by C. J. Archer
After a moment, Matt let my hands go. “Better?”
I nodded.
“You’re nervous,” he said.
“Aren’t you?”
He chose not to answer, which I suspected was his masculine way of admitting he was terrified.
I put my gloves on as the others stepped back from the carpet. “It is ready,” Fabian declared.
“Not quite.” I crouched down and spoke the extension spell into each of the iron rods to lengthen Fabian’s magic. He was a powerful iron magician and his magic lasted a long time, but I felt a little better afterward.
Fabian put out his hand to me. “Your flying carpet awaits, madame.”
His attempt at an upper class English accent brought a smile to my lips, despite my fear. I took his hand, stepped onto the carpet and sat down. “It’s like being at a picnic but without the food.”
“And colder,” Fabian added.
“The blanket,” Matt said and jogged to the carriage.
I drew in a deep breath and looked up at the dense gray sky. We would be touching the clouds in just a few moments.
Or plummeting to our deaths.
“Fabian, tell me honestly,” I said. “Do you think this will work?”
“I do, but you are frightened, ma femme incroyable. I understand. It is a frightening thing to fly when we do not have wings.” He took my hands in his. “But it will work. I have controlled the flight of iron rods many times, and your magic is strong.”
“But wool is not my expertise.” I withdrew my hands from his and stood. “This is madness. We can’t do it.”
“India, do not be afraid. Trust your magic. Trust yourself. You are amazing, incredible!” He took my hands again and offered me a warm smile. “I have never met anyone with magic as strong as yours. This will work.”
“India?” Matt said. “Have you changed your mind?”
I took the blanket he offered and clutched it to my chest. “I’ll attempt this, despite my reservations. But you can’t come.”
He bristled. “I’m coming.”
He went to step onto the rug but I put a hand to his chest. “No, Matt. I have to go, and so does Fabian, but you don’t.”
“You’re my wife. Where you go, I go.” He moved into the middle of the rug and sat down cross-legged. He put out his hand to me. “Come away from the edge.”
“Matt, listen to me! I don’t want you doing this! Please, get off.”
“No.”
“Matt! We haven’t done this before! It could be a complete disaster. I will not be responsible for your death.”
“If the experiment fails and I die then so will you so you won’t feel any guilt.”
I blew out an exasperated breath. “You’re a fool. A mad, foolish idiot with not an iota of common sense. If we get out of this alive I’m going to have you committed to an asylum.”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.” He stretched out his hand further. “Sit with me, India. I’ll keep you warm.”
Willie gave me a little shove in the back then proceeded to sit on the carpet beside Matt. “Sit down, India. We don’t have time for your bickering.”
“Not you too!” I cried.
She grinned. “I ain’t missing this. What about you, Cyclops? You coming?”
“It won’t hold me as well,” he said. “I’m too heavy.”
“It will hold as many as can fit,” Fabian told him. “The iron rods already have my spell in them. They are strong and only require the flying spell now.”
Cyclops backed up toward the carriage. “I promised Catherine I’d visit her today after church.”
Willie grunted a laugh. “What about you, Duke?”
Duke also backed away. “I value my life and limbs.”
“Coward.”
“Is that any way to talk to the man who’ll be arranging your funeral?”
Willie laughed then let out a whoop. “Come on India, Fabian. Do your magic and get this thing in the air.”
I checked my watch. She was right. We were running out of time. But we couldn’t simply take off without a test first.
“We speak our spells at the same time,” Fabian said. “Ready?”
“Almost. I must concentrate or it’ll fly off without any control.”
“I am controlling the iron. It is not entirely in your hands.”
I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or worse. I put my hands over the bulge in the rug where one of the iron rods had been strapped to the underside. The carpet was so thick I couldn’t feel the warmth of Fabian’s magic through it.
I drew in a deep breath and focused my attention on the rug beneath me. I ran my hands through the lush pile and imagined it rising gently off the ground and floating into the air. I went over the spell in my head, silently sounding out every syllable. The process calmed my rapidly beating heart a little.
“Ready,” I said.
Matt sidled closer and put an arm around my waist and the blanket over my lap. Then he grabbed hold of the nearest rope holding the carpet raft together and gave Fabian a nod.
Fabian counted down from three then we both spoke our respective spells.
The carpet rose off the ground. The iron rods lifted together, keeping the rug flat. It held our weight easily.
Either Duke or Cyclops gasped loudly and I lost concentration. The rug sagged between the iron rods and the entire contraption suddenly plunged.
“India!” Fabian cried.
I focused on the words in the spell again and managed to regain concentration enough to lower the rug gently to the ground without incident. “I can’t do it,” I said. “I can’t even lift it over the buildings let alone fly it all the way to Brighton.”
“You got to, India,” Willie urged. “Or Amelia’s going to set off a bomb.”
“Fabian will have to do it alone.”
Fabian blinked huge eyes. “I cannot, India. You know I cannot. That proved it. I need you. You are stronger than me. Your magic could do this alone if not for keeping the rug flat. Mine cannot.”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Matt’s arm tightened around my waist and he drew me back against his body. “If you don’t try again, you will always wonder if you could have done it,” he whispered in my ear.
