Skyborn

by Sinéad O'Hart

  Bastjan pulled himself out of Crake’s embrace and ran, dodging falling objects and fighting for balance. He heard Alice and Crake calling him back, and Wares’s fearful yapping, but he knew what he had to do.

  His fingers shook as he reached the shuddering doors. The bolt was jammed through two metal loops and attached by a short chain to a panel nailed to one of the doors. Bastjan hauled at the chain with all his strength. The great bolt began to shift, lifting upwards, and Bastjan pushed at it until finally, and with surprising speed, it popped right out of the loops.

  And then, with a groan of metal, the doors to the airship’s cargo hold began to grind open. Bastjan flailed for something to hold on to as the wind sucked at his hair and clothes and buffeted against his breath. Beneath him, all he could see were mountains, jagged and snow-capped, far too close for comfort. Just as he felt sure he was about to tip forwards into emptiness, he felt someone grab his hand firmly, pulling him to safety.

  They both tumbled against the wall in a jumble of limbs and hair and muffled apologies.

  “You’re welcome,” Alice muttered, pushing him off.

  “Where are we?” Bastjan said, staring out at the view. The mountains were rushing by beneath the ship, coming closer and closer with every minute, and it couldn’t be long until they’d come in to land.

  A noise from the cage drew their attention towards the Slipskin. Her eyes were fixed on the outside world too, reflecting the white of the snow beyond the door. She blinked, slowly and purposefully, and her glow intensified, wrapping around her body like a shroud. Then it disappeared as quickly as if the shroud had been pulled away – and when it did, the Slipskin girl was gone. In her place was a tiny bird, no bigger than a wren, small enough to flit between the bars of the cage with ease.

  The bird flew to Bastjan and perched on his knee. She looked up at him with her golden-brown head to one side, her shining eyes regarding him curiously. And then she slipped through the cargo door, disappearing into the sky so quickly that she seemed to vanish completely. Bastjan watched her go, and from somewhere very deep, he felt a bubble of loss and pride and sorrow rising up through him.

  “Bye,” he whispered, his throat aching. “I ’ope I did all right, Mum.”

  In the next second, the airship landed, hitting the snowy mountainside with a crump. Alice grabbed hold of Bastjan again as he almost hurtled out of the door. They held one another tight as the ship skidded along the rocky ground for several hundred yards. Finally, the airship gave one last lurch and settled, metal groaning all around as it found purchase on the mountain.

  Bastjan turned to see Crake coming towards him on unsteady feet. Empty-handed, his axes lost in the collision, he slumped down beside the children.

  A noise made them turn to see Quinn scrambling to his feet, pulling loose the harness that Hubert had used to overpower him. The animal handler was lying on the floor, his face slick with blood down one side. It looked like he’d been hit by something, perhaps one of the crates that had been dislodged in the crash-landing. Quinn bent over Hubert’s prone form, pulling something free from the unconscious handler’s belt, and then staggered forwards. After a step or two Quinn stopped again, bending to pick up an object from the floor.

  As the ringmaster slid the object into his pocket, Bastjan recognized it – his mother’s box. His lungs were suddenly tight, as though drawn shut with thread, and the words he wanted to shout at his stepfather were stoppered up before they reached his tongue. Without so much as a backwards glance, Quinn staggered out through the doors and into the morning light, his eyes fixed on the sky. In his hand was the harpoon gun he’d pulled from Hubert’s belt, its point shining and death-sharp.

  Bastjan looked out to see Quinn fighting his way through the knee-deep snow as he skirted around the ship, getting further away every second.

  “Whoop,” Bastjan said, shaking his head in irritation at the sound. He coughed, painfully deep, and got to his feet. “C’mon,” he said. “We ain’t jus’ goin’ to let him go, are we?”

  “What harm can he do now?” Crake said. The big man winced as he began to drag himself up.

  “Harm? He can do plenty! He’s got Hubert’s gun. He’s goin’ after ’er again – you know ’e is. Please, Crake. Please.” He sucked hard on his lip. “And my mum’s box, Crake. I got to get it back.”

  Crake’s body throbbed with pain, but the strongman pushed it aside as he got to his feet, shaking with effort. He leaned heavily on Bastjan’s shoulders.

