Airborn by Kenneth Oppel
“You’ll be a married man after all,” I said to him.
“She may not have me, now I’ve gone and kept her waiting.”
“You had the very best of excuses.”
“Pirates!” he said.
“Murderous pirates and a sinking ship and a crash-landing on a tropical island!”
“And let’s not forget my valiant acts!” Baz added. “I served cool beverages in blazing tropical heat; I helped shade the rich and privileged.”
“You’re a proper hero,” I assured him.
We were making our way back toward the ship where the captain and officers were already inspecting her underbelly. It was not a pretty sight.
“We can mend scrapes and broken bones well enough,” Captain Walken said. “Mr. Chen, what do you make of the tail fin and rudder?”
“A day’s work, sir.”
“Make it tomorrow’s work, then, Mr. Chen. I’ve worked you all like packhorses today. Aside from essential watch duty and cabin crew, you’re all on shore leave for the evening!”
“Permission to give you three cheers, Captain.”
“If absolutely necessary.”
We gave the captain three great cheers.
“Now then,” he said, “I believe that our esteemed chef, Mr. Vlad, has been preparing something wonderful for dinner. I urge you to enjoy it. My heartfelt thanks to you all for your labors. Now I must go relay the good news to our passengers.”
The captain had allowed all the passengers back on board, and everyone in the dining room was in a merry mood that night. In the kitchen, I’d never seen Vlad happier. Earlier in the afternoon, he’d sent his four assistant chefs into the lagoon to catch fish and since had been slow-cooking them in great pits on the beach.
“Look at this,” he’d said to me, pointing a cleaning knife at an enormous colorful fish laid out on the kitchen counter. “Have you ever seen anything so lovely? Look at the texture of her flesh, here. You see? She is beautiful. The fish here are finer than any I’ve seen anywhere.” He sucked in his breath and looked across the kitchen at some distant mirage. “I could stay here, yes? Stay here and open a restaurant. People would come from all over the world to eat fish such as this.” He pointed his knife at me. “You, Mr. Cruse, would you travel across the world for such a meal?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good boy. You’re a good boy. Now go and tell my idiot cooks to hurry up with those mangoes.”
After they’d spent hours fishing, Vlad had sent his assistants climbing trees to gather coconuts and mangoes and pineapples. Judging from the smells coming from the kitchen and wafting across the beach, we were all in for an exotic feast.
All the windows were thrown wide, and the warm, perfumed night air filled the lounges and dining rooms. It still amazed me, the view from the windows: palms and sand and a turquoise lagoon, still aglow even as the sun sank below the horizon.
And there was Kate, sitting in her usual seat, but where was her chaperone?
“How is Miss Simpkins this evening?” I asked as I put the napkin on her lap.
“She’s feeling poorly. She’s retired to bed with a violent tropical headache.”
“Tropical headache?” I placed a hot roll on her side plate.
“Thank you. That’s what the ship’s doctor said, but I think he was simply being kind. I think she just wanted to get back into her comfy bed. The beach was a little too stressful for her. Your ship’s doctor is rather dashing, isn’t he?”
“Is he?” I said, taken somewhat aback.
“He is,” Kate said firmly. “Now, look what I found.” She had a fat little book in her hand—how many books had she brought? I wondered—and flipped pages.
“I always thought Doc Halliday was kind of odd looking,” I muttered.
“There, look at this,” Kate said, pointing.
It was a tinted picture of the little red snake that had sent us running through the forest.
“Perfectly harmless,” she said, smiling, as she read the description. “Apparently it jumps like that to frighten off predators. It’s not at all poisonous.”
“Cheeky devil,” I said, pouring some water from the decanter into Kate’s glass.
“I’m very grateful to the little fellow. If it weren’t for him, we might not have found the skeleton.”
“Maybe you’d like one as a pet?”
“Well, at least we know it’s not poisonous. So when we go back, no worries.”
Going back I looked over to the captain, seated at the head table with his officers and a number of passengers.
“Would you like the fish or the suckling pig tonight, Miss de Vries?” I asked with professional courtesy as Baz swirled close by with three plates balanced in his hands.
“The fish, of course. I could smell it baking for the last hour.”
“Very good, miss.”
“We’ll talk later,” she said, eyes twinkling as I moved away.
We didn’t get the chance to talk again until much later. Dinner had been served and eagerly devoured. The dessert trolleys had made their rounds; the men had retreated to the smoking room, the women left behind in the starboard lounge to await their partners’ smoggy return. People headed off to bed earlier than usual, no doubt exhausted by watching the crew work all day. I tended bar. Kate stayed behind, reading. One by one, the passengers left, until it was just Kate sitting there. I started wiping down tables. I wasn’t sure I was ready for Kate just now.
“Aren’t you going to do this one?” she asked when I’d cleaned every table but hers. “You’re not avoiding me, are you?”
“Of course not.”
“When do you get off duty?”
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea, going back.”
“Of course it’s a good idea. We need to take pictures and gather up the bones.”
“The captain asked you to stay near the ship.”
“Yes, but I’m under no obligation to obey him. I gave no promise.”
