, you little worms!” The voice of the guard was loud as he mounted the terrace. “You’d better not be singing what I think you’re singing!”
The quiet, bitter song died instantly. The shadows froze.
“Well? Who’s going to answer me? Number Seven? Number Thirty-one?” The guard, a man with a broad face and a squashed-looking nose, rather like a bulldog’s, hitched his thumbs in his belt and looked around.
“We were just practicing,” said a clear, anxious voice, and one of the shadows stepped forward.
The guard bent down to look at the front of the child’s shirt. “Number Seventeen, is it? And what are you practicing?”
“We’re practicing our . . . um . . . welcome songs. For Lenny Loompski.”
“Good answer, wormlet. Only I don’t believe you. What, exactly, were you singing? Let’s hear it. Now.”
The child took one more step forward—Christina could see it was the girl called Dorset—and began to sing.
O, happy day, when Lenny came
The Loompski of the greatest fame
To care for us, poor orphans dreary
To wipe our eyes when we are teary—
“But that’s not what we were singing,” said a slow voice from somewhere in the crowd. “We were singing Taff’s song.”
Taft sucked in his breath. His back went rigid.
“Taff’s song, eh?” The guard swept his bulldog head from side to side, scanning the seated orphans. “Keep singing it, whoever you are.”
“No!” Taft whispered. “Don’t, Danny—they’ll beat you—”
Danny’s clear, sweet tones filled the hollow.
Lenny makes us want to vomit
Take this orphans’ home, and bomb it—
“All right, whoever’s singing that, stand up!” roared the guard.
Taft gripped Christina’s arm. “Stay down.” He peered around the corner of the vat, crouching, as Danny began to struggle to his feet.
Christina nodded frantically—of course she was going to stay down, what else would they do?—when all at once her heart catapulted. Taft was up and trotting into the circle of orphans before she could stop him.
“It was me!” he said loudly.
“Taff!” cried Danny, rising all the way. “You came!”
Five pairs of orphan hands immediately pulled Danny back down. Taft ran to the guard, opening his eyes wide. “I’m sorry, really I am. I just sang it because that’s what you said you wanted to hear.”
“I didn’t want to hear how Lenny Loompski makes you want to vomit, you disgusting caterpillar!”
Taft spoke up as two more guards, attracted by the commotion, came striding along the gravel path from the guardhouse. “But you asked for the song about bombing the orphans’ home. I heard you.” He blinked several times, looking particularly innocent.
The first guard glanced uneasily behind him. “That’s not what I meant—” He spun to face Taft. “You trying to get me in trouble, maggot?”
“Who, me?” said Taft.
The guard grabbed his shoulder and shook it. “And where’s your number, you little grub? And your collar?”
“What happened? Attempted escape?” asked a fourth guard, coming up.
“Look,” growled the first guard. “Somebody let this one off the last truckload and forgot to put a collar on him. No number stamped on his shirt, either.”
“Wasn’t me.”
“Wasn’t me, neither.”
“Well, it sure as night crawlers wasn’t me.”
“I don’t care who it was, you leeches, let’s get a collar on him now! Mr. Big Boss Loompski could come back anytime, and I don’t need to tell you what that means!”
Christina stuffed her knuckles in her mouth to keep from crying out in protest. Taft looked as if he wanted to put up a fight, but in an instant his arms were pinned behind his back and a collar was fished out of a pocket and snapped onto his neck with a crimping tool. The last guard marked the number 101 onto his shirt, gave his forehead a noogie for good measure, and quick-stepped him toward the vat where Christina was hiding.
“No!” Taft shouted. “I mean—wait! Look!” He twisted under the guard’s hand, and pointed. “Over there!”
Christina froze. What was Taft doing?
“Behind the rocks!” Taft was pointing away from the vat, but his eyes slid sideways to where Christina hid in deep shadow. “Go behind the rocks!”
“You giving me orders, boy?” The guard was incredulous.
Christina edged backward. Taft wanted her to get behind the rocks, that much was clear . . . but why? She couldn’t help him from there. She moved slowly, quietly, back up the terraced steps, past the rock outcropping. The guards, their eyes used to the firelight, did not seem to notice her quiet movements in the shadows of the night.
Christina made the safety of the standing stones and peered through to the corrie behind. The little plane, silvery in the moonlight, waited like a promise.
One of the men near the fire guffawed. “Go ahead, Torkel, show the kid what’s behind the rocks.”
Christina watched with dread as Torkel, looking more like a bulldog than ever, marched Taft straight toward her, up to the tall stones that ringed the terraced basin.
“Go past that rock.” The man gave Taft’s collar a violent shake. “Go on, get going.”
Taft took a step forward and hesitated. “Are you saying you want me to . . . try to escape?”
“Yeah,” said Torkel, sounding bored. “Now, move it.”
Taft took another step, and another. Chr
istina bit her knuckles. Could she sing fast enough to start up the plane and get Taft out before the guard caught them? Probably not—but what else could she try? Taft was almost to the nearest upright slab. She backed up—she took a breath—
“AIIGGHH!” Taft’s cry was choked. His hands flew to his neck; his knees buckled. He fell to the ground and lay helplessly, his legs twitching.
Torkel guffawed. “Got a shock, did you?” He grabbed Taft’s arm and hauled him to his knees. “Now you know what happens if you go past the circle of stones. And there’s an alarm that goes off in the guardhouse, too. So we’ll be hot on your tail if you try it, fishbait.”
Taft knelt, swaying. Torkel began to pull him up, but Taft shuddered and lifted his head. “I bet,” he said, his voice faint, “you’d like me to sing the Happy Lenny song instead of the song I made up.”
“You got that right, wormboy.”
“I bet,” Taft went on, his voice a little stronger, “that you want me to sing it loud. Loud enough to drown out a Starkian harrier, if it started screeching.”
“Yeah, yeah. On your feet, Number One-oh-one.”
“You probably want me,” Taft said even more clearly, turning toward the rocks as he was led staggering away, “to sing so loud that you couldn’t even hear somebody singing six notes!”
“You’re a musical little squirmer, aren’t you? You can start singing right now, if you’re so excited about it. Go on, sing!”
Christina watched in agony as Taft was marched away, hunch-shouldered and skinny, his hair sticking up in little tufts over his ears that caught the moonlight.
Taft’s voice came howling back to her, loud and raucous: “Oh, happy day, when Lenny caaame . . . Help me sing, you guys!” he cried as the guard propelled him toward the circle of staring children. In an instant, more voices were raised. “The Loompski of the greatest faaame!”
Christina took her fist out of her mouth and gave the plane an agonized glance. She couldn’t abandon Taft, and Danny, and the rest—she couldn’t leave them here—
No. She wasn’t abandoning them. She was going to get help, and that was exactly what Taft was hoping she would do. He was covering for her, making enough noise so that she could sing the plane’s engine through all the steps to ignition and takeoff. She couldn’t waste what he was doing, or he’d never forgive her.