Roar of Sky

by Beth Cato

  “Is that all?” Cy’s chuckle sounded strained. “Well, I do have some true good news. That newspaper also mentioned the ambassador making a stop in town. It’s Morimoto.”

  She released a long breath. Ambassador Morimoto was one of the most public Japanese representatives.

  “That is good news,” she said.

  The airships loomed larger, the noise of engines creating a consistent background drone. Men in military and company uniforms huddled in small and large groups and blocked the way ahead. Cy rolled her off the sidewalk and around stalled autocars in wait of passage through the gate.

  Ingrid clutched the chair arms. “I see Fenris out here.”

  Fenris Braun leaned against a building, his hands thrust into his pockets. He was of average height and reed slim, his skin a socially acceptable shade of tan, though he rarely endured the sun. Stains mottled both his khaki trousers and untucked denim shirt.

  “Didn’t expect to see you out here.” Anxiety edged Cy’s voice.

  “Circumstances required that I take a walk. I decided to wait here afterward. This is a good place to see who comes and goes.” Beneath a brown bowler hat set at a cocky angle, his gaze tracked the other men around the outer gate.

  “What circumstances?” asked Ingrid.

  “A man was watching the Palmetto Bug. He was about as subtle as a dragon with heartburn. I decided to make his acquaintance. He then decided to take a nap. And a swim. Unfortunately for him, he did both at the same time.”

  “Are you saying you . . . ? How?” She dared not say more with other people so close by.

  Fenris’s glance was cold enough to make her erupt in goose bumps. “I’m saying yes, I did. As for how . . . well, I can still possess weapons within the dock, can’t I? My efforts were proved worthwhile, in any case. I found this.” He tugged a folded sheet from his pocket and passed it to her. “The man was clearly incompetent. I expected Bl—the fox to hire better lackeys. At least his ineptitude was to our advantage.”

  She unfolded the single sheet as Cy leaned over her shoulder. A list in light pencil included numbers, names, and airship classes. The Palmetto Bug was about two-thirds of the way down the page, its line marked by a drawn star in darker lead.

  “He was watching for us,” Cy said softly. “Did he—”

  “He had no chance to report to anyone, no. I observed him the whole time. And before you begin griping at me, yes, I took care of him with proper efficiency.” Fenris continued to assess everyone who walked by.

  Had Fenris had much experience with this sort of thing? From what Ingrid knew of him, it didn’t seem likely. And yet . . .

  She opened her mouth to ask, but no sound emerged. Suddenly she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.

  “Let’s hope your work remains efficient through the night,” Cy murmured, passing the notepaper back to him. “We’re taking on freight in the morning and heading off for Hawaii Island. I assume the ship is still flyable, even with your recent distractions?”

  “The Bug will be ready.” Fenris waved a hand in dismissal, then tilted his head, a thoughtful look on his face. “Truth be told, I was almost hoping someone would try to break on board because I rigged a new alarm that will shock—”

  “Fenris.” Cy said a great deal in that one word.

  Fenris sighed. “I suppose we shouldn’t leave too many bodies in our wake.”

  Chapter 3

  Saturday, May 5, 1906

  “The sylphs are molting.” Fenris made the statement with all the drama and dread of announcing that the Palmetto Bug was plummeting to its doom. He cast a glance at Ingrid over his shoulder.

  “And good afternoon to you as well,” she said, rubbing her eyes as she yawned. She dropped her body into one of the wooden seats that flanked the door just within the control cabin. Her muscles felt stiff, but at least her clothes were unrestrictive today. She wore cotton drawers for their day flight to Hawaii Island. The male underclothes fit her loosely and featured larger buttons than their feminine counterparts; her legs had absorbed the worst of the nerve damage, but her finger coordination wasn’t what it once was, so small buttons were troublesome.

  Certainly, wearing such attire would have been scandalous to much of society, but she was comfortable, fully covered, and her company didn’t mind, and she didn’t particularly give a damn about society at large.

