The Lightning Key (7 page)

M
iles Wednesday, sky-sailing and sleep-sentenced, sat on the bench in his cabin and tried to fit the broad sweep of Little's world into his head. He had always taken the simple view that the Song Angel had come from the sky somewhere, a place that was just not easy for earthbound people like himself to reach. Little's description, however, was a bit more complicated, and he suspected that she was putting it simply for him at that.

“How . . .,” he began, chasing his question around his own mind to try to get a grip on it. “How can you visit the Realm? Aren't you banished for using your real name?”

“I was never banished exactly,” said Little. “I became tied to the body I had adopted on Earth.”

“But without the wings,” said Miles.

“The wings are part of what people expect angels to have,” said Little. “Once I chose to bind myself to Earth, I became an ordinary girl, and the wings no longer . . . fit.”

“Then how can you bring me to the Realm?” asked Miles. He was beginning to feel a little nervous at the prospect of arguing for his life in front of the mysterious Council. What would they look like? What exactly would he say? Perhaps running and hiding was the better option, though he knew he could not do that forever. He reached into his pocket and gently squeezed Tangerine, but the squeeze was not returned as he had half expected, and he was left with a hollow feeling.

“I can still visit when I'm sleeping,” said Little.

“Do you go back often?” asked Miles. It had never occurred to him that she might have any way of returning to the life she had left behind, and he was surprised to feel a twinge of jealousy.

Little shook her head. “Hardly ever,” she said, “but I can if I need to. I can meet you there, but first you'll have to find your own way into the Realm.”

“How do I do that?”

Little scratched her head. “It's hard to explain,” she said. “Once you're asleep you've got to look for the light, and . . . get
between
it.”

Miles looked at her blankly.

“Look,” said Little, “all you need to do . . .” She sighed and stopped speaking for a moment, tracing spirals on the palm of her hand. Suddenly she smiled and looked up. “Actually, it's not that complicated,” she said. “There's a lever that will open your way into the Realm.”

“A lever?” said Miles doubtfully.

Little nodded. “A big brass lever,” she said. “You just need to look for the lever and pull it, and in you go.”

“Why didn't you say that already?” asked Miles.

Little shrugged. “I forgot,” she said.

“Where is the lever? Where do I find it?” asked Miles. It seemed a highly unlikely idea to him, and not at all like the solutions Little usually came up with.

“I can't do everything for you, Miles,” she said with a grin. “You'll just have to look for it yourself.”

There was a tapping at the door, and Baltinglass came in. “Are you the traveling companions of Baltinglass of Araby, by any chance?” he said.

“It's us,” said Miles.

“That's a relief,” said Baltinglass. “I forgot to count the doors on the way out, and this is the third cabin I've tried. The first one had three ladies in it. They must have been in their nighties, because they were mighty relieved to discover I was blind. The one next door is an odd one. Nobody answered me, but I'd swear there was someone in there. I could smell a cigar burning. And pickled socks of some kind.”

He felt his way to the bottom bunk and sat down with a creak. “I'll sleep here belowdecks,” he said. “These old bones are not as tough as they used to be, and if I fell out of the top bunk I'd shatter like a chandelier. Good night, Master Miles. Night, Little.” He threw his head down on the pillow, and within minutes his quiet snoring was added to the sigh of the wind in the rigging.

Miles climbed into the middle bunk and lay down on the hard mattress. He was eager for sleep to come, but he had never felt so completely awake. The more excited he became about the prospect of visiting another world in his dreams, the more his eyes felt like they were glued open. He forced them to close, and listened to the
wup, wup, wup
of the great propellers, driving onward through the darkening night. He pictured the
Albatross
, sailing far below them with Doctor Tau-Tau on board, the
Tiger's Egg in his pocket, and the Great Cortado scheming and sniggering in a lamplit cabin.

