The Crooked Castle
Page 25
And now the same thing had happened again. Carmer and Grit had promised to protect Bell, to help him face his demons, and the Unseelies had snatched him up barely a day later. Carmer was supposed to be learning about this new, terrifying, magical world he’d entered. He was supposed to be getting better at it. But once again, someone had ended up in the clutches of the Unseelies because of him.
Bell listened patiently while Carmer blabbered, glaring daggers at any curious circus folk who walked too near the table. He handed Carmer a polka dot handkerchief that Carmer strongly suspected belonged to Nan; Carmer took it and blew his nose vigorously.
“Carmer,” said Bell, “has it ever occurred to you that my fate was sealed when I overslept for my shift that day? That the minute I saw something I shouldn’t have on that ship—long before we ever met, I might add—my life was about to get a whole lot more complicated?”
Carmer’s breath came in embarrassing hiccups from crying. He shrugged. Bell pushed the lukewarm bowl of stew at him.
“It sounds to me like that Gideon Sharpe was in the game long before you even knew the game existed,” mused Bell, leaning his elbows on the table. “And it also sounds like he was a stinker who did a lot of awful things before he wised up, and he probably had a good kick in the butt coming for a while. Now whether he deserved the kick he got, yeah, that’s up for debate. But it’s got nothing to do with you.”
Carmer remembered what Gideon had said to him when he and Nan had been cornered by the Hunt in the swamp. Gideon had led the Wild Hunt away, probably at great personal risk. Consider us even.
“It was for trying to save him,” Carmer realized. “He thought he owed me for trying to get the faeries to give him another chance. He was paying back the debt.”
“You know, for someone so smart,” said Bell, reaching over to nudge Carmer’s shoulder, “you can be pretty stupid.”
“You’re not the first to mention it,” muttered Carmer.
Bell looked out toward the sea again before fixing his gaze back on Carmer. “I don’t blame you, kid. And neither, it seems, does Gideon Sharpe, so you might want to take a stab at not blaming yourself.”
It was a bit of a novel concept, but Carmer figured he could give it a go.
“Consider us even,” he whispered to himself.
TO THE HIGHEST HEIGHTS
“I can’t look,” said Nan, covering her face with her hands. “Tell me when it’s over.”
“Um, I think the whole point of having witnesses is that they watch,” said Carmer, though he looked a little green himself.
“Well, I’m going to watch, even if you ninnies won’t,” said Grit. “Go, Bell, go!” She cheered and flew in figure eights above Carmer’s hat, shooting off encouraging sparks in rainbow colors.
“What are you doing?” Carmer hissed. The Blythes were on the other end of the beach, it was true, but they were bound to notice sparks mysteriously exploding above Carmer’s head. One of their dogs cocked its head.
“Oh, relax,” Grit said. “They probably just think you’re waving around sparklers. Or, um, aerial signals or something.”
“I think they’ve got all the ‘aerial signals’ covered,” Carmer said. “Let’s keep the fireworks to a minimum.”
Grit sat back down on the edge of Carmer’s hat with a huff, but he was probably right. They didn’t want to distract Bell, who was currently strapped into what the Blythes hoped would be the world’s first successful manned airplane. He was surrounded by a small crew of Blythe Flights employees; while the event had the potential to be historic, it also had the potential to be disastrous. There would be no cheering crowds of spectators today—just a bunch of antsy engineers, one pilot of debatable sanity, a wire walker, a magician’s apprentice, and a faerie princess.
Faerie queen, technically, but considering that her territory had barely been hers for a day before a “freak storm” struck and the entire tidal island sank into the sea, she didn’t think it counted. Much. And yet . . . she didn’t mind the sound of it as much as she used to.
Nan turned and marched up the sand dune, as much for an excuse to turn her back for a while as for a better view. The thrum of the plane’s engine and the roar of the propellers were loud enough to carry down the whole beach. Grit would be surprised if they didn’t wake up half the city.
If anyone but Carmer had told her that this hunk of wood, canvas, and metal was supposed to fly, she would have laughed in their face. But then again, if anyone had told her, a year ago—when she was a sheltered little fire faerie who thought stepping a single toe out of the Oldtown Arboretum counted as an adventure—that she would soon have a mechanical wing and a human boy for a best friend, create electricity with her bare hands, and willingly be crowned queen of an abandoned rock hundreds of miles from home . . . well, she would have laughed pretty hard at that, too.
The contrast between the chilly tranquility of the beach, the waves gently lapping on the shore, the grasses swaying in the wind, and the long, sleek metal form of the plane—all perfect angles and painted lines—struck her as just about the oddest thing she’d seen on this whole adventure. Anyone who said that airplanes looked like birds had never, Grit was prepared to argue, ever gotten a good look at a bird in their life.
Driff City wasn’t like Skemantis, where the old and new blended together (relatively) seamlessly. No iron gate could hold back a flying machine like that. They would even, Carmer said, eventually fly too fast for anyone (faerie or human) to think about holding on for the ride. Grit imagined the sky filled with them—noisy, magical not-birds, ferrying people from place to place in ways that no one could have imagined. Ways that were supposed to be impossible.
She had gotten too wrapped up in her own thoughts. One moment, the plane was running down the wooden launch track, and the next, the back wheel had lifted off the ground, and then the front, and then . . . Bell Daisimer was flying.
The cheers from the Blythe Flights crew were instantaneous. Robert picked up Isla and swung her around, like two giants doing a jig, until she batted him away so they could watch the landing. The dogs, sensing the excitement, scampered around the group, yipping at the strange new flying object in the sky.
Grit peeked over the edge of the hat at Carmer’s face. His expression was rapt, but guarded, and Grit knew he was concerned for Bell’s safety as well. Getting the thing up in the air was only half the battle.
She hopped down to Carmer’s shoulder and looked at the plane, one hand on her hip.
“It’s kind of noisy,” she said, wrinkling her nose. They watched the smoke trail it left behind, ribbons of black against the clear sky.
“And smelly,” he added.
“But it’s happening,” Grit said. Whether they were ready or not.
The important part was what they decided to do about it.
Carmer nodded. “It’s happening.”
And when the plane completed its graceful arc over the water, the sunrise glinting through its wings, Grit thought, just for a moment, that it didn’t look so out of place after all.
Acknowledgments
There was a time when the very idea that I would have a second book out in the world—never mind a first—seemed just as impossible as a faerie with one wing. I would like to thank some of the people who helped Carmer, Grit, and me continue on this crazy adventure:
Krestyna Lypen, Sarah Alpert, Eileen Lawrence, Brooke Csuka, Ashley Mason, and the whole Algonquin Young Readers team. Carmer and Grit couldn’t have a better home.
My partner, David, for continuous support on the good days and the bad, and for nodding enthusiastically when I go off on tangents about the Hindenburg.
Brooke Mills, who remembers when this book was about kitsune and spiritualists and the invention of the radio and actual magical whales. You’ve been with me since day one.
Alex Trivilino, walking Harry Potter lexicon, for excellent plot advice—and for boundless patience when, naturally, I ignore said advice.
Har
vard John, whose ability to accurately diagnose the deepest, gnarliest problems in my manuscripts is uncanny.
My agent, Victoria Marini, without whom there would be no Carmer and Grit at all.
John Logan, for the balloon painting he paid a hundred dollars for in 1983. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d put you in the book.
Published by
Algonquin Young Readers
an imprint of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
Workman Publishing
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
© 2018 by Sarah Jean Horwitz.
All rights reserved.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.
Design by Carla Weise.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
eISBN 9781616208325
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017032158