The Peculiars

by Maureen Doyle McQuerry

  Merilee screamed.

  And then the rotor caught. With a jerk their descent stopped as wind spun the blades. The coach shuddered side to side, and Lena found herself on top of Merilee.

  Jimson whooped and hollered.

  Mr. Beasley gave a grunt of satisfaction. “I believe that the titantum was the key. It kept the frame and the boiler light enough, but I really didn’t know for sure.”

  EVERYONE WAS SILENT. WITHOUT THE CLATTER OF THE WHEELS, Lena could hardly believe they were moving. But when she gathered her courage and looked down, she discovered that they had gained altitude and were traveling south at a shocking rate of speed. There was nothing supporting them other than air. And that thought made her feel so funny that she pulled her head back inside.

  “Aren’t we going the wrong way?” Jimson asked. He had not, Lena noticed, stopped smiling since they took off.

  “Not for long!” Mr. Beasley was adjusting a brass-and-wood handle that protruded from the instrument panel. “We steer by a rudder. A nice wide arc and we’ll be heading north. This device”—he gestured to a long brass lever—“is the cyclic control. It lets me adjust the pitch of the blades.”

  “But what makes the top rotor spin?” Lena asked. “It looks like the steam pipe only goes to the rotor in the back.”

  “Smart girl! This”—he pointed—“is the fuel tank. It’s filled with kerosene. It heats the water in the boiler. The water turns to steam and powers the rotor. The top rotor spins by aerodynamic forces. It doesn’t need a motor, only enough air moving through it. That’s why we needed a running start.”

  “It’s amazing!” Jimson eyed Mr. Beasley’s hand on the rudder. “May I fly it?”

  “All in good time. You’ll be doing everything from manning the gauges and filling the fuel tank to steering.”

  Lena noticed that Merilee hadn’t said a word. The general ebullience seemed to have missed her, and Lena wondered if she feared for her mother. “Merilee, it’s just like Mr. Beasley said, the marshal and his deputies have no idea that your mother is a Peculiar.” She hesitated. “They believe she’s just a housekeeper who was willing to help them.”

  Silent tears spilled from Merilee’s hazel eyes, and she shook her head from side to side. “And what about the others?”

  Of course Merilee wouldn’t know that Abel had been shot. Lena darted a quick look at Jimson, who was suddenly subdued.

  “One of the deputies shot Abel when he was holding Lena hostage. Abel was threatening to shoot Lena.” Jimson’s tone was bald, matter-of-fact, but his eyes, Lena noticed, were clouded with trouble.

  Mr. Beasley’s sigh was deep and ponderous. “I’ve been afraid something like that might happen.”

  Merilee made a small whimpering sound.

  Mr. Beasley continued. “Abel was a bitter man. After his father was killed in the mines, he let his bitterness take hold and it grew until there was little else left. He wasn’t the boy I once knew. I hoped I could help him, but he was never able to contain his impulses, most of which were violent. It’s a terrible tragedy.” He paused and removed his goggles, dabbing at his eyes. “I do believe that he would have been happier in Scree. He always volunteered for the most dangerous jobs, like helping the prisoner on the train escape.”

  “Was he a Peculiar?” Lena felt strange saying the word out loud in front of Merilee.

  But it was Merilee who answered. “Abel and his brothers are goblins.”

  “But—” A cold wave of nausea passed over Lena. She felt Jimson’s eyes on her.

  “And what about Milo?” Jimson asked to change the subject. “He came just in time to save us.”

  “Milo has been around the world a time or two. He knew all about my business at Zephyr House, but he managed to keep himself apart from it. If anyone can land on his feet, it’s Milo.”

  “And what about Mrs. Mumbles?” Jimson continued. “Do you know, I think it was the cat that brought Milo to us at the right time!”

  Mr. Beasley laughed. “Never underestimate a feline. They understand much more than we give them credit for. Especially Mumbles. She’ll be company for Mrs. Pollet. She likes the cat more than she lets on.”

  Despite the warmth from the boiler, a cold wind whisked in through the glassless windows. Merilee shivered.

  “If we draw the curtains, it will be a little warmer,” Lena offered.