  “I don’t see any kind of molting here,” she said, examining the doorway. The sylphs hovered near the ceiling, their presence like a buzzing bonfire to Ingrid’s senses. Their scent flared like lavender as they greeted her as a bobbing gray mass. There had to be about a thousand sylphs, each resembling a gray-winged moth with a humanoid body. Ingrid had rescued them from becoming oil-fried enchanted appetizers for wealthy diners overseas.

  “The gray fluff is in their rack. I cleaned it up as best I could, as very unpleasant things would happen if that mess entered the ventilation system. At least they aren’t shedding near the control cabin.” He shot a glare over his shoulder. “They have taken to their training quite well.”

  “Fenris, they’re fairies, not poodles!”

  “I don’t discriminate. In fact, people need those same kind of boundaries. Have you ever been around small children?” He shuddered head to toe as if he were speaking of spiders. “If you do see any fluff on the floor, let me know immediately. We need to clean it up before . . .” He uplifted a fist and flared out his fingers to illustrate a small, dramatic explosion.

  “Wonderful. Because there weren’t enough ways this mission might kill us. Now we have to worry about fairy dander.” She leaned forward on her knees and studied the dials and meters and toggles. “I often wonder what all this means.”

  “I’m not the one to come to with your life dilemmas.”

  “You know what I’m talking about. How the two of you pilot the Bug. I can’t comprehend what any of this means, yet . . .”

  “Are you expressing an interest in learning to fly?” Fenris looked at her sidelong, an eyebrow raised.

  Was she? Ingrid couldn’t say she had ever daydreamed about flying an airship on her own, but she did detest her ignorance about operations aboard the Bug. And with her legs as they were, the idea of new independence in movement held special appeal.

  “I think I’d like to understand more of how things work,” she said. Fenris accepted this with a grunt.

  Ingrid gazed out the glass. Patches of green and red land peeped from beneath a blanket of gray. “Where are we? Is the Big Island beneath those clouds?”

  “No. That’s Maui.”

  She slipped into the vacant copilot’s seat to better see. “Oh! That’s Haleakala! It’s huge!” Maui’s massive volcano poked from among the clouds. “I’m glad I woke up when I did. I was afraid I’d slept too long and missed the sights.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t have exhausted yourself helping us this morning.”

  Before dawn, they had loaded their freight: twenty small pots of vanilla orchids. The little plants had surprised Ingrid; she hadn’t even known vanilla beans grew from a kind of orchid.

  Fenris and Cy had done the hard work of ferrying plants by the armful up the mooring mast and into the Bug; Ingrid had merely lashed the pots in place along the corridor. Not something that would have tired her out before.

  “I had to help load,” Ingrid said. “I can’t abide laziness. It’s not as if I drew on my magical power.”

  “Magical power, physical power. Those two overlap quite a bit in regard to your body.”

  “That’s why I’m certain my grandmother will be able to help in some way.”

  “Delusion is wonderful while it lasts,” said Fenris.

  Ingrid recalled Blum’s parting words for her in Seattle. Hope is a form of gangrene. Her hands formed fists atop her thighs. “You really don’t think I’ll get better.”

  Beneath his goggles, his thin lips pursed together. “Define ‘better.’ Will you be able to move like you once did? To jump, climb, run? That m
ight be asking for a miracle.”

  “Madam Pele is a goddess.”

  “She doesn’t go around healing erstwhile relatives who knock at the door of her volcano, does she?” He arched an eyebrow. “No. Of course not. She’s too busy burning down villages with lava.”

  Ingrid conceded that point with a frown. “Actually, I’m most concerned that she won’t show herself to us at all. As a shapeshifter, she could be anything, anywhere. If she wants to hide from me, she will.”

  “Shapeshifting. Such an interesting skill.” Wistfulness flickered over Fenris’s face, and he shook his head as if to shed the unfinished thought. “Ah, well. To bluntly change the subject, I spy something of great interest to you.” He pointed ahead. Ingrid sucked in a sharp breath.

