A balloon filled with hydrogen gas.
Now, these events took place nearly a half-century before the famed Hindenburg dirigible—which was, likewise, filled with hydrogen—burst into flame and crashed in New Jersey. That accident might have been prevented had the airship used nonflammable helium, rather than combustible hydrogen, to stay aloft. Unfortunately, the Hindenburg wasn’t allowed to use helium because the United States had a monopoly on the gas.
Hence, its tragic end.
And helium wasn’t used to keep any airship aloft until the second decade of the twentieth century. At the close of the nineteenth century, when Elizabeth entered the labyrinth, no one was using helium for much of anything. It had only recently been discovered—which brings us back to the story at hand, and the fact that Prometheus’ airship, like the Hindenburg, was kept floating near the clouds by hydrogen.
A highly flammable gas.
Prometheus turned his attention from Elizabeth to his crew, barking orders to gather buckets and fill them with water to douse the flames. Unfortunately, water is a lot harder to come by on an airship than it is in a traditional ship floating on the ocean, and there wasn’t enough of it on board to stop the flames from spreading.
Elizabeth didn’t know about hydrogen or helium, so she wasn’t as worried as she might have been. At first, she was relieved that there weren’t any actual sails to catch fire, as there would have been on a seagoing ship. But at the flames rose higher, and attempts to douse them failed, the crew members turned their attention to a different task: abandoning ship. They ran for the port gangplank connecting the ship with the glacier, or for the starboard plank connecting it to an adjacent ship, flagged as the Serenity. It, in turn, floated on air beside ships flagged as Concord and Equanimity. Elizabeth thought it strange that pirate airships should have such peaceful names. It was just another example of things that didn’t make sense in this place.
On the port side, she saw men jumping and slipping onto the ice. One of them knocked the plank away, and it tumbled down to the valley below, forcing those who hadn’t make it across to either try leaping over the gap or to flee in the opposite direction, to the adjacent airship.
Jumping toward the glacier was not an attractive option. Those few who tried couldn’t find anything to grab except slippery ice, and found themselves sliding backward, arms and legs flailing, off the mountain to their doom below.
The rest who had headed in that direction quickly thought better of it, and reversed course, making for the Serenity. There was much less peril in this course of action, at least initially, but as each of them landed on the deck of the neighboring vessel, it sagged ever so slightly beneath the added weight: It was hard to tell how much it could absorb.
Captain Prometheus was running this way and that, trying to persuade his crew not to abandon their posts. Most of them, however, had no interest in going down with the ship. More than half had already fled by the time another thought apparently occurred to the captain: “The cargo!” he shouted. “We can’t just leave the cargo!”
Elizabeth realized he was talking about the slaves. They were stuck belowdecks, no doubt locked into cramped holds while they awaited possible buyers.
“The prisoners!” she cried. “We have to get them out!”
Illian rushed toward the door that led belowdecks, but Prometheus barred her way. “No, you don’t, Lassie,” he said. “I’ve got too much invested in...”
He tried to form a fireball in his hand, then thought better of adding to the growing inferno. Instead, he threw his body across the door and dared her to try to get past him.
Illian took the dare. She punched him in the face, and he crumpled to the deck in a heap. She climbed over him and threw open the door.
“Wait!” Taradreq called. “I have a better idea.”
She leapt and then soared skyward, causing the deck to shudder and rise as she relieved it of her weight. She banked sharply, then dove around the far side of the ship and flew straight toward it, slamming into it with all the force she could muster and causing splinters to fly where the sideboards had been.
Illian grabbed hold of the doorframe and held on tight to keep from falling as the ship shuddered and listed to one side. The gangplank between the Tranquility and Serenity flew skyward, then tumbled to the valley below, leaving the few crew members who hadn’t escaped stranded aboard Prometheus’ vessel. Elizabeth fell and slid sideways toward the edge, but Dreqnir caught her in his talons and flew eastward, setting her down briefly upon the glacier.
A moment later, she climbed into the sleigh on his back, and he ascended once again. From there, they could see a massive hole in the starboard bow of the ship, where the captives were waiting as Taradreq took them, several at a time, onto her back. When she could carry no more, she ferried her passengers across to the glacier, then returned to the ship for another load.
By this time, the other airships in the pirate armada were breaking free and rising into the air, having cut the ropes and straps that bound them to earth below. It was a majestic sight to see them rising and moving away, fleeing the fires that were consuming the Tranquility. The flames had nearly reached the balloon above the ship, and Taradreq was hurrying to gather the last of the prisoners from the lower deck before it was too late. A young boy hesitated, looking scared. He crawled to the edge of the splintered boards, then clung to them, looking down, but unwilling to climb onto the dragon’s back. Suddenly, with those already on her back holding tight, she rose and extended the talons from one massive claw, closing them tight around the boy and flapping her wings once mightily to push herself away.