“But—”
“No buts.” He rested his chin on my shoulder and cupped my cheek with his hand. “We all know you can do this. Now prove it to yourself.”
I drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All right.”
Fabian gave me a flat smile and counted us down again. We spoke our spells at the same time and once again the carpet rose. And rose, and rose.
I didn’t look down. I concentrated on the rug and the walls on either side of the alley. I listened to my words and focused on finding a rhythm. By the time we reached the third floor, I’d found it. The spell became a chant as rhythmic as a marching band’s drumbeat. It flowed through me, out through my mouth and in again through my ears before I repeated it without pause.
“The eaves,” came Matt’s voice behind me, neither too loud nor too soft.
A quick glance showed me what he meant. The overhanging eaves extended beyond the walls into the lane, narrowing it. The rug wouldn’t fit.
Fabian’s whispering stopped, but the rug didn’t fall. We were perfectly fine hovering there in mid-air, just below the roofline, and all because I was controlling it.
I stopped chanting too but continued to concentrate, picturing the rug moving past the eaves and higher. The carpet moved forward several feet then rose where the gap widened. It had found its own way up.
“Blimey,” came Willie’s murmur. “They look so small. Even Cyclops.”
I didn’t look but I could feel Matt leaning to one side. Then I felt him tense.
“Everything all right?” I asked.
“Shhh,” he whispered. “Just concentrate.”
I smiled. “It’s fine, Matt. Stop worrying.” Partly to be sure and partly to satisfy hi
m, I continued to chant the spell.
“Isn’t that Coyle and Hope?” Willie asked.
I stopped chanting and the rug took a sudden dip before I caught it and directed it to keep rising. It was too late to do anything about Coyle and Hope seeing us. That would be a conversation to have when we were safely home again.
The carpet kept close to the roofs, just above the chimneys. It was smokier up here, from the fireplaces lit all across the city, but the scenery was spectacular. The sea of roofs was punctured by church spires, more than I expected. In the distance, St Paul’s dome squatted amid the city’s financial district like a mother supervising her brood.
We floated rather than flew, drifting over the river, and silent factories, over the open expanses of green parks and the tightly packed slums, within spitting distance of each other. The city looked like a resting giant from up here, with the chimneys expelling their smoky breath and the vein-like streets stretching into the distance.
But even more remarkable was the silence. There were no shouting hawkers, no omnibus bells or train whistles, no rattling carriage wheels or clip clop of horses’ hooves. There was nothing but the wind.
“India,” Fabian said quietly. “We must go faster, yes?”
He was right. This floating, drifting pace was too slow. We’d never reach Brighton before two.
“Yes,” I said.
A look came over his face of intense concentration. I could feel the iron rods wanting to move forward, to pick up the pace. It wasn’t a sensation I could feel with my body, but rather with my mind. No, not my mind—my senses. My magical senses.
The carpet didn’t respond to the iron rods, however. Not until I turned my focus onto it and pictured it speeding up. Only then did our pace quicken. Across from me, Fabian removed his hat before it blew off and gave me a nod of acknowledgement.
Matt’s arm tightened around my waist.
We streaked through the air and soon left London behind. We all removed our hats and my hair soon came loose from its arrangement thanks to the wind. Matt unfolded the blanket and wrapped me in it, but I didn’t feel cold. The magic kept me warm.
When I saw Willie shiver, I handed it to her.
She thanked me and flung it around her shoulders. The wind whipped at it, tugging the ends. She grinned then rose onto her knees and stretched out her arms. “Yeeehah! We’re flying!”
I leaned back into Matt. “If she stands up, you take her left leg and I’ll take her right.”
His other arm came around me too and he gently squeezed. “Stop talking and just concentrate.”
I smiled. The poor man was not enjoying this experience as much as his cousin. Or as much as me, I realized. I was enjoying myself. It wasn’t necessarily the fact that I had made a carpet fly that gave me such a sense of satisfaction. It was the use of my magic. Using any spell at such a profoundly intense level would have fulfilled me, it just so happened to be a wool movement spell this time.
“Follow the railway to Brighton,” Matt said, loud enough for both Fabian and me to hear.
I glanced down and spotted the train line on our left. I steered toward it. Fabian must have done so too because I felt no resistance from the iron beneath us.
We passed over green paddocks and small villages, over winter-bare trees and dark rivers snaking through the countryside. I spotted the tangle of carriages from the derailment and spared a thought for the victims.
We weren’t as high as the clouds, but high enough so that people on the ground wouldn’t have recognized a carpet flying overhead and would attribute the sighting to a large bird or a trick of the light. It was difficult to know how far we’d traveled and how far we had to go. I didn’t check my watch, but I sensed over an hour had passed by the time the sea became visible in the distance. And there, nestled on the foreshore, was a large cluster of buildings. Brighton.
The carpet suddenly sagged in one section. Willie swore as she slipped into the dip and had to grab onto one of the ropes to haul herself out of it.
