The boys did as they were told. They joined him on the main deck, standing all in a row.
The White Pope shook his head like a disappointed adult. “You could not just do as you were told. The situation has become critical, and so the solution must be critical to match it. Somehow, you gentlemen found out about the rules.” He paced in front of them, waggling the revolver in their faces. “Do not eat. Do not drink. Do not fall asleep.”
Rufus sat down on the deck and watched, wide-eyed.
“I wonder who told you the rules.” The White Pope reached into his pocket and pulled something from it. He held his fist out to Eddie and said, “Guess what I have in my hand.”
Eddie shook his head.
The White Pope opened his fingers. In his palm, he held the broken body of a pixie.
“What have you done?” cried Eddie. He reached for the tiny thing.
The White Pope wouldn’t let Eddie have it. He threw it aside. It landed on the deck some distance away.
“It wouldn’t tell me who was helping you, so I crushed it.”
Abe made a sound like an angry badger. “You evil son of a horse thief.”
Charlie stared in horror.
“Do not blame me,” said the White Pope. “Blame yourselves. You forgot the biggest rule of all.”
“What rule?” said Abe.
The White Pope bared his teeth, savoring. “Do not die. Because, like the pixie, if you die here, you are just as dead as you would be at home.” He walked up to Eddie and sneered down at him. “You get to go last.” Then, he pointed the revolver at Charlie’s head.
Charlie squeezed his eyes shut.
“Stop!” shouted Eddie.
The gun discharged with a resounding boom.
Charlie fell to the deck.
“Oh, dear God!” cried Eddie. “Oh, dear God, you killed him!” He dropped to his knees beside his friend. “Charlie?”
The White Pope roared. He stumbled backward, waving his arms in front of his face. He had a small wound that was bleeding a scarlet rivulet down his cheek.
Eddie’s pixie was zipping around the White Pope, attacking with vehemence. It dove in and bit the man on the face again. It wasn’t playing anymore. It went for the soft parts. It bit his eyelid and flew away with a handful of eyelashes.
The White Pope covered his head with his arms.
The pixie bit him again, and he grunted in pain. Blood swelled from the new wound and ran down his neck. He tried to keep the pixie in sight, but the tiny creature was fast.
The White Pope commanded, “Cease this foolishness.” When it went for his eye again, he swatted it against his own cheek with a loud thwack!
A wing jutted from between his fingers. A leg dangled at an odd angle from under his palm. When he lifted his hand, the crushed pixie twitched and fell to the deck. The White Pope bent, picked it up with two fingers and flung it away.
“I hate you!” Eddie shouted. He threw himself at the White Pope. Abe joined him.
Rufus shouted “Papa!” and attached himself to Eddie’s leg, trying to hold him back.
Eddie punched the White Pope in the nose. Abe captured the hand holding the gun.
The fires under the balloons roared.
The White Pope shouted, “You will pay for that!” He had blood smeared all over his face. He was a terrible sight.
The airship rose and rose, and rose, and then stopped with a jerk. The nose of the ship floated upward, but the aft moved no further. The deck angled. Objects began to slide down the incline.
With the White Pope’s tunic clutched in one hand, Abe looked around, trying to figure out why the ship was uneven.
Charlie’s body rolled. It gained momentum until it came to rest with a thud against the aft deck. Eddie, Rufus and the White Pope were also sliding. Eddie grabbed a rope and clung to it. Rufus hugged Eddie’s leg. The White Pope latched onto a mast. Abe let go and slid all the way to the quarterdeck.
The balloons rubbed against one another, rasping. The web holding them creaked and groaned.
“What’s happening?” shouted Eddie, hanging on for dear life.
The White Pope had begun to laugh.
Abe heard a small voice whisper near his ear, “Release the anchor.” He looked for the source of the voice and found Eddie’s pixie clinging to his shirt, hiccupping with the effort. Its wing was torn, its face swollen, and its leg broken. It oozed green where the bone stuck out of its skin. It pointed toward the helm.
Abe said, “Thanks,” and “Hang on.” He worked his way to the stairs and climbed down—the direction which used to be up. He reached the helm.
“The bottomest one,” gasped the pixie. Abe found the lever and pulled it.
The airship bucked. The aft end bobbed up to level off with the front, and the balloons bumped against one another violently. The whole ship creaked and rattled.
Abe sheltered the injured pixie with one hand and held tight to the railing with the other as the ship rocked. He thought the quake might cause the balloons to collapse, but they didn’t.
Eddie got to his feet.
The White Pope stood as well, and he aimed his revolver at Eddie. “Come, Rufus,” he ordered. The child released Eddie’s leg and ran toward his father. The White Pope cocked the gun and put his finger on the trigger.
“Don’t!” shouted Abe.
Another voice joined him. “No!”
It was Charlie. He came charging and threw himself at the White Pope with all his momentum. The pope didn’t see it coming. He was knocked off balance, and he stumbled and fumbled toward the rail. His body bent against it, and then he went feet over head. His scream lasted long enough that the boys knew he had fallen a terrifying distance.
Rufus ran to the edge, but he was too small to see over the side. He reached and tried to climb—and began to cry.
Abe and Eddie rushed Charlie, hugging him and patting him on the back.
“I figured you for a goner,” said Abe. “I thought he’d shot you.”
Charlie looked down at himself. “It would appear that he missed. I think I fainted.”
The boys laughed and laughed, all except Rufus, who sat down in a corner and wailed.
High in the sky, they flew toward home in the airship. They presumed they were headed for home, and the truth was that they couldn’t have gone anywhere else. They flew toward the sun, and so it continued to set for much longer than seemed normal. Time slipped away, and they entered the borderland between Fantasy and Reality.
They sat together on the deck, Lenore’s gifts cradled in their arms.
Eddie murmured, “Who shall say that anything is impossible hereafter?”
And then a deep, unencumbered sleep crept over them.
They dreamt of fairy princesses and pixies, of papal gunslingers and kings. Before they even knew they were near it, they had caught up with the dawn.
∞
Epilogue
Rufus awoke in his own bed. His mother was there, and she hugged him, but even her warm body couldn’t dislodge the burr his father’s death had left behind.
The other boys awoke at home as well. Abe smelled frying bacon and biscuits, Charlie watched the other boys in the dormitory get ready for class, and Eddie heard the milkman’s wheels rolling on London cobblestones. They all had the same thought as they awoke; they regretted—for a moment—that they hadn’t said a proper good-bye to each other.
Many years later, once he was grown, Abe reached out to his long-lost friends. He established a correspondence with them that lasted throughout their lives. They took measures to ensure their letters didn’t fall into the wrong hands, for they contained references to things the general public would never understand. When they were old enough and well on their way to greatness, they arranged secret reunions at which they ate cake and reminisced. Whenever they met, they made quite a troupe—three grown boys of exceptional vision and a pixie with a limp who came to be known as Albatross.
~ END ~
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Charlie Darwin, or The Trine of 1809 (Stories in the Ether) Page 6