  “Not yet. I’ve stashed blankets under the seats.” Mr. Beasley reached under his bench and pulled out a plaid wool blanket. “There should be one for each of us . . . Well, what do we have here? A stowaway!” Along with the blankets Mr. Beasley lifted up Mrs. Mumbles by the scruff of her neck. “I guess she’s more of an adventurer than I thought!”

  “Mumbles!” Jimson exclaimed, reaching for the animal. But the cat ignored him and jumped from Mr. Beasley’s arms to Merilee’s lap, where she contented herself by circling once and settling down in a tight coil.

  Lena handed a blanket to Merilee and then wrapped herself up as if she were on a familiar carriage ride rather than sailing through the sky.

  She covered Merilee’s hand with her own. The tall girl was tentatively looking out the window as the aerocopter banked into the wide turn that would bring them northward. “Where will we be going?” Merilee asked.

  “Now, that part of the plan hadn’t quite been finalized.” Mr. Beasley looked abashed. “I did hope we had at least another day. Thomas Saltre will have a watch over all the borders. Crossing the border away from the road is my first plan. Then we need to proceed deep enough into Scree to be away from search parties. All my mining interests will be watched, so we can’t go there.”

  He reached under the seat again. “I do have one more provision for our journey. Miss Mattacascar, your purse!” With a flourish he held aloft Lena’s purse that had been stolen on the trip to Knoster. “Abel gave it to me some days ago. With all the brouhaha, I never had time to give it to you.”

  Lena reached for her bag. “I can’t believe it.” She opened the drawstring and looked inside. The money was gone, but she had expected that. She felt for the slit in the silk lining and inserted two fingers. The papers were still there. With a great sigh of relief she pulled them out. Then she removed her shawl. She looked at Jimson and Mr. Beasley. “Please avert your eyes.”

  Jimson’s eyebrows rose, but he did as he was asked. And Mr. Beasley followed suit.

  Lena unbuttoned her jacket and opened the small jet buttons on her dress. She reached inside and found the folded letter pinned to her chemise. She withdrew it, leaving the money in place, and did up the buttons. “Perhaps this will be of some help.” She extended the letter and then the folded papers from her purse to Mr. Beasley. “For my eighteenth birthday, my father left me a letter, which I’ve kept close to my heart. He also left me a small inheritance, which I kept in the lining of my purse. They are a map and a deed to the Mattacascar family mine.”

  Jimson whistled and looked over Mr. Beasley’s shoulder.

  Mr. Beasley quickly scanned the map. “This is farther than we can travel by air without refueling, but the area’s remote enough that I doubt we’d be discovered. I am somewhat familiar with this part of Scree. The nearest outpost is Ducktown. Does anyone still work your family mine?”

  “I don’t know anything about it. I didn’t even know there was a family mine,” Lena answered.

  “Interestingly enough, the deed doesn’t mention what type of ore is mined there, but the claim looks genuine. Yes, Lena. I think this will do very nicely.” Smiling, he carefully refolded the deed and letter, returning them both to her. “We’ll use the map and my wind triangle to help with navigation. Of course, dead reckoning depends on estimating our speed. It’s not completely accurate, but it should get us close to your mine.”

  It was so cold that Lena longed to draw the heavy curtains, but her longing to watch the landscape sail by was stronger. The only sounds were the rushing of the wind and the whirring of the propellers. They had turned inland from the coast,
and below them the frosted clumps of evergreens grew closer and thicker. Farmland gave way to forest, punctuated by outcroppings of rock.

  “The main border crossing is on the coast at the rail line. We’ll be crossing farther to the east, over an area that’s difficult to traverse. By now the marshal will have sent a telegram to alert the border guards. They’ll send an arrest warrant with the Pony Express across Scree. We can only hope that we’re well ahead of him and that he has no idea where we’re headed. Jimson, we need some kerosene added to the tank to fuel the boiler.”

  Jimson unscrewed the cap of the metal fuel can and used a funnel to pour the liquid into the tank.

  “How far are we from the border?” Merilee asked. She had the blanket pulled up to her nose and well tucked in at her sides. Unlike Lena, she seemed less interested in the view than in staying warm.

