The Peculiars (24 page)

Jimson whistled and looked over Mr. Beasley’s shoulder.

Mr. Beasley quickly scanned the map. “This is farther than we can travel by air without refueling, but the area’s remote enough that I doubt we’d be discovered. I am somewhat familiar with this part of Scree. The nearest outpost is Ducktown. Does anyone still work your family mine?”

“I don’t know anything about it. I didn’t even know there was a family mine,” Lena answered.

“Interestingly enough, the deed doesn’t mention what type of ore is mined there, but the claim looks genuine. Yes, Lena. I think this will do very nicely.” Smiling, he carefully refolded the deed and letter, returning them both to her. “We’ll use the map and my wind triangle to help with navigation. Of course, dead reckoning depends on estimating our speed. It’s not completely accurate, but it should get us close to your mine.”

It was so cold that Lena longed to draw the heavy curtains, but her longing to watch the landscape sail by was stronger. The only sounds were the rushing of the wind and the whirring of the propellers. They had turned inland from the coast, and below them the frosted clumps of evergreens grew closer and thicker. Farmland gave way to forest, punctuated by outcroppings of rock.

“The main border crossing is on the coast at the rail line. We’ll be crossing farther to the east, over an area that’s difficult to traverse. By now the marshal will have sent a telegram to alert the border guards. They’ll send an arrest warrant with the Pony Express across Scree. We can only hope that we’re
well ahead of him and that he has no idea where we’re headed. Jimson, we need some kerosene added to the tank to fuel the boiler.”

Jimson unscrewed the cap of the metal fuel can and used a funnel to pour the liquid into the tank.

“How far are we from the border?” Merilee asked. She had the blanket pulled up to her nose and well tucked in at her sides. Unlike Lena, she seemed less interested in the view than in staying warm.

“We’ll be there in another thirty minutes if my calculations are correct. Of course, it’s always difficult to tell where one country ends and another begins without a marker of some sort. The trick isn’t the crossing. It’s how we’ll eventually land.”

“How does she land?” Jimson lovingly stroked the fabric walls of the aerocopter.

“I am not precisely sure, but I do have theories.”

Jimson sighed. “This is the best day of my life.”

LENA FOUND THAT TRAVELING BY AEROCOPTER SUITED HER.
She tried not to think about what Nana Crane would say. It would, to Lena’s reckoning, be the final confirmation of her own goblin blood. She also tried not to think about poor Abel with his flat brown eyes. Was that what it meant to be a goblin? She shuddered.

She let her mind settle on the image she had held at bay, the marshal standing at the base of the widow’s walk, head thrown back looking up at her and seeing only another Peculiar. All that time he had been using her, and she had allowed it. More than allowed it, she had envisioned traveling with him as her guide to Scree. And she had betrayed Mr. Beasley and his work at Zephyr House. She had betrayed them all. She burned with shame, feeling the hollow place inside her, the place where her soul should reside, open wider.

Across the coach Jimson laughed at something Mr. Beasley said. They both examined the wind triangle as Mr. Beasley explained his calculations. Jimson certainly did not seem to be pining for his missing Pansy. As she watched, Lena could feel his excitement catch like a flame to kindling. Despite the marshal, despite almost being shot by flat-eyed Abel, it was impossible to stay solemn when she was traveling in an aerocopter. If she was doomed to be wild, as Nana Crane had predicted, she would enjoy every minute of it.

Merilee, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be faring half so well. She alternated between looking seasick and terrified. Which, Lena thought, was not in keeping with the reality of her wings. While Jimson and Mr. Beasley discussed the necessary terrain for a smooth landing, Lena whispered the question that had been nagging at her ever since she first saw the drawings of Annuncius syndrome in Mr. Beasley’s sketchbook. “Could you fly? When you had your wings, I mean.” And then she blushed, wondering if her question was too presumptuous.

Merilee looked at her with a small frown puckering her broad brow. “No, of course not. The wings were never strong enough. But I did try once when they first grew in. I jumped off a fence . . . and ended up on my face in the dirt.” For the first time Lena saw laughter in Merilee’s eyes.

“Were they heavy?”

“A bit. But the worst part was the itching—day and night as the feathers came in.”

Then she looked shyly at Lena. “What’s wrong with your hands and feet?”

Instinctively, Lena’s feet crept under the hem of her skirt. “I don’t know. Nobody does. But I was born this way.” The next words were very hard to force out. “Some people say my father was a goblin.”

Merilee looked at her directly with her wide hazel eyes. “They’re not all like Abel, you know.”

Lena leaned in closer. “You’ve known other goblins?”

“In Scree. There were others in the mines. I was very small, but I remember playing with a family of them. They were some of my best friends.” She shrugged her thin shoulders.

“But did they look like me? Did they have hands and feet like mine?”

“No, not that I remember. They looked just like anyone else.”

A gust of wind buffeted the coach. Merilee turned very white and closed her eyes again.

“It looks like we’re headed into some nasty weather,” Mr. Beasley announced. “I suggest drawing the curtains to preserve warmth.” He was holding a compass and a brass spyglass. “We are on course. The border is just ahead. The land changes to rock and shale, but we may miss seeing it in all this weather. The clouds might work in our favor by adding some cover, but they will make navigation more difficult.”

They were entering a wilderness of gray. Clouds clustered together like fleecy animals in a herd. It looked to Lena as if
she could step outside and be carried away on their soft backs. But with the clouds came a chilling damp. It swamped the coach, forming small ice crystals on the window frame. They drew the curtains and leaned into the warmth of the boiler. Lena rubbed her hands together, glad this time for her gloves. If it was this cold now, how would they bear it in the middle of the night? There was a small hiss, and a light flared in the darkness of the coach. Mr. Beasley lit the kerosene lantern that hung from the ceiling. As the light swayed, shadows played across their faces, and Lena recalled her trip on the train to Knob Knoster.

