Thunderstruck by Shannon Delany
Rowen coughed. “What was that about?”
Tommy shrugged. “Salanna is a fine spy. A beautiful young woman, still she disguises herself and masters her voice to seem a man.”
“She seems quite an attractive woman—why play at being a man?”
“Men are able to get into places a woman may not,” he said. “Salanna ventures into places we have no man to go and gathers information. We have tried sending men but they are too often discovered. She did what they could not. Do not ask me how—some things I do not know or understand.” He groaned. “We should obtain her support before we transport you to Philadelphia. She will want assurance you are trustworthy.”
“How do you suggest we do that?” Rowen asked. “She seems distinctly unimpressed with both of us.”
“Talk with Salanna. Show her you are good men. Filled with abolitionist ideals. That might be enough to let her see why we should transport you.”
“Actually, I don’t think your balloons will be fast enough to get us to Philadelphia,” Jack said. “They depend on the winds and tend to be slower … We need the pod to take us in. It cuts through the air like a hot knife through butter—it outruns most other airships.”
“Then take it,” Tommy said. “The wings will be mended by morning.”
“It’s not quite so easy,” Jack said. “We need to be at a very high altitude to catch the wind and hold it long enough to complete the last leg of our journey.”
“But you are in the foothills now. The altitude is higher than Philadelphia, true, but only by a small amount.”
Jack shook his head. “Shite. There has to be some other way.”
“The Artemesia can’t dock without us there in advance,” Rowen murmured. “We set the plan into motion.”
“A plan?” Tommy asked. “This is more intriguing than meeting with the Council to express abolitionist views.”
Jack shook his head. “The council needs a more serious shakeup.”
“That I do not disagree with,” Tommy said.
“We are setting a plan into motion to provide that. But it must happen in a certain order.”
“Is this a coup?”
“Would you support it if it was?”
Tommy’s lips grew thin. Rowen shifted from foot to foot.
Jack pressed the point. “Will you support us?”
“Not only would I support it, but I’d wager Salanna would, too. But if balloons are not fast enough … our wagons won’t be either.”
Jack nodded grimly. “Correct. We need to get the glider to a good altitude.”
Tommy rubbed his chin, looking back at the huge balloon skins lying limp against the grass. “The pod is not very heavy,” he said, more to himself than them. “We have a significant length of heavy rope …”
Rowen’s eyes narrowed.
“And a few men who know how to tie strong knots that release when given just the right pull.” He looked at them both again and grinned. “Come now. We’d best set this plan into motion quickly so we are ready to greet adventure in the morning!”
***
Aboard the Artemesia
Out of prayers and long out of stormlanterns, Jordan found her way back to her room and locked the door. Caleb had provided her with a new nightgown, which lay draped across the foot of her bed. She slipped into the heavy linen shift, appreciating its weight and coverage. Longer than her dress and more modest, she considered wearing it as well tomorrow to better cover the bits the captain had been so determined to expose.
She woke after a few hours, panting, her heart thrumming. The misty remnants of a dream lingered, filling her room. She opened her hand and the stormlights blared to life, so bright they nearly peeled paint from the walls as she tried to clear her memory of the stain hovering so near.
The stain of the captain.
She shuddered and pulled her knees to her chin, wrapping her arms tight around them. Squeezing her eyes shut, she reached a hand out to the bank of windows lining her room’s wall and pulled her fingers in. Lightning split the sky and thunder boomed, rattling glass. With a muffled sob, Jordan sank back under her quilt and covered her head with her pillow.
Tomorrow would be a new day, she promised herself. And with the new day she would no longer be anyone’s victim—especially not the victim of a dead man.
Day could not come soon enough.
***
Aboard the Pod
The pod’s wings repaired, the skins were slipped onto the skeletal fixtures and secured under the glow of torchlight. Tommy led Rowen and Jack to a large wagon sporting tall wheels, colorfully painted walls, and a curving roofline. He held a punched tin lantern up, candlelight giving a soft and wavering glow. “This is where you will sleep tonight,” he explained, leaping up three attached stairs and tugging open the door. He hopped down, handed them the lantern, and ushered them inside with a flourish.
“I leave you now,” Tommy said, dipping his head and doffing his cap.
“Thank you,” Rowen said.
Inside space was tight, only an aisle flanked by two narrow beds ending at a wall lined with shelves dotted with oddities. There sat stumps of candles that had melted together in rivulets of colored wax; a variety of different sizes of marble mortars and pestles glimmered, and there were dried flowers, and glass jars filled with herbs, spices, and liquids Rowen couldn’t determine the origins of. Some jars looked like fish, and some bristled with little glass thorns or tiny bumps that reminded him of toad’s warts.
“Those are the dangerous sorts,” Jack muttered, motioning to the bumpy bottles. “I’d wager we’re in an apothecary’s cart. They bottle the dangerous things in glass with remarkable textures so, even in the dark, they grab the correct drug—or don’t grab the wrong one.”
Rowen nodded, taking a seat on a bed. He pulled his boots off and swung his feet up. “Tomorrow we make the rest of the journey to Philadelphia,” he said, folding his arms and putting them behind his head.