  “We’ll be there in another thirty minutes if my calculations are correct. Of course, it’s always difficult to tell where one country ends and another begins without a marker of some sort. The trick isn’t the crossing. It’s how we’ll eventually land.”

  “How does she land?” Jimson lovingly stroked the fabric walls of the aerocopter.

  “I am not precisely sure, but I do have theories.”

  Jimson sighed. “This is the best day of my life.”

  LENA FOUND THAT TRAVELING BY AEROCOPTER SUITED HER. She tried not to think about what Nana Crane would say. It would, to Lena’s reckoning, be the final confirmation of her own goblin blood. She also tried not to think about poor Abel with his flat brown eyes. Was that what it meant to be a goblin? She shuddered.

  She let her mind settle on the image she had held at bay, the marshal standing at the base of the widow’s walk, head thrown back looking up at her and seeing only another Peculiar. All that time he had been using her, and she had allowed it. More than allowed it, she had envisioned traveling with him as her guide to Scree. And she had betrayed Mr. Beasley and his work at Zephyr House. She had betrayed them all. She burned with shame, feeling the hollow place inside her, the place where her soul should reside, open wider.

  Across the coach Jimson laughed at something Mr. Beasley said. They both examined the wind triangle as Mr. Beasley explained his calculations. Jimson certainly did not seem to be pining for his missing Pansy. As she watched, Lena could feel his excitement catch like a flame to kindling. Despite the marshal, despite almost being shot by flat-eyed Abel, it was impossible to stay solemn when she was traveling in an aerocopter. If she was doomed to be wild, as Nana Crane had predicted, she would enjoy every minute of it.

  Merilee, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be faring half so well. She alternated between looking seasick and terrified. Which, Lena thought, was not in keeping with the reality of her wings. While Jimson and Mr. Beasley discussed the necessary terrain for a smooth landing, Lena whispered the question that had been nagging at her ever since she first saw the drawings of Annuncius syndrome in Mr. Beasley’s sketchbook. “Could you fly? When you had your wings, I mean.” And then she blushed, wondering if her question was too presumptuous.

  Merilee looked at her with a small frown puckering her broad brow. “No, of course not. The wings were never strong enough. But I did try once when they first grew in. I jumped off a fence . . . and ended up on my face in the dirt.” For the first time Lena saw laughter in Merilee’s eyes.

  “Were they heavy?”

  “A bit. But the worst part was the itching—day and night as the feathers came in.”

  Then she looked shyly at Lena. “What’s wrong with your hands and feet?”

  Instinctively, Lena’s feet crept under the hem of her skirt. “I don’t know. Nobody does. But I was born this way.” The next words were very hard to force out. “Some people say my father was a goblin.”

  Merilee looked at her directly with her wide hazel eyes. “They’re not all like Abel, you know.”

  Lena leaned in closer. “You’ve known other goblins?”

  “In Scree. There were others in the mines. I was very small, but I remember playing with a family of them. They were some of my best friends.” She shrugged her thin shoulders.

  “But did they look like me? Did they have hands and feet like mine?”

  “No, not that I remember. They looked just like anyone else.”

  A gust of wind buffeted the coach. Merilee turned very white and closed her eyes again.

  “It looks like we’re headed into some nasty weather,” Mr. Beasley announced. “I suggest drawing the curtains to preserve warmth.” He was holding a compass and a brass spyglass. “We are on course. The border is just ahead. The land changes to rock and shale, but we may miss seeing it in all this weather. The clouds might work in our favor by adding some cover, but they will make navigation more difficult.”

  They were entering a wilderness of gray. Clouds clustered together like fleecy animals in a herd. It looked to Lena as if she could step outside and be carried away on their soft backs. But with the clouds came a chilling damp. It swamped the coach, forming small ice crystals on the window frame. They drew the curtains and leaned into the warmth of the boiler. Lena rubbed her hands together, glad this time for her gloves. If it was this cold now, how would they bear it in the middle of the night? There was a small hiss, and a light flared in the darkness of the coach. Mr. Beasley lit the kerosene lantern that hung from the ceiling. As the light swayed, shadows played across their faces, and Lena recalled her trip on the train to Knob Knoster.