In almost the same instant, the balloon overhead exploded in a massive fireball that made it almost seem like the sun had returned to reclaim the evernight sky. The ropes burned and snapped. The balloon deflated and disappeared in flame, and the ship, deprived of the gas that had been keeping it aloft, came crashing down, smashing into the side of the mountain and coming apart into splintered boards, some still aflame, that fell thousands of feet to the earth below.
Taradreq landed, out of breath, on the glacial plateau, setting the frightened boy down first and then allowing the other refugees to climb down from her back.
Dreqnir touched down beside her.
“Did you get everyone, Mother?” he asked.
“I think so,” she said. “That one there was the last one.” She nodded toward the boy, who was shivering and sobbing on the hard ice of the glacier.
Some of the former slaves talking excitedly, but many seemed badly shaken. A few wandered around, seemingly in a daze, but most eventually gathered into groups; some were obviously members of the same clan or village, having been taken together into captivity by the traders. The boy, however, was alone.
Elizabeth ran over to him and put an arm around him, raising him to his feet.
“What’s your name?” she said. But he could not stop crying long enough to answer her.
“Are you here alone?”
He nodded, still sobbing.
Elizabeth glanced at the other airships, growing steadily smaller and disappearing beyond more distant mountains. She wondered if any other captives were aboard.
She turned back to the boy, who was looking up at her. He couldn’t have been more than ten.
“I’m alone, too,” she said.
He was shivering in the cold.
“We can be alone together,” she said, “until we find our way home.”
He nodded.
“I’m Elizabeth,” she said, but he didn’t answer.
Then she heard that ringing in her ears again—not a ringing, but a melody. It was still too faint to make it out, as though it wasn’t coming from inside her head but very far away.
She turned to Dreqnir. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” he asked her.
“I thought you said dragons had very good ears.”
“The best,” he said simply.
She shook her head, and th
e playing stopped. Perhaps she had imagined it. But then, a moment later, it began again.
...
Chapter Nineteen
Out of Time
“Are you sure you can’t find a way out?” said Alex. He was growing hungry. The Minute-Hour didn’t keep any food in his cupboards, relying solely on children for his sustenance.
Asterion had awakened twice now, and each time, Isis had waved her multiple tails and lulled him back to sleep.
Ruffus shook his head and howled a half-hearted, mournful howl. He had been sniffing and snuffing around all day, but he was no closer to finding the exit to Asterion’s prison than he had been when he started.
“Do you have any ideas, Isis?”
The feline opened her eyes halfway and shook her head lazily. She seemed oddly unconcerned, but cats always seemed that way, even in the direst situations. They seemed more interested in sleeping and grooming than anything else, and the boy wondered how they managed to survive with such a laissez-faire attitude in such a dangerous world. “Can’t you do something?” he said.
She yawned. “I can do many things,” she said sleepily. “But none of them will help, so the best thing I can do is conserve my energy.”
“What if we all die in the meantime?”
“I have seven more lives,” she said casually. “I’m not particularly worried.”
“Well I am!” Alex nearly shouted. “I only have one, and I don’t want to see it end yet.”
“If you want to do something constructive, why not play the Minute-Hour’s flute?” Isis suggested.
“How is that constructive?”
“It’s a magical flute,” she stated simply. “Who knows what it can do?”
She had a point. Alex had thought about using the baseball card to escape, but he didn’t know how that would help him. He had approached the wall with it and held it out in front of him, hoping against hope that the barrier might collapse and disappear, the way the Reaper had when he’d been confronted with the card. But it didn’t work that way. The card had no effect at all on the barrier.
What the flute would do was anyone’s guess. Alex remembered a Bible story about a hero and his soldiers who walked around a fortified city blowing trumpets, which somehow caused the walls to fall down before them. He started playing the flute, as Isis suggested, but the walls here seemed as solid as ever. He tried walking around in circles, but that didn’t work, either. If the flute had any kind of magic, it wasn’t the kind that made walls crumble or disappear.
Alex set the flute down.
“Keep playing,” said Ruffus.
“But why? This thing won’t get us out of here.”
“I don’t think it will, either,” the bloodhound confessed. “But remember how it worked before, when Asterion played it?”
Alex shook his head. He had no idea what the dog was getting at.
“It called us to him,” Ruffus explained.
Alex brightened. “Like the Pied Piper.”
“Yes.”
“We can’t get out, but we did get in,” Isis yawned. “Maybe if someone else hears the music, they can come and rescue us.”
“If they don’t get stuck in here, too,” said Ruffus.
“Well, there is that,” Isis conceded.
Alex nodded grimly. “It’s better than nothing,” he decided, then put the flute to his lips again and resumed playing. He still had no idea how to play the flute, but the flute seemed not to care, and the tune that came out the other end of the instrument was one he had known for as long as he could remember: Brahms’ Lullaby. His mother had hummed it to him in the cradle before he had been orphaned and begun his foster life—not that he recalled this exactly, but the memory had been there somewhere, all but lost inside the labyrinth of his mind. It comforted him, and it made him yearn for home.
