by J M Sanford
But it was too late for such thoughts. The eagle screamed. It gathered itself, launched straight at her. With a squeak of fear, Amelia flattened herself against the wall, the unearthly blue flames rushing past her, hot and damp as breath on her skin. The eagle wheeled about in the narrow space of the corridor, wings spread and all of a sudden much bigger than she remembered. She shrank from the wicked hook of its beak, its ear-splitting screams. At the top of the stairs, the hatch flew open, a shaft of moonlight shining in bright clear and cold. The trapped soul barrelled towards the night sky like a man freeing himself from the wreckage of a sinking ship might flee to the surface of the water. In the next instant, it was gone from sight, and Amelia heard someone swear out loud on deck.
“Amelia?” – that was Meg’s voice, fearful and uncomposed – “Where are you?”
Amelia made for the hatch, realising as she did so that for the first time since the Storm Chaser had ascended, her footing was less than steady. “Here! Down here!” she called back, and regretted it when she saw Meg’s face looking down at her: never had she seen such fury in anybody’s eyes as when Meg caught sight of Amelia with the spell book clutched to her chest, caught red-handed coming from the empty soulchamber.
“You did this?” Meg growled.
Amelia shrank back, but not before Meg grabbed her by the wrist, pulling sharply. “Ow! Let go! You’re hurting me!” Amelia resisted, but the new slant to the staircase worked more to Meg’s advantage than hers. Amelia found herself lying flat along the stairs, looking up and out into the night, at a horizon dizzyingly askew, clouds rushing up past them as they plummeted towards the sea.
“Get out from there, you stupid girl!” Meg shouted. “I need to –”
“I can’t allow you to do that, Madam,” said Captain Dunnager, scooping Amelia up under one arm, whisking her across the horribly tilted deck to deposit her in the relative safety of the deckhouse. He came back a moment later carrying the indignant Meg in the same fashion, where she kicked at the air and bit the Captain’s well-muscled forearm, to little effect. He locked the door behind him while Meg hammered on it with both fists, apparently forgetting her magic in her anger. Then she swore at the top of her voice, and the lock exploded like a New Year’s fireworks display, blasting the door outwards into the night.
“That, my girl, is how a real witch deals with troublesome locks!” she shouted at Amelia, and stomped off back towards the soulchamber.
The angle of the deck was becoming less steep, the rush of clouds past them slowing. Nevertheless, Amelia crawled across the deck, only getting to her feet when she was absolutely certain that it was level once more. The clockwork dragonette, miraculously still in its cage on the hook, scolded at her as she passed it.
“Amelia!” Meg shouted from below the deck, “Get down here this instant!”
Reluctantly, Amelia descended the stairs into the dark narrow corridor that led to the Storm Chaser’s soulchamber.
There, Captain Dunnager lay sprawled in front of the soulchamber door, his eyes open but sightless, his long limbs twisted unnaturally in the position he had fallen in. Amelia gasped in shock. In the unnatural light of the soul chamber, his body was dark and lifeless.
The light of Meg’s soul burned furiously bright from her eyes. “See what you’ve done? He’s had to give up his own soul because of you!”
“Is he… Is he…”
“He’ll be fine as soon as I sort out this mess you’ve caused, but he won’t thank us for leaving his body lying around like this. Percival! Harold!”
The two men came down into the corridor and took Captain Dunnager’s unresponsive body away to his cabin, taking care not to be seen looking at either Meg or Amelia. Amelia went to follow them, but Meg pulled her back.
“Not so fast, missy – you’ve got some explaining to do. For starters, what exactly did you think would happen when you let the ship’s soul out?”
Amelia’s cheeks blazed with humiliation. She’d known there would be consequences to freeing the Storm Chaser’s captive soul, but she hadn’t expected anything so… drastic. She’d expected the skyship to remain aloft, becalmed by the sudden loss of its power. She’d thought that perhaps the skyship would be forced to harness the wind the old fashioned way with its blue and white striped sails – what else were they there for, if not to aid the soul in propelling the skyship onward? “I thought it would only slow us down,” she muttered. “I don’t want to go on this wretched quest anyway.”