  Merilee leaned her head back against the tufted seat and closed her eyes. Mrs. Mumbles splayed across her lap like a cat fur muff. Mr. Beasley steered and scribbled in a small notebook, but Jimson’s eyes, solemn now and deeply shadowed, were fastened on Lena as if he too was remembering the long-ago train ride. When she met his eyes, Lena found herself blushing and short of breath. Then she thought of Pansy and deliberately averted her gaze. The coach jarred side to side, the curtains fluttered and, with a sickening jolt, they dropped.

  “It’s just the air currents. Turbulence. We’ve flown into a pressure differential. We’ll be fine if we can keep our stomachs.” Mr. Beasley’s confidence was reassuring, but for the first time Lena realized how vulnerable they were, sailing unsupported through vast miles of sky. “I’m going to drop us down a little to see if we can get below the storm. Jimson, I want you to pull this lever until the gauge reads minus ten degrees. Here.” He pointed to a small brass handle. “I’ll try and keep her steering straight. You might feel another sudden drop. Nothing to be alarmed about.”

  Lena clutched the edge of the bench as Jimson scooted forward and gripped the lever. With a ratcheting tick, they dipped, suddenly enough to make Merilee reach for the empty bucket under the seat. Lena felt her own stomach roil. Looking up, she again found Jimson’s eyes. This time she didn’t look away.

  Then they were mercifully steady again. Jimson dropped his gaze as Mr. Beasley parted the curtains. “We’re below the clouds. Any lower and we’ll be brushing treetops. We should have crossed the border a good ten minutes ago. I suggest we look for a place to land.”

  “You mean we’re not going to fly all night?” Lena felt strangely disappointed.

  “Too difficult to navigate in the dark! We can’t see the landmarks. And there are mountains just ahead. We don’t want to risk flying into one. The trick is finding the right landing spot. We need a smooth landing area, but also a place with enough grade to aid in takeoff.”

  Lena peered out the window. In the dim light of October’s end, sparse evergreens rose like ghosts. As far as she could see, in every direction, there were no smooth places for a landing.

  “We’re not quite as far as I thought. We’re crossing into Scree now!” Mr. Beasley exclaimed.

  Below, the trees gave way to rock, layers of dark gray shale like shingles on a roof.

  Once more Jimson was leaning halfway out of the aerocopter. “The stony borderlands. What a view!”

  All four of the passengers gazed over the wide b
and of shale and flint that ran along the border. A brown-and-gray world opened below them, as if cloud and fog had sucked all color from the landscape. Sailing low, they just barely cleared the tops of giant spruce and cedars, the ghostly sentinels to this rocky kingdom.

  “We’ll have to land soon, before the mountains,” Mr. Beasley warned.

  “But all I can see is rock.” Lena wondered if Mr. Beasley really knew what he was doing.

  Jimson held the brass spyglass to one eye. “I believe there’s water just ahead. It looks like a lake on the flank of a hill.”

  Layers of rock gave way to wide swatches of bony earth. Boulders erupted through the thin skin of soil. Trees were still sparse, but in the fast-approaching distance evergreens ringed the feet of snow-blanketed mountains.

  Jimson handed the glass to Mr. Beasley. “I don’t suppose we can land in water.”

  “We have no idea how deep the lake is, but the land just above it may be our best option. It appears to be an open meadow and high enough on the hillside to facilitate our takeoff.” Mr. Beasley considered the situation, then handed the spyglass to Lena. “The trick will be to not land in the middle of the lake but above it, in the meadow. I want you all to follow my instructions precisely. We will drop as gradually as possible.”

  Jimson was in charge of reducing fuel to the boiler. Merilee secured everything in the coach as well as possible, and Lena, who was longing to have some real part in flying the aerocopter, was allowed to help Mr. Beasley steer. “We want the rotor tilted into the wind, to maintain autorotation. We’ll gradually drop, and at the last minute we’ll slow our descent by angling up the top rotor. At that point, we should be traveling about seven miles per hour. When we land, I’ll apply the brake.”

  Lena, with one hand on the rudder lever beside Mr. Beasley’s, watched their descent toward the lake. It grew larger—a pale glacial blue oval surrounded by a gravelly shore. Suddenly, the drop was precipitous. The water of the lake came rushing toward them.