But it occurred to him, then for the first time, that he didn’t know where home really was.
Alex came from Iowa, with its red barns and cornfields, but he had never felt like he belonged there. It all seemed too new to him, which was strange for one so new to the world himself. In a sense, he had felt most at home on his first day of school: The classrooms and corridors felt familiar, as though he were supposed to be there. Almost. Even Moravia Elementary was not quite right. He had been bullied there, teased for being taller and quieter than the others, and the teasing had gotten worse when he refused to fight back against students who pushed him on the playground or cut in front of him in line.
He’d started missing school because of it, saying he had a sore throat or an earache just to avoid the taunts of other children. More and more, he’d just stayed in his room, teaching himself the things they should have been teaching him in school: how to learn, where to look for what he wanted to know, and why things were the way they were. Instead of learning from textbooks and lectures, he’d learned from novels and comic books, from old magazines in the attic and baseball cards that came collected in neatly wrapped packs. He’d read about the Depression and Pearl Harbor in the pages of Time, and he’d memorized the statistics of all the greatest ballplayers, enshrined on cardboard rectangles that smelled like bubblegum.
As time went on, he’d realized it wasn’t just the bullying that made him feel out of place at the school.
It was the school itself.
He wasn’t supposed to be there, at that particular school. He was supposed to be at a different school, where he could decide what subjects would be offered and how classes would be conducted. The strangest part of it all was that he could envision the school, as if it really existed. Just not here. And not now.
Alex realized, as he reflected on these things, that Iowa had never felt like home because, in a very real sense, it wasn’t. His home was elsewhere, and he’d entered this maze in order to find it.
He remembered what the tree-man, Likho, had said to him: If he did not find his way home, past, present and future would become disconnected, and the entire world would be trapped in this maze that he had entered. What if the maze itself were like a school? What if it were a series of lessons, like classes, that he needed to learn in order to move on with his life?
But why should the whole world be caught up in this? That didn’t make sense. What did make sense, though, was that something was very, very wrong—and that he needed to make it right. He just had no idea how. If he needed to find his way home, but Iowa was not that home, what exactly did he need to find?
He had reached the center of the maze, but now he needed to find his way out of a prison from which there was no escape.
He stopped playing the flute for a moment.
“Will everything always be this hopeless?” he said.
Isis purred softly. “You can choose to have hope or not,” she said. “That is your choice, whatever your circumstances may be. You can accept them or try to change them. You can accept hope or discard it. The choice is yours.”
Alex sighed. Even when he’d hidden in his room from those schoolyard bullies, he had still had hope. He had felt trapped then, just as he did now, but he hadn’t given up. So, he wouldn’t give up now. He remembered the girl Likho had told him about, to whom he had sent the map and the compass, and realized he had given her a reason to hope. Perhaps someone he didn’t know, someone beyond these walls, could give him such a reason in the same way.
He lifted the flute and started playing again, but this time, a different tune came out: one he didn’t know. How or why he could play music he had never heard, he had no idea. But a title came into his head, as well: “Long, Long Ago.”
...
The young boy from the Tranquility shook Elizabeth awake. They had returned to the catacombs inside the mountain, which offered them refuge from the freezing sub-Arctic air. The tunnels were empty now. Nigel’s men seemed to have abandoned them, and when Elizabeth and the dragons returned to the place where they’d left “Father Time,” they found him gone, as well. The girl only hoped he had been removed by his followers and
hadn’t awakened on his own.
She decided not to think about it. Either way, it was convenient that he and his men had gone. It gave the refugees from the Tranquility a place to stay while they waited to return home. Taradreq had pledged to help them get there, offering the services of her dragon subjects to fly them wherever they needed to go. Some, however, did not have homes. For some, their homes had been burned or destroyed by the men who had enslaved them; others had been taken as young children and had been slaves so long they didn’t even know where “home” was.
Among the children from the Tranquility was the scared little boy that the Dragon Queen had plucked from the airship before it went up in flames.
Elizabeth still didn’t know his name. All she knew was that, like her, he felt alone and wanted to find his way home.
She opened her eyes and found him staring at her.
“Why did you come here?” he asked.
“What?” Elizabeth sat up and rubbed the sleepy sand out of her eyes with her knuckles.
“Why did you come here?” the boy asked again.
“To find the Dragon Queen,” she said, yawning, “and to free King...” Her voice trailed off.
To free King Nicholas.
With a start, she realized that she hadn’t seen Nicholas among the refugees. The compass had pointed her directly to the Tranquility. Had she missed something? Had he been aboard one of the other airships anchored farther from the glacier? In all the excitement of the fire, the evacuation and the explosion that had destroyed the ship, she had forgotten all about King Nicholas! What if he had been aboard the Tranquility and hadn’t escaped? What if he had gone crashing thousands of feet to the valley below with the wreckage of the airship?
“No!” she said, closing her eyes tightly.
The Talismans of Time (Academy of the Lost Labyrinth Book 1) Page 17