Meg stared at her, incredulous. “You thought a stonking great boat like this would stay up in the air without any magic? Or did you think it would just float down to the sea all serene and graceful?”
“Yes, that,” said Amelia, grasping at the option which seemed the less foolish. “The second one.”
“You stupid girl! Give me back those rings.”
Amelia handed the conjuring rings over meekly. “Does this mean…”
“Oh, no. No, no, no! Don’t go thinking you can wriggle out of your duty so easily. You can have your rings again when I judge you’re ready for them. Not that I judged well in the first place, clearly… In the meantime, stay out of my sight!”
~
For days, Amelia was too ashamed to do anything but stay out of Meg’s way. The Storm Chaser became a kind of ghost ship in the wake of her act of sabotage. From within the dark windowless soulchamber, Captain Dunnager could keep her steady and on course effortlessly, and her wheel turned without visible intervention while Meg tended to the Captain’s vacant physical body. He lay in the cargo hold in a deep unnatural sleep: never stirring or turning; scarcely breathing. Percival, no longer needing to take his turn at the wheel, took to spending a great deal of time teaching Harold how to sword fight, the pair of them avoiding Amelia’s company. The realisation that even Harold and Percival were unwilling to stand by her made Amelia realise the seriousness of what she’d done, even more than their terrifying plunge towards the sea. To make matters worse, the wyverns seemed to sense a difference in the skyship, and even if they couldn’t understand exactly what it was, it troubled them. They flocked closely around the Storm Chaser, howling dismally. Whether they missed the eagle soul or worried over Captain Dunnager’s well-being, Amelia couldn’t begin to guess, but either way it was just as awful. Shunned by her companions and shamed by the distressed wyverns, she headed back down to the soulchamber. She stood a while at the barred and locked double doors, sure that Captain Dunnager would sense her there. Behind the dark glass she could see a blue-white glow, like that of the eagle soul, but she dared not look any closer.
“I really am very sorry,” she said, head bowed, timid as a mouse. If she’d realised how badly the skyship would need a soul to replace the one she’d set free, she would gladly have offered herself up as a replacement. “You will be able to go back to your body, won’t you?” She’d first gone to the cargo hold where his physical body lay, still and senseless, but as she’d stared at it she’d realised just how empty and useless it was without his soul.
“When we land.” Captain Dunnager’s voice seemed to reverberate from all around her, from the very walls of the corridor and the boards beneath her feet. “And when I can get a new soul. Not a cheap thing, a soul,” he added reproachfully.
“I’m sorry,” said Amelia again. “I don’t have much money, but what I have I’ll gladly give you.”
“Your Ma warned me there’d be danger on this journey,” he said. “I didn’t think she meant from you.” As with Percival, Amelia couldn’t be sure but she sensed she was being laughed at. Under the circumstances, she tried hard not to take offence.
“I wish she’d just left me in peace in Springhaven. I was happy with my books and my knitting and… And the Black Queen wouldn’t have come chasing after me if it wasn’t for Meg.”
“Books and knitting?” That time, Amelia knew for sure that the Captain laughed, the sound of it bouncing around the cramped and gloomy corridor, tingling under her feet. “You sound like an
old woman – good thing Madam Meg did come along and shake you out of your cobwebs, I reckon!”
Amelia glowered at the heavy double doors, and without another word turned and stomped off. Horrible. Horrible! Calling her an old woman just because she liked a quiet life; liked dragons and witches to keep to the pages of storybooks where they belonged…
13: AERIAL BATTLE
A scream like a cat being murdered jolted Amelia awake, breathless and with her heart thudding painfully. Ever since the day she’d set the eagle soul free, she’d feared it would return for revenge, its rage at imprisonment blinding it to the difference between friend and foe… but it was only the wyverns again. Dreadful, ugly beasts! Amelia pulled the blankets over her head, but it did her no good. She heard the thud and creak of Percival’s heavy footsteps on deck, but only when she heard Harold shout did she come to full alertness. Could it be the wyverns, with the way she’d seen Harold admire the horrible creatures?