“Well, he had a word with me afterward.”
“Did he forbid you from leaving the ship?”
“Not exactly.” I recited our brief conversation to her.
“Well, I don’t see what the problem is,” she said. “You wouldn’t be disobeying a direct order. He just wants you to be safe. He doesn’t want you to be late again. You won’t be.”
She was just shaping things the way she wanted, I knew that.
I said nothing. Her voice was low and urgent when she next spoke.
“Matt, you promised.”
“I know.”
“This is something the world has never seen. We can’t just leave it here. We’ve discovered something amazing, you and I!”
I liked the “you and I” part. I felt tugged in all different directions.
“I want to help you,” I said miserably. “I want to get the bones, I do. But the captain wants me with the ship.” It wasn’t just disobeying orders; I couldn’t help feeling that if I left the Aurora, some disaster would befall the ship. It would be tempting fate. “Don’t ask me to choose, please. It’s not fair. You or the captain. You or the ship.”
“It doesn’t seem a very difficult choice to me,” Kate said, her nostrils narrowing. “Anyway, I don’t see what the ship’s got to do with this.”
“It’s my home.”
“It’s not your home,” she said impatiently. “It’s where you work, that’s all.”
I looked at her, not trusting myself to speak. She didn’t understand anything.
“Fine,” she said. “I don’t want to force you. I can ask Mr. Lunardi.”
“Mr. Lunardi!”
“Yes, I’m sure he’d be delighted to accompany me.”
“You don’t mind sharing your little secret, then?” Our secret. My heart was beating slow and hard and angry.
“I’m sure he can keep a secret. He seems a perfect gentleman.”
“A much better bet than a cabin boy, you’re quite right. I’m sure you’ll be mu
I turned and walked away, trembling inside with rage. I’d been useful to her, that was all. That was the only reason she had been friendly to me.
“Matt,” she said, when I was near the door. I stopped. “I’m not going to ask Mr. Lunardi. You know I wouldn’t do that. You’re the only one I trust.”
I gave a hollow laugh, unconvinced. “And what if I say no?”
“I suppose I’ll just have to go by myself.”
She would too. I almost smiled, half in vexation, half in admiration of her pigheaded willfulness. She’d go and get lost, and then I’d feel it was somehow my fault. There’d be a big search party, and that would waste even more of the ship’s time. And she might get hurt. I sighed. If I went with her, it would only take a few hours.
“I’m not on duty again till noon,” I said, without turning to face her. “We can leave at first light. We’ll have to be quick, though.”
“Thank you,” she said, walking over. “Thank you so much, Matt. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you. I didn’t mean to imply that Mr. Lunardi was—”
“—any better than me? Well he is, isn’t he? Let’s not pretend. He’s wealthy, he’s older, he’s handsome, he’s a junior officer…”
“Is he?”
“Of course he is,” I fairly shouted. “Assistant sailmaker. Didn’t you notice the insignia on his collar?”
“I didn’t, no.”
“The golden wheels? Blazing like little suns?”
She shook her head. “All those insignia look the same to me. Everyone seems to have them.”
“Not me,” I said hotly.
“And I don’t find him handsome, by the way.”
“You don’t?”
“I don’t,” she said firmly. “His type of looks are not at all to my liking. You know, the only problem with first thing in the morning is the light might not be at its best in the forest.”
“Take it or leave it,” I said. “There might not be another chance before we take off.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “I’ve got a flash anyway.”
“What about Miss Simpkins?” I asked.
“Oh, she’ll be bedridden.” Kate said it without a trace of sympathy. “I know all about her headaches. Half the time they’re just to get off work.”
“Well, her work is particularly horrible,” I said.
She looked put out for a moment before she realized I was joking.
“Marjorie won’t even know I’ve left the ship,” she said. “I’ll leave her a note telling her I’ll be at breakfast and then reading in the lounge so I won’t disturb her rest. So that’s all taken care of.”
It was a bad decision I was making, I knew that. But I couldn’t have her cavorting alone in the forest. Besides, I did want to see the bones again, and I wanted her to have them. It made me feel good to help her.
“About six-thirty, then,” I said. “Meet me at the base of the grand staircase.”
I was exhausted, and I should have fallen asleep the moment my cheek touched the pillow. But I could not. I tried to lull myself to sleep with images of flight. I imagined the Aurora lifting off into a cloudless sky, imagined myself at her controls, flying her. But every time I almost dozed off, some part of my mind would start to panic and jerk me away from sleep, and my heart would race. It was just like being back in the cramped, low-ceilinged apartment in Lionsgate City.
I hated it, feeling this way about my beloved cabin. It was small, but that didn’t matter: when the Aurora was aloft the cabin was as big as the sky, and in a single night gave me a sleep as wide as continents and deep as oceans.
Now it was a cell.
It was four in the morning before my body could finally endure no more, and despite the turbulence in my brain, I slept—
—and dreamed I was running along the beach. The skeleton was bounding after me, its bony wings flared, its legs stretching long as it soared weightlessly over the sand. Its jaws gaped.