One of the iron rods had fallen off. No, not fallen but no longer seemed to be flying. It was merely a passenger, held in place by the ropes. Its weight was dragging on the carpet instead of supporting it.
I glanced at Fabian. Sweat beaded on his forehead and the muscles in his jaw were rigid.
“Charbonneau!” Matt barked. “What’s happening?”
Fabian shook his head. He seemed unable to do more.
“He’s concentrating,” I told Matt.
“He needs to concentrate harder. This thing is going down.”
Another dip appeared in the carpet as a second rod lost its magic. The weight of it pulled against my magic and I struggled to keep the carpet flying, let alone flat.
“Grab onto the ropes!” Matt shouted over the wind.
We each clung to the ropes as the carpet began to sag on one side. All except Fabian. Sweat dripped from his temple. His lips moved as he spoke the spell, each iteration louder than the last. He no longer whispered it. He squeezed his eyes shut.
But his efforts weren’t enough. Another rod suddenly stopped working and the carpet tilted violently. I fell backward into Matt. Thanks to his strength and grip on the ropes, we did not slide off.
Thank God Willie had heeded Matt’s warning. She lay face down, her legs dangling off the edge of the carpet, but at least she still clung to the ropes.
Fabian, however, fell off.
Chapter 15
Matt released one of the ropes and lunged, catching Fabian’s forearm.
I screamed. Fabian bellowed something in French. Matt shouted at him to hold on, and Willie shouted at Matt to hang onto the rope. His grip was the only thing stopping both he and Fabian plunging to their deaths in the paddocks below.
Dear god, no. The iron rods were failing one by one. Fabian was in no state to concentrate on the magic, and I couldn’t keep the carpet flying without them. We were too heavy.
The rug suddenly dropped as the magic in the final rods gave way.
Willie, who’d been hauling herself back up, hadn’t quite got her grip on the rope. Her light weight saw her rise off the carpet into the air, hanging onto the rope by her fingertips.
“India!” she shouted. “Land this thing!”
“I can’t,” I cried. “Not without Fabian.”
I couldn’t see more than his forearm and hand, gripping Matt. But his hand was slipping.
Matt gritted his teeth and tried to haul Fabian up, but he was too heavy, and with Matt’s arms stretched as far as they could reach, he couldn’t put his weight into it. He was using all his strength to merely hold onto Fabian.
But Fabian continued to slip.
Willie settled onto the rug again and tried to help Matt, but she was too far away, and I couldn’t stretch enough to reach Fabian either.
The carpet continued to hurtle toward the ground.
I recited the spell, over and over, and focused hard on the woolen fibers. The carpet responded by slowing its descent, but the weight of the rods and us was too much, and it soon picked up speed again. If we continued to fall at this rate, we would hit the ground hard.
Too hard to survive.
“Matt,” Willie said darkly, desperately. “Let him go.”
Matt squeezed his eyes shut and growled with pain and frustration. He was at his limit.
And the ground was getting closer.
“Matt!” Willie cried. “We need to lose some weight.”
Matt opened his eyes and what I saw in them turned me cold. The decision he had to make tortured him. He didn’t want to be responsible for Fabian’s death, but if he didn’t let go, we might all die.
If he released Fabian he would always blame himself, no matter how many times he heard it was not his fault. He would forever tell himself he could have held on longer, could have found the extra strength necessary.
I couldn’t let him suffer like that. Not when this journey was my idea. Fabian’s death would be on my hands. And I knew I co
uldn’t live with the guilt.
I’d started us on this path. Now I had to stop it.
I continued to chant the spell and focus on the carpet, but it didn’t slow our progress. The carpet wasn’t the problem, it was the iron rods. The very elements that had allowed us to take this journey were now our downfall. The magic within them was no longer working and Fabian was too exhausted and scared to have any effect.
I knew his spell. I’d heard it many times during our experimental sessions. If my magic had worked on wool, a substance that was not my expertise, then it could work on iron too.
But I’d never managed two spells at once.
I knew I could stop reciting the carpet spell and the magic would continue to work as long as I didn’t entirely lose focus. I’d already done it and the magic had held.
There was no time to experiment. No time to be tentative. We had mere seconds now.
I stopped reciting the wool spell and spoke the iron one. The rods didn’t respond. I concentrated on the rods in my mind’s eye and repeated the spell. Our descent slowed.
But it wasn’t enough. We were still falling too fast. The barren tree branches came into view alongside us. There was only time to speak the spell once more.
I shouted it into the wind and pictured the iron rods and the carpet carrying us forward instead of up, in the hope that would require less magic.
The rug skidded mere inches from the long grass and shot ahead. When Fabian’s feet hit the ground, he pushed off and leapt onto the carpet. He fell flat on his face, still clutching Matt’s forearm. Matt let go and rolled onto his back. He closed his eyes and sucked in deep breaths.
I focused on slowing down the carpet and soon we were skimming across the paddock at a more sedate pace. A safer pace.
I blew out a breath and rested a hand on Matt’s chest, under his coat. His heart beat rapidly but steadily. There was no need to use his magic watch.
“India!” Willie cried. “Tree!”
