Airborn by Kenneth Oppel
“She’s a wild animal.”
“She’s gentle as anything, isn’t it obvious? She’s shy.”
“Why not just set a little saucer of milk out for her?”
Kate looked at me. “I’d like to get on with this if you don’t mind, Mr. Cruse. We are expected back at the ship.”
“Sorry to hold you back,” I said, and saw that her eyes were smiling at me.
“Half an hour, that’s all,” she promised.
I nodded. “Let’s get down from here and find a good place to take this photograph.”
15
THE CLOUD CAT
The fish stank. And in the middle of the small clearing, under the noonday sun, it was certain to stink even more soon. Any living creature with or without nostrils would sniff it out before long.
“Won’t she be suspicious?” I asked. “Oh, look, a dead fish in the middle of the forest.”
“I don’t think she’ll ask too many questions,” Kate said.
Bruce stank too. He was the one who’d taken the fish from the carpetbag, unwrapped it, and placed it on the ground. He kept rubbing his hands on the grass, but the smell was stubborn and clung to him.
Trees and stacks of fern grew thickly all around the clearing. We crouched down, hidden. Kate found a narrow gap in the fronds and set up her camera in front of it. She peered through the viewfinder.
“This will be perfect,” she said. “I’ve got a good wide shot through here. If she comes to the fish, I’ve got her.”
We waited. We were not far from the tree that held the cloud cat’s nest. Surely it couldn’t be long before she smelled the fish. I could smell it—or maybe that was Bruce. I wished he’d move a little farther away. On Kate’s instruction, we stopped speaking altogether. Part of me wanted the cloud cat to hurry up and come; the other part was afraid it would. I was not so sure of Kate’s assumption it had a gentle soul. Why should it, any more than an eagle or panther?
The day gathered heat. Even sitting in the shade of the trees and ferns, my body was filmed with sweat. The air was so filled with moisture it was hard to imagine there was any room for oxygen. My heart ran hard. I leaned back against the tree trunk, closed my eyes, listened to the heat. I listened to the symphony of birds and bugs. I listened to the breeze high up in the treetops. For a moment I thought I could hear the ocean, but that was probably my imagination. And then, most strange, I thought I heard the sound of propellers. I opened my eyes.
“Did you hear that?” I whispered to Bruce. “Sounded like propellers.”
His eyes lifted to the sky and he listened and shook his head. “No.”
“Shhh,” said Kate.
A branch creaked. Something brushed leaves.
The cloud cat was coming.
Kate held up her hand.
Very slowly I moved my head so I could see through the ferns. At the far side of the clearing, trees rose up in a solid wall. Suddenly, there she was on a low branch in full view. I blinked. She must have dropped down from on high. It was the first time I’d seen her tip to tail, the whole glorious length of her, and she was truly beautiful, sleek and regal and exquisite, her fur silvery-gray and soft looking. You could imagine exactly how it would feel if you stroked it. She was no more than four feet in length. She was like a princess robed in a fur mantle, bunched around her shoulders. With her wings furled, she didn’t seem so large. She was like a strange cat. Her eyes were flecked green. I wanted to look at her forever.
She gingerly paced along the branch to its skinny end, and still it didn’t bow—she was that light. Nimbly she pounced into the clearing, landing several yards back from the fish. She crouched, frozen on the earth, and then took a single step closer.
She wasn’t meant for walking, I could tell right away. Her wings were her front legs, and she had a funny hunched way of moving on the ground, shoulders swinging, face closer to the earth than her rump. She was a bit like a cat when it’s stalking a bird in the grass, ready to pounce, but on the ground she had nothing of her feline grace as when soaring from tree to tree. Her legs were all wrong for walking, even though she’d strengthened them through her life in the forest. I hated seeing her walk. She slouched, she slunk, as if revolted by the feel of the earth beneath her feet. I wished I could help her. I knew what it was like to have your wings clipped.
