Airborn by Kenneth Oppel
“It’s what I’ve trained to do all my life,” I said. “It’s my heart’s desire.”
“No need to be sarcastic, Mr. Cruse.”
She started with the skull, which was closest after all, and worked her way down the vertebrae. I took a deep breath and grasped the skull on either side. I joggled it gently.
“You’re being careful, aren’t you?” she asked.
“I think so.”
“These are delicate things.”
“Would you rather do it?”
“No, no, I trust you. Just be gentle.”
With a snap the skull came free from the spine, and I was suddenly holding it in my hands. It was incredibly light. The lower jaw dropped off its hinges, and I nearly lost it altogether.
“That was close,” said Kate.
“Stop watching me,” I told her. “I’m absolutely fine.”
A few teeth fell out, and I caught them in my hand at the last moment. I gingerly lifted it all over to the bag and put it inside.
On we worked, Kate labeling, me dismantling. I was wrapping bones up in handkerchiefs and knickers and stockings and bits of ladies’ clothing I’d never seen before and certainly never handled. And then I realized they were Kate’s things, and my cheeks started to burn and I felt most improper. I got back to work on the vertebrae, fiddly little things, but they popped out fairly easily.
Kate looked over and gave a snort, and at first I thought I was doing something wrong.
“I wish we had some proper packing materials,” she said.
“I’m surprised you didn’t think to bring some.”
She smiled. “We’ll just have to do the best we can. Given the circumstances, I think we’re managing rather well.”
“Those wing bones aren’t going to make it,” I said, nodding at the whippy bones at the end of the creature’s arms.
She grimaced. “I know. They’re bound to break. Just do the best you can wrapping them up.”
We worked on in silence. I still didn’t like being in the forest much, still felt it pressing in on me. The air was thickening as the sun climbed. Every one of the creature’s bones passed through my hands, and I marveled at their lightness; it was as if they were filled with hydrium and only wanted to be released from my grip to fly. Lighter than air. I smiled to myself.
“Amazing creature,” Kate kept muttering as she worked her way down the skeleton with her wax crayon. “Amazing. I was reading about pterosaurs—do you know what they are?”
“No.”
“Winged lizards. Or at least that’s what is thought. Lizards that died out eighty million years ago. But not everyone agrees. Maybe they weren’t reptiles at all. Perhaps they were mammals, or they developed into mammals…”
I knew nothing of the matter, so said nothing. It made me feel rather downcast, all this knowledge locked away in books that I didn’t know and likely never would. I loved books, but they were expensive and heavy and reading them took time I rarely had. It seemed Kate had read practically everything.
“Imagine how many animals used to exist,” she was saying. “All the ones that are extinct now. Not just the dinosaurs, but all the other animals that must have once flown and crawled and walked and hopped across the earth. Maybe this is one that’s managed to live on in secret. Don’t you love the idea of it?”
“I love how it never has to land,” I said.
“You would,” she said with a laugh, then looked at me quite seriously. “Born in the air, just like you. I’d never thought of that.”
I hadn’t either.
“You two have a lot in common.”
“I’m not quite as bony,” I said.
Kate contentedly went back to her labeling. I went back to packing bones in her undergarments.
“When I write my scholarly articles,” Kate was saying now, “I’ll mention that you and I discovered the bones together, and that you were instrumental in their preservation.”
“Thank you, that’s very kind of you.”
“Fair’s fair,” she said, “and if you ever decide to go to university, it’ll stand you in good stead.”
“I’ve never had any desire to go to university.”
“No? Well, what do you wish for, then?”
“I want to fly airships.”
“I suppose you’re already well on your way.”
“Not really,” I said, and I told her. I probably shouldn’t have, but I told her how I’d been expecting to be made assistant sailmaker at the end of the voyage, and how Bruce Lunardi had taken my position because of his rotten father. So I was still stuck as cabin boy.
“That’s really terribly unfair!” she said indignantly. “I like that Lunardi fellow even less now.”
I couldn’t help smiling. I couldn’t have asked for a more satisfying reaction.
“I shall write a letter!” Kate said, still fuming.
“No, please don’t,” I said.
“I hate it when things are unfair,” she muttered. “You must go to this Air Academy too, when you’re older.”
“It’s not quite as easy as that,” I said.
“Why isn’t it?”
“It costs money, and I haven’t much of that. None, in fact.”
“Surely there are scholarships for promising students.”
I nodded, saying nothing.
“You must get a scholarship,” said Kate, solving all my problems for me. “And after your training you can proceed to sailmaker, and then on to officer and then captain. It would be such a terrible shame if someone of your obvious ability didn’t succeed.”
I didn’t feel like talking about it anymore. Even if I won a scholarship, the Academy training was at least two years—two years during which I would be making no money to send back to my mother and sisters. They relied on me. Even if the Academy offered me a place, I’d not be able to take it. But somehow I couldn’t tell Kate this. I felt ashamed. Around her and all her wealth, the very idea of being poor seemed ridiculous. Impossible. She meant well, but I doubted she had any notion of what the world was like outside her moneyed bubble.