  “What about Hubert?” Alice asked, as Crake held out a hand to her.

  “Help’s comin’,” Crake said, nodding his head towards the sound of voices. Bastjan turned. Some of the crew members were entering the hold from the other side, smashing their way through the doors that led into the body of the ship.

  “We gotta go,” Bastjan said. The big man nodded and began to hobble forwards, supported on one side by Alice and on the other by Bastjan. Together, they picked their way over the chaos of the upturned room and when they reached the doors Crake slid to the ground first, stretching up to help the children down.

  They hurried through the snow, following the ringmaster’s tracks around the ship. The air was thin and cold as a knife. All around them mountains rose into the sky. The ship had come down in a snowfield, held in a hollow between the peaks like sand in a cupped palm.

  “There!” Bastjan said. The ringmaster was a hundred yards ahead of them, kicking up snow with his boots as he strode across the frozen ground. The ramp, beneath which Bastjan and his friends had hidden the day before, had been wrenched open in the collision. As they watched, someone appeared in the opening. He jumped towards the ground, landing softly in the snow.

  “Who’s that?” Alice asked as the man came towards Quinn.

  “Lahiri,” Crake answered. “He does the king pole.”

  “The what?” Alice asked, frowning.

  “The first pole to go up when we’re raisin’ the big top,” Bastjan muttered, keeping his eyes on the men. The ringmaster was shouting something at Lahiri, who looked confused. Lahiri’s hand strayed to his belt.

  “I said now!” The ringmaster’s shout was loud enough to carry. Lahiri fumbled at his belt and unfastened a ring of keys, which he handed to Quinn. Once he had the keys, Quinn struck Lahiri with the butt of his harpoon gun, hitting him smartly on the side of the head. Lahiri crumpled to the ground.

  Bastjan’s breath began to come in thick gloopy gusts once more. He and Alice shared a horrified look.

  “What on earth is he playin’ at?” Crake murmured, and then something struck Bastjan with almost as much force as the harpoon gun had struck Lahiri. The pods. Marlowe, the rigger who’d tried to lock him up, had had a set of keys just like the one Lahiri had just handed to Quinn.

  He looked at the airship, lying on its side. Its hull seemed undamaged, but the balloon was slumped against its tethers, gradually deflating. The pods, hanging sideways, were still attached to the back of the ship, rocking slightly on their moorings. Bastjan remembered what Marlowe had said: There are controls to fly it, o’ course, but that’s no good to youse lot. You need to ’ave a clue what you’re doin’ first…

  “The pods,” he said to Crake. “The ringmaster’s goin’ to fly one. He is goin’ after her!”

  Before the strongman had a chance to reply, Bastjan was off, chasing after Quinn as fast as he could, his legs pistoning through the snow.

  “Look!” Alice gasped as she and Crake scrambled after him.

  The ringmaster had climbed up a bank of snow and churned-up dirt and launched himself from it, landing awkwardly on top of the nearest pod. He reached down to undo the lock on the pod’s small round escape hatch using the keys he’d taken from Lahiri. It fell open heavily. As Bastjan and his friends drew near, the ringmaster swung himself through.

  Bastjan scrambled up the snowbank and launched himself from the top of it, grabbing hold of the hatch’s handle just as Quinn tried to haul it closed. The hatch was m
ade of thick, heavy metal and Quinn didn’t look at all pleased to be pulling against Bastjan’s weight too. The boy clung to the door, staring up into the pod – and into the ringmaster’s enraged face.

  “If you know what’s good for you, thing,” Quinn snarled, “you’ll let go of this door and leave me in peace.”

  “Not a chance,” Bastjan wheezed. “Whoop.”

  “Come on, Mr Quinn, sir,” Crake said, gasping as he reached the pod. “Give it up. It’s time.”

  “What would you know about it being time,” Quinn snapped at Crake. “You should’ve been retired years ago.”

  “Fair enough,” Crake said, with a shrug. “And I would have gone with me honour intact. Don’t you want to do the same?”

  “Honour?” Quinn spat. “What has honour to do with anything? I’ve discovered the most incredible headline act anywhere on earth and you expect me to step away from it?” He stared at Bastjan with hard, sharp eyes. “I thought it was in your blood, boy. The circus. I couldn’t have been more wrong.”