Closer she came to the center of the clearing, where the stinking fish shimmered in the sun’s gaze. Before now, we’d only seen her from a distance, veiled by leaves and branches and moving quickly. The cloud cat took one more step and then stopped. I could see her ears twitching. She was listening. Could she hear our breathing, the creak of our bones as we tried not to move? The cat, I noticed, had never once put her back to us. She approached on the far side of the fish, her head pointed toward us. Surely she couldn’t see us. Not for the first time I wondered at the wisdom of coming so close to her home. I’d seen crows attack people when they innocently walked beneath a tree holding the birds’ nests. But that was because there were hatchlings, and the parents were protective. Our cloud cat had nothing to protect—but herself.
Then, in three abrupt, slinking steps, she was upon the fish. With her curved front claws she impaled the fish at both ends, tail and gills. Her jaws opened, and we saw her teeth—and everything changed.
We saw her teeth, and suddenly she was no longer a sleek shy cat.
We heard her wet panting sounds as she ravenously tore into the meat with her fangs, and she was full of threat and power. I’d seen the teeth on the skeleton, but it was impossible to imagine them in motion, powered by massive jaws, ripping into the fish. Now that she was so close, I could smell her, a rank chicken-coop heat of fur and sweat and fish and old meat and excrement. I swallowed, but my mouth was so dry I almost gagged. I glanced over at Bruce. He was shaking. Kate’s face had gone very pale. Her hands trembled atop the camera.
We’d made a terrible mistake.
The creature was no more than twelve feet in front of us, and I felt a tremendous fear in me. I could see the fish’s broken spine on the ground, its severed head and dead eye jerking with every pull from the creature’s jaws.
She ate the fish. She could eat us.
The picture was not important. All that mattered now was getting away safely.
The cat finished with the fish and looked up. Her nostrils flared. I looked at Bruce’s hands, could practically see the smell of the spoiling fish, rising like steam.
Kate had put her eye to the camera’s viewfinder. Her finger was on the plunger. I reached out to try to stop her, but too late.
The camera clicked as its shutter contracted and opened.
It was a precise little metallic click, but it was a sound completely foreign to the forest, and it might as well have been thunder. The cloud cat’s head snapped up as if yanked by a chain. Her gaze was leveled at the ferns. That was all there was between us, a few inches of soft, drooping leaves.
Be very, very still.
I heard a low, dangerous, liquid purr. I crouched frozen, floating outside my body, just staring at the cloud cat’s face. It was not a cat’s face, really. It had altogether more intelligence and intent.
She will not see us she will not smell us she will not hear us.
Bruce ran.
He did it suddenly, and there was no hope of holding him back.
“C’mon!” he hissed.
He pivoted and ran straight back from the ferns, bent low, hoping he would not be seen. I could see the cloud cat’s ears flare and swivel, her chin tilt up. Her rump dropped, and then she sprang. Kate and I fell flat, my hand raised across my face to ward off a blow, but the cat was not interested in us, perhaps didn’t even see us. Bruce was her prey. The cat sailed toward us, wings flaring immensely. She landed on a thick branch above me and Kate. In the brief second she touched down, I saw the way her claws gripped the bark, and smelled the pungent odor of her belly and breath and wings as they folded and flexed. The creature’s nostrils flared again as she sniff
I looked frantically round for a stick or a rock, some kind of weapon, but saw nothing. My eyes flicked over Kate’s spyglass, and suddenly her grandfather’s scribbled words burst from my memory: the sight of my spyglass makes them scatter in an instant. I snatched it up and ran.
“Stay here!” I shouted at Kate.
Bruce had rolled over onto his back, kicking with his feet to keep the cloud cat at bay. The cat squealed, her jaws wide, feinting with her head. Bruce shouted; I shouted, too. I scooped up a stone and hurled it. It struck her flank, and the creature turned clumsily. Bruce scrambled back, and I caught a glimpse of his torn trousers, ragged with blood. I stood, a few yards from the cat, my arms spread wide, brandishing the spyglass like a sword and cursing to clear a Tasmanian pub. The cloud cat froze, her eyes following the frenzied motion of the spyglass.