Miles opened his eyes and saw to his surprise that the bunk above him was receding into the far distance, and the space in which he slept was rapidly growing to the size of a cathedral. There seemed to be small animals with beady eyes huddling at the end of the bed, just beyond the reach of his toes. They were whispering together, all sharp ears and pointed noses, and casting furtive glances in his direction. He opened his mouth to say, “Shoo,” but his voice would not work. He looked around for a bat or a broom handle with which to chase them away. There was something sticking up at the side of the bed. It was a brass lever of some kind, like Morrigan's long handbrake. He was sure it hadn't been there when he went to bed. He grasped the lever tightly and pulled, and without warning the mattress opened beneath him like a trapdoor and dumped him out into the night sky.

He fell through the cold air toward a domed cumulus cloud, his fluttering bedsheets wrapped around him and the beat of the airship's engines fading rapidly into the night. He landed in the cloud before he had time to think. It was like falling into an invisible web of very stretchy elastic,
if you can imagine such a thing. His fall had been broken, but he sank rapidly until only his head was free of the clammy whiteness. With a great effort he paddled and pulled himself upward until he was more or less sitting on top of the cloud, and looked around him. The
Sunfish
had receded to the size of a baked bean. Above him the sky was strewn with stars, and all around him a fleet of towering clouds sailed purposefully, much larger now than they had looked from the porthole of the airship. He looked down and found he had sunk back into the cloud up to his chest. He was still entangled in his bedsheets, and struggling back to the surface was difficult and surprisingly tiring. He was not sure he could keep this up for long. He reached in his pocket for Tangerine before realizing that he had left his overcoat in the cabin of the
Sunfish
. The cloud began to suck him in again. He had never felt so alone.

Something hit him on the shoulder, and disappeared before he could see what it was. He turned around quickly, but there was nobody there. Another small object bounced off his chest, and this time he caught it in his hand. It was a pinecone. It did not seem strange to him that pinecones should be flying about in the night sky. He was sure someone had thrown them at him once before. Who had it been?
Not Lady Partridge. Not Baltinglass, or Tau-Tau, or the Bolsillo brothers. “Little!” he said aloud.

And there she was, sitting beside him, a look of exasperation on her face. “Finally!” she said. “You were supposed to look for me as soon as you got here.”

“I forgot,” said Miles. He had sunk almost up to his neck again.

“What are you
doing
down there?” said Little, who was sitting on top of the cloud without difficulty.

“I keep sinking,” said Miles. “I'm surprised a cloud can hold me up at all. They're just made of . . .”

“They're made of cloud,” said Little sharply.

“ . . . water vapor,” finished Miles.

Little opened her mouth to speak, but then she seemed to shoot upward and disappear all at once, and Miles was falling through clammy grayness. He felt dampness rushing up at him, then he was in clear air again and the cloud was above him and shrinking fast. Below him the inky ocean stretched to the horizon, tiny wrinkles marching across it. The wrinkles were getting bigger. He was falling fast, and now that he had left the cloud an icy wind shrieked in his ears. He listened for the
whump
of Silverpoint's wings coming to save him, but he knew that the Storm Angel was otherwise occupied.

“Silverpoint's not here,” said Little's voice beside him. She was falling too, her silver-blond hair streaming upward. “And I can't lift you. You need wings, Miles.”

“I can't just grow wings!” shouted Miles.

“You can't just sit on clouds either, but you managed that at first.
Think
yourself some wings, Miles, or you will die.”

A shot of fear ran through Miles. He had never heard Little speak like this before. He closed his eyes, fighting to control his panic, and tried to imagine wings sprouting from his shoulders. If you have ever found yourself plummeting through icy skies and trying to grow a pair of wings at the same time you will understand how impossible a task that was, even in a dream. He opened his eyes again. The water rushed up toward him, and when he thought of the shock of the cold and the prospect of drowning he stretched his two arms out in desperation. The bedsheets flapped crisply behind him, and his headlong dive turned into a sort of deep swoop. He was falling still, but not as quickly, and instinctively he angled his outstretched hands upward. He pulled into a horizontal glide in the nick of time, close enough to feel the spray that blew off the crests of the waves. A panicky laughter rattled around his chest.

