by Jeff Wheeler
Juliet blushed and replaced her sword in its scabbard, which had been skillfully affixed to her armor. “With five percent of twenty men’s wages, I shouldn’t need to work again at all. Isn’t that the idea?”
Brenton gazed out the window as the dusk-pink clouds floated by. “I’d rather be poor in the air than rich on land.”
It struck Juliet as a curious sentiment, until she remembered the tintype she’d found among his letters so many weeks before. “You’d give it all away,” she suggested boldly.
“Ah, so you did see the photograph that day. I’d thought my mail was a bit out of order.”
“Who are they?” she asked.
“Children.”
“The world has many poor children,” Juliet challenged. “Why them? Why the Portmouth Children’s Home?”
“They saved my life,” he said simply. “I only wish to return the favor.”
* * *
Juliet knew that the day would come eventually, that somewhere in this vast and peaceful sky, the Wispers would find them. She’d only hoped it wouldn’t come so soon.
The alarm sounded in the middle of the night, and Juliet rose and donned her armor, praying that it was merely pirates. Weeks before, she’d have laughed at the thought of preferring pirates over anything else, but pirates were mere people, and Brenton had taught her of their strategies, their ways, and how they fought. Pirates would certainly be cause for alarm, but Wispers . . . Wispers still terrified her, for she hardly knew what to expect.
She passed Brenton in the corridor. He, too, was armored and ready, though it wasn’t a sword in his hand as she had hoped, but the small black box that contained the reverse particle disruptor.
“Wispers, then?”
He nodded, his face looking paler and more tired than she’d ever seen it. “The crew are already locked up in their cabins. The time has come to test your mettle.”
Through the massive windows of the bridge, Juliet saw the dark cloud and immediately knew that this surreal, unnatural formation was indeed where the Wispers dwelled. It looked as though instead of water, the foreboding cloud could rain down pure malevolence and death. It grew larger and larger in the window as the Realm of Impossibility drew nearer.
Then, suddenly, it was upon them.
“Quick!” Brenton shouted, squeezing his eyes shut as if in pain. “Give me the blindfold and the earpiece. They’re already at work. I can hear them beckoning.”
Juliet brought him the items he needed and helped him set them in place, just as they’d practiced.
“The device!” he shouted, louder than he needed to. Was it due to his own impaired hearing, or to be heard over the Wispers in his head?
Juliet placed the reverse particle disrupter in his hands and closed his fingers around it. She kept her hands on his for longer than necessary. Just as she was about to pull away, he reached up to her face and leaned in toward it, planting a single soft kiss on her lips.
“I’ve never had the courage to do that before,” he shouted. “Now it’s your turn. Be courageous for me.”
Brenton attached one end of his lifeline to the base of the ship’s wheel and the other to his harness. Though blindfolded and deaf, he traversed the ship gracefully, expertly, and was gone, out the portside hatch, before Juliet could gather her thoughts or stop the spinning in her head.
The slamming of the hatch, however, acted like a jolt of electricity. Juliet recalled where she was and what she was to do. She planted her feet before the ship’s wheel and—with a breathless prayer—steered the Realm of Impossibility directly into the center of the terrifying, stormy cloud of Wispers.
Brenton’s voice came through clearly in her earpiece, with the same clipped, steady tone that he’d used when they’d gone over their plan. They passed into the cloud, and it closed around them, casting a shroud around the ship and obscuring Brenton from view.
“I’m powering it on,” he said. “Hold her steady!”
Juliet braced herself against the wheel. Across the bridge, alarms blared and red lights blinked of danger, but Juliet didn’t waver, pushing the warnings to the back of her mind.
The reverse particle disrupter sprang to life with a click and a whir, and Juliet’s heart leaped as the thick clouds surrounding Brenton swirled and thinned. His figure slowly came into view, a ghost in sparkling armor, balanced on the edge of the ship. One hand clutched a handhold and the other grasped the spinning device. His teeth were clenched tightly, and his head was thrown back as if in pain. “I won’t do it . . . I can’t . . .”
“You can do this, Ty Brenton,” Juliet shouted, hoping against hope that he’d hear her through his earpiece over the voices filling his head. “It’s working. Just hold on. Just a few seconds more. Don’t give up. Don’t you dare let go.”
The cloud swirled around, and now even Juliet could hear the howls and roars of the Wispers. They pressed their ghastly, half-formed bodies against the window glass, their faces distorted and ever-morphing. They’d discovered her deceit. They saw her purpose there, and with that realization, they called to her too.
Let go . . . Join us . . . Come and fly with us . . . Leave that silly ship behind and join us . . . Join us . . . Join us . . .in the air.
Juliet squeezed her eyes shut and shouted nonsense words, listed flavors of tea from the menu of Ms. Chari’s, recited her times tables and poetry she’d memorized in grammar school. Anything to keep them from her head. Anything to keep them away.
Over the chaos, she heard a familiar voice, one she’d grown to love.
“Juliet!”
At the sound of her name, her eyes sprang open, for she knew somehow, deep down, that it wasn’t just a cry for help. She knew, somehow, it was good-bye.