“Go on! Get out of here!” I bellowed, churning my arms, trying to look big and to make enough noise to scare her off.
But she did not flee. She stood her ground, watching me, fur bristling.
Bruce was slowly crawling backward. Shakily, he stood.
“Run, Bruce!” I shouted. “Go!”
He ran. He was injured, but he could still run. The cat kept her eyes fixed on me. The spyglass wasn’t as terrifying as I’d hoped. The creature was spitting and hissing. Her rump kept dropping, and I flinched every time, waiting for her to pounce. I stepped backward, never taking my eyes from the cat, slashing the spyglass through the air. The cloud cat stayed put. Back I went another step.
“Kate!” I shouted, without turning.
“Here,” she said.
“Stand up slowly.”
“I’m standing.”
I hoped Bruce was good and far away by now. I hoped he had the sense to keep running and not stop until he reached the ship. He had his compass. Kate had mine. We wouldn’t get lost.
“Don’t move suddenly,” I said, still walking backward. I felt Kate’s icy hand take mine. The cloud cat was still in sight, hunched on the ground, making an unearthly growling sound.
“Leave your camera behind.”
“But—”
“Leave it.” My eyes did not stray from the cat. “You’ll need to run.”
“Yes.”
“Walk slowly backward with me. We’re just going to disappear nice and easy into the forest.”
We took two steps, and I tripped. I landed heavily on my rump, and the spyglass leapt from my hand and disappeared in the dense undergrowth. When I looked back up, the cloud cat was gone. Then I saw a cloudy flash overhead in the trees, and she was leaping toward us, clawed wings flared, jaws parted, shrieking.
I grabbed Kate’s hand and we ran, hurtling through the trees. We didn’t have long. The cloud cat would outrun us in less than a minute and we’d have to face her, try to scare her off somehow. We were bigger and heavier, but she was stronger and faster. And her teeth…
I risked a look back and saw the creature crackling from tree to tree like flame through a parched forest.
I wanted to scream. Kate did. Up ahead I saw the trees thinning and what looked like an open field on the far side. I tugged at Kate’s hand, leading her toward it. That was our chance. The cat liked trees. She felt safe in them. If we could get free of the forest, we would be out of danger.
16
RESCUE
We burst from the trees and were in a field of tall grass. Before I could even check to see if the cloud cat was following, the sun was blotted out and I heard a droning sound behind us. I spun and saw the belly of an airship passing overhead, so low I could feel the powerful wash from its propellers and smell its engine fumes. The ship cast a great shadow over the field. In the trees at the forest’s edge, I caught a glimpse of the cloud cat cringing against a branch, watching the ship, watching us.
I whirled back to the airship. It took my mind a few seconds to catch up, for at first I thought it was the Aurora. But how could it be? This ship was much smaller, only a third its size. It came in for a landing in the field, nose to the wind. It must be a rescue: someone had been searching for us and now they’d found us! She slowed herself swiftly, and crew were hopping out from the hatches and taking the lines and holding her down. In the center of the field was a tall mooring mast, and there atop its peak were two men catching hold of the nose lines as the ship nudged up against the locking cone. Then I knew.
I pulled hard on Kate’s hand, trying to turn her back to the trees. I recognized the ship’s night-colored skin, the complete absence of any markings on her rudder or belly, and I knew what she was and who she carried.
“What’re you doing?” Kate demanded, trying to pull free. “We’ve been rescued. Hello! Hello!” she shouted out, waving.
“Shut up!” I hissed. “It’s the pirates!”
But it was too late. One of the landing crew had turned in our direction. We’d been sighted. Now it was Kate’s turn to tug at me, but I stood stock-still, grasping her hand tight.
“Matt? Come on! Run!”
“Keep waving,” I told her, and I lifted my hand and waved at the pirates. “Hello there!” I hollered. “Hello!”