Across the room, Meg groaned and stirred. “What is it now?” she muttered, her voice thick with sleep. The wyvern screamed again, and Meg growled. “Couldn’t the boy have taken a fancy to horses, like other boys do?” She got out of bed, throwing on her coat over her nightdress, grumpily ramming her feet into her boots. As she disappeared up on deck, Amelia tumbled out of the hammock, put on her own coat, and followed.
A dreary dawn painted the scene in cool greys, with the rain falling in big heavy drops as Amelia squinted into the low, dark clouds. Meg too shielded her eyes to look up. “Something’s not right…” she muttered.
They waited, watching the skies. Harold had Captain Dunnager’s sword strapped at his hip, and though it looked too big for him, he gripped the hilt in valiant readiness for whatever might come.
Sudden light flashed across the sky, muted by the cloud cover, accompanied by a crackling hiss that made Amelia jump.
“Oh, no,” she heard Meg mutter to herself, “What have you got up there, you horrible beasties?”
Another scream, and small dark shapes drifted down towards them, identifiable as feathers before they settled on the deck or drifted over the railings. Amelia caught one as it floated by – black and shiny as coal, as long as the distance from her elbow to her fingertips.
“Amelia, dear, maybe you should go below deck.”
“I don’t want to,” said Amelia, surprising herself. Fearful as she might be, she found she didn’t want to miss seeing what magnificent bird such a feather belonged to.
Meg said nothing, still watching the sky. This time, Amelia saw the jet of flame that illuminated the clouds, the fleeting silhouette of the big wyvern.
“I didn’t know they could do that!” she cried.
“My girl, what you don’t know could fill a dozen libraries.”
Another flash of fire and shadows, another scream. Louder, closer. Amelia stood her ground. Then, suddenly the beasts were out in the open. Wings folded tight, the wyvern fell like a stone, plummeting past the Storm Chaser, heart-stoppingly close. The two creatures pursuing couldn’t hope to match the wyvern’s speed. Not foolhardy enough to try, they slowed, circling down towards the skyship. Amelia held her breath, still clutching the long black feather in her sweating fist.
They were almost beautiful, for all that they were so fundamentally wrong in nature. They each had the head, wings and talons of giant birds of prey, the powerful hindquarters and long whip-like tails of great cats. They soared improbably as the skyship itself: one black as coal from beak to tail-tip, the other russet red and gold. With the wyvern gone, they turned their attention to a larger opponent: the Storm Chaser. They circled slowly at a careful distance, visibly sizing up the skyship’s defences.
“What do they want?” Amelia whispered.
Meg shook her head. “They’re not even real,” she muttered to herself.
Amelia wondered what she meant – the griffins might be magnificent, fantastic, the stuff of dreams or nightmares, but they looked as flesh and blood as the wyvern had. The stench of singed fur, the way the gouges in the black griffin’s flank exposed pink muscle, the feather right in her hand… Her senses couldn’t deny the evidence, for all that her brain protested. As the griffins continued to circle, Meg sidled closer to Amelia, keeping the beasts in sight.
“Do griffins ever hurt people?” Amelia asked.
Meg shook her head again. “I don’t know! Griffins aren’t even supposed to exist! How handy are you with that sword by now, boy?” she called across the deck to Harold.
Stunned, Amelia stared at Meg. “What do you mean? Are you going to tell me dragons and unicorns and flying cities are all real, but griffins aren’t?”
“Unicorns don’t exist either – they died out hundreds of years ago.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake! Why can’t –” and then Meg shoved her roughly to the deck, just as the black griffin whooshed past overhead, wicked sharp claws raking Amelia’s shoulder. Harold swung his sword wildly, missing the griffin by a good six feet. “Where can they be coming from?” Meg muttered, still curious even in the face of murderous monsters.
Amelia clutched at her shoulder, shocked at the amount of blood she found there. “I don’t care where they come from!” she wailed. “Just make them go away!”
The red griffin skimmed the boards, a screaming wyvern in pursuit, and the gilded cage with the clockwork dragonette went flying off its hook. Amelia just managed to grab it before the poor thing could tumble away overboard between the railings. She held the cage tight to her chest, barely hearing the squawking and clattering of the rattled dragonette.