Clear blue sky nearly blinded her. The Wispers, barely visible now, floated away, high up in the atmosphere, to gather with harmless cirrus clouds. Their voices were silenced, the hostility that had thickened the air gone, as if it’d never existed.
And hanging out of the portside hatch, a severed lifeline whipped in the breeze.
* * *
Even after Juliet landed the Realm of Impossibility, the world seemed to spin around her with dizzying speed. At the air docks, she left the ship and the crew, not daring to look behind her for fear that she’d crumble to bits. Without Brenton, she couldn’t seem to get her bearings. The world seemed so different now that she’d seen it from above.
Mrs. Perogi’s apartment seemed even less welcoming than before, even staler and danker and—above all—too still. Sometimes the air seemed unbreathable. Ms. Chari accepted her return to the teahouse with a curt nod and the bellowing order, “And hurry up! There’s dishes to be washed!”
Every jangle of the golden baubles above the door reminded her of that day he’d first walked in. In the end, she took a broom handle and smashed them, calling it an accident. She saved one piece of the shimmering metal for herself.
With the baubles broken and nothing in place to announce the customers’ arrival, Juliet was taken aback when, one morning, someone spoke her name.
“Juliet Silver?”
“Who are they asking for?” Ms. Chari bellowed from the back room.
“I’ve got it,” Juliet hollered, then dropped her voice. “Who are you, and what do you want?”
The man wore the dark suit of a lawyer, and Juliet wondered if her little adventure had finally caught up to her. The blockade had been lifted, so she couldn’t imagine that they’d be after her for that, but still . . . She reached for the sharp sliver of bauble-bit in her pocket.
“My name is Uric Lindenheim, and I’ve come to ensure that you receive that which is due you.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Lindenheim turned the dials on his briefcase, and from a slot in the top popped a stiff document. “You have inherited an airship, Ms. Silver, one by the name of Realm of Impossibility.”
* * *
The ship dived and weaved, bobbed and cut in, until it was clo
se enough to the Bearer of Bad News that they could haul it in. The crew laid planks between the two so that their captain could board the opposing ship. Heavy boots fell on the planks, and when the hatch burst open, the crew of the Bearer looked up from where they were cowering with expressions of shock and surprise.
“Who are you?” the Bearer’s captain asked, sheathing his sword. If he’d had his monocle, he might have recognized the air pilot standing before him as a teahouse girl who’d once served him a cup of Earl Grey.
“My name is Juliet Silver, the captain of the Realm of Impossibility, and I’ve come to collect what I’m due.”
Stenson turned to his crew with a chuckle. “Stand down, boys. She’s just a girl. I’m afraid, though, young lady, that I don’t know what you mean.”
“Ten percent of your earnings to the pilot who rid the skies of the Wispers. That pilot, old man, is me.”
“I’m afraid you weren’t part of the deal.” Stenson’s face suddenly turned stony.
“Perhaps not, but Ty Brenton was, and he’s left me in charge. I won’t be put off by a technicality.”
“I don’t want to harm you, girl.” Stenson narrowed his eyes and drew his sword.
“Oh, I assure you. You won’t.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, Juliet Silver released the Bearer of Bad News back into the skies, a few hundred golden coins lighter.
“Do you think that he’ll do it?” her first mate asked. “That he’ll tell the others that you’re calling them out on their refusal to hold up the bargain?”
“He does pilot the Bearer of Bad News, does he not?”
“You do know that we’ll be considered pirates now, ma’am?”
“Someone once told me that I’d make a good pirate. I suppose now we’ll see if he was right.”
The first mate nodded thoughtfully. “Where to now, Ms. Silver?”
Juliet’s hand strayed to the belt in her pouch, to the tintype that she kept within it. “Next stop, Portmouth Children’s Home. We’ve a delivery to make there.”
Wendy Nikel
When Wendy Nikel isn’t traveling in time, exploring magical islands, or investigating mysterious phenomena, she enjoys a quiet life near Utah’s Wasatch Mountains with her husband and sons. She has a degree in elementary education, a fondness for road trips, and a terrible habit of forgetting where she’s left her cup of tea. Her short fiction has been published by AE, Daily Science Fiction, and others, and she is a member of SFWA.
WWW: wendynikel.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/wendynikel
Twitter: @wendynikel
On the Other Side
By Amy Power Jansen | 4,000 words
When I was young, I opened doors.
Big doors. Small doors. Gymnasium doors. Assembly room doors. Bathroom doors. They swung in; they swung out. They slid open.
It was Cape Town, South Africa, and it was the ’90s and—then like now—many doors were locked. So, I learnt to pick locks. Kept opening doors. Doors at home. Doors at friends’ houses—their parents did not appreciate it. Doors at school—even less appreciated.
Always hoping to find something else. A forest full of snow and firs and talking creatures. An underwater palace of mermaids and singing clams. Wide, open plains with migrations of gargantuan creatures fourscore deep.
But I never did.
At first, my parents watched attentively. Back then, it was my bedroom door—or theirs. Our front door—white plywood slats lying crosswise. Or the kitchen door—glass set in pale milkwood. Close, familiar doors with smudged handles.