  Mauna Loa. She could recite its data from oft-overheard lessons at the Cordilleran Auxiliary. The volcano scraped the heavens at fourteen thousand feet, about the same height as Mount Rainier back in Washington, but Mauna Loa existed on an entirely different scale. Geologists speculated it was the largest mountain in the world in terms of mass. Whereas many mountain peaks formed a rough triangle, Mauna Loa formed one that was squat and wide, like a sumo wrestler in position to start a bout. Even though it was early May, a dusting of snow was still visible at the peak.

  “I’ve never seen a mountain that big in all my life,” said Fenris. “And that’s a volcano? Christ.”

  “Yes, and there are actually several other volcanoes around it. That peak to the left is Mauna Kea. It’s actually the same height as Mauna Loa, but the mass is considerably different.” She stared in awe. Mauna Kea appeared puny in comparison. “Straight ahead, I think, is Kohala, and then Hualalai is over on the right somewhere beneath those clouds. That one last erupted about a hundred years ago.”

  She suspected she was pronouncing the latter name wrong, as she had read it more often than she heard it. That bothered her. This place was part of her identity, and she wanted to grant it proper respect.

  “The lava rocks all those volcanoes left behind will create a rough flight for us soon.” At Ingrid’s puzzled look, Fenris continued: “Black lava rocks absorb and radiate heat. By early afternoon, that can cause thunderstorms to develop. Like that.” He motioned to the clouds ahead and below them.

  As if to illustrate, the craft made a small lurch. “I hope Cy can sleep through it.”

  “Eh. We’ve had to bunk in cheap flats beside railroad tracks more than once. The man has evolved, per Darwin’s theory, to sleep whenever and however he can. The little tub of beeswax he bought back in Honolulu won’t hurt either. You know, maybe if you plug your ears, you’ll sleep better.”

  She shrugged. Her sleep issues had little to do with noise and a lot to do with leg cramps. “I’m going to stretch my legs and check on the plants.”

  “Be extra careful walking through this turbulence.” As if to illustrate, the Bug hit another rough patch. It bobbed up and down as if on a stormy ocean current.

  “Be extra careful yourself. An airship crash would bring unnecessary excitement to our day.” Ingrid had to pivot her hips around to lead with her right leg in order to step out from between the pilots’ chairs.

  The sylphs dipped and swarmed around her as she entered the hallway. They had been ecstatic when the orchids had arrived that morning, buzzing like a hundred cats purring at once. They must have been starved for greenery, Ingrid decided. They hadn’t expressed any desire to leave the ship in Honolulu, instead lurking in their rack. When she had checked on them, they conveyed that the bustle and scents of the dock were reminiscent of the Seattle port where she had rescued them from death.

  “I’m glad to see you, too,” she said. She extended her arms to either side, catching herself on the walls as the airship jostled. The fairies followed her.

  Ropes secured the orchid pots to built-in holes and fasteners. She frowned as she tentatively lowered herself to the tatami mat. The slender vines and broad leaves looked noticeably larger than before. She looked to the next plant, and the one behind her. They all looked larger. One plant had even developed buds, and none of them had been budding when she tied them down.

  “Is this your doing?” she murmured to the sylphs. She didn’t reach into her power to formally ask the question. That had been less necessary recently, as the sylphs had begun to understand more verbal communication from all three humans aboard the Bug.

  The sylphs responded with a high-pitched clicking sound.

  “Don’t make them grow too big, not this time. The man buying these plants wants them small.”

  The happy buzz took on a querulous tone. Ingrid sighed. Even if she delved into her power to clarify what she meant, she wasn’t sure how she’d go about it. Instead, she switched to a word they knew quite well. “Pastry?”

  At that, the sylphs reached a euphoric decibel that Fenris could probably hear in the cockpit. Ingrid opened the pantry, which currently had an entire shelf devoted to kashi-pan wrapped in newsprint bundles. She grabbed two packets and, with a high-stepped gait to prevent her feet from dragging, walked to where the four beds flanked the corridor.

  Sitting down, she tore a pastry in half and extended a piece to the sylphs. They dive-bombed it, the weight of the yeast bread dissipating in a matter of seconds. Not a single crumb remained on her palm.

  She usually didn’t rely on equal distribution when she fed the sylphs these days. Their relationship had become more casual. The fairies had accepted the Bug as their new nest, and Ingrid, Cy, and Fenris were part of the deal.