“What are you doing?” Kate sobbed.
I kept waving. “If we run, it tells them we know they’re pirates. It means we might have friends to warn. They’ll chase us; they will search and find the ship and all will be lost. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said quietly.
“There’s nowhere to run anyway,” I said. “The cat is still in the trees.”
I saw her take a glance; I’m not sure if the cloud cat was still there at the forest’s edge. It didn’t matter.
We jogged toward the pirate ship, still waving.
“Here’s the story,” I told Kate, inventing as we ran. “We were bound for the Hawaiis in a small airship out of Van Diemen’s Land. We got caught in that terrible typhoon and were sunk. I’m the cabin boy. You’re a passenger. We are the only two who survived. All others were lost, including your mother. We washed up here on the island. Smile. We think we’ve just been rescued by nice friendly people.”
“But won’t they recognize us from the Aurora?”
“No.” I was gambling they wouldn’t have had the time or interest to notice what we looked like; they’d been intent on other things.
If we could lie, if we could make them believe we were castaways, perhaps we would have a chance. After our run through the forest, we looked bedraggled enough, our faces sweaty and streaked, our clothes rumpled and torn in places. It was good luck that I was not in my ship’s uniform to give us away, and that Kate had decided on a streamlined outfit rather than a sundress. A proper dress would have sunk her to the ocean floor in heavy seas and made our story a farce. In harem pants, though, it was possible she could have swum. Thank heavens we were not carrying the camera equipment and spyglass. Now I only prayed that Bruce would not come running out after us and give us all away.
My belt.
“Run ahead of me for a second,” I urged Kate. “Block their view.”
I pretended to stumble in the tall grass, and as I hit the ground, I ripped my belt out through the loops and left it. On its buckle was the Lunardi Line insignia.
I scrambled back up and continued running. We reached the landing field proper, where the grass had been scythed low. The pirates, I saw, had laid down a rail track in a great circle around the mooring mast, so that the airship, fixed at her nose, could pivot with the wind, her stern rolling along on its set of landing wheels. It had taken a great deal of work, and it had been done well. The field’s placement was ideal for keeping the ship hidden, ringed around by hills and forest on either side. It would make a difficult approach and landing, but the ship was small and maneuverable as a
“Thank goodness!” I called out when we were near the crew. “We worried we’d never be found! Are you from the Sky Guard?”
Their eyes were on us, and I prayed again we would not be recognized.
“Who the feck are they?” I heard one of the pirates mutter to his comrade.
It was quite something to be running toward a group of pirates, trying to look as overjoyed as a child unwrapping Christmas presents. They were a motley bunch. Many of them wore little more than cut-off trousers and undershirts, their muscled bodies greasy with sweat. Their faces were whiskery.
“Where’d you two come from, then?” one of them asked, striding forward.
This was the one Szpirglas had called Mr. Crumlin, and I assumed he was first mate, if air pirates went by such titles. He was a great grizzly of a fellow, his bare shoulders and arms sprouting more hair than seemed decent or practical in such heat.
We stopped before him. I was puffed as I began my story, and glad of it, for it made it harder to feel nervous about the lies I was spewing. As I talked, another conversation started its chatter in my head. What good could come of this? These were the wretches who had murdered our officer, who’d been happy to leave us to a watery grave after their ship slit us stem to stern. What chance had we of getting away alive from them? Maybe we should have taken our chances in the forest with the cloud cat; we should have run until our lungs burst. But I kept all these worries imprisoned in my skull and finished my tale of storms and shipwrecks and castaways.
“We’d better let the captain hear this,” said Crumlin.
But he had no need to summon him, for down the gangway came Vikram Szpirglas himself, looking dashing, I had to admit, striding toward us as though he had a mastery of all four elements. He was a handsome man; he should have been someone admirable and good, but all I could see in him now was the murderer who’d held a pistol to Mr. Featherstone’s head and pulled the trigger.