“That's better!” said Little, flying beside him. “Now you need to rise again.”

Miles flapped his arms, but it only made him lose height. “They're not really wings,” he said nervously. “I'm just gliding.”

“Just make yourself lighter for now,” said Little. “We'll work on the wings later.”

An updraft lifted Miles as she spoke, making him feel suddenly buoyant. Why hadn't he thought of that before? He allowed the weight to drain from his body, just as it had done when he had inadvertently healed Dulac Zipplethorpe after the boy was kicked by a horse, or when he had cured the pain in Baltinglass of Araby's leg. At the time he had been afraid he would be carried off by the breeze, but now that was exactly what he wanted. A gust of wind caught beneath his makeshift wings and he soared upward. Little kept pace, and suddenly Miles noticed her wings. They looked exactly the same as they used to, pearly white and fine-feathered, and breathtakingly beautiful. She was laughing now, and her voice seemed to twist the shrieking of the wind into a wild, headlong music. He could feel the thrill of flight race through his body like an electrical charge, and he laughed too. “Up!” called Little. “Higher, Miles!”

“Where are we going?” called Miles. His billowing bedsheets seemed clumsy by comparison with Little's exquisite wings, and his arms had begun to ache all of a sudden. He felt the weight pour back into his body, and he began to lose altitude fast. A look of alarm came over Little's face, and he thought he glimpsed more figures beyond her, indistinct shadows that were growing closer as they flew alongside. She was no longer laughing.

“Close your eyes!” she said urgently.

“Why?” asked Miles, closing them anyway.

“You're not falling anymore, are you?” came Little's voice.

She was right. The wind seemed to solidify into something soft beneath him, and the plummeting sensation faded away. “Does this mean I'm flying?” said Miles excitedly.

“No,” said Little. “It means you're in bed.”

Miles opened his eyes. The rhythm of his bedsheet wings had turned into the
wup, wup, wup
of great propellers, and he found himself lying in his bunk aboard the
Sunfish
, entangled in his bedclothes.

Little's head hung over the edge of the bunk above, her skin glowing as faintly as a distant star, her wings no longer anywhere to be seen. “You
okay?” she whispered.

“Why did we leave?” asked Miles, struggling to disentangle himself from the sheets. “I thought we were going to see the Council.”

Little smiled. “You're not ready for that.”

“I learned to fly, sort of,” said Miles, who was feeling secretly proud of himself. “Is that not good?”

“You learned to stop falling,” said Little. “You'll need a lot more than that to survive in the Realm. We haven't even taken the training wings off yet, Miles.”

B
altinglass of Araby, hot-coffeed, fried-egged and streaky-baconed, sat among the ruins of his breakfast in the stateroom of the
Sunfish
, regaling the other passengers with tales of daring between the puffs of smoke that belched from his pipe. “There I was,” he said, “face to face with a black mamba, hiding in a hollow log while the privateers sharpened their cutlasses and argued over whether it would be more fun to flay me or roast me.”

The blind explorer had a rapt audience, but Miles was sure he had heard this story before. He seemed to know what Baltinglass was about to say a moment before he said it, which was strange, as the
old man's stories contained a liberal dose of fiction and were seldom told the same way twice. Miles had an uneasy feeling that there was something he had forgotten to do, and it made him restless. He suddenly remembered his mother's diary, and the fact that he hadn't had a chance to read any more of it since leaving Partridge Manor.

“I think I'll go back to the cabin,” he said.

“I'll come with you,” said Little.

They took their leave of Baltinglass, who was just then being smoked out of the log by pugnacious pirates, and made their way along the narrow corridor that ran the length of the hull. The curve of the ship made the corridor wider at the top than at the bottom. Stout ribs of oak stood at intervals along the outer hull, alternating with brass portholes that framed circular cloudscapes of spectacular beauty.

As they approached the door of their cabin Miles's anxious feeling became sharper, and he was not entirely surprised to see the door standing ajar and the wood splintered around the lock. He put his hand out to stop Little, and her blue eyes widened as she saw the broken door. Miles crept forward. With Tau-Tau and the Great Cortado far below them on the
Albatross
he had thought they were relatively safe, at least for the moment. It seemed he was
wrong. He pushed the door open slowly.

