Sky Jumpers Book 2 (22 page)

“You’d get in a lot less trouble without me.”

I shrugged. “Probably.”

He looked at me for a long while. Finally, he let out a deep breath and said, “You know how I told you that you’re persistent?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t like it when you use it on me.”

I held my breath, trying to figure out what that meant.

“Let’s get you out of here,” he said. “We need to go back to White Rock.”

Luke got us back to Heaven’s Reach on a much faster route than the one I’d traveled.

At the top of the mountain path, in the clearing before Heaven’s Reach, he reminded me that the mayor didn’t want him there, and told me he was going to sleep with our horses.

When I stepped around the building and onto the grass, I saw the others working under the orange glow of the seforium lamps in the grassy area. Brock and Aaren rushed forward to meet me.

“Don’t do that again,” Brock said.

I crinkled my forehead. “What?”

“You left! All by yourself, and you were gone for hours! We didn’t know where you went, so we didn’t know where to start looking for you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t want you to be worried—”

“Not knowing was much worse, because then we had to worry about
everywhere
you could be,” Aaren said.

“Hope, if something had happened to you …” Brock let his sentence trail off, which made me think about all the terrible things that could’ve happened. And if I was wrong and Luke hadn’t been in Downwind, I’d still be locked up there, and they wouldn’t know where to find me.

I swallowed. “It would’ve been bad.”

“Did you find him?” Aaren asked.

“Yep. He’s with the horses. He’s going with us.”

“That’s good,” Brock said, “because …”—he drew out the word and motioned to the sail with a flourish—“we finished!”

The sail was on the grass, all of our bedding laid out like puzzle pieces across it, with rope tied to the frame but not yet tied to the corners of each blanket.

“And …,” Brock said, motioning toward a cart filled to the top of its two-foot sides with the orange mineral. “Ta-da!” A wooden shaft rose from the center a few inches above the seforium, to slide the sail frame into.

“We have the seforium,” I said. We all took a moment and stood around the cart, feeling light enough to fly. After
the past few days—or really, the past thirteen days—I couldn’t believe we actually, finally had it.

“And food, too,” Brock said as he gestured to two bundles nestled among the mineral.

“We leave first thing in the morning,” Aaren said.

I could hardly wait.

The sky was barely beginning to lighten, and I was wide awake. We were heading home today!

After we ate breakfast, we tied our bedding to the straps on the sail’s frame. The sun hadn’t yet risen when Brock left with the cart down a small canyon near the mines that had a road wide enough for the cart to go to the base of the mountain. Aaren, Alondra, and I carried the sail down the path we always used.

By the time we made it through all the switchbacks in the path and got to the bottom, we heard a rumbling from the other direction, and turned to see Brock and a man from Heaven’s Reach riding the cart down the incline. They sat on a bench the lumber workers had added to the
front, and each had their feet on one side of the axle. It came to a stop not far from us.

Luke came out to meet us, holding the reins to both Ruben and Buck.

I gasped. “We can only take two horses! What are we going to do with the other two?” There had been so many problems to worry about, I hadn’t even thought of this one.

“We’re taking Luke’s horse and Arabelle with us,” Aaren said. “The people here are going to take care of Ruben and Buck.”

“We’ll treat them well,” Alondra said.

It hit me then that I might not ever see her again. “Thank you,” I said. “For everything.”

She curtsied. “I think you make an excellent Sky Surfer.”

I grinned. “You too.”

She glanced from Luke to me. “I’m surprised your uncle came back.”

I shrugged. “I think he’s more loyal than he thought he was.”

She bounced on her toes. “I hope he finds his lost city of metal someday. I hope you all do.” It looked like she wanted to leave with us in search of it right now.

“We’re about to sit on a cart full of rocks and hang out in the wind,” Brock said. “Wanna come?”

Alondra laughed. “As much as I want to, I think I’d better stay here.” She reached for Ruben’s reins, and the man who rode the cart down took Buck’s. “I’ll miss you all,” Alondra said; then they both headed back toward the path.

Before long, the cart was out in the open, with the two horses hitched to it, the sail lying on top of the seforium like a giant cover.

It took an hour and a half of walking to reach the rickety bridge that crossed over White Rock River and into Desolation Alley. Once we got to the other side, I was more than ready to turn toward home. As we lifted the sail, the sun rose in the distance and made the seforium shine the most beautiful orange I’d ever seen.

“Here we go,” Luke said as he placed the sail mast in the hole in the middle of the cart. Then he led us out into the wind.

Aaren and I rode on the cart first, and practiced a bit to figure out how to steer. As soon as we got the hang of it, I realized that we were only going at the speed of walking.

“Luke?” I called out. “Is this as fast as we’ll go?”

He chuckled. “No. The wind isn’t as strong the closer to the river you get. I figured you’d want a chance to get used to it before we threw you into Desolation Alley. Are you ready?”

I’d been ready since I first heard their idea of using a cart and sail.

“Go about fifty feet that direction, and you’ll be in the thick of it. We’ll keep the horses near the river and out of the wind—try to go the same speed as us.”