  Examining the remaining bread in her other hand, she concluded that the middle of this particular bun contained some sort of yellow marmalade. Ingrid suspected it was lemon, but biting into it, discovered a much tarter flavor than she expected. Still delicious, though, despite numerous little seeds. It must be some local fruit.

  She ate the rest of the soft bread roll, then reached for the second. This one was an-pan. The red bean paste inside was the slightest bit chunky, just the way she liked it.

  Across from her, Cy occupied the bunk that she often used. Blackout curtains obscured him from view, but she could hear the soft noises he made as he slept.

  Good. He wasn’t awake to stop her. Fortified by bread, she climbed the ladder to the rack directly above.

  She proceeded slowly, her feet dragging against each rung. About halfway up, the muscles in her left leg spasmed with an electric-shock jolt from her toes to her buttocks. Her calf went painfully rigid. She kicked it out in an effort to loosen the tension. Her right foot lost its grip. She gasped as her body dropped—then immediately stopped.

  The prickling sensation of the sylphs’ touch brought a different kind of pain, but one that was preferable to smacking her head and back on the floor below. She gritted her teeth as she clenched the topmost rung with her sweaty hands and dragged herself upward, the sylphs providing an extra boost.

  At last, she made it onto the bunk. Sweat drenched her body. She sat and rubbed the troublesome calf muscle.

  The sylphs fluttered into the large, bowl-like nest they’d made for themselves in the blankets. Their buzzing was subdued out of courtesy for Cy.

  She had climbed this ladder in mere seconds several times before. Now the effort reminded her of trudging up Telegraph Hill in San Francisco with a laden pack.

  In the far corner behind the sylphs’ nest, the Green Dragon Crescent Blade of the Chinese god Guan Yu lay hidden in its bag beneath folds of blankets. The holy presence of the pole-arm’s blade radiated heat that was distinct from that of the sylphs. The fairies had gladly accepted Ingrid’s request that they guard the weapon from any strangers who might come aboard the Bug, and they had otherwise shown no reaction to it.

  Lee’s carving of the qilin stared at her from the back wall. The image of the chimerical combination of dragon, goat, and unicorn was undeniably crude but still recognizable.

  The kirin and qilin were regarded as among the most powerful beings in the Japanese and Chinese pantheons, so rar
e and obscure that they were considered extinct or mythological. They were creatures of peace, and also ones of divine portent, said to visit people destined to be sages or powerful rulers.

  Previously, the qilin had shown up of its own volition and counseled Ingrid to save Lee’s life for the sake of the world—as if she had needed additional motivation to save the boy she loved as her brother. It had also told her that it could perceive the world through reproductions of its image, but it hadn’t returned since then. And she was damned sick of waiting for the next visit.

  She stretched out her fingertips to touch the triangle-shaped divots of splintered wood, relying on the tactile sensation to help her reach out to the celestial being.

  “Qilin.” Ingrid placed as much emphasis on the name as she could without utilizing her power. “Thank you for watching over us. I am keeping the guandao close by your image here. I hope I can return it to Lee, or give it to someone else whom you deem worthy enough to wield it.” She knew she didn’t qualify, and in truth, she was still embarrassed that she had tried. She wasn’t Chinese, and it was arrogant of her to presume she could handle the holy weapon.

  It was unquestionably arrogant of her to invoke the qilin like this, too, but she was desperate.

  “I need your help, qilin.” She kept her tone humble. “If Lee is alive, you are certain to be watching over him.” She struggled with her emotions, thinking of how she and Lee had clung to each other in the weeks after Mama had died. “I ache to watch over him myself, to talk to him, but I have no means to do so.”

  She went quiet for a moment. There was still no sense of the qilin’s holy presence, no tintinnabulation of bells or whiffs of wonderful smells from the past that made her feel at peace.

  “I would be humbled and honored, qilin, if you could act as a medium between us. I know this is a bold request on my part. I’m grateful to you for even listening to me.” She shook her head, chagrined. “Even saying that is a presumption on my part. I’m sorry.”