“Then things get exciting,” Jack promised, kicking his own boots off.
“Yes,” Rowen agreed, opening the tin lantern’s door and blowing out the candle.
***
Aboard the Artemesia
Meggie woke in the middle of the night, wet with tears and the water of untamed Witchery. Maude had rolled out of their shared cot to comfort Meggie first, even as Bran was rousing. Maude was always quick with fresh bedding and gentle words—always the first to soothe the wounds of—Bran yawned and rubbed at his eyes—any wounded.
He still didn’t understand how he’d won Maude. He sat up and swung his legs over the bed’s edge.
He smiled, hearing Maude softly sing, “Rise Gentle Moon.” Nearby Marion shifted in his bed, the ropes supporting his mattress groaning under the young man’s weight. And length, Bran thought, noticing the way Marion’s feet hung off the bed’s end.
What might Marion have been if he’d remained unMade? Would he have cared about abolition or revolution if slavery had never touched him directly? Would any of them have cared, or did it take the lurid touch of a thing to make a person care enough to change it? Combat it?
Conquer it?
What was any man’s tipping point?
Were not more physicians and nurses people who once suffered the cruel touch of death or disease? Were not the hardest workers and most clever entrepreneurs the ones who grew up in poverty’s grasp? And the finest artists and authors—were they not the ones who had only imagination to entertain them as they developed?
Or perhaps they were merely the most frequently drunk …
But the strongest proponents of steam power—why did they support what they did? Had all of them known a Weather Witch?
Why was the Wandering Wallace so passionate about this movement? There must be a story behind such dedication.
Bran sank back into the mattress, hearing the muffled noise of Maude saying a fresh “Good night and sleep tight, my dear little mite.”
Maude crawled back onto the cot, h
He rolled toward her in the dark, his heart thumping solidly inside his ribcage. “How so?” he whispered, lips brushing her forehead. “What has she dreamed?”
“She dreams of water mostly, but sometimes someone chases her.”
“A typical dream,” Bran murmured, relief sighing out of him as he sank deeper into the thin mattress, ready to give himself over to sleep once more.
Maude buried her face in the crook of his neck. “Tonight she ran from someone trying to tell her a scary story.”
Bran stiffened. “Oh?”
“The girl’s name is Sybil.”
“A common name,” he said.
Halfheartedly.
“You know the Sybil chasing her,” Maude insisted. “We need to get to ground, Bran. We need to do what is proper by that dead child. She lost her life too soon, far too soon. We must appease her spirit.”
He groaned softly. “I know all that and accept the blame. But we aren’t on the ground and I cannot get us there faster. I cannot appease Sybil yet. I promise I will, just not yet.”
Maude shifted beside him, her breath hot on his cheek. “But we need Sybil out of Meggie’s head before …” The sentence fell away, leaving the unspoken truth hanging in the night air to haunt them both.
Before she saw what her father had done …
… to the Witches …
… and to a little girl …
… just like her.
Chapter Eleven
This world is not so bad a world
As some would like to make it;
Though whether good, or whether bad,
Depends on how we take it.
—Michael Wentworth Beck
The Wilds of Pennsylvania
The Tempest’s pod was packed tight in the camp’s largest wagon, its wings repaired and made ready for flight. A secondary set of belts and buckles had been installed for Rowen because, as Tommy Toogood pointed out, “This is a far-from-standard launch.”
Because, beyond the belts, buckles, and fixed wings, there were balloons.
And specially devised rigging.
“When you promised things would get exciting, I didn’t expect this,” Rowen said, eyeing the heavy ropes and metal fixtures that ringed the pod like tentacles.
“It will be much different than any launch I’ve done before,” Jack admitted. “But what’s the worst that could happen?”
“We could die.”
Jack coughed. “True … But the odds … You are a hero in the making. Heroes never die until their story’s reached its end.”
“What if mine has and we don’t know it yet?”
Jack scoffed, “We’ve got a few chapters in us yet!”
“As long as they aren’t all dénouement.”
“True, true. Falling action is not what I’d wish right now …”
The wagons arrived at the foothills where the large silk balloons lay spread flat in the blossoming dawn. The balloons had been rearranged, the baskets forming a large circle. The wagon holding the pod pulled into the circle and a group of men surrounded it, hefting the pod and setting it down in the center of the balloons.
The wagon pulled away and the men stretched the ropes, tying each to a metal link on a different basket.
A half-dozen ropes were knotted to a half-dozen balloons, every action overseen by Tommy and the woman, again dressed as a man, Salanna.
“It is time,” she announced. “Light the balloons.”
The men started small fires nestled in fancy metal cradles chained to the base of each balloon. They worked bellows by each, rhythmically pumping to fill each balloon while other men kept hold of more ropes—two per basket—acting as living anchors.
“Careful now,” Salanna warned over the rhythmic blasts of the bellows. “They must fill at the same rate so we rise together.”