Whoever had been in their cabin was gone, but the duffel bag had been upended on the lower bunk, and the floor was strewn with clothes. “Who could have done this?” said Little. “Our clothes are all over the place.”

“That was us,” Miles reminded her, “but someone's been through the duffel bag too. We'd better check whether anything is missing.” He reached instinctively for Tangerine, but the bear lay quietly in his trouser pocket, just where he had put him when he got dressed that morning.

Little began to gather up the scattered contents of the duffel bag, and Miles suddenly knew exactly what had been taken. He picked up the overcoat that slouched in a corner and put his hand in the inside pocket. Celeste's diary was gone.

A chill crept through him. “It must be Cortado, or Doctor Tau-Tau.”

“But they're on the
Albatross
,” said Little.

“My mother's diary is gone,” said Miles. “Who else would even know about that? They must have an accomplice on the
Sunfish
—a passenger, or even one of the crew.” He thought for a moment. “Either way the diary must still be on board.”

“But it could be anywhere,” said Little, packing
Baltinglass's eclectic travel kit back into the duffel bag. “How will we find it?”

“First I'm going to find the captain and tell him there's a burglar on his ship. You can go to the stateroom and get Baltinglass. The sight of him waving his swordstick around might be enough in itself to make the thief reconsider.”

Miles had no idea where the captain might be found, so he made his way toward the stern of the
Sunfish
, where he knew the crew had their cabins. Turning a corner he almost bumped into First Officer Barrett.

“Mr. Wednesday!” Barrett beamed. “You have the look of a man on a mission. Can I be of assistance?”

“I'm looking for the captain,” said Miles.

“A ship's captain is a busy man,” said Barrett. Standing still did not come naturally to the first officer, and after almost five seconds in the same spot he was beginning to hop from foot to foot.

“It's very important,” said Miles.

“In that case,” said Barrett, his feet easily getting the better of his caution, “I'll conduct you without delay to the poop deck. Which,” he added with a high-pitched laugh, “is not nearly as rude as it sounds. Follow me.”

He turned and sped along the corridor, with Miles trotting behind to keep up.

“Poop, from the Latin
puppis
,” called Barrett over his shoulder, “meaning a raised deck in the stern of a ship. The real pooping is done in the heads, which are in the front, otherwise known as the bow. Am I going too fast for you?”

Miles was not sure if Barrett was referring to the speed of his explanation or his progress toward the stern. “I can keep up,” he said.

“No further need,” said First Officer Barrett. “We've arrived.”

He ran up the wooden ladder that led to the poop deck and opened a hatch at the top. Daylight streamed in, bringing a blast of cold air with it. Barrett disappeared through the hatch, and Miles heard himself announced. “A young man to see you, Captain. He says he has urgent business.” Miles took a deep breath, and without waiting for an invitation he followed the first officer up the ladder.

The poop deck was as spectacular a vantage point as you are ever likely to see. It was open to the wind, as bright and cold as an iceberg. Above it the huge belly of the helium balloon hung like a gray ceiling, and on all sides a patched snowscape of cloud could be seen, stretching away to the distant horizon.

Captain Tripoli stood in the center of the poop deck, a white clay pipe clamped between his teeth. He was tall and straight, with angular features and skin so blue-black that he might have been mined from a seam of coal. He seemed unaffected by the crisp gale that blew across the deck, and looked Miles up and down with a stern expression. It was as much as Miles could do to avoid being blown to the guardrail, but he was careful to stand his ground.

“Passengers are not allowed on the poop deck,” said Captain Tripoli, looking at his first officer disapprovingly. His voice was deep, like a cello, and rather than whipping it away the wind seemed obliged to blow around it.

“It's important,” said Miles. “Our cabin has been burgled.”

The captain raised one eyebrow. “Then we'd better make an exception,” he said.