Suddenly, Captain Dunnager’s voice boomed out of the woodwork, the voice of the ship itself: “Everyone below deck and I’ll shake them off!”
Amelia, still holding on tight to the dragonette’s cage, didn’t protest this time when Meg dragged her by the arm, down the stairs and into the cabin. The initial shock of the griffin’s attack was beginning to wear off and the pain set in, vicious and relentless. The Storm Chaser rocked and swayed as if buffeted by tempestuous seas, while it was all Amelia could do to hold on. With tears streaming down her cheeks, she squeezed her eyes tight shut until lights and colours danced in the blackness.
It felt an age before the Storm Chaser settled, the cabin becoming as still and unassuming as her own bedroom back home again.
“Oh, you’re bleeding!” Suddenly Meg was at Amelia’s side, rummaging in her satchel and coming up with a little glass vial. “Didn’t I tell you to get below decks?”
Amelia turned to look at her shoulder, immediately regretting it. “Oh dear,” she said, faintly.
“Come on, out of that blouse while I find a bandage. Here we go…”
Amelia hissed through her teeth and flinched away when Meg took some cold salve from the jar and dabbed it on her wounds, but the pain dissipated almost at once. Meg bandaged Amelia’s shoulder quickly and efficiently, and Amelia wondered how often the witch had tended to such wounds before – how often she’d cheerfully led her companions into mortal danger.
“Have they gone?” Amelia asked, putting on a clean blouse. “The griffins?”
Meg squinted out of the porthole. “Can’t see hide nor hair of them, nor the wyverns. Good job, Captain,” she announced to the room.
Amelia joined her at the porthole. The sky outside was bright blue and cloudless, incongruous in the aftermath of what had felt like the greatest storm she’d ever known. “Why didn’t you just use magic to see them off?” she asked Meg. It had been so unlike the witch to let someone else take charge, without even putting up a fight.
Meg looked irritated. “You’re better off not using magic when you’re angry, and I can see I’d best tell you why, so that maybe you’ll pay attention to me this time. Magic is a living thing. It feeds on your feelings. It’ll take you over if you let it – it’ll clamp onto your soul and not let go ‘til you’ve nothing left to give. I’ve seen it happen to better witches than you or I, girl, so don’t go thinking you know better.”
<
br /> “Oh.” Amelia hung her head. “You’re still angry with me, aren’t you?”
“Too right I am! You’re a sentimental fool, and you’re clever but not nearly so clever as you think you are.” She paused, and admitted, grudgingly, “but I was no better at your age, so I dare say you’ll grow out of it eventually.”
Amelia didn’t know quite what to say to that. She’d been walking on eggshells ever since the incident with the eagle soul, afraid of whatever unimaginably awful punishment the witch might be dreaming up.
Meg took a deep breath, and looked up at the ceiling. “Captain Dunnager? How far off course are we?”
“Ten, fifteen miles,” his voice reverberated in the air above their heads. “I got a sense we were intruding in birdies’ magistracy.”
“I agree. More like they wanted to scare us off than really hurt us.”
“Maybe we flew too close to their nest?” Amelia ventured timidly. To her surprise, she felt anxious to prove herself to Meg.
Meg ignored her, continuing to address the ceiling. “You seen griffins before, Captain?”
“Never in all my days, Ma’am.”
“Hmm. Nor me. Suspicious that such things should just come out of nowhere at a time like this… Can you find us a Flying City close by? Perhaps I can find out more there.”
“Certainly, Ma’am.”
“Good.” Meg stood at the porthole, gazing out into the empty sky, deep in thought. “Go away now; I need some time to myself.”
Amelia wasn’t entirely sure if Meg was talking to her, the Captain, or both. Nevertheless, she nodded and slipped quietly out of the cabin, where she stood on the deck and wondered what to do. The Storm Chaser might be bigger than the snailcastletank, but it still didn’t give her very far to get away from Meg. She was curious where their wild flight from the marauding griffins might have taken them, but didn’t much fancy staying out in the open, just in case. Instead, she headed for the soulchamber once more.