The carefully stitched balloons rose into the air, flaming cradles and bellows hanging beneath them in a spiderweb of rigging, and more men clung to the ropes, the baskets beginning to rise off the ground, skimming the grass. Men hooked a foot into a well-placed hole in each basket and swung their legs over, finding their proper place so the bellows and fires might be well-tended.
Salanna looked at Jack and Rowen. “Time to buckle up, boys,” she said.
Together they entered the pod, Jack again taking the seat as Rowen stepped to the back wall. The made quick work of their assorted belts and buckles, strapping themselves in.
“You ready?” Jack asked.
“Hell no,” Rowen answered. “If by ready do you mean will I vomit or scream? Scream? Undoubtedly. But we will remain vomit-free.”
“That is good news. Perhaps miraculous.”
The balloons slowly rose, their baskets tottering on the ground like children balancing on tiptoes. The baskets rose higher, the ropes connecting them to the pod slowly straightening, and the baskets drifting out of the pod’s view. Men counted in unison and anchor ropes flopped to the ground, loose, with a slap. Rowen braced himself, saying, “Not miraculous. I ate nothing this morning.”
“That explains your piss-poor attitude. A sacrifice made in the name of revolution,” Jack said with a snort.
The ropes went taut and Rowen couldn’t be certain if the groan and growl he heard were the straining ropes, the places they joined the pod, or his stomach determined to make him a liar.
“Hold on!”
Inside the pod their world shifted, the entire ship rocking forward onto its nose. Jack and Rowen hung facedown, staring at the grass and held in place only by their snug belts and heavy buckles. The pod scraped a few feet along the foot of the hill, sounding like it found every rock to rub against, and then it swayed free of the ground.
Rowen swallowed the lump rising in his throat as his stomach matched the movements of the heaven-bound pod.
The world grew smaller below them, drifting away as they left wagons and carts and the remnants of smoldering campfires behind—or below, Rowen thought.
The hills and the trees became tiny toys—models made to surround an ornate dollhouse. They climbed into a clear sky, outstripping the rising sun, which spread like a painter had overturned his colors across mountains and valleys alike.
And still they rose higher and the world below grew smaller.
“Not long now,” Jack said, his voice deeper from the weight of his body pressing his ribs into the leather belts. “Brace yourself.”
“I have been …”
They hung silently then, the world below sliding to the side but the sizes of things remaining the same.
“Any minute,” Jack whispered throatily.
Shouts came from above. The din of voices cleared and a rhythmic count began at their backs.
“They’ll cut the ropes any moment …” Jack stretched his arms out, his hands above the pod’s controls, fingers poised and twitching.
Rowen wondered if it was wiser to keep his eyes open or squeeze them shut.
But it was too late.
They were already falling.
And Rowen was screaming as the world rushed toward them.
Jack growled out his determination, slamming the lever down and popping the wings wide open. Rowen’s back slammed into the wall as the pod was hurled upward again. Their altitude leveled out, and Jack adjusted their path, pointing their nose toward Philadelphia with the knowledge new allies followed them below, transported by colorful wagons.
***
Aboard the Artemesia
It was while the Wandering Wallace stayed belowdecks—the time he spent in his cabin seemed longer and longer each day—that Jordan took her chance. She had stared at the charts and maps so long she nearly had them memorized. So it only took a brief sweeping aside of a small section of clouds to sight the sun and adjust their course.
To nudge them just a bit away from Philadelphia.
She
She needed distance between herself and the idea of revolution. Between herself and the idea of Rowen. To consider setting Meggie and her family down for safety’s sake. She reached into her sleeve and felt the brass heart he’d given her, nested and hidden in its folds.
She needed time to make sure the Wandering Wallace would be true to his word.
She was struggling with trust—with most men. She shouldn’t be surprised, shouldn’t blame herself, but frustration stung her nose and threatened to make her eyes stream nonetheless.
Revolution and freeing the Witches meant more than simple freedom. It meant an overthrow of all rank and order. It was potentially a disaster. A bloody disaster if the gleeful way the Wandering Wallace secured the Artemesia was any mark of his true methodology.
Her jaw clenched and she remembered the screams of people being thrown off of balconies.
The sun fell on her face, warm and reassuring.
Her stomach shimmied in her gut at the thought of leaving Rowen, but knowing she must take her chance while she had it and keep the Wandering Wallace from leaving her kind to their own devices, she sealed the clouds and held the slightly adjusted course steady.
***
Aboard the Artemesia
Meggie stood before the longer of the Topside dining tables, smoothing out a bedsheet slung across it and spilling to the floor to create a makeshift stage for a puppet show. The Wandering Wallace, now wearing the wildly ribboned and thickly maned mask of a lion’s head, had donated the frame from his knife-throwing background to their cause, and it now hung with another plain sheet. Behind the sheet and the draped table an array of strong white stormcells glowed, casting a powerful light against the fabric.
Meggie turned, noted everyone’s attention was focused on her, and puffing out her chest, began. “Once, long, long ago in the far, Far East—”
“So far east it is west to some,” Maude’s voice rang out from behind the cloth, the words followed by her easy laugh.