We veered to the left. The wind caught the sail and jerked us ahead, then made us fly forward. The trees on my right whipped by faster than I’ve ever seen them pass me. It took every bit of our focus to steer over all the bumps and rocks in the dirt. We were probably going twice as fast as the fastest I’ve ever raced a horse before.

The horses!

I had been paying so much attention to the path, I’d forgotten that we were supposed to go their speed. I twisted in the seat. The horses were so far behind us, they looked like little bugs. I tugged on Aaren’s sleeve and yelled, “Slow down!” I pointed to the right, so he’d get what I meant even if he couldn’t hear me over the wind. He did, and we adjusted the wheels, slowing as we got farther and farther from the center of Desolation Alley. Eventually, we reached the side of the river, where the wind barely moved us, and then waited for Luke and Brock.

It was too bad we couldn’t go as fast as the wind would take us. We’d make it home to White Rock in no time! But we’d need the horses for the last 125 miles, and if they
were days behind us, it really wouldn’t matter that we got there more quickly.

When Brock and Luke caught up, I jumped off the seat to give Brock a turn. “You’re going to love this,” I said.

Brock and Aaren stayed closer to the speed of the horses than Aaren and I had. We took turns trading off about every hour. Sometimes I was with Brock, sometimes with Aaren, and sometimes with Luke.

I couldn’t believe that Luke and his dad had come this entire distance, but traveling the other direction, the wind in their faces the whole time. It never stopped blowing!

At the end of the day, we set up camp in the middle of some poor wind-beaten trees as close to the river and away from the worst of the wind as we could get. We detached the sail, set it down on the ground, untied our bedding from the frame, and laid our bedrolls on top of the frame so it wouldn’t blow away. Then we sat on the bedrolls while we ate so they wouldn’t be lost to the wind, either. Before crawling into bed, the three of us told Luke about Anna’s theories and what we figured out. When I explained that ruthenium could hold a permanent magnetic charge, his eyes went from surprised to excited to eager.

“You’re going to find the ruthenium, aren’t you?”

He gave me that mischievous smile that made him
look like a kid who was planning something fun. I hoped he would find it.

“How far do you think we traveled today?” Aaren asked.

Luke looked back at the road. “Let’s just say ‘far.’ ”

By the fourth day of our trip back, I was sore from sitting on the hard bench of the bumpy cart or on the hard saddle of the bumpy horse, but the fun of flying across the ground in the cart never got old. I wondered if this was what riding in a car felt like before the bombs.

When we stopped for lunch, we saw Glacier in the distance across the river. That meant we were nearly 125 miles from home! We hadn’t seen another person on our side of the river the whole time.

My skin was so dry from the constant wind, it was cracking. I tried to get my fingers through my hair to pull it into a ponytail, and Aaren laughed at me. “When we get back, it’s going to take weeks to brush through that mess.”

Aaren had needed a haircut before we left, and it had gotten even longer since we’d been gone. “We’re going have to shave you bald!” I said.

“While mine,” Brock said as he tried to flip his hair out of his eyes, except it was so tangled, it moved as one solid mass, “has stayed perfect.”

* * *

In the middle of day five, the cart was going slower than the horses no matter where we aimed it.

Luke rode over. “We’ve reached the end of Desolation Alley.”

I looked behind me at the land we’d crossed, where it fell off into the sky so far away. My lips, skin, and hair were glad to see Desolation Alley gone. The part of me that loves to sky jump was heartbroken. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to travel that far again, or spend nearly five days sailing across the land in a cart.

I thought back to the thrill of figuring out what Anna had been trying to solve all along. Something about exploring and discovering things felt more like me than inventing ever had. But even though I was going to miss this, I didn’t want to be the same as Luke and always be out here. In front of me, White Rock was finally visible. It was teeny on the horizon, but it called me home. Not everything about me came from my birth family—I got a lot of things from my parents and even from my town. That part of me wanted to be back. To see my family.

To be home.

Early the next afternoon, with the horses pulling the cart, we circled around the back side of our crater enough to see Browning. It wasn’t home, but it was a familiar sight, and it meant the tunnel to White Rock was only ten miles farther.

Then I heard a sound, like a far-off roar. I whipped my head to it—back toward Browning. The main gates were open, and people were streaming out. All of them were shouting. It took a minute before I realized that the shouts we were hearing were actually cheers.

“Why are the people of Browning out here?” I asked.

“I don’t think those are the people of Browning,” Brock said.

I squinted when the ones on horses got close enough that we could start to see faces. The riders were from White Rock! But the only faces I really saw were the two on the front horse—my parents. My dad rode right up to us, grabbed his injured leg, and slid down, then held out a hand to help my mom.

“You’re safe! You’re back!” my mom repeated as she checked to make sure all my body parts were still attached.

More and more people reached us, all talking at the same time.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“The rest of the group made it back late last night,” my dad said. “Without you.” His voice cracked on the last two words. I looked from him to my mom and noticed their red swollen eyes.

My mom motioned to two trailers outside of Browning’s gate. “A rescue party was just leaving to go save you.”

My dad glanced at the cart of seforium. “I should’ve known that it’d be you saving us.”

“Did we get here in time?” Brock asked Mr. Hudson.

Mr. Hudson smiled. “You did.”

We did it. We actually did it.

I turned to my parents. “Why were you in Browning?”