They’d watch. I’d open. Their shoulders would droop. My mom would snort and pace away. My dad would pat my shoulder. “Next time, next time.”
At night, sometimes I would creep to the top of the stairs and listen to them talk in the TV room, with the TV on. They whispered. I crept closer. They didn’t catch me. They never did.
“We can’t wait forever,” my mom would say.
“She’s our daughter,” my dad would say.
And later:
“One trip, Malcolm, just one,” she would say. “We won’t be long.”
“Not yet, Bernice,” he would say.
And eventually:
“Only a few days.”
“All right. Just this once.”
I was eight the first time they left without me.
They left me with Sarah, who had looked after me since I was a baby. I wasn’t alone. But even that first time, it felt like they were abandoning me. Like they’d given up.
They told the school that they were going on a business trip. Organised the finances with a tall, thin, warm-coloured man named Paul. Paul who always smiled with a mouth full of teeth. “Only a week,” Dad said.
But how would they know what a week was? Was a week there the same as it was here?
They didn’t book plane tickets or accommodation or car hire. When they were ready, they packed some clothes and stepped through their bedroom door. No flash, no thunder, nothing. But when I opened the door, it didn’t go anywhere but their bedroom. Their empty bedroom. Filled only with the smell of pine—like a strong air freshener.
I trudged down to the kitchen to help Sarah bake cookies.
When they got back, they came in through the front door. That first time, anyway. Almost normal. They dropped a bag of something glowing and whirring, and Dad swung me into a tight embrace. He started telling me about a wide white world where everyone lives in caves—enormous ones, dark, you’d think, but full of light. Made by worms and crystals and huge flying bats.
I’d always loved his stories before. But I wriggled out of his arms and ran back up the stairs. They’d been gone six weeks.
When I crept downstairs that night, I heard them arguing.
“Not again,” he said. “Never again.”
“She’s perfectly fine.”
“She’s not.”
“She will be.”
They stayed for two years.
My mom never watched when I opened doors now. My dad did. He tried to encourage me. He’d tell me stories of where they’d been. Or have me tell stories of where I’d like to go. He’d never read the children’s books from this world. He didn’t know about Narnia or Hogwarts or Camp Half-Blood. Sometimes we’d sit in the passage, swapping stories for hours. Then I’d try. I’d fail. And he’d pat my shoulder, or sometimes I’d curl up in his lap. We didn’t cry. At least, not together.
Until the next time they left. I cried. I wailed. I clung to his leg. Sarah had to pry me loose. But they left anyway. This time, for only three weeks.
They were planning to go again.
That’s when I started opening doors anywhere, everywhere. At school, I opened closets and classrooms, offices and empty lockers. They called me in. They called my parents.
My dad came. He apologised to the school. And when we drove home, he held my hand most of the way. Even though he was driving, even though it was dangerous.
We got home and he opened the door between the garage and the house one-handed. He held my hand so tight, so fast. I knew he wouldn’t leave me again.
But when we got inside, Sarah came running. My dad let go of me and ran. I followed. Out the back door, into the garden, and under the wide-spreading oak, there was my mom. Lying there, shaking. I’d never seen it before. But I’d heard them talk about it—in whispers in front of the TV. One of the reasons they had picked this world. It knew how to make the medicine.
Sarah ran the vials out to them. I huddled in the doorway. He injected her. She calmed. Then, he supported her up the stairs, brushing straight past me. She slept. He hovered.
And two weeks later, they left again.
Again through their bedroom door. Leaving the thick smell of blooming flowers and freshly cut lawns in their wake. I didn’t see them leave. I got home from school, went upstairs, and caught the smell in the passage. The smell of another world.
I lay on my bed, dry-eyed, for hours.
Dad listened. He found it fascinating. They’d chosen this place for its cleanly mown lawns, its straight streets, its friendly people, its medicine, and its place on his maps. He hadn’t noticed that all the people in this neighbourhood were one colour—some worlds were like that. He could blend in; he was a world-walker, after all. Mom could and didn’t. Didn’t care what other people saw or thought—or felt.
Even when he understood, he called it “apart-hate” (which makes sense as far as it goes). I heard him sometimes, talking to Paul about it. Thin, tall Paul and his spreadsheets, who shook his head at the strange—rich—man who invented things everyone needed. My dad had enough money for Paul to answer the questions about the country they both lived in. Strange man, enough money.
But the more interest Dad took in me and my world, the angrier my mom got. Her attacks got more frequent. And when she was awake and she was well, she fumed. The only way to mollify her would be another excursion.
They never warned me. They never left when I was home.
Dad said he didn’t want to hurt me.
But I hated that, coming home to the smell of far-far-away. That’s when I found a girl at school to teach me to pick locks. There had to be a door somewhere that would work for me. My door, I thought. I’d stopped fantasising about other worlds. It was all doors now. Wide, double-panelled stinkwood doors with bronze handles. Small, thin pine doors, cracked and hidden behind gates.
There had to be one.
The first time the police brought me home, all the blood drained from Sarah’s dark face. She sat me down in the formal lounge, and she scolded me. I’d never heard a cross word from her in my life. She was so quiet. Often serious, but never stern.