  Bastjan took a deep breath. “I know what’s in my blood,” he said, trying not to lose his grip on the hatch. “My mum’s in it. An’ she wouldn’t’ve let you do this.”

  Quinn coughed out a humourless laugh. “Your mum,” he sneered, “performed with you before you could even walk, for goodness’ sake. There was nothing she wouldn’t have done, if an audience would applaud her for it.”

  “She’d never ’ave hurt me! She’d never ’ave hurt anyone!” Bastjan shouted, tears filling his eyes. “An’ I’m sure she wouldn’t’ve gone up if you hadn’t made her.”

  The ringmaster snorted. “Me? I didn’t make her do the Dance of the Snowflakes. In fact, the act wasn’t even my idea.” He leaned forwards out of the pod, his eyes narrowed. “It was hers.”

  Bastjan felt like someone had punctured him. “What?”

  Quinn’s face shone with malice. “If you don’t believe me, ask your friend Cornelius. I’m sure he remembers.” He turned to Crake. “Don’t you? Don’t you remember our dear Ester and how she begged me to put her and the baby on top billing? How she assured me it would get the crowds in? And it did – for a while.” The ringmaster chuckled. “Yes indeed, I’m sure old Crake remembers that all too well.”

  Bastjan turned to his friend. He felt as though all the blood in his body had begun to drain out through his heels. His hands, on the hatch, were numb. “Crake? What’s ’e talkin’ about?”

  The strongman was grey in the face, staring at the ringmaster with hatred in his eyes.

  “Your mother loved you, lad,” Crake said.

  “And old Crake here loved her,” the ringmaster jeered. “But she chose me. Didn’t she, Cornelius? Not for love, of course. But for everything that came with being married to a ringmaster. She wanted the circus. She wanted fame. She wanted to be known all over the world. The Girl Who Flew!” Quinn waved his hand in the air. “So marriage to a moth-eaten circus strongman wasn’t part of her plan – whatever her heart might have told her.” He turned to Bastjan. “Your beloved mum endangered you every night of your life and she did it because she wanted to.”

  “Because you wouldn’t let ’er out of a silly, hasty promise that she made in desperation!” Crake shouted, so suddenly that Bastjan jumped. “She was newly widowed, in need of a home an’ a job to provide fer a young baby, an’ she was willin’ to do whatever she had to, to keep her child safe. She promised you a headline act that nobody could top, an’ she delivered you the Dance of the Snowflakes. She only meant to perform it once, but when she showed you what she could do, you wouldn’t let ’er stop. Nothin’ was good enough – not even the new act she was workin’ on, the one that would’ve let ’er keep the child on the ground, where he belonged.”

  “I wasn’t going to allow her to take my act away,” Quinn replied, his voice tight with rage. “The Dance of the Snowflakes made me.”

  Crake blinked, a new understanding dawning on his face. “I heard you, shoutin’ at her the day she fell,” the strongman said. “You found out about her wantin’ to leave. Didn’t you?”

  Quinn’s face twisted. “She wanted to visit her mama, she said. But she wouldn’t tell me when she was coming back. I knew, then. She was taking her act somewhere else. I couldn’t allow that.”

  “She weren’t goin’ to any new circus!” Bastjan said. “She jus’ wanted to fix things.”

  Quinn turned to the boy. “So she wanted to give up her talent and stop performing?” he said. “How’s that any better? She would’ve ruined me.”

  Bastjan’s mouth was tight as he stared at his stepfather. “Yeah. Well, you managed that all by yerself.”

  A sudden noise from the sky made them all look up – a terrible shriek. Bastjan saw a gigantic shape against the weak morning sun. A spiralling tail covered with sharp barbs, claws that shone like metal and a pair of wings, their feathers like sharp plates of armour, which were wide enough to block out the light. The creature’s head was huge, with a curved, powerful beak, and her golden eyes glittered. The Slipskin.

  Bastjan had no idea what sort of creature she’d become – perhaps one that only existed in her nightmares. She was circling the downed airship, her massive head turning from side to side as though she were looking for something.

  “What’s she doing?” Alice said. Wares, at her feet, growled at the wheeling Slipskin and then took off at a run, yapping at its shadow. “No! Wares! Come back here!” Alice yelled, racing after the dog.