Merilee leaned her head back against the tufted seat and closed her eyes. Mrs. Mumbles splayed across her lap like a cat fur muff. Mr. Beasley steered and scribbled in a small notebook, but Jimson’s eyes, solemn now and deeply shadowed, were fastened on Lena as if he too was remembering the long-ago train ride. When she met his eyes, Lena found herself blushing and short of breath. Then she thought of Pansy and deliberately averted her gaze. The coach jarred side to side, the curtains fluttered and, with a sickening jolt, they dropped.

“It’s just the air currents. Turbulence. We’ve flown into a pressure differential. We’ll be fine if we can keep our stomachs.” Mr. Beasley’s confidence was reassuring, but for the first time Lena realized how vulnerable they were, sailing unsupported through vast miles of sky. “I’m going to drop us down a little to see if we can get below the storm. Jimson, I want you to pull
this lever until the gauge reads minus ten degrees. Here.” He pointed to a small brass handle. “I’ll try and keep her steering straight. You might feel another sudden drop. Nothing to be alarmed about.”

Lena clutched the edge of the bench as Jimson scooted forward and gripped the lever. With a ratcheting tick, they dipped, suddenly enough to make Merilee reach for the empty bucket under the seat. Lena felt her own stomach roil. Looking up, she again found Jimson’s eyes. This time she didn’t look away.

Then they were mercifully steady again. Jimson dropped his gaze as Mr. Beasley parted the curtains. “We’re below the clouds. Any lower and we’ll be brushing treetops. We should have crossed the border a good ten minutes ago. I suggest we look for a place to land.”

“You mean we’re not going to fly all night?” Lena felt strangely disappointed.

“Too difficult to navigate in the dark! We can’t see the landmarks. And there are mountains just ahead. We don’t want to risk flying into one. The trick is finding the right landing spot. We need a smooth landing area, but also a place with enough grade to aid in takeoff.”

Lena peered out the window. In the dim light of October’s end, sparse evergreens rose like ghosts. As far as she could see, in every direction, there were no smooth places for a landing.

“We’re not quite as far as I thought. We’re crossing into Scree now!” Mr. Beasley exclaimed.

Below, the trees gave way to rock, layers of dark gray shale like shingles on a roof.

Once more Jimson was leaning halfway out of the aerocopter. “The stony borderlands. What a view!”

All four of the passengers gazed over the wide band of shale and flint that ran along the border. A brown-and-gray world opened below them, as if cloud and fog had sucked all color from the landscape. Sailing low, they just barely cleared the tops of giant spruce and cedars, the ghostly sentinels to this rocky kingdom.

“We’ll have to land soon, before the mountains,” Mr. Beasley warned.

“But all I can see is rock.” Lena wondered if Mr. Beasley really knew what he was doing.

Jimson held the brass spyglass to one eye. “I believe there’s water just ahead. It looks like a lake on the flank of a hill.”

Layers of rock gave way to wide swatches of bony earth. Boulders erupted through the thin skin of soil. Trees were still sparse, but in the fast-approaching distance evergreens ringed the feet of snow-blanketed mountains.

Jimson handed the glass to Mr. Beasley. “I don’t suppose we can land in water.”

“We have no idea how deep the lake is, but the land just above it may be our best option. It appears to be an open meadow and high enough on the hillside to facilitate our takeoff.” Mr. Beasley considered the situation, then handed the spyglass to Lena. “The trick will be to not land in the
middle of the lake but above it, in the meadow. I want you all to follow my instructions precisely. We will drop as gradually as possible.”

Jimson was in charge of reducing fuel to the boiler. Merilee secured everything in the coach as well as possible, and Lena, who was longing to have some real part in flying the aerocopter, was allowed to help Mr. Beasley steer. “We want the rotor tilted into the wind, to maintain autorotation. We’ll gradually drop, and at the last minute we’ll slow our descent by angling up the top rotor. At that point, we should be traveling about seven miles per hour. When we land, I’ll apply the brake.”

Lena, with one hand on the rudder lever beside Mr. Beasley’s, watched their descent toward the lake. It grew larger—a pale glacial blue oval surrounded by a gravelly shore. Suddenly, the drop was precipitous. The water of the lake came rushing toward them.

“Hold off, Jimson!” Mr. Beasley barked. He pulled on the lever. The aerocopter listed sideways and then straightened, but they were too close to the water. One wheel caught the surface of the lake, spraying water, tipping the machine perilously to one side. Lena slammed against the hot pipe of the boiler, shrieked, and landed hard on Jimson. Mrs. Mumbles tumbled in an undignified heap to the floor. The machine righted, jolted a few yards, and bounced to a grinding stop on the lake’s beach as Mr. Beasley firmly applied the brake lever.

Everyone was silent. Lena could hear Mr. Beasley
breathing. A trickle of sweat had run down his face, causing one painted eyebrow to melt. Jimson carefully lifted Lena off his right hip and rubbed at the welt on the side of his face where it had smashed into the bench. “Are you all right?”

“I will be. It’s a good thing I’m wearing two layers of skirts. I didn’t get burned at all.”

With her tail curled in the air, Mrs. Mumbles yowled, shook herself indignantly, and began to preen. Then Merilee began to laugh, and once she started they all joined in. It was a relief to be alive, to have finally made it into the wilds of Scree.