I was so slow, so weak. I could barely lift my feet from the sand to take a stride. Why couldn’t I go faster? It would be upon me in a moment. What was wrong with me? I should have been able to fly free, but I could not leave the earth.
11
THE ONE THAT FELL
I tore at the vines hanging down around the branch, trying to let more light in. I felt strange doing it and kept glancing over at the skeleton, half expecting it to shift, angry at having its long, sheltered slumber disturbed. It seemed smaller somehow, once the view around it opened up and the morning sun bathed its dry bones. It looked dejected, no longer so ready to pounce, slumped and crumpled along the broad branch.
“That’s brilliant, much better,” said Kate from the ground. I moved back against the trunk, and she took a photograph from down there. She said it was important to give a sense of exactly where the specimen was found. She was using a smaller camera than the one I’d seen in her stateroom. This one was a compact box with a large mirrored bowl lamp mounted on the front. When she took the picture it gave a mighty flash, stunning the bugs of the forest into a momentary silence.
The camera and flash had fit snugly inside a leather case with a molded interior. Kate had carried it slung over her shoulder as we’d worked our way up through the forest in the early morning light. I’d offered to carry it for a while, for it did look cumbersome, but she kept saying she was fine, that it was her gear and she would manage it, which quite impressed me. She did let me take the carpetbag, though. She’d insisted on bringing it, to carry back the bones. I felt absurd hiking through the ferns and foliage hefting a carpetbag with a rose pattern on the outside. “I’ve left quite a lot of clothing in there,” she’d told me, “for padding. Bones are fragile things.” She didn’t want them getting scraped or cracked. It had taken us more than an hour to reach the tree.
“Can you stand close to it?” she called up to me now. “Without touching it, of course.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Scale.”
I still felt uncomfortable being near the skeleton, but I reluctantly crouched beside it and stared at the camera’s big dark eye. Flash!
“Terrific,” she said. “I’m coming up.”
She passed the camera up to me first, and then I helped pull her to the first branch. She wore a white cotton tennis dress, and the skirt was daringly short, just below the knees, but it wasn’t always getting underfoot, and she could get around the tree much more easily. On her feet she wore flat-soled sandals with good grips. Her legs were bare—earlier, when I’d first noticed, my cheeks flushed. It was most unconventional, even in the tropical heat, for a young lady to go bare legged. I was trying to keep my eyes off them. They were very pale and bruised purple in places from all our running and tree climbing the day before.
Before she started taking pictures, she first measured the skeleton with a cloth measuring tape. She took the length and width and height and a bunch of other measurements that seemed quite unnecessary to me, and wrote them all down. She was using her grandfather’s journal, continuing the work he’d started last year. I liked watching her hands as she wrote, the way her fingers held the pencil. She had lovely long fingers, but they looked strong too. Probably got lots of exercise turning the pages of books.
Then it was on to the photographs. Kate wanted close-ups from every possible angle, so she’d have no trouble reassembling the bones once she got them home. It was quite a job, maneuvering around the skeleton. She clambered about on all the nearby branches to get the views that pleased her best, and I followed after her anxiously, holding the camera until she was ready, and grabbing hold of her whenever she was about to teeter off the tree altogether.
“How do we know they don’t live on land?” It had been bothering me all morning. If there was one here, there could be others, alive this time, teeth and all.
“My grandfather said they never landed. Anyway, he saw them head south, remember? They just feed around here. They
“Right.” I wanted to be reassured. “So this one must’ve just died in flight.”
I looked up through the tree. I supposed it was possible. Directly overhead I could see a patch of clear sky. He died in the air, spiraled earthward like a dry leaf, just happened to thunk down all neat and tidy on this branch. A bit far-fetched maybe but…No. Impossible. His claws were locked into the bark. He’d been alive when he landed. I tried to imagine it. He was too weak or ill to keep flying, and had started to drop, leaving behind his home, his sky, every foot lower a foot he would never regain. By chance the island was below him and into the trees he went, clutching at things with weak claws until he crumpled against this big old branch. He dug in, hunching down as death took him. No bird dared come near the body: they’d never seen such a thing. Only the bugs, after a time, went to work on the carcass.
Kate fired off another blinding photo.
“Surely you have enough now,” I said, conscious of the time and wondering how long it would take to label and wrench apart all the bones.
“Yes,” she said. “I think I have enough.”
She hung her camera carefully by its strap from an overhanging branch. Then we brought up her carpetbag. The branch was broad enough for us to crouch side by side, with the carpetbag behind us. Kate produced a special wax pencil, which she said she never traveled without.
“I suppose you never know when you might stumble on some ancient relic or skull and need to label it right away,” I said.
“Quite,” she replied. “Really, it would have been more useful to label the bones first, then take the pictures, then take the skeleton apart,” she said. “Never mind. Gosh, there really are a lot of bones, aren’t there?”
“Lots of bones,” I agreed.
“I’ve never done anything like this before, you know,” she told me gravely.
“Really?” I said. “You amaze me.”
“Oh, be quiet,” she said, smiling a little. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll label the bones, and then you start taking them apart and packing them into the bag.”