I looked up at the sky, noted the sun’s angle, and sighed.
“We would’ve been approaching Sydney Harbor by now,” I said.
She turned to me. “What happens when we don’t arrive?”
It seemed to be the first time she’d given it any thought. I’d been dreading it, forcing it from my mind. Up till now, my mother and Isabel and Sylvia hadn’t known anything was wrong. They hadn’t worried. That would all change—if not today, then soon. I wondered if my mother could bear it, after what happened to my father.
“We’ll be reported missing. Everyone will assume we’ve crashed into the ocean and drowned.”
“Gosh,” she said.
“Your parents will be worried sick.”
She went back to the skeleton. “Well, they’ll put on a good show anyway.”
I stared at the back of her head, not quite sure I understood.
“They’ll call all the important people they know,” Kate went on, “and demand updates and answers, and an extensive search.”
“Well, that’s something,” I said.
“Mmmmm.”
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” I asked. “Or did you eat them all?”
“I think one child was all my parents could endure.”
“Well, you are quite willful,” I said.
Her head whirled round, and she fixed me with those eyes of hers. Then her face softened. “Yes, I suppose I am. I rather like the sound of it, though. Doesn’t it sound intriguing and exciting? The willful Kate de Vries!”
“I’m starting to feel rather sorry for your parents,” I said.
“You needn’t,” she said. “They don’t have to deal with my willfulness much. There’s Miss Simpkins, and before her there were all sorts of nannies. None of them stayed on very long, now that I think of it. My mother is wildly busy fluttering about in high society, and my father manages things.??
“What exactly does he manage?”
“Other people’s money mostly. It seems to take a great deal of his time and energy.”
“Ah.”
“Oh, there’s nothing wrong with them,” she said. “They’re perfectly normal, I suppose. Crushingly normal. They wouldn’t let me go with Grandpa on his balloon trip.”
“Was your grandfather actually willing to take you?” I asked.
“Well, no, he wasn’t. But even if he was, my parents wouldn’t have allowed it. They certainly don’t want me to study at university. All they want me to do is dress and behave appropriately and not embarrass them. My interests seem to embarrass them. And my talking. I’m always being told I’m saying the wrong thing, or at the wrong time, or too boldly. ‘Kate, you are too bold,’ my mother always says. She hates being embarrassed. She’d rather have the Black Death than be embarrassed. Though I suppose having the Black Death would be rather embarrassing in high society. The coughing and drooling and so on.”
“I’m wondering if maybe your parents paid the pirates to sink our ship.”
To her credit, she laughed.
“I’m sorry. I talk too much—everyone says so. What about your parents? They must miss you, being away so much.”
“Well, I suppose my mother’s used to it. My father worked aboard airships too. He died three years ago.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” she said, looking stricken. “Your poor mother. She’s going to be frantic when she hears about the Aurora.”
“I know,” I said, feeling sick. “She’s a worrier. She never wanted me to take the position.”
“Weren’t you awfully young?”
“Twelve’s not so young to start as cabin boy. It was a good job. And we needed the money.”
“So you started right after your father died?”
I nodded. “The Aurora was my father’s ship too. I think Captain Walken must have felt sorry for us—but I’m not sure Mom ever forgave him for offering to take me on.”
“It’s what you wanted though, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” I’d never been able to tell my mother how comforting it had been to work aboard Dad’s old ship. Everyone knew about my father, and they were all very kind to me, especially Captain Walken. Baz took me under his wing right away—the older brother I never had. I felt like I’d discovered another family aloft. And my father always felt nearby, visiting me often in my dreams. I kept this all to myself, though, for I couldn’t bear being disloyal to Mom and Isabel and Sylvia.
“Do you get home much?”
“We get shore leave regularly. I’ve got two sisters, almost as terrifying as you. I should go home more,” I said guiltily. “It’s hard now, with Dad gone.”
“He was the storyteller.”
I nodded, surprised she remembered.
“Took you everywhere in your head. Like my grandpa,” she said. “Oh, look, I meant to show you this.”
She shifted past me and climbed down to the ground. From a side pocket on her camera case she slid out an old photograph. Back in the tree, she showed it to me. It was a class photograph of schoolboys on the front steps. They all wore uniforms, shirts and blazers and shorts.
“Can you tell which one he is?” Kate asked.
“Your grandfather?”
“You met him.”
“He was a bit older by then!”
“Go on, look. It’s so obvious!”
I conjured up the image of the old man in the hospital bed, tried to take him back to his childhood.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Honestly.” She pointed to a boy. “He looks just like me.”
“He does?”
“You can’t see that?”
“Ah, yes, long auburn hair, pleated skirt…”
“Boys are so hopeless at this. Isn’t he adorable, though? Look at his ears, how they stick out. And did you notice he’s the most rumpled looking? All the other boys look fairly trim, but his uniform’s all crumpled as if he’d just rolled down a hill.”
“Already off having adventures,” I said.
She looked down at the picture. “Yes,” she said sadly.
“You have his eyes,” I told her.
She looked up at me, beaming.