“This boy is a traveling companion of Baltinglass of Araby,” piped up First Officer Barrett.

“Indeed?” said the captain, looking at Miles with renewed interest. “You may go about your duties; thank you, Mr. Barrett.”

The first officer disappeared down the ladder, slamming the hatch behind him, and leaving Miles alone on the poop deck with Captain Tripoli and
the whistling sky of a fine winter's morning. The captain consulted the instruments that were set into a waist-high wooden column by his side; then he looked up again at Miles. “Let's start with your name,” he said.

“I'm Miles Wednesday,” said Miles.

“An unusual surname,” said Captain Tripoli.

“My father's name was Fumble, and my mother's was Mahnoosh,” said Miles, “but I grew up in an orphanage. At least until I escaped.”

“Then we have something in common,” said the captain. “I also grew up without parents, although my escape was from an uncle in whose charge I had been left.”

Miles was surprised. He had always assumed that to have family of any kind would be better than being raised by strangers. “Why did you have to escape your uncle?” he asked.

“I learned that he planned to sell me as a camel jockey,” said the captain. “I was only seven years old, but I knew what a harsh fate that would be.” He frowned and changed the subject abruptly. “What was stolen from your cabin?” he asked.

“A diary that belonged to my mother,” said Miles.

“What else?”

“Nothing else,” said Miles. “It's the only thing of hers that I have.”

“It's not easy to get away with a shipboard burglary,” mused Captain Tripoli. “Why would anyone take such a risk?”

Miles said nothing. He did not want to have to explain what the diary contained, or why it might be of interest to anyone else.

“You're not obliged to give me all the details,” said the captain. “A description of the diary will suffice for the moment. I'll have my first officer conduct an investigation.”

Miles took his leave of the captain after describing the diary to him. His ears stung from the cold, but he was sorry to leave the spectacular skyscape that the poop deck afforded, and as he walked back along the corridor he made up his mind to find another excuse to visit the captain before their journey ended. He was turning this problem over in his head when a foot suddenly emerged from an open cabin door, and as he tripped over it he felt a jarring blow on the back of his skull that made his teeth knock together and sent him spiraling away into emptiness.

 

Varippuli the tiger, soul-snagged and shanghaied, stood waiting in a room where frost bristled on the
walls and his breath billowed in clouds of steam. He seemed unaware of his surroundings, and stared through the walls of the frozen waiting room at some half-remembered landscape beyond. Miles found himself standing to the tiger's left, almost close enough to reach out and touch him. The tiger gave no sign of having seen him, and Miles stayed as still as a mouse. Varippuli was no longer his friend and ally, and he did not want to draw attention to himself.

He stared at the tiger's heaving ribs, vaguely aware that he was dreaming, but not daring to blink nonetheless. The wavy black bars of the animal's stripes seemed to stand out from the gold of his pelt, and the harder Miles stared the more the gold seemed to glow. Soon he was enveloped by glaring sunlight and could not see the black at all. He turned his eyes away from the light and found himself gliding alongside the patched gray flanks of the
Sunfish
, almost weightless and lifted by the same stiff breeze that had blown across the poop deck minutes before.

Through a gap in the clouds below him he could see the
Albatross
crawling like a beetle on the corrugated blue of the sea. The soaring sensation was exhilarating, and he tilted himself, cautiously at first, to test his control. He spotted a cannon poking
from the hull of the
Sunfish
, and he swooped down past the network of cables and ropes by which the hull was suspended to take a closer look.

It was not a cannon at all, he realized as he got closer, but a head. It looked as if someone were trying to climb out through a porthole. “That's not very wise,” said Miles into the wind. There was something disturbingly familiar about the tousled head, and with a shock he realized what it was. “That's
my
head!” he said aloud. The head was lolling and the eyes closed, and he could see shoulders now, and his arms pinned to his sides by the narrow hole. There was no doubt about it: He was being posted out through a porthole, just as he had posted Little through the back window of the Mermaid's Boot, except that the only thing waiting to break his fall was the freezing ocean a thousand feet below.