  Cyrus Quinn growled, regaining his grip on the handle of the pod door and hauling it up with massive effort. Bastjan’s hand slipped; he landed with a whumpf in the snow.

  “Wait!” he shouted, desperation making his chest burn. I can’t jus’ let him leave! “Wait jus’ one minute! You made me a promise.” Bastjan was sure he could see the corner of his mother’s box poking out of Quinn’s pocket, just out of reach. “You promised me my mum’s things.”

  Quinn let the door fall open a crack. “So I did. I’m afraid, however, that in this case my word is not my bond.”

  “Then take me with you!” Bastjan shouted.

  Crake turned to Bastjan, incredulous. “What? You can’t mean that. Son, you’re not thinkin’ right!”

  Bastjan didn’t look at Crake. He spoke again, the words thick and tight in his throat, pushing painfully out through his mouth. “Take me.”

  After a heartbeat’s pause, Quinn reached down and grabbed Bastjan by the collar, hauling him aboard the pod. Then he reached for the control panel on the wall and pressed a button. Gas-powered engines kicked into life, blasting Crake off his feet. The clamps attaching the pod to the side of the airship released one by one, each with a hollow clunk.

  Crake scrambled to his feet as the pod began to lift off. He grabbed hold of the hatch, gripping a pipe on the side of the airship with the other hand, and Bastjan saw the strain on his face as the force of the pod’s engines grew stronger and stronger.

  “Please! Stop! You’re goin’ to kill ’im!” he shouted.

  “What a capital idea,” Quinn said, pulling out the harpoon gun. Without missing a beat he braced himself to fire and shot Crake in the chest. The harpoon hit with a strange-sounding clang, skittering off into the snow.

  The strongman finally released his grip and fell to the ground, and the pod rocketed into the sky. It righted itself as it flew and Bastjan dropped to the floor. His lungs felt like they were slowly filling with water. All he could think about was the look on Crake’s face – the fear, the sorrow and the betrayal. An’ now Quinn’s shot ’im, Bastjan thought, despair swallowing him up. I ain’t never goin’ to get a chance to tell ’im how sorry I am… He wiped his nose on the back of his hand and swallowed hard, pushing the pain away just enough to keep going. Getting his mother’s box back wasn’t worth this – it wasn’t worth any of it. But I can still save the Slipskin.

  “Come on!” Quinn shouted, steadying himself against the pod’s erratic movements. He tucked the harpoon gun under one
arm as he reached for the hatch. “Help me get the door shut!”

  Bastjan pushed himself to his feet, finding his balance as he would on a swaying rope. He could feel the pod gaining height with every second, but he was not afraid. Not any more. As he came within range of the ringmaster, he bent low and threw himself at the man, almost knocking him flat.

  “Take care, you fool! You’ll have us both overboard!” Quinn tore Bastjan away from him, his eyes filled with rage.

  “You’re not goin’ to hurt anyone else!” Bastjan roared. The noise of wind in the tiny pod was overwhelming. It was hard to breathe and the pod’s movement was dangerously unpredictable. They had to get the hatch shut, or soon they wouldn’t be doing much of anything at all.

  “I’m not going to hurt her, you simpleton! I’m going to give her a new life, one she couldn’t dream of in that wreck of a city she called home.” Quinn’s eyes searched the boy’s face. “I thought you were throwing your lot in with me,” he said, blinking. Bastjan could have sworn he looked disappointed – almost wounded.

  “I never wanted anythin’ to do wi’ you,” Bastjan said. “My mum tried to get away from you an’ she died before she could. I ain’t goin’ to let you destroy her memory too.”

  A shadow fell over the pod. They both turned to look out of the hatch, which was flapping and groaning in the wind. The Slipskin was outside, flying beside them. Her gigantic golden eye peered in through the door. Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Bastjan launched himself at Quinn once more, shoving his hand into the ringmaster’s pocket.

  His fingers found the familiar shape of his mother’s treasure box, but the ringmaster jerked away before Bastjan could tear it free. With a savage kick, Quinn threw Bastjan off. He fumbled for his gun, a crazed look in his eyes as he slid a new harpoon into the chamber.