“This is going to prove him right,” she said, nodding at the skeleton. “No one will think he was crazy after this, not even my mother.” She looked at her wristwatch. “We’re making good time. It’s just past ten o’clock.”
“We should start back in half an hour. I need to be on duty at noon.”
We carried on with our work, dismantling the skeleton bone by bone. I have to say, I felt odd doing it, like we were stealing. A carpetbag seemed no fit place for the bones of this creature. The last vertebrae from his tail went in. I clasped the bag, lifted it. The bag scarcely felt heavier than it had when I’d carried it empty. I looked at the naked branch. We were done.
“I do hope we can manage to reassemble it,” Kate said.
It made me smile the way she said “we,” for I would not be around for that. I was about to remind her of this when a terrible throttled shriek pierced the forest, alarmingly close.
The birds stopped singing, the bugs ceased their thrumming. Even the wind bottled its breath. Everyone and everything in the forest was listening. Kate and I looked at each other.
I heard the soft rustle of something pattering through leaves. It was in the tree next to us. I caught sight of it almost right away because it was so brightly colored: a parrot’s wing, not attached to a parrot, fluttering down through the branches. It disappeared into the ferns on the forest floor, and I could just see a flash of its color through the greenery.
I stared at it for a moment, my mind’s pistons firing at half speed.
Something had just eaten that parrot.
Something had swallowed it whole and spat out the wings.
There was the wing in the grass.
Sound returned to my ears. My gaze slowly lifted, climbing the tree beside us. High up, something moved fast. Like a slender wisp of fog it seeped through the branches and disappeared behind the veil of vines and leaves. My heart clattered.
“I see it,” Kate whispered.
It jumped.
It was so quick it was hard to focus. It was long and lean and had sleek cloud-colored fur. As it soared through the air between trees, its wings flared open for just a second and suddenly it was huge, a completely different creature. And just as quickly the wings pulled in and it was mist again and vanished among the branches.
I could hear the rasp of my own breathing. When I spoke it sounded as if someone had a good grip round my windpipe.
“It’s in our tree.”
We had our heads tilted back, and hands shielding our eyes, trying to spot it, but the sun was too bright. I had to keep blinking and looking off to one side. All I caught were vanishing wispy bits of the creature through all the greenery. My whole body was filled with liquid lead.
High up, I saw a fringe of cloudy white fur against the thick dark trunk and realized it was clinging to the far side, almost completely hidden. Then it showed itself. Sinewy as a snake, it came slyly creeping around, its whole body flattened upside down against the trunk.
I felt Kate’s hot hand close around my arm.
It was a pale panther. It was a bat. It was a bird of prey. With its wings pulled in, it was sleek, almost scrawny. It had jutting shoulders and a humped back, but then I realized these were its massive wings, bundled tight. From head to tail it was no more than four or five feet. Its face was a cat face, only longer, with a lower forehead, the nostrils more pronounced and dark against the pale fur. It was a panther’s face but altogether more streamlined, designed to cut through wind. Its large eyes danced with intelligence and sunlight. It was exquisite. It was terrifying.
“I need my camera,” Kate whispered. Her face was pale and she was trembling.
“Stay still,” I hissed.
But Kate
The creature screeched and pounced onto a higher branch, sprang once more to its tip, then soared out of the tree.
“Come on!” Kate said, scrambling down. I jumped after her. I didn’t know how wise it was to follow this creature, but Kate was already off. For a moment it seemed we’d lost it, and I couldn’t help feeling a bit of relief, but then Kate jabbed up her finger, and I caught the quick cloudy flash of it as it pounced into another tree.
It definitely had its own course set, for it was traveling in a straight line now, pouncing, barely touching down before springing again. The branches did not shudder as they took its weight. Sometimes the creature, when crossing between trees, opened its magnificent wings a little, the sun flashing on the white fur.
And I understood now how we could’ve missed them, all of us sky sailors over the years. Against the green of the trees they were easy enough to spot, but against a cloudy sky they blended in almost completely. Even in a blue sky your mind would’ve told you it was just a little wisp of cloud; the same with water: just a bit of foam on a wave’s crest. Maybe I’d even seen them before, but simply never realized it.
We ran after it, heads tilted, trying to track it as it soared through the forest. But it was faster than us, and I knew that it would soon leave us far behind.
The trees thinned and then disappeared abruptly, and we saw the creature launch itself into the air, wings spread, and drop out of sight. I gasped. We moved as close as we dared to the edge of the high bluff. Below us we could see it as it pounced down the cliff, wings flaring as it jumped from scraggly treetop to treetop. As the ground leveled out, it continued to leap across the forest canopy.
“It doesn’t know,” Kate said. “It doesn’t know how to fly.”
“Its left wing,” I said. “Look.”
Every time it flared its wings, the right shot out to its full length, but the left never quite made it. Perhaps it had been injured, or maybe its left wing was unnaturally stunted, making it incapable of flight. Maybe it had just never learned. Any creature capable of flight would not be leaping from tree to tree; it would be soaring high above them. We watched as the silvery creature got farther and farther away and then dropped out of sight